The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales
Like many people, I thought the Grimm brothers had lived long ago & travelled around Germany collecting stories from old women hunched over spinning wheels.
The Boggart: A Study in Shadows
I became fascinated by boggarts about a decade ago. If I turned to the fairy and folklore dictionaries, I learnt that a boggart was a type of house goblin or perhaps, at a stretch, a poltergeist.
Spring in Southeast Asia: Diasporic Chinese New Year Folklore
Here are a couple of folklore and stories associated with Chinese New Year. I have grown up with these stories as they are part of tradition and culture.
Suffragette Mary de Morgan: England’s First Feminist Fairy Tale Writer?
Ask anyone for the names of the great fairy tale tellers, But hardly anyone will mention Mary de Morgan, Pre-Raphaelite, suffragette, and one of England’s first feminist fairy tale writers.
The Sluagh: Spirits of The Unforgiven Dead
Celtic folklore has given us some of the darkest and most frightening tales in folkloric history: three-headed monsters, headless horsemen, famine-spreaders, joint-eaters and spirits of terror.