English Heritage has commisioned Wessex Archaeology to produce a Teacher’s Kit for schools taking kids to the Avebury monuments. About Avebury, the English Heritage site says: “Avebury rivals - some would say exceeds - Stonehenge as the largest, most impressive and complex prehistoric site in Britain. Built and altered over many centuries from about 2850 BC to 2200 BC, it now appears as a huge circular bank and ditch, enclosing an area of 281⁄2 acres (111⁄2 hectares), including part of Avebury village. Within this ‘henge’ ditch is an inner circle of great standing stones, enclosing two more stone circles, each with a central feature.”

The Kit will help schoolchildren heading for Avebury and the surrounding monuments make the most of their trip to the World Heritage Site. It is a downloadable resource for teachers of Key Stage 2 and 3 pupils. As well as information sheets for teachers there are on-site investigation sheets, puzzles, maps, treasure hunts and other games and activities to help pupils to learn about the history of these historical sites in an entertaining and engaging way. [Wessex Arch. News] Continue Reading »

An update to our post about the new theory about the origins of the Celts, which can be found here, the ABP Welsh Communique gives us a little more detail. The full text of the article can be found here. In his O’Donnell Lecture at the University College, Bangor, Professor John Koch said that on the basis of an extensive continent-wide overview of linguistic and archaeological evidence, he has come to the conclusion that a Celtic civilisation and culture had originated on the Atlantic West of Europe in the Bronze Age.

Recent DNA researches has shown that contemporary British people – Celts and Anglo-Saxons alike – have more in common with the Basques than any other race group. This finding has attracted confusion and amusement in the popular English press. Continue Reading »

While there are various explanations of the origins of fairies and the nature of them and their lands, there is little explanation in any studies of where the modern conception of fairies has come from. None of the books suggest that fairies have wings like dragonflies or butterflies. The wee-folk of Celtic mythology are generally thought to be the size of small children or dwarfs, rather than the size of insects as they are thought of today.

They also tend to be suitably disproportionate, like chunky hobbits rather than the tiny but perfect adult fairies in modern storybooks. It is likely that these modern depictions of fairies sprang more from the minds of individual humans than any specific culture or mythology.

For almost as long as people have been seeing fairies, people have been writing about them. The countries of the world have a wide variety of myths and legends, but the “little people” crop up in a great many of them. Into more modern times, we have Spenser’s “The Fairie Queen”, and Shakespeare’s “A Midsummers Night’s Dream” in Elizabethan times, both of which did much to cement the modern conception of what a “fairy” is.

A wide variety of cultures believe in fairies similar to the Celtic version, and some cultures see fairies as the animistic spirits of nature. None of these fairies bear much resemblance to the modern fairies and if they had wings, it is a detail that is usually left out. Spencer’s fairies were like the Celtic version, Shakespeare’s were like a combination of tall elegant elves and the wee-folk, but it was not until the Victorian era that fairies were established as little winged beings.

Thomas Croker (1789-1854) in his collection of Irish Fairy Tales, described fairies as being “a few inches high, airy and almost transparent in body; so delicate in their form that a dew drop, when they chance to dance on it, trembles, indeed, but never breaks.”

One of the first of these “delicate” fairies to impinge on popular consciousness was probably Tinkerbell in J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. Around that time, there was also a large amount of sentimental art, creating cutesy portrayals of fairies and cherubs. There was also a large fuss made about the fairy photographs taken by two young girls in England at Cottingsley. These photographs sparked a world-wide debate that did much to “fix” the image of the small, winged, fairy in the public mind, and if you ask any group of people, there’ll no doubt be someone who remembers seeing the pictures at some time. The Victorians had a soft spot for the “cute”, and much of the modern conception of the little delicate, insect size fairy came from them.

Disney also has a part to play from the 1950s onward, pushing the sanitised Tinkerbell as a sort of happy go-lucky nature sprite, making fairies happy and unthreatening, reinforced even more by having Julia Roberts play her in the live action version.

