Reluctantly Charmed Blog Tour: Ellie O’Neill on Irish Fairy Lore

Ellie O’Neill took the long way round. She sold spider catchers in Sydney, flipped burgers in Dublin and worked in advertising in London. All the while, she had that niggling feeling, that she had stories to tell. So, at thirty-something, she made the brave leap and moved back in with her parents to get the job done. Swopping the dizzy disco lights of London for their suburban Dublin house, she scribbled away knowing that there was something about Irish fairies she needed to share with the world. Then most unexpectedly Ellie fell madly in love. The only catch, he lived in Australia. True to form she couldn’t ignore the magic and followed her heart to Oz for what was supposed to be a long holiday. Five years later Australia is home to Ellie, her Joe and their fabulous baby (with an Irish name no one can pronounce).

Reluctantly Charmed (Simon and Schuster Au October 2014) is Ellie O’Neill’s first novel. You can read my review HERE, but first, read on to learn more about this delightful novel…

“Kate McDaid is listing her new-year’s resolutions hoping to kick-start her rather stagnant love life and career when she gets some very strange news. To her surprise, she is the sole benefactor of a great great-great-great aunt and self-proclaimed witch also called Kate McDaid, who died over 130 years ago. As if that isn’t strange enough, the will instructs that, in order to receive the inheritance, Kate must publish seven letters, one by one, week by week.
Burning with curiosity, Kate agrees and opens the first letter – and finds that it’s a passionate plea to reconnect with the long-forgotten fairies of Irish folklore. Almost instantaneously, Kate’s life is turned upside down. Her romantic life takes a surprising turn and she is catapulted into the public eye.
As events become stranger and stranger – and she discovers things about herself she’s never known before – Kate must decide whether she can fulfil her great-aunt’s final, devastating request … and whether she can face the consequences if she doesn’t.
Witty, enchanting and utterly addictive, Reluctantly Charmed is about what happens when life in the fast lane collides with the legacy of family, love and its possibilities … and a little bit of magic. “

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I’m delighted to welcome Ellie O’Neill to Book’d Out today to share a little about how her granny and her belief in fairies inspired the writing of Reluctantly Charmed.

My Granny Believed in Fairies by Ellie McNeill

My granny believed in fairies. She was a formidable woman who shed her rural upbringing with delight and made a very modern life for herself in Dublin. She worked when that wasn’t the done thing for a woman, she dressed in the height of fashion at all times, she drank Brandy or champagne, and was a keen poker player. But there were old fashioned traditions from her upbringing that she was never able to shake, and one of them was her belief in fairies.

Fairy lore in Ireland has been handed down from one generation to the next and is a predominantly rural tradition. Irish fairies are not angelic woodland creatures, they like to drink whisky, dance, sing songs and play sports. The belief is that if they are not kept happy they will turn nasty and play an evil trick on you. The good news is that it’s not too difficult to keep them happy; leave them be, don’t disturb a fairy ring, leave a little bit of milk for them at the end of your glass, wash the steps at the front of your house for the fairies to have somewhere nice to rest as they’re passing by. If however, they are angered they could perform all manner of devilment on you. Granny told me stories of her village, and how a local farmer was said to have stepped into a fairy ring and that was the cause of his club foot. Back then, if a farmer had a bad harvest it was more often than not because of something he had done to the fairies. Ailments and disabilities were regularly attributed to their anger. She also had a story of a man who was given a hump on his back because he sang one of their favorite songs out of tune. Fairies were not to be messed with.

What’s interesting about this piece of Irish folklore is that, unlike in other cultures the fairies are not confined to childhood. They belong to the adult world. A thread of this superstition still exists today, the majority of farmers in Ireland would be incredibly reluctant to farm through a quarter of an acre of a field that houses a fairy ring. Just in case. They would also incur a government fine of up to $20,000 as fairy rings are seen as our cultural heritage and are protected landmarks.

After my Granny had passed away and I started to write Reluctantly Charmed, I could not shake the memory of her putting her glass on the window sill with two fingers of milk in it. What I had accepted in my childhood deserved some exploration in my adulthood. I investigated the folklore and fell in love with that romantic otherworld and all the magic and mystery that surrounds it.

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Reluctantly Charmed is available to purchase from

Simon and Schuster I I Booktopia I Bookworld I via Booko