Hag: Forgotten Folktales Retold

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The twist in her version is a compulsively self-referential narrator, whose voice examines another problem with retelling folktales, that their details change and are often lost over time.

These stories were wonderful imagined, some stronger than others but as a whole I thoroughly enjoyed the ride! Just as the Brothers Grimm codified Germany's rural folk lore, Hag catalogues the early myths and legends that have shaped the UK's storytelling heritage.The first tale is 'A Retelling' by Daisy Johnson, tackling the tale of the Green Children through a combination of magical realism and meta-fiction.

She'd never met her father and when she was all grown up, she leaves the town she grew up in to move to the big city and finds work on a secluded farm where the owner doesn't pay her much and got her to work tirelessly. 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. A collection of short stories that are retellings of British folklore and mythology selected and introduced by Professor Carolyne Larrington.

An entertaining collection of short stories, modern retellings of folk tales from all parts of the British Isles. Originally conceived as an Audible podcast, the book version from Virago Press also has two new stories as well as copies of the original tales on which they are based. 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.

Her journalism has been featured in The New York Times , the Observer , the Guardian and the Huffington Post . Whilst they do hang together well as a collection, many of the stories have a rather half-baked quality and the links to the original folklore are tenuous and uninspired in places. The main reason is that - this re-telling isn't a re-telling at all, it is a word-to-word story copied from the original tale, even the title is the same. They are all very singular stories with the common theme being they are based on folklore retellings so I found this easier to read in parts as the stories are so distinct in styles and topics.Logan treads familiar ground here -selkies and women giving birth to their children was an important element to her debut novel The Gracekeepers- but I love her writing so you don't hear me complain. This is a Feminist reclaiming of British Folktales and is definitely worth a read but just be warned, it'll stay with you. Although these terms are notoriously hard to define and classification is difficult, I would struggle to describe this as a “folk horror” collection. I felt that the strident anti-Catholic rhetoric actually lessened the impact of the original by highlighting and underlining what is more subtly conveyed in the folktale.