A very long time ago in my late teens, I wrote a book with the rather unimaginative title ‘The Magic Forest’ which was (quite rightly) never published. Although derivative (I was inspired by Walter de la Mare’s strange and wonderful novel ‘The Three Royal Monkeys’) it was neverth … | Continue reading
Stories about selkies are ambiguous, evocative, sad. This is largely because of the way seals themselves affect us. Bobbing curiously up around boats, they seem to feel as much interest in us as we feel for them, and there is something human about their round heads and large eyes … | Continue reading
In ‘A Book of Folk-Lore’ (1913) the Devon folklorist Sabine Baring-Gould recounts three instances in which he and members of his family ‘saw’ pixies or dwarfs. I’ll let you read them: In the year 1838, when I was a small boy of four years old, we were driving to Montpellier [Fran … | Continue reading
All voyages are voyages of discovery; all voyages are dangerous. Even in these days when cruise liners are thought of as little more than floating hotels, disaster sometimes strikes. Departing on a voyage is already a little death, a farewell to loved ones who may never be seen a … | Continue reading
This wonderful poem attributed to Finn was translated by Lady Augusta Gregory in Gods and Fighting Men (John Murray, 1904), and is part of the medieval tradition of poetry in praise of spring and summer (in comparison to the harshness of winter). As to the age of the poem, the Fe … | Continue reading
This is just to give notice that a week today, on Saturday 25th November at 8pm GMT, I'll be giving an online lecture for the wonderful Folklore Podcast about my search for 'Lost Fairy Tales of 16th & 17th Century England and Scotland'. I'll be talking about fairy tales of which … | Continue reading
Following my series of posts on 'Enchanted Sleep and Sleepers' (see links: #1, #2 and #3), here is a sort of appendix: three tales from Irish mythology. The Fenian Cycle tells how Finn son of Cumhail once tried to wed a woman of the Sidhe. He was hunting on the mountain Bearnas M … | Continue reading
This tale comes from John Masefield’s collection of sea stories ‘A Mainsail Haul’, first published in 1905 when the author was only 26. It's beautiful, although like most tales about selkies it is quite dark and sad. ['Loanings' means 'lanes'.] ‘The seals is pretty when they do b … | Continue reading
I’m delighted to welcome for the second time to my blog the author Shveta Thakrar, whose second YA novel The Dream Runners was published by HarperCollins last year. I thoroughly enjoyed her debut novel Star Daughter and this one's even better. Shveta weaves into her YA fantasies … | Continue reading
Probably the best-known enchanted sleeper after the Sleeping Beauty is Rip van Winkle. A lazybones living in the Catskill Mountains, he prefers hunting to hard work. Out with his dog one evening, he helps a strange little fellow to carry a keg up the mountain. They arrive at ‘a h … | Continue reading
My last post concerned a number of enchanted sleepers, all male, whose lengthy slumbers – however inconvenient – were almost entirely benign, awarded by the gods or God in order to save, enlighten or confer spiritual blessings upon them; and sometimes all three, for even when the … | Continue reading
This is the first of a series of posts on enchanted sleep and sleepers in mythology, legends, the eddas, sagas, fairy tales and folklore. And to begin as as close to the beginning as I can, the earliest tale of an enchanted sleep I know is that of the 7th or 6th century BCE philo … | Continue reading
Jonas Lie was a contemporary of Ibsen, born 1833 at Hvokksund, not far from Oslo, but spent much of his childhood at Tromsø, inside the Arctic Circle. He was sent to naval college, but poor eyesight made him unsuited for a life at sea, so he became a lawyer and began to write and … | Continue reading
St Ives Harbour Fish Market: courtesy of https://www.cornwalls.co.uk Another tale from Robert Hunt’s ‘Popular Romances of the West of England, or The Drolls, Superstitions and Traditions of Old Cornwall’ (third edition, 1896) was told orally to Charles Taylor Stephens, a poet and … | Continue reading
There’s a story in The Mabinogion about a girl who is changed into an owl. The magicians Gwydion and Math ap Mathonwy create her out of flowers for Lleu Llaw Gyffes whose mother has cursed him never to have a human wife. They take ‘the flowers of the oak, and the flowers of the b … | Continue reading
This is a tale told in Robert Hunt’s ‘Popular Romances of the West of England, or The Drolls, Superstitions and Traditions of Old Cornwall’. First published in 1865 it went into three editions and was illustrated by George Cruikshank, of whom more below. The third edition begins … | Continue reading
I've been reading a lot of Irish and Scots fairy tales or wonder tales lately and have been struck, as often before, by the sheer beauty of expression in many of them. I cannot read the original Gaelic of course, but various Victorian translators seem to have done a marvellous jo … | Continue reading
A story from Formosa (now Taiwan) recorded in the Folk Lore Journal 1887 (Vol 5 p 139) tells how seven brothers, banished from their home, encountered some unsettling ‘little people’ on their journey through the forest. The exiles went forth into the depth of the forest, and in t … | Continue reading
Folklore tells that the mountain ranges of Skye named the Red and Black Cuillins were named after the Irish hero Cuchulain, who came there to learn battle skills from the woman warrior Scáthach, pronounced Ska’hach, with ‘ch’ as in ‘loch’. According to James MacKillop’s Dictionar … | Continue reading
Some time ago I was sitting in a pub garden watching a little boy of about three trying to play Aunt Sally - a game rather like skittles which is popular in our bit of Oxfordshire. He was having difficulty, but eventually succeeded in hurling the heavy wooden baton (which is used … | Continue reading
It came, it came again to the scented garden, The call that they would not heed, A clear wild note far up on the hills above them, Blown on an elfin reed. From the heath in the hidden dells of a moorland people It came so crystal clear That they could not help a moment’s pause on … | Continue reading
To begin near the beginning: the name Adam was originally not a proper name at all. In his book The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary, the Hebrew scholar Robert Alter remarks of Adam’s first appearance in Genesis 1.26: The term ’adam, afterwards consistently used … | Continue reading
There are fools. There are foolish fools and wise fools, and this essay will concern itself (mainly) with the wise ones. Foolish fools, in the oral tradition and in literature, are simpletons who make bad decisions. Granted three wishes, they squander their chances, wish for some … | Continue reading
‘The Binding of Fenris’, ill. Dorothy Hardy This is the full text of the Katharine Briggs Memorial Lecture as I gave it to the Folklore Society on 8th November 2022. If you would prefer to watch, there’s a link at the bottom to the Youtube recording of the event made by the Folkl … | Continue reading
'Water-Horse' by Andrew Paciorek This tale about a water-horse is taken from ‘Skye: The Island and its Legends’ by Otta F. Swire (Oxford University Press, 1952). Varkasaig is on Loch Bharcasaig (same name, different spelling) on the north-west coast of Skye. ‘Crowdie’ is gruel, a … | Continue reading
I have made a discovery, or at least a possible discovery. Maybe others have made it before, but it is new to me: in 1891 at the age of seventeen G.K. Chesterton, then a pupil at St Paul’s School London, wrote and illustrated a witty natural history (or supernatural history?) of … | Continue reading
I love lists. Especially lists of mysterious creatures, like the well-known one by Reginald Scot in The Discoverie of Witchcra... | Continue reading