14th July, 2025 in Folklore
An Irish folklore story from the new book The Anthology of Irish Folk Tales Volume II out July 2025. Every county in Ireland has its own tale of the Leannan Sidhe, the fairy lover, and County Derry is no different. The story is told of a young man trying to withstand the romantic…
22nd February, 2023 in Folklore, Natural World
Mark Norman author of Telling the Bees and Other Customs: The Folklore of Rural Crafts talks about the ancient bee custom of ‘telling the bees’ and its connection to royalty. When the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, passed away the world was naturally watching the news. As t…
2nd December, 2020 in Folklore
I love stories about a place because they add richness to their surroundings. Moyry Castle’s Killer Cat There’s one about a tiger cat, who lived in harmony with nature, with a wizard, near Moyry Castle, an old Elizabethan Tower House in the Gap of the North. Each day the cat fora…
19th February, 2020 in Folklore
The Creator was busy making animals out of clay, shaping them perfectly, one by one, and then breathing life into them so that they could run, swim or fly away. When it came to Hedgehog’s turn, he was getting impatient and started wiggling around in God’s hands before he was quit…
12th January, 2018 in Folklore, Local & Family History
When writing Dublin Folk Tales For Children, I was (in part by necessity!) strongly inspired by ‘place’. Not just a geographical place, however, but also an emotional and sensory place. This for me was the Dublin that smelled of salty shores, sugary teas and ripe rive…