From these images people have come to see fairies as happy, positive, creatures… a far cry from the baby-stealing wee folk of Celtic mythology from which they derived.

by Willie Meikle

Thank you to Willie Meikle for allowing us to post this article on our site

Willie is a Scottish author now living in Newfoundland. He has written eight novels and over 150 short stories, you can find Willie and his books at

http://www.williammeikle.com

Penny, from Crane’s Nest Creations, hosts a blog site in which she exhibits her Etsy bed-dolls, other art and talks about her beliefs, has hosted a superb piece about some of the fey traditions of Beltane which she has graciously granted us permission to reprint here for you. About herself, she says: Spirit guides me to create, I believe that art is the expression of the soul which has evolved to the point of reaching out to others with common interest in acceptance and there is a searching or attraction to those who are inspired to do the same.

Continue Reading »

Cora Anderson 1915 - 2008 Cora Anderson, a co-founder with Victor Anderson of what is now known of as the Feri Tradition, passed on this morning at the age of 93. Cora Anderson was known as a Grand Master of the Feri Faith, a prolific writer, and was a key influence in the lives of several prominent Pagans and Witches. Cora Anderson is the author of Fifty Years in the Feri Tradition and Childhood Memories, and coauthor, with Victor H. Anderson, of Etheric Anatomy: The Three Selves and Astral Travel. She was a contributing author to Potpourri of Cookery. Her articles have been featured in Witch Eye and Circle magazines, and her recipes have been published in Women’s Circle and T. Babes Recipe Service. She also writes a feature column, “Letters from a Hill Witch,” at Lilith’s Lantern.

Cora was the Grand Master and, with her husband, Victor, the foremost teacher of the Feri/Faery Tradition. She helped train some of the most influential voices in neo-Paganism. A natural kitchen Witch, Cora worked as a hospital cook for many years, and often charged the food with healing energy for the patients. Her straightforward approach to the Craft earned her the respect and admiration of many around the world. Continue Reading »

THE Fairies have a great fondness for getting their babes suckled by comely, healthy young women. A fine young woman of Nithsdale was one day spinning and rocking her first-born child. A pretty little lady in a green mantle, and bearing a beautiful babe, came into ‘the cottage and said, “Gie my bonny thing a suck.” The young woman did so, and the lady left her babe and disappeared, saying, “Nurse kin’ and ne’er want.”

The young woman nursed the two children, and was astonished to find every morning, when she awoke, rich clothes for the children, and food of a most delicious flavour. Tradition says this food tasted like wheaten-bread, mixed with wine and honey. Continue Reading »

It is the most delightful land of all that are under the sun; the trees are stooping down with fruit and with leaves and with blossom. Honey and wine are plentiful there; no wasting will come upon you with the wasting away of time; you will never see death or lessening. You will get feasts, playing and drinking; you will get sweet music on the strings; you will get silver and gold and many jewels. You will get everything I have said…and you will get gifts beyond them which I have no leave to tell of.”

“ Thus it was that the Otherworld, the mystical enchanted land of many Celtic myths, was described to the warrior Oisin by the faerie-woman Niamh of the Golden Hair.

In Irish myth, the Otherworld was created as the domain of the divine race of the Tuatha de Danaan following their defeat by the Milesians (Ireland’s fifth and last race of invaders). The Milesians, it was decided, would rule the visible part, while the Dananns took possession of the invisible regions below ground and beyond the seas. This Otherworld was accessible through lakes, caves and above all the Sidhe or faerie mounds, the countless prehistoric burial mounds such as those of the Boyne in Co. Meath. Continue Reading »

It is just over three hundred years since Robert Kirk, minister of Aberfoyle, died at the age of fifty two. But the question remains, did he really die or was he ‘taken’? Taken, that is, by the Good People, the elusive folk who lived under the earth in the green hills. The youngest and seventh son of James Kirk, Robert studied theology at St. Andrews and took his master’s degree at Edinburgh. He became the minister of Balquidder and moved to Aberfoyle in 1685, having published a psalter in Gaelic the previous year.

