Folk Tales and Fairy Tales: Seven Miles of Steel Thistles
One of the things I wanted to do was to confront popular misconceptions about fairy tales, such as ‘fairy tales are all about princes rescuing princesses.’
A Pied Piper Mystery
hile the Pied Piper of Hamelin is undeniably a fairy tale, it’s uniquely grounded in real-world specifics – the date for one – June 26. That’s the date in 1284 when the town lost a significant portion of its population, a matter treated as fact in the first written allusion to the incidents, the initial […]
Tapping the Admiral: Nelson, Trafalgar & the Corpse in the Cask
The phrase “Tapping the Admiral” originates from a piece of folklore surrounding the death of Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar in October of 1805.
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