I've been away from Myth & Moor for rather a long time now. There's just been so much going on around here: hard grief after the loss of our beloved Tilly (following the loss of two members of my family in the last two years, both deaths sudden and heart-breaking), a new medical issue to come to grips with (on top of the old ones), deadlines to meet (including one for a Big Project that I can't quite tell you about yet but will be able to soon). This week I'm away from home again, but I'll be back in the studio for the rest of month and plan to start Myth & Moor back up with the star ..read more

Each year as Christmas approaches I receive requests to re-post this piece on the tales and folk customs of winter holiday season, so here it is. Today I am making a new batch of kiffles, as Howard prepares the rest of the holiday food and tends the fire. Tonight we'll join our Chagford neighbours singing carols in the village square; tomorrow we'll eat, and drink, and count our blessings, while raising a glass for all of the loved ones we've lost in the last two years. (Far too many.) It's a bittersweet holiday this time, our first without Tilly...but joy can co-exist with sorrow, and there ..read more

Typepad, the platform that hosts Myth & Moor, has had massive problems over the last few weeks as they've moved from one data centre to another. While many issues have been resolved, other problems remain and this blog isn't functioning 100% normally yet. You may find pages hard to load, art still missing on a number of pages, and I'm still having difficulties in publishing new posts like this one. But the hardworking engineers at Typepad are on the case (it's a platform-wide issue) and it should all settle down soon. If nothing else goes haywire (fingers crossed), Myth & Moor will re ..read more

My apologies for the start-and-stop nature of this blog right now. My own health has stabalized (touch wood), but we're going through a health crisis with Tilly, who is very sick and very frail and needs a great deal of care and love. We yet don't know what the future holds for our dear old girl, but we're heading up to a specialist vet/animal hospital on the Devon and Somerset border today. She has a full day of exploratory tests ahead of her, after which we should know more. She's frail and shakey on her feet, but also clear-eyed, present, and very loving. We're hoping for good news, of cou ..read more

On a bright morning in early summer, with Tilly snoring beside me on the sofa, here are some songs to start the week. I trust you'll have no trouble picking out the theme for this week's selections.... Above: "Dog," a song by American country blues musician Charlie Parr, from his album of the same name (2018). The enigmatic video was shot in Parr's hometown: Duluth, Minnesota, on Lake Superior. Below: "Dogsong" (also known as "The Sheep Dog Lullaby") by The Be Good Tanyas, a Canadian folk trio from Vancouver. This version of the song is from their compilation album A Collection (2000-2021 ..read more

This wasn't the post I was planning today, but with terrible news from America (my home country) dominating the headlines, revisiting this piece seems appropriate. We'll return to the folklore of May and the changing of the seasons tomorrow.... Having grown up amidst violence and ugliness, I have long dedicated my life to kindness, compassion and beauty: three old-fashioned ideals that I truly believe keep the globe spinning in its right orbit. William Morris, artist and socialist, considered beauty to be as essential as bread in everyone's life, rich and poor alike. It is one of the truths t ..read more

Beltane has passed, and now the Great Wheel brings us to an enchanting and enchanted time of year, the turning of one season to the next: the liminal space between quickening spring and the full fecundity of summer. In folklore, the days of the In-Between have a particular magical potency. Certain herbs are gathered, following the cycles of the moon. Certain stories are told at this time of the year and no other. Certain flowers and leaves are brought into the house (conferring love, or health, or protection from fairy mischief), while others are best left to the wild, or avoided altogether ..read more

On a quiet green morning in the last days of May.... Above: "As I Roved Out" performed by Northern Irish singer Cara Dillon, with her husband Sam Lakeman on guitar. The song appeared on her recent album Live at Cooper Hall (2021).  Below: "May Morning Dew" performed by Scottish singer Siobhan Miller (with Innes White, Charlie Stewart, and Euan Burton) in Glasgow. The song appeared on her album All is Not Forgotten (2020). Above: "Searching for Lambs" performed by English singer/songwriter Nancy Kerr with her husband James Fagan, at the Bath Folk Festival in 2013. The song can be ..read more

This week's Saturday Post from the Myth & Moor archives was chosen with Patricia A. McKillip in mind, for her body of work is shining example of how to re-wild the stories we tell, on the page and to each other. From "Turning Our Fairy Tales Feral Again" by Sylvia V. Linsteadt: "Humans are storytelling creatures. We need story, we need deep mythic happenings, as much as we need food and sun: to set us in our place in the family of things, in a world that lives and breathes and throws us wild tests, to show us the wildernesses and the lakes, the transforming swans, of our own minds. These ..read more

In 2002, Philip Martin published The Writer's Guide to Fantasy Literature, containing writing advice from the likes of Peter Beagle, Susan Cooper, Ursula Le Guin, Gregory Maguire, Donna Jo Napoli, Midori Snyder, Jane Yolen, and others. Patricia McKillip also appeared in the volume, in the section on High Fantasy. Her advice for creating magic in fiction is both charming and wise. "If you put a mage, sorceress, wizard, warlock, witch, or necromancer into fantasy," she wrote, "it's more than likely that, sooner or later, they will want to work some magic. Creating a spell can be as simple or as ..read more