He had also been involved in preparing a Gaelic translation of the Bible. We might expect a man of his background to have been a staunch supporter of established orthodoxy but this was no ordinary preacher. He recorded his thoughts in a manuscript dated 1691 entitled “The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies”. There is no mention of hell and damnation, just a fair and reasonable account of the unseen world.

There is nothing sentimental in his writing, and those seers who had the ability to witness the people of peace regarded it as an affliction rather than a gift. The Tabhaiser, or Seer, “is not terrified with their sight when he calls them, but seeing them in a surpryse (as often he does) frights him extreamly”. These are clearly not the tinselled fairies of Victorian England but the wild and elemental spirits of nature. Two ways of gaining the second sight are described. The first is to acquire a tedder (tether) of hair which has bound a corpse to the bier. With this wound round the waist one must stoop down and look back through the legs until a funeral passes. The alternative is to find an accomplished seer who will place his right foot over the candidate’s left and lay his hand upon his head. This confers the power to see and seems not unlike descriptions of admission to a witch coven. Continue Reading »

Our latest episode, part 5 of the Book of Invasions, is on the site and available for your download. It is already available via iTunes and other podcatchers. We hope that you enjoy the show. It’s slightly longer than our normal episodes at just over 31 minutes and it comes with a WARNING. This story, in the original Celtic Myth, was ribald and full of humour. With a view to keeping our site and stories kid-friendly, we have retained the toilet humour and toned down the sexual references to either allusion or just plain statement.

Having said that, there are two main themes to our story in this episode. The first is a murder which is the beginning of a sub-story about the Sons of Tuireann and the second concerns the adventures of the Dagda as he seeks to delay the attack of the Fomori and aid the Children of Danu.

You can listen to the episode on the website here and find the accompanying Shownotes here.

We are really keen to hear your views about the series so far, whether by email or voice feedback - something that we can share with other listeners. So, if you get a chance, drop us a line and let us know what you think. We would love to hear it all.

If you fancy writing us a review for any of the podcast directories, in particular iTunes, that would be absolutely fantastic - we’ll certainly give you a shout out. The more people come to hear about us, the more friends we will all discover on this site and the more people will come to know and love the Celtic Tales as we do.

Thanks for listening

There was one time a woman named Colloo in Close-ny-Lheiy, near Glen Meay, and she had a child that had fallen sick in a strange way. Nothing seemed wrong with him yet crosser and crosser he grew, nying-nyanging night and day. The woman was in great distress. Charms had failed, and she didn’t know rightly what to do. It seems that, about a fortnight after birth, the child, as fine a child for his age as you would see in a day’s walk, was left asleep while the mother went to the well for water.

Now Herself forgot to put the tongs on the cradle, and, when she came back, the child was crying pitiful, and no quatin’ for him. And from that very hour the flesh seemed to melt off his bones, till he became as ugly and as wizened a child as you would see between the Point of Ayre and the Calf. He was that way, his whining howl filling the house, for four years, lying in the cradle without a motion on him to put his feet under him. Not a day’s res’ nor a night’s sleep was there at the woman these four years with him. She was fair scourged with him, until there came a fine day in the spring that Hom beg Bridson, the tailor, was in the house sewing. Hom is dead now, but there’s many alive as remember him. He was wise tremenjus, for he was going from house to house sewing, and gathering wisdom as he was going.Well, before that day the tailor was seeing lots of wickedness at the child. When the woman would be out feeding the pigs and sarvin’ the craythurs, he would be hoisting his head up out of the cradle and making faces at the tailor, winking, and slicking, and shaking his head, and saying

“What a lad I am!”

That day the woman wanted to go to the shop in Glen Meay to sell some eggs that she had, and says she to the tailor: “Hom man, keep your eye on the chile that the bogh [poor dear] won’t fall out of the cradle and hurt himself while I slip down to the shop.” Continue Reading »