All articles in Folklore
14th January, 2021 in Folklore
The making of Finn and the Fianna
It is this spirit, which runs like a vein of gold through the entire cycle, that compelled me to write Finn & the Fianna. Western culture has long been infatuated with Greek culture and, by extension, Greek myths. In recent years, Norse mythology has encroached on the hold t…
2nd December, 2020 in Folklore
Magical Irish animals
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…
27th October, 2020 in Folklore
Ask the author: Kevin Walker on Queer Folk Tales
In his first collection, Queer Folk Tales, storyteller Kevin Walker brings a host of LGBTQ+ folk tales to life. When we asked him to tell us all about what inspired the book, he delighted us with a conversation with himself… What is the title of your book? Queer Folk Tales. That…
30th September, 2020 in Folklore, Natural World
A walk in the wild, wild woods
Listen to any good traditional storyteller and, sooner or later, you will find yourself walking into the woods. Woodlands are full of immediate life, colour, sound, scent, and danger, no matter what the season. They are worlds away from the barren, unforgiving desert, or farmland…
20th August, 2020 in Folklore, Local & Family History
Exploring Gloucestershire in search of stories
The summer holidays may be nearly over, but there are still plenty of nice weekend days ahead! Come on a journey that will take you far into the past, deep into other worlds and through the seasons of the year – all without leaving Gloucestershire! To the Forest! That’s the…
4th August, 2020 in Folklore
‘Wherever we go we take our stories with us’: Jewish folk tales of Britain and Ireland
My family were gathered in my home in Cornwall and I was telling a story, which I love doing and they are tolerant of, when one of my sons stopped me and said “I know this story, Rabbi Tann told it to us in cheder in Birmingham. Only he said it was a bowl of soup!” I was flabberg…
26th February, 2020 in Folklore
Animal folk tales of Britain and Ireland
The scope for my latest book ensured a bountiful story harvest gathered from five countries, rich with their variety of cultures and habitats. As a performing oral storyteller, I chose much of the material from our vast lore of oral literature – traditional tales – which I have t…
19th February, 2020 in Folklore
How the Birds helped the Hedgehog
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…
18th February, 2020 in Folklore
Medieval tales from many lands
As any storyteller will tell you, stories grow in the telling as they are adapted over time to suit the peoples who tell them and the places where they are told. And many of the stories we share are ancient, having already travelled far even before medieval writers like Giovanni…
2nd October, 2019 in Folklore
Folk tales of rock and stone
What makes a good story? In many collected folk stories, for example ghost stories, the story is that something simply happens somewhere… and that is it. An event is described. A white figure appeared. It might happen again. It has a beginning and middle and a full stop. But ther…
4th September, 2019 in Folklore
Collecting Scotland’s folk tales
There are remarkable facts behind this new anthology. In recent years numerous new collections of folk tales from Scotland’s diverse regions have been published. That is a creative roll call of places and people. Scotland has proved fertile folk tale territory, as this richly dis…
28th August, 2019 in Folklore
Growing up with stories
I grew up in North Dorset surrounded by stories. Our home was attached to the village school. Since Victorian times it had housed a succession of schoolteachers and their families. When my father took over in 1956, the school was very old-fashioned, with two ancient upright piano…