Folkbyte September 2026

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Greetings, and mòran taing for taking the time to read my newsletter. This is the September 2026 edition of Folkbyte, and it's another brief missive. Onward!

Dispatches from the Word Mines

The Storyteller's Guide to Folklore progresses apace. I'll finish the Curse chapter by the end of this week, which will mean the book is two-thirds completed. I'm aiming for a draft in the late autumn and completed edits by Yuletide, but this will depend on the demands of the Folk Life section of the book, which I'll be writing next.

I still don't have any shareable news on the publication front, though I can tell you that all continues to be well. Meanwhile, I'm sharing Folklore & Fiction memes under the #throwbackthursday hashtag on social media. It isn't much in the way of content, but I've never liked having my work reduced to the word "content" anyway. It presumes that social media platforms are my "container," and I'd rather hand you a book.

I delivered the Folklore of Charms workshop again last weekend to a local audience, and it went well. As I mentioned in July's Folkbyte, I'll have news late this year or early next about a more robust folklore of magic class you'll be able to attend.

That's all for now. We're approaching the autumnal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere and the spring equinox in the Southern Hemisphere, so I send you a blessing for balance in all things, and I leave you with this passage from the Anglo-Saxon Æcerbot ritual:

Erce, erce, erce, mother of Earth, 
May the Almighty, the eternal Lord, grant you 
Fields flourishing and bountiful, 
Fruitful and sustaining, 
Abundance of bright millet-harvests, 
And of broad barley-harvests, 
And of white wheat-harvests, 
And all the harvests of the earth! 
Grant him, O Eternal Lord, 
And his saints in Heaven that be, 
That his farm be kept from every foe, 
And guarded from each harmful thing 
Of witchcrafts sown throughout the land.^[1]

Beannachdan,
Ceallaigh

Footnotes