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

  Following my series of posts on 'Enchanted Sleep and Sleepers' (see links: #1, #2 and #3), here is a sort of appendix: three tales from Irish mythology. The Fenian Cycle tells how Finn son of Cumhail once tried to wed a woman of the Sidhe. He was hunting on the mountain Bearnas Mor with his companions of the Fianna, when a great wild pig turned on their hounds and killed most of them. Then Finn’s hound Bran got a grip on it. It began to scream, and at the noise a tall man came out of the hill. He asked Finn to let the pig go. Finn agreed, and the man led them into the hill of the Sidh ..read more

  This tale comes from John Masefield’s collection of sea stories ‘A Mainsail Haul’, first published in 1905 when the author was only 26. It's beautiful, although like most tales about selkies it is quite dark and sad. ['Loanings' means 'lanes'.]   ‘The seals is pretty when they do be playing,’ said the old woman. ‘Ah, I seen them frisking their tails till you’d think it was rocks with the sea beating on them, the time the storm’s on. I seen the merrows of the sea sitting yonder on the dark stone, and they had crowns on them, and they were laughing. The merrows are not good; i ..read more

I’m delighted to welcome for the second time to my blog the author Shveta Thakrar, whose second YA novel The Dream Runners was published by HarperCollins last year. I thoroughly enjoyed her debut novel Star Daughter and this one's even better. Shveta weaves into her YA fantasies all kinds of mystical beings from Hindu legends and sacred texts, and Holly Black describes her writing as ‘beautiful as starlight’. In this post, Shveta retells the story of the enmity between the nagas and garudas, describes the creative thinking behind her novel, and challenges us to consider ways to turn old enm ..read more

  Probably the best-known enchanted sleeper after the Sleeping Beauty is Rip van Winkle. A lazybones living in the Catskill Mountains, he prefers hunting to hard work. Out with his dog one evening, he helps a strange little fellow to carry a keg up the mountain. They arrive at ‘a hollow, like a small amphitheatre, surrounded by perpendicular precipices, over the brinks of which impending trees shot their branches, so that you only caught glimpses of the azure sky and the bright evening cloud.’ Within this cave-like structure a number of ‘odd-looking personages’ dressed in old-fashioned ..read more

  My last post concerned a number of enchanted sleepers, all male, whose lengthy slumbers – however inconvenient – were almost entirely benign, awarded by the gods or God in order to save, enlighten or confer spiritual blessings upon them; and sometimes all three, for even when the sleeper awakes only to die shortly afterwards, he does so in a state of holiness or grace. This time I’m looking at enchanted sleep narratives involving women, in which the motivation of the instigator is consistently malign and the dénoument is often far from satisfactory.  Sigurd kills Fafnir ..read more