Greetings, and mòran taing for taking the time to read my newsletter. This is the April 2026 edition of Folkbyte, and I'm writing it as I begin preparing an academic paper titled "Passion, Empathy, and Action: A Critical Introduction to The Climate Fiction Writers League," which I'll be delivering at the International Society for Folk Narrative Research conference in Reykjavik this year.
Dispatches from the Word Mines
Well, the "Religion" and "Ritual" chapters of The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore are beasts, coming in at over 4500 words each. This is unsurprising, given the subject matter, but I was still sad to cut the material below from the "Ritual" chapter. Long-time subscribers to the Folkbyte newsletter and before it, the Folklore & Fiction dispatch and podcast will recognize the material from the November 2019 edition of the latter, titled "What is a ritual?" It's revised for the book here, so I thought I would share it with you.
In January, I introduced you to the folkloristics of material culture via the Maggie Wall Witch Monument near Dunning in Perth and my visit there in November 2025. Material culture is a broad topic covering everything from traditional recipes to vernacular architecture, but my specific interest was in shrines as places of cultural memory. I also discussed the concern Perthshire locals have about "ritual litter" at the monument but concluded that I was more comfortable with the votive offerings there than I was with the ones I had seen at Dunino Den earlier in the day. This dispatch continues that discussion.
I'll begin with a passage from my travel journal:
Tuesday, November 4, 2025: I arose early, packed a thermos of tea and lunch, and drove two and a half hours to the far end of Fife and Dunino Den, which lies below Dunino Chapel. I have little sure knowledge about the place, but it has clearly been in use as a ritual site since the Stone Age. A narrow, stone stair arcs down through the rock. On the wall of the stair, a pattern is carved into the rock. At the bottom and around the den, a man's face is carved into another rock wall. There is an altar and a fire pit in the centre of the space, but they felt cluttered and out of place to me, so I wandered a bit more until I saw two trees rising next to each other at the edge of the stream. I made an offering of my homemade incense there, which is comprised of dried lilac, rose, cedar, and rowan from my land along with a bit of resin to help it burn. Then I went to the overhanging rock wall, stepped into the shallows, and filled two water bottles. Afterward I sat by the shallows a while. The energy felt good and restful there.
Dispatches from the Word Mines
I'll be finishing the "Ritual" chapter of The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore in the next few days, but I first wrote about ritual as a folklore genre in the November 2019 edition of the Folklore & Fiction dispatch and podcast series. I was about three months from leaving for Toronto and my field work in the animal rights community there, so my attention was on my dissertation proposal and packing preparations. But it was still important to me that I keep a regular schedule with the Folklore & Fiction project, so I put out an edition that focused primarily on the work of religious scholars Ronald Grimes and Catherine Bell. Both of these researchers have done good work on the folkloristics of ritual, and I was able to apply it to passages in Frank Herbert's Dune and Sarah Avery's Tales from Rugosa Coven.
I saw an Internet meme a couple of weeks ago that read "You know it's a bad sign when the folk music is good again." Folklorist/musician Ceallaigh was like "Ain't that the truth?" But my Instagram feed was already full of folk songs about the ICE raids in California, Illinois, Minnesota and elsewhere, and I'm aware that social injustice and expressive culture have a well-established relationship.
After I read the meme, I started collecting those Instagram songs and went looking for more elsewhere on the Internet. I found a variety of musical responses to ICE with a variety of intended audiences, from Los Jornaleros del Norte's catchy middle finger "Le Cumbia De La Migra" to Heidi Wilson's simple but powerful "Hold On." This Special Dispatch highlights some of these musical responses and provides a bit of folkloristics to help unpack their performative contexts. I'll also be dividing them into songs of protest, satire, tribute, and solidarity in line with ethnomusicologist David King Dunway's scholarship in “Music and Politics in the United States.”[1]
Greetings, and mòran taing (many thanks) for taking the time to read my newsletter. This is the February 2026 edition of Folkbyte, and it comes to you a week late as I was tied up meeting a deadline for The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore. I still have no official announcement to make, and I likely won't for a few months yet, but things are definitely looking up for my wee book. Here's what's on the hob.
Dispatches from the Word Mines
On January 15th, my doctoral dissertation research was featured on Emilia Leese's Think Like a Vegan podcast. It was a pleasure and privilege to share excerpts of my work with her audience. Here's Emi's introduction:
This Special Dispatch and the one to follow are rooted in the folkloristics of belief and material culture. I had originally intended to begin with an essay on Dunino Den, an ecologically exquisite ravine below Dunino Church in Fife with carvings in the rock dating back to the Stone Age, but one of the resources I want to consult for that essay is a documentary from the 1980s preserved on a VHS tape. As it happens, I have a working VCR in my attic (or at least, I think it still works), but I don't have an RCA to USB capture device. It's on order, and I expect to have it in a couple of weeks.
Greetings, and mòran taing (many thanks) for taking the time to read my newsletter. This is the January 2026 edition of Folkbyte, a somewhat quiet missive after the torrent of publication news I shared in the autumn! I'll get right to it.
Housekeeping
First, a warm welcome to the many newcomers who signed up for the Folkbyte newsletter in the last several weeks. This is the first of two regular posts you'll receive from me in the course of a month. It's designed to keep you informed about my work, and it arrives on the first Wednesday. The second is the Special Dispatch, a new essay series I tinkered with in the early autumn and will launch in earnest this month. For the most part, these essays sit at the crossroads of academic folkloristics and contemporary Paganism, and the next several of them will discuss various aspects of my recent retreat in Scotland. It arrives on the third Wednesday.
I'm writing this end-of-year post in a rush, as I'm about to have our traditional house full of D&D gamers overnight. But it's been a banner year, and I didn't want to fare it well without writing about it.
Early in the year, I released The Folklore & Fiction Ballads EP, which was the culmination of four years of ballad research, discussion, and performance in the Folklore & Fiction podcast. Shortly thereafter, Hyldyr published a new edition of the historical Pennsylvania Dutch grimoire The Long Hidden Friend containing my introduction.
Greetings, Everyone!
As promised, I'm writing to let you know about the launch of Field Notes for Storytellers: Research, Security, and the Archival Muse. I'm putting the finishing touches on the course, but it's available for pre-order now and will launch on the Winter Solstice, which is December 21st this year. You can find it here: https://csmaccath.store/b/fieldnotesforstorytellers.
Field Notes for Storytellers is a standalone course, but I've designed it to support your writing in ways that complement The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore, which will be completed in 2026.
Greetings Everyone,
As promised, here is a link to the first installment of "A Mouth Full of Stones," which is this week's serialized story at The Daily Tomorrow. I hope you enjoy it.
Warm Regards on a Snowy Day,
Ceallaigh