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The Isles & the Otherworld

The Last Lantern on the Street

A field note on the jack-o'-lantern, from Stingy Jack's doomed coal-lit turnip to the one carved light that always seems to burn longest on the street.

The Keeper of Unwalked Roads

A journal account of the Lantern Man, the Dartmoor light said to lead travellers off finished roads and onto ones that never were, at a cost few agree on.

The Century Walk of the Green Man

An account of the Green Man, Britain's foliate-headed spirit of the greenwood, and the local legend of his once-a-century Greenwalk through orchard, field and oak.

The Hare Who Answers the Moon

An account of the old Chinese belief that the wild hare conceives by gazing at the moon, and its uneasy kinship with the tame Jade Rabbit of legend.

The Herds That Answer to No One

A look at Flidais, the Irish goddess who is said to herd and protect the wild deer of the forest, and at the old tale of the cattle raid that carries her name.

The Night the Black Horse Comes

A look at the púca, the shapeshifting night spirit of Irish and wider Celtic folklore, and the blackberry and harvest lore still tied to its name.

The Bough He Carried Instead

A look at the holly bough carried by the Green Knight in the Middle English romance, the small green sign that turned an armed intruder's arrival into something closer to a game than a threat.

Where the Whistlers Fly

On the old English belief in the Seven Whistlers, the unseen birds whose calls marked the boundary between the known road and the country beyond it, and on what the blank edges of old maps once meant to those who had to cross them.

Lykos and the Hollow Wood

A journal entry on Lykos, the guardian wolf said to haunt the last old-growth remnants of the English wildwood, and the folk memory that keeps him there long after real wolves were gone.

The Hare That Watches the Moon

A look at the moon-gazing hare of British and Celtic folklore, from Boudicca's battlefield augury to the shapeshifting hare-witches of the northern trials.

The Skin Left on the Rocks

A journal entry on the selkie of Scottish, Irish, and Faroese tradition — the seal that becomes human by shedding its skin, and what is owed, and lost, when that skin is taken.

The Bells Under Dunwich

A record of Dunwich, the medieval Suffolk port swallowed by the sea, and the enduring claim that its church bells can still be heard tolling beneath the waves during storms.
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