A book called ‘The Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song’ edited by R.H. Cromek and published 1810, contains this “Account of Billy Blin'" with some entertaining stories.  "This is another name for the Scotch Brownies, a class of solitary beings, living in the hollows of trees, and recesses of old ruinous castles. They are described as being small of stature, covered with short curly hair, with brown matted locks, and a brown mantle which reached to the knee, with a hood of the same colour. They were particularly attached to families eminent for their ancestry and virtue; and ..read more

  I am extremely fond of house-spirits, two of which appeared in my first  books for children. The three books of my Troll trilogy all feature one of the Scandinavian nisses I first met in Thomas Keightley’s 1828 compendium ‘The Fairy Mythology’. I was charmed by their mischief, vanity, naïvety, essential goodwill and occasional bursts of temper. My Nis has all these characteristics and I love him. The second house spirit arrived in my fourth book ‘Dark Angels’: he’s a hob (a ‘bwbach’ in Welsh) who lives under the hearthstone of a 12th century motte and bailey castle on the Welsh M ..read more

  For more than a decade from the mid 1970s the artist Joan Hassall was a neighbour of my family in the Yorkshire Dales village of Malham. I was twenty in 1976 when she inherited Priory Cottage in the village, and she lived there until her death in 1988 at the age of 82. Joan was a skilled wood engraver who illustrated many, many books (you can read more about her life here). I was a bit too young to be a friend, but I knew her as a much-loved village figure, with her thick pebble glasses, beautiful smile and layers of flower-patterned skirts. She played a number of musical instruments ..read more

A talk I gave for The Folklore Podcast last November, with some additions and revisions for this post. This gruesome photo shows a genuine example of a Hand of Glory, currently in Whitby Museum. Not long ago I was reading John Aubrey’s Brief Lives and came across a reference to one of his other works, a compendium of folklore called (for some reason) The Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, published 1686. Never having heard of it before I went to archive.org for a look and flicking through the pages, suddenly stopped at a paragraph in which Aubrey describes ‘a story that was generally ..read more

A very long time ago in my late teens, I wrote a book with the rather unimaginative title ‘The Magic Forest’ which was (quite rightly) never published. Although derivative (I was inspired by Walter de la Mare’s strange and wonderful novel ‘The Three Royal Monkeys’) it was nevertheless the closest I’d yet got to finding my own voice; and I’d been writing lengthy narratives ever since nine or ten years old. It was a dream-quest story in which a girl goes through a picture into a magical world: the picture in question was a reproduction of  Henri Rousseau’s ‘The Snake-Charmer’ which hung ..read more

  Stories about selkies are ambiguous, evocative, sad.             This is largely because of the way seals themselves affect us. Bobbing curiously up around boats, they seem to feel as much interest in us as we feel for them, and there is something human about their round heads and large eyes. Basking on sunlit rocks they are part of our world, yet are also natural inhabitants of an unseen, underwater world in which we would drown. For most of our species' co-existence, only in imagination could we follow them there. My mother use ..read more

In ‘A Book of Folk-Lore’ (1913) the Devon folklorist Sabine Baring-Gould recounts three instances in which he and members of his family ‘saw’ pixies or dwarfs. I’ll let you read them:    In the year 1838, when I was a small boy of four years old, we were driving to Montpellier [France] on a hot summer’s day, over the long straight road that traverses a pebble and rubble strewn plain on which grows nothing save a few aromatic herbs.   I was sitting on the box with my father, when to my great surprise I saw legions of dwarfs about two feet high running along beside the horses ..read more

  All voyages are voyages of discovery; all voyages are dangerous. Even in these days when cruise liners are thought of as little more than floating hotels, disaster sometimes strikes. Departing on a voyage is already a little death, a farewell to loved ones who may never be seen again, either because of the dangers of the passage or because the travellers mean never to return. To the oppressed and poor of Europe in the nineteenth century, America seemed a promised land, a western paradise of plenty and equality. But they had to leave behind all that was familiar if they were to make a ..read more

  This wonderful poem attributed to Finn was translated by Lady Augusta Gregory in Gods and Fighting Men (John Murray, 1904), and is part of the medieval tradition of poetry in praise of spring and summer (in comparison to the harshness of winter). As to the age of the poem, the Fenian Cycle which relates the deeds of Finn mac Cumhaill dates in written form to the 8th century. The poem follows a brief account of how Finn received his poetic powers (by accident).  The prophetic, wisdom-giving water of the well of the moon, guarded by three women of the supernatural Tuatha de Danaan ..read more

  This is just to give notice that a week today, on Saturday 25th November at 8pm GMT, I'll be giving an online lecture for the wonderful Folklore Podcast about my search for 'Lost Fairy Tales of 16th & 17th Century England and Scotland'. I'll be talking about fairy tales of which we know nothing but the names, others which have survived by the skin of their teeth, and some which can be inferred from references in poems and plays. It's been a lot of fun to research! Here's the link to all the lectures: if you'd like to find mine, just scroll down. http://www.thefolklorepodcast.com ..read more