Peter Stevenson

‘’These stories are of another world, an Otherworld so familiar to the folk of Ceredigion 100 years ago; exotic and enticing, dark and dangerous, curious and comical, a world of the marginalised and misunderstood, of flooded lands and lost languages. A dreamworld.’’

Let’s travel to Wales.

A wanderer stumbles upon an old estate and starts narrating the tales of the Tylwyth Tag. Of changelings and witches. Myths like Rhysyn and the Mermaid, the Tale of Taliesin. Stories of the men-women who demand justice, of devilry and Old Nick himself, of the White Lady of Broginan and the ghosts of Aberystwyth Promenade, of phantom funerals and corpse candles. The Talking Tree of Cwmystwyth, Operation Julie, legendary ‘’people of the road’’.

Written with elegant, playful humour and with a deep sense of nostalgia, respect and tenderness for the region and its inhabitants (mortals and otherwordly alike), Peter Stevenson has created one of the finest volumes in the exceptional Folk Tales of Britain and Ireland series.

‘’Ceredigion is a land of contrasts, where old meets new, where dolphins swim close to the biggest fish-processing plant in the land; where men dress in women’s clothes not only for a Friday night out with the boys, but to stand up for their liberty and carry out acts of subversion; where conjurers weave their spells in the hills away from those who think they wear pointy hats, cloaks, long grey beards and appear on Saturday night TV; where the last beavers in Wales lived on the banks of the Teifi rather than in a cage waiting for permission to be released as part of a reintroduction scheme; and where the fair folk are darker and more dangerous than the gossamer-winged sprites who live in the illustrations in children’s picture books. It is a land where people speak the language of story, and the stories have mud on their boots.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/… (mere)

At first this seemed like a good idea. However, by the end I found myself in a blur of anecdotal, sometimes mythological, other times authorial passages which, although having chaptered themes, began to lose its pep. The author dips in and out of elucidation and sometimes I felt a bit disconcerted as how much the author had contributed to the telling of each piece and how much was "verbatim" from the sources from whence they came. In that I didn't want to read Welsh Folk Tales as told by Peter Stevenson, I wanted some background on who told the story and where it came from.

To be honest, the book for me was less a folk compendium and more a periodical assortment of loose tales. Having said that, it is still worth a read if you have an interest on the subject as it may introduce many myths and folktales that may otherwise remain unknown.… (mere)