Ceallaigh's Blog
Hello, and welcome to the September 2021 Folklore & Fiction dispatch. In this edition, I'll be exploring ATU 2014 "Chains Involving Contradictions or Extremes." Let's begin with a Palestinian story that tells us right in the title where it fits among folklore genres and contains a treasure chest of narrative jewels to admire.
Here are the folklore-related memes I published to social media in August 2021.
Hello, and welcome to the August 2021 Folklore & Fiction dispatch. In this edition, I'll be exploring ATU 1284 "Person Does Not Know Himself" by way of an Irish story entitled "Seán na Scuab" and ATU 1326 "Moving the Church" by way of a German story by the same name. Both tale types feature short, humorous anecdotes about fools, and they form the foundation of this month's broader folkloristic discussion of comedic narrative.
"Seán na Scuab"
Long ago there was a poor man living in Buffickle, west in Béara. He was married. He made his living by making brushes and selling them in Cork a few times a year.
Here are the folklore-related memes I published to social media in July 2021.
Myths, legends, fairy tales, and fables are distinct folk narrative types with specific characteristics, but the terms are often conflated in common usage, and the genres themselves are sometimes muddied in contemporary storytelling. Many writers and readers also believe they are inflexible categories of established tales, when in reality they are dynamic tools we can use to weave familiar narrative patterns into new tales.
Hello, and welcome to the July 2021 Folklore & Fiction dispatch. In this edition, I'll be exploring ATU 1096 "Sewing Contest." Let's begin with a British poem of the tale type that pits a humble tailor against the Devil himself.
"The Devil and the Tailor"
There was a tailor in our town,
Who was a worthy wight;
All through the day
He worked away,
And halfway through the night.
He had a wife whom he did love,
And he had children bright;
To find the meat
For them to eat,
Did puzzle the tailor quite.
It's been a real pleasure writing for the Alphabet Anthology series; some of my best stories have come out of Rhonda Parrish's prompts. So I'm delighted to show you the cover for the next instalment of the series; G Is for Ghosts. Subscribers to the Folklore & Fiction dispatch and podcast will have already seen an excerpt from my story around the letter "C," but here it is again, in case you haven't read it.
Hello, and welcome to the Folklore & Fiction dispatch. At the summer and winter solstices, I mimic the sun and pause to reflect on my own creative work. In this edition, I'm discussing fables in fiction with a passage from my short story "Metal Crow and Ghost Crow," forthcoming in the G Is for Ghost anthology.
Here are the folklore-related memes I published to social media in May 2021.
Three dreams of sorrow were given to Serkleit, Goddess of Art and Fermentation, Keeper of Caves at the Heart of the World, before her deification.
Once in a while, I love to occupy that liminal storytelling space between poetry and fiction and tell a richly-phrased story in just a few words. When Rhonda Parrish invited me to submit a story for consideration in her tarot anthology Arcana, I did just that. "The Moon" is the shortest story I have ever written and an effort to apply the meaning and symbolism of the card itself to the experience of being a transgender woman. While I'm a natal woman, I hope it offers something gentle and poetic to that experience and to my friends in the transgender community.