Hag: Forgotten Folktales Retold

Product Information

Undoubtedly, this is one of the most appealing and riveting short story collections I've read in recent years, and I can't recommend it highly enough for those who enjoy old myths and legends, and even the supernatural or fairytales, and one of the best aspects is that this book doesn't just retell the prominent stories we all know, hence the use of ’forgotten’ in the title. Overall, Hag is a successful endeavour, in that it brushes the dust off some excellent British and Irish folklore. She recognises the link between herself and the tales her ancestors told, and is quite literally buried underneath the earth of her home county. What McBride brings to an otherwise “straight” account is a strongly opinionated present-day narrator, who keeps intervening with ironic commentary about the story. Between Sea and Sky' by Kirsty Logan was a beautiful take on 'The Great Selkie of Sule Skerrie' that is almost an elegy to complicated mother- and womanhood.

Sour Hall' by Naomi Booth is adapted from 'Ay, We're Flittin' and centralizes trauma, fear and anger as two women get used to living on their possibly haunted farm.A fellow and Vice Chair of The Royal Society of Literature, she is the co-presenter of the BBC's Novels That Shaped Our World podcast, Turn Up For The Books. Carolyn Larrington, the tales in this collection bring attention not just to great female authors but also to perhaps forgotten gems of British and Irish folklore.

So from Orkney, Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, the Midlands, Yorkshire, and the Fens and more, imaginative, eerie, disturbing and unsettling stories are told, of the supernatural, that which cannot be explained, of mermaids, pixies, curses, demons, boggarts, fairies, and the green children. Larrington provides the reader with a lengthy, remarkably insightful and informative introduction which includes the exploration of the title, Hag. Little has hosted a range of podcasts and shows, her awards include LGBTQI+ Broadcaster of the Year, Future Leader and Rising Star at WOW. The stories that we tell are sometimes true and at other times the truth is buried in the legends of the land.The dark, gothic influenced, traditional folk tales are sourced from all corners of the British Isles, originating from the oral tradition, and fittingly this collection began as podcasts that evolved into these fascinating curated stories by Carolyne Larrington, professor of Medieval English Literature. When Kathleen is given a chance to see the young man once again by a mysterious figure, Kathleen agrees to all the terms, after all, she'd be able to see her love once again.

I just kept getting very annoyed with what I couldn't stop thinking about as ungrammatical sentences (either missing commas, or a sentence that really should have been more than one sentence).

We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

One of the things that set us apart from the other creatures of the planet is our ability to tell stories and to imagine ourselves in the place of others. Although these terms are notoriously hard to define and classification is difficult, I would struggle to describe this as a “folk horror” collection. There is a consistent unsettling thread woven through all of the tales, as well as strong feminist tones, and this lent to the collection's cohesive feel. As professor Carolyne Larrington, the expert who wrote the introduction and chose the stories, says, ‘the last fifty years have seen a remarkable upsurge of interest in Britain’s traditional imaginary’.I would say some are stronger than others and tricky on kindle to figure out with ease who wrote what. The stories were picked from different parts of the UK and Ireland and gave all managed to capture what the local areas have to offer. All of the retellings in 'Hag' have been written by women, and featured strong female characters, but they all have been so diverse and timely. The sentence structures were so jarring at times, especially because I had to re-read them to figure out how they made sense/ In terms of the story, it wasn't the most interesting, nor the easiest plot to follow. If any of the authors in the title seem familiar to you, trust that the others will be equally pleasing.