In a daring act, facing frightful peril, Mark Twain exploited a legend to launch his onstage comic career. With his future as a lecturer on a knife’s edge, Twain decided to open with a worn-out narrative that had seen better days. A disgruntled audience nearly drove him from the stage … until they understood his brilliant manipulation of their own folklore.
A brilliant professor once told us that desire always lurks at the heart of Arthurian legends. Desire for glory, for love, for kingdoms, for power over one’s own life. While the desires of Arthurian women often led to unflattering depictions (depictions that Feminist retellings of the legends strive to rehabilitate or explain with a backstory), they also make them some of the legends’ most compelling characters. This is particularly true when magic is involved! With this in mind, today we offer a discussion of our top five most magical women of Arthuriana.
Folklore is filled with tales of man-eating beasties and Australia is no exception, home to the dreaded Bunyip.
The Folklore of Cornwall: The Oral Tradition of a Celtic Nation addresses everything from piskies – south west Britain’s fairies – to mermaids, harvest festivals, a corpse visiting his betrothed, and the giants long noted for making the Cornish peninsula their home. And amid all this are the spirits of the mines – knockers together with the tommyknockers, their New World descendants.
Scottish lore contains some of the darkest and strangest figures in folkloric history: shape-shifters, blood-suckers, monsters without skin.
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