Paul Farrell

A little girl reading to her teddy bear before bed on Christmas Eve gets led by a monster into a world of magic forests, volcanoes and witches’ lairs.

Director John Ford, acclaimed actor Tyrone Power, and the players of Dublin's famous Abbey Theatre bring to life three stories about Ireland that reveal the fierce pride, the unrestrained gaiety, and the unending devotion of the Irish people. In "The Majesty of the Law," a police officer is assigned to arrest an Irish curmudgeon who hit the neighbor who sold him a lousy batch of homemade whiskey. Set at a train station, "A Minute's Wait" offers a humorous look at Irish conceptions of time as a train's brief scheduled stop to pick up some lobsters for an important dinner stretches out into a long, leisurely pause. The final vignette, "1921," tells the story of the elaborate rescue of an Irish patriot from prison.