projectbrexlore

[projectbrexlore]

About the only thing that can currently make me feel patriotic.Whatever they vote, the people claiming the appaling Manchester attacks are a governmental red flag   need to read verse 5 and 6. http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_garden.htm

[projectbrexlore]

Blog for investigating British Folklore in the Brexit era- like many others, my national identity is a little.. fluid at present,( if not entirely missing in action but my love of FOLKTALES, WONDER TALES and oral storytelling is undiminished. When I‘ve given talks at conventions lately on the Brothers Grimm and the relevance folktales and storytelling can have to our everyday lives,,to working through crises, understanding one’s own story, dealing with the uncanny  and ambivalent, people have come up to me and asked “can you do this for British folklore ?” Well, the answer is yes, I can - and probably should . There are some fantastic stories, one or two heroes   - and villains - we’ve largely forgotten -admittedly, most books of folklore for kids you see on the shelves  of your average cutprice bookstore*are * Grimms tales, or Perraults’. Rarely are they Mr Fox, or Mad Tom o’ Bedlam or  all the many many Jack tales, not necessarily involving beanstalks.  Or, indeed, giants. For adults there’s plenty on the Celtic Otherworld, and fae enounters, less so on the intrepid Englishmen like” King Henry”(no reign number specified) or Childe Roland who   stepped off the path, beyond the field we know, there and back again et etc-sometimes just *there*. Herder said back in the 19th entury that every nation’s native literature was like a garden - none is of itself better than the others, they just grow slightly different flowers. So this is a wander through ..our garden, to look at same rare flora and maybe root up some weeds and all. And I make absolutely no apology for this being on the same blog as u-remainia only to say, read both.. And please bring me stories, national , local, dialect, personal, transformative as you wish.Urban myths are not exluded either, or limericks or songs or filks or anything anonymous and of the people.(Modern material that is racist, homophobic or mysognist however is). I can’t pay you for stories except in bard’s coin(=drink ;-)) should we meet and you will be aknowledged. If there is a process of reconciliation at work here, one that can’t perhaps yet happen outwardly, politically because the wounds are too fresh, then perhaps it can happen - or begin - in the aesthetic. And if anyone is interested in co-authoring something at some point on this, performing stories or publishing an anthology, let me know also.(Brexite(e)r co-authors especially welcome)