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
Survival in the Wild: ‘The Fear of Tiptipwa’, a Folktale from Bihar
‘The Fear of Tiptipwa’, a folktale about survival in the wild, first appeared in The Greatest Folktales of Bihar, published by Rupa India in October 2019.
Fairies in a Flat Landscape: the Fairylore of Suffolk
Suffolk might seem the very last place to look for fairylore; after all, most of us have grown up with the idea that belief in the fairies flourishes in wild, untamed places, and specifically in the ‘Celtic’ areas of the British Isles – Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Ireland.
Folklore of the Welsh Lakes: The Legend and Legacy of the Lady of Llyn y Fan Fach
In Wales, legends of encounters with the Otherworld are never far away. One such legend is associated with Llyn y Fan Fach, a lake in Carmarthenshire.
Skogsrå and Huldra: The femme fatale of the Scandinavian forests
Tolkien describes the Old Forest, a space filled with deep-rooted mysteries and danger in Middle-earth. Although, this takes place in his “secondary world”, it still sets the mood, turns our thoughts in the right direction, as we try to imagine the deep, dark and mysterious forests of the Nordic countries, which are very real and exists in our world.