The Twelve Dancing Princesses
In her book, Enchanted Tales, Laura Sampson retells the enchanting story of ‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses’, a tale from France by Charles Deulin.
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.
Children’s Teeth and the Mice That Take Them
When I was a child I knew that every time I lost a tooth, the tooth mouse (or tandemuis) would come and swap my baby teeth for cold hard cash.
The Seal Children: Sealskins and Soulskins. Or, When We Were Migrants
The first story that I found in this land where I live was The Seal Children, and as we walk the path to Maes Y Mynydd where the story is set, my mind wanders back through selkie stories.
Tellers of Tales
Folklore is at heart oral and behavioural traditions, so the notion of written folklore is somewhat oxymoronic. Any attempt to preserve oral traditions in writing involves a transformation of the material