Ceallaigh's Blog
Folklore & Fiction
The March 2020 Folklore & Fiction dispatch has been recorded as a podcast, and you can both read and listen to it here. In it, I'm discussing charms with help from scholars J. Stanley Hopkins, Jonathan Roper, and others, discussing the use of charms in storycraft, and providing you with an example and an exercise on the topic. I also wrote a supplementary dispatch that month, which I've recorded as a podcast, and you can both read and listen to it here. In this one, written just after the pandemic was declared, I'm discussing the value of keeping a journal you can pass on to others.
Folklore & Fiction
The February 2020 Folklore & Fiction dispatch has been recorded as a podcast, and you can both read it and listen to it here. In this edition, I'm writing about superstition with help from scholars Ülo Valk, Torunn Selberg, Alan Dundes, and others, discussing superstition in the context of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series of books, and providing you with an exercise on the topic.
Greetings Friends!
This month marks a substantial change from the material you're accustomed to receiving from me. I'm podcasting my second year of archives, and the dispatches are already available at folkloreandfiction.com, so there's no sense shipping them out to you as newsletters. Instead, I'm introducing a new newsletter format that combines my Folklore & Fiction work with whatever insights I happen to have on folklore, storytelling, and spirituality along with any news I might have about my own career. Hope you like the change.
Hello, and welcome to the December 2022 Folklore & Fiction dispatch. At the summer and winter solstices, I mimic the sun and pause to reflect on my own creative work. However, in this edition, guest contributor Rebecca Buchanan will pause and reflect in my place with a return to June's discussion of Pagan futurism via her short story, "Hysthaany." Rebecca is the editor of the Pagan literary ezine, Eternal Haunted Summer and is a regular contributor to ev0ke: witchcraft*paganism*lifestyle. She has published four short story collections and two poetry collections as well as numerous other novellas, short stories, and poems in every genre from fairy tales to fantasy to horror to mystery to romance to science fiction. She has a Master’s degree in Women’s Studies in Religion from Claremont Graduate University, and a personal library that is threatening to outgrow her house.
Here are the folklore-related memes I published to social media in November 2022.
Hello, and welcome to the November 2022 Folklore & Fiction dispatch. This month, I'm bringing you a bit of Arthuriana rescued from a fire and later added to the Child ballad collection. I wish I could sing it for you, but alas! There is no air to pair with it, and the ballad itself is fragmented. Dispatch readers will see evidence of this fragmentation in the transcript, while podcast listeners will hear it in the pauses I've added to the reading.
Let's get started.
Here are the folklore-related memes I published to social media in October 2022.
Hello, and welcome to the October 2022 Folklore & Fiction dispatch. This month, I'm delighted to bring you the work of guest poet and actor Math Jones. Math was born in London, but lived in Worcester for many years, and is now based in Oxford. A pagan in the Old English and Norse tradition, he often writes poetry on the stories and in the metres of that tradition. He also writes more usual verses, performing throughout the Midlands and London. A bookseller for many years, he retrained in 2008 to be an actor, and has been acting professionally since then, as Math Sams.
Here are the folklore-related memes I published to social media in September 2022.
Hello, and welcome to the September 2022 Folklore & Fiction dispatch. After last month's somewhat theoretical discussion, I thought it might be interesting to undertake a straightforward exploration of a Japanese folktale and discuss the ways it employs structural symmetry in storytelling. Let's start by taking a look at that tale, titled "Luck from Heaven and Luck from the Earth."