Various Authors
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This is the first of two volumes, so rich are the story-mining seams taken from just the few Irish collections I have in my possession, at the moment. These first stories have been, taken from around one hundred and forty Irish tales, themselves taken from pretty well every tradition, including classic tales of Irish legend, fairy and folk beliefs, and tales in the vernacular, oral tradition.
For the most part these tales are as collected by Victorian...
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Italian literature arguably, began after the founding of Rome in 753 BC. Latin literature was, and still is, highly influential in the world, with numerous writers, poets, philosophers, and historians, such as Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger, Virgil, Horace, Propertius, Ovid and Livy.
Much later, following in the footsteps of Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron, Italian Renaissance authors produced a number of important works such...
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It is, said that a particular feature of Romanian culture is the relationship between folklore and classical education and the arts. This is, in part, attributed to the rural character of Romanian life that has, produced an exceptionally vital and creative traditional culture. Romanian folklore tales were the main literary genre until the 18th century, being both a source of inspiration for literary writers and a traditional way of framing storytelling.
Strong...
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So, here we are, book number two in the Fireside series of traditional folk and fairy tales from around the world. These tales are, drawn from some of the great collectors of Celtic and Scottish storytelling, and as ever, these stories illustrate the beauty and the darkness inherent in our ancestral memories and in our "modern" interpretations of this confusing world.
These stories were, once upon a time, the fireside equivalent of a YouTube story,...
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Continuing the theme of stories from northern lands, this volume concentrates on the Sagas from Viking isles, such as Iceland and The Faroe Isles. These forms are also known as family sagas, and were often told by the "skald" bards. For the most part these sagas take the form of prose narratives and are mostly based on historical events that took place in the 9th, 10th, and early 11th centuries. Many of these sagas are focused on history, especially...
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The worlds of folklore and traditional storytelling are fascinating places to visit wherever the land or the people may be Tales from different regions are often, shaped by geography and by cultural and historical factors that have accumulated over the course of centuries. At their heart, though, is an ever, present desire to explain and understand the world and the experience of living in it day by day.
The Balkan Peninsula is a region in South-Eastern...
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In Tales from Gallia we have a collection of tales from the French & Gallic folk tradition. These tales were originally collected by Andrew Lang, Charles Perrault, Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, Comtesse de Sophie Ségur, Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d'Aulnoy, Katharine Pyle and Edmund Dulac, representing some of the finest collectors working from the seventeenth century onwards.
As ever it's been a delight working with these...
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This volume of tales from the north concentrates on Finland. Many of these stories have their roots in the folklore of Finnish paganism, and they have many features shared with fellow Finnic Estonian mythology and other Uralic fables. Finnish folklore also shares some similarities with neighbouring Baltic, Slavic and to a lesser extent, Norse mythologies.
Much of Finnish mythology survived within an oral tradition of mythical poem singing and folklore...
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This is the first in a two-volume collection of tales from Scandinavia. There is a clear and rich tradition of storytelling in the north, perhaps dictated by long winter nights and roaring fires. Whenever you read the sagas or pick-up on the wandering collections of Hans Christien Andersen and Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, amongst many others, you tap into a centuries old heritage wrapped in wonder-and-magic and outlandish heroism.
In this, volume...
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And so, we reach the final volume in this small collection of tales from the north. Originally, I intended to complete the series with the Finnish volume, but as ever, there were just too many fabulous stories in my archive to call such an immediate halt.
In this volume, we have work collected by Jørgen Engebretsen Moe and Peter Christen Asbjørnsen taken from East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon and Norske Folkeeventyr, much of which I have adapted...
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Tales From Germania, as with the collection of stories from France, Tales From Gallia, concentrates on those lesser, known stories from the Brothers Grimm alongside other collectors such as Andrew Lang, Margaret Arndt and Logan Marshall. I also found some interesting but unattributed tales to add to the mix.
Although the stories told by the brothers and Andrew Lang have become old and familiar friends, I have to say that the stories told by Margaret...
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Tales From The Land of Hope & Glory
The wonder of storytelling is in the ritual. We have been sharing our stories, adult and child, for millennia. Before the advent of pen and parchment people relied on stories being passed through the generations as both history and as caution or adventure or excitement. Stories were and remain an essential element in the cultural and spiritual life of communities the world over.
Listening to a story is like going...
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Folklore & Fairy Tales from the Magyars (Hungary) - Here we have a rich mine of folk and fairy tales from the Magyar tradition. I've taken the following extract from Wikipedia as a starting point for this introduction...
"According to András Róna-Tas the locality in which the Hungarians, the Manicha-Er group, emerged was between the Volga river and the Ural Mountains. Between the 8th and 5th centuries BC, the Magyars embarked upon their independent...
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This is the second in a two volume collection of tales from Scandinavia. There is a clear and rich tradition of storytelling in the north, perhaps dictated by long winter nights and roaring fires. Whenever you read the sagas or pick up on the wandering collections of Hans Christien Andersen and Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, amongst many others, you tap into a centuries old heritage wrapped in wonder and magic and outlandish heroism.
In this second...
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This is a second volume of Irish tales, so rich are the story-mining seams taken from just the few Irish collections I have in my possession, at the moment. Across the two volumes, we have around one hundred and forty tales, taken from pretty well every tradition, including classic tales of Irish legend, fairy and folk beliefs, and tales in the vernacular, oral tradition.
For the most part these tales are, as collected by my Victorian and Edwardian...
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Mythology was at the heart of everyday life in Ancient Greece. Greeks regarded mythology as a part of their history, using myth to explain natural phenomena, cultural variations, traditional enmities and friendships. It was a source of pride to be able to trace the descent of one's leaders from a mythological hero or a god. Few ever doubted that there was truth behind the account of the Trojan War in the Iliad and Odyssey.
Greek myths concern the...
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John A. Crow explains it perfectly in Spain, The Root and the Flower, University of California Press, 1985:
Spain was first called Iberia, a name given to it by its Iberian inhabitants (from North Africa). The name was supposedly based on the Iberian word for river, Iber. They reached Spain around 6000 BCE. When the Greeks arrived on Spanish soil around 600 BCE. they referred to the peninsula as Hesperia, meaning "land of the setting sun." When...