PETER STEVENSON

This book, a selection of folk tales, true tales, tall tales, myths, gossip, legends and memories, celebrates and honours unique Welsh stories. Some are well known, others from forgotten manuscripts or out-of-print volumes, and some are contemporary oral tales. They reflect the diverse tradition of storytelling, and the many meanings of chwedlau. If someone says, Chwedl Cymraeg? they are asking, Do you speak Welsh? and Do you tell a tale in Welsh? Here is the root of storytelling, or chwedleua, in Wales. It is part of conversation. This book, one to linger over and to treasure, keeps these ancient tales alive by retelling them for a new audience.

The Grimms called them The Quiet Folk, in Mori they are Patupaiarehe, in Wales Y Tylwyth Teg: hidden people who live unseen, speak their own languages and move around like migrants, shrouded from our eyes like those who lived in the utopian world of Plant Rhys Ddwfn off the west Welsh coast, where this book begins.In mythology, lost lands are coral castles beneath the sea, ancient forests where spirits live, and mountain swamps where trolls lurk. Strip away the mythology, and they become valleys and villages flooded to provide drinking water to neighbouring kingdoms, campsites where travellers are told they cant travel, and reservations where the rights of first nations people are ignored.The folk tales in this book tell of these lost lands and hidden people, remembered through migrations, dreams and memories.

A lone man wanders from swamp to swamp searching for himself, a wolf-girl visits Wales and eats the sheep, a Welsh criminal marries an Indian Princess, Lakota men re-enact the Wounded Knee Massacre in Cardiff and, all the while, mountain women practise Appalachian hoodoo, native healing and Welsh witchcraft. These stories are a mixture of true tales, tall tales and folk tales, that tell of the lives of migrants who left Wales and settled in America, of the native and enslaved people who had long been living there, and those curious travellers who returned to find their roots in the old country. They were explorers, miners, dreamers, hobos, tourists, farmers, radicals, showmen, sailors, soldiers, witches, warriors, poets, preachers, prospectors, political dissidents, social reformers, and wayfaring strangers. The Cherokee called them: the Moon-Eyed People.

Coloca una marioneta en cada dedo y ponles tu voz. Estos libros narran con sencillez el cuento de La Bella durmiente y El Gato con botas, cada página cuenta una secuencia y se presenta como un esce

Just ask those mountains over there.They have heard these stories before.They have witnessed the floods.Through the travels of a Mesolithic Marsh Girl, Peter Stevenson tells the folk tales of the sea along the Welsh Coast Path. From bridge-dwelling bwbach and drunken mermaids, to swan girls, salmon children and the pirate Leekie Porridge of Tenby follow Morwen on a journey that blends past and present and explores the social and environmental change that is carved into the Welsh coastline.

Ceredigion is a land shaped by mythology, where mermaids and magic mix with humans and where ordinary people achieve extraordinary things. This is a captivating collection of traditional and modern stories, including the submerged city of Cantrer Gwaelod, or the Welsh Atlantis, how the Devil came to build a bridge over the Rheidol, the elephant that died in Tregaron, and how the Holy Grail came to Nanteos. All the while the tylwyth teg (the Welsh fairies) and changelings run riot through the countryside. Storyteller and illustrator Peter Stevenson takes us on a tour of a county steeped in legend, encountering ghosts, witches and heroes at every turn.

Este libro narra con sencillez el cuento de La bella durmiente. Cada página cuenta una secuencia y se presenta como un escenario de maravillosos decorados donde actúan los personajes. La lectura en voz alta se convierte en una representacion teatral. Coloca una marioneta en cada dedo y ponles tu voz.¡Ahora el cuento es tuyo!.