Welcome to the June 2025 edition of the Folkbyte newsletter! In this edition, I'm writing about The Long Hidden Friend, House of the Wolfings, The Songwriter's Guide to Folklore, and a few other newsy bits and bytes.
Housekeeping
It's come to my attention that about a dozen of you have missed the last three newsletters because of a database glitch. If this is you, here are the newsletters you missed. Note that the March 2025 edition contains information about updating your account details if you ever need to do that.
Dispatches from the Word Mines
The Long Hidden Friend
I mentioned some months ago that I was working on the introduction to a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch grimoire. That book of magic is The Long Hidden Friend, and it's a beauty. (Hyldyr always does such fine work.) You can buy it here.
House of the Wolfings
I just signed the contract for my introduction to a new edition of William Morris' classic fantasy novel House of the Wolfings. This novel is a must-read for serious Tolkien fans, as Tolkien was clearly inspired by Morris' writing. Forthcoming from Hyldyr.
The Songwriter's Guide to Folklore
I know a few of you were disappointed when I stopped production on The Songwriter's Guide to Folklore last summer. For the new folks, I had planned to write a book for songwriters like the one I'm writing for storytellers, but over time I came to have doubts about the marketability of such a book. However, I do think my original plan to write a songwriting supplement for The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore would go over well, so I've retooled the book outline into a course outline. Don't look for it any time soon; it's presently scheduled for release in 2027. But I have other courses planned for the interim, and I'll tell you more about them when they're ready to launch.
Song and Covenant
I haven't written about my dark, climate crisis fairy tale series in a while, but I wanted to let you know that it's next in the queue after The Storyteller's Guide is completed. I'm hoping to get started on it by Yuletide.
Last Month on Social Media
I'm not making any new educational videos at present, but there are sixteen videos in my YouTube playlist that explore the intersections of folklore and storytelling. If you've missed any of them, you can find the playlist here.
From the Folklore & Fiction Archive
In April 2019, I released the fourth Folklore & Fiction dispatch and the third to discuss the folkloristics of traditional narrative and belief. The topic was the memorate - a personal experience narrative with a supernatural component - and the ways it might be utilised in storytelling. Around this time, I started posting weekly memes to social media highlighting key points of the dispatch, and a few years later I revised and re-released a couple of them. Here are two of the memes I revised. You can read the whole dispatch here.
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You'd think I would have made a cup of tea before I started writing this newsletter, BUT I DID NOT. How could it happen?! How am I still awake?! Why am I still sitting at my des...
Yours in anticipation of lilacs,
Ceallaigh
Dr. Ceallaigh S. MacCath-Moran holds hold B.A. in Celtic Studies from the University of Toronto, an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Maine, and a PhD in Folklore from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. She is also an author, poet, and musician under the name C.S. MacCath. Her long-running Folklore & Fiction Project integrates these passions with a focus on folklore scholarship aimed at storytellers, and she brings a deep appreciation of animism, ecology, and folkloristics to her own storytelling. You can find her online at csmaccath.com, folkloreandfiction.com, and linktr.ee/csmaccath.
© 2025 Dr. Ceallaigh S. MacCath-Moran. All rights reserved unless Creative Commons licensing is specifically applied. To read the full "Copyright Statement and Usage Guide," visit https://csmaccath.com/copyright.