Largs Viking Book Festival

By Odin's beard, it's Largs Viking Festival time again!

Always a cultural highlight - there's lots to see and do, you can check out the full programme online.

This year, I'm delighted to be taking part in the Viking Book Festival. I'll be at the Woodhouse Hotel on Sunday 28th August at 7pm, discussing comics, folklore and heritage - with a sprinkling of spooky stories and Superpower Project.

There's loads of cool events at the Book Festival, but if I had to pick another "must-see" it would be an afternoon of polite Viking Mayhem with fellow Kelpies authors Robert Harris and David MacPhail - you can catch them on Sunday 28th August on the Festival Stage at 3.30.

Hope to see you at the festival.

The Christmas Spiders

Christmas Spider from The Spider Lady

Not so long ago, and not so far from here, there was a little cottage right at the edge of a forest. In the cottage lived a widow and her two young children. The widow had lost her husband some years back – he went off to the war and never returned, but before he left, he and the children planted a pine cone from the forest in a pot by the door, and he told them he would be back to help them decorate it when it had grown into a tree. The tree grew sure enough, and the children grew, and Christmas drew near, but the widow knew her husband would not be returning home.

It had been a hard winter, and there was little money, but as she watched the children skip off to bed talking excitedly about how they would decorate the tree the next day, the widow thought of a way to try and make the sad little tree a little more special for them. Taking her old yellow dress, which had faded these last few years, she cut out a cloth star, and put it at the top of the tree. Then she went to bed, hoping that the children would be happy to see it in the morning. All three of them huddled in together against the cold.

And as they slept, the spiders crept out from all the dark places in the house. The little family were always kind to spiders, never chasing them out of the house, or brushing away their webs before they had eaten. The spiders saw the little tree, and the cloth star, and they decided to help decorate the tree too. They worked all through the night, spinning and weaving their webs across the tree. Then they scuttled back into the rafters and corners to sleep until morning.

It so happened that St Nicholas passed by the cottage in the forest. He saw the little tree with the tattered cloth star, and he saw how the spiders had tried to help by covering the branches in their dusty grey webs, and he decided to help the family and their spiders out too.

St Nicholas took an old leather pouch from the pocket of his greatcoat, and from it, took out gold and silver sand which he sprinkled all across the tree. And the webs turned to strands of silver and glittered like a morning frost and the cloth star turned to gold.

The little family and the spiders woke that Christmas morning to a tree that sparkled bright enough to light the room. And with all the silver and gold, the little family never wanted for anything again, though they always took care to leave a window open for spiders in the autumn, and let them stay all through the winter.



This is my take on a traditional Ukranian folktale. There are lots of different versions, sometimes it's Jesus who visits, not St Nicholas, sometimes, no one visits at all, they are just magic spiders who spin gold. You will be delighted to know, that you can indeed purchase that now “must have” item for your Christmas Tree, a Christmas Spider, from a variety of Etsy shops.

To be clear though, here is a real Christmas Spider below, if you see one of these in your house, don't annoy it. They bite.

Read more of my Winter Folktales here

Bad Gold

A monster sketch from mhairi robertson

Three warriors protected the village. It was a small village, and they were brave warriors, just and well respected. They defended with honour, taking no pride in their skill, caring only for the families in their village.

One day an elder from the next village asked if they would help defend them from bandits. At first, the warriors refused, their place was with the village they loved, defending their families and friends. But the elder offered them a bag of gold coins for their trouble.

'What harm can it do?' said the First Warrior, 'with this gold we could buy more defences for our own village and even build more houses.'

So the warriors left and defended the next village from bandits, and returned a little richer.

Word spread further about the warrior's skills, and more villages came to ask for their assistance, offering more gold.

And the warriors took the gold, built more houses, and bought weapons to arm other warriors to defend the village while they were gone.

So it went for many months, the warriors trained more warriors, and sent scouts to other villages to ask if they needed defending from anything. That's how they found the dragon.

The dragon was causing all sorts of trouble for a town in the north, but it was so large and so vicious that it would take an army to defeat it. But by now, the little village had an army.

'If we best the dragon, people will know how skilled we are.' said the First Warrior.

'And if we break the dragon, it will be ours to command.' said the Second Warrior.

'We will be unbeatable.' said the Third Warrior.

So it was they marched north, battled the dragon, and won.

And the dragon was wonderful and terrible, assuring the warriors victory in every battle, but it was greedy, needing gold to survive. So the warriors had to ask for more gold from the villages they defended, and to steal gold from villages not in their care. They swept across the land, feeding the dragon.

One day, the warriors came upon the village that had once held the most important place in their heart. Blackened from the fires and smelts of the forges which crafted weapons for their many armies, the houses all gone. And on the mountain above, rested the dragon, always hungry, always waiting.

The warriors saw their folly, but it was too late to change things. The dragon roared, the forges burned and the gold rolled slowly in.

And the warriors marched to the next village, no longer remembering whether they were there to defend or attack, knowing it no longer mattered.

Read more Community Fables here

A Cure for Witches

badger woodcut by ross ahlfeld

"A tuft of hair gotten from the head of a full-grown Brock

is powerful enough to ward off all manner of witchcraft;

these must be worn in a little bag made of cat's skin - a black cat -

and tied about the neck when the moon be not more than seven days old,

and under that aspect when the planet Jupiter be mid-heaven at midnight."

That winter the sky was thick with witches, almost darkening the moon as they  shrieked and cackled across the night sky; and wherever their black shadows fell, there was trouble and misfortune.

Nothing and no one seemed able to stop them, not the watchmen with their swords and pikes and not the elders with their plans and schemes.

As the nights passed in the shadow of the witches, there was a sickness in the village and the harvest crops all rotted in the store. The people grew worried for there were many winter nights yet to come.

So it was that a Trapper came to one of the villages plagued by witches.

"There is only one way to keep the witches from your village," he said "and I can show you how it's done."

"What must we do?" asked the Elders.

"All you need, is a tuft of hair from a badger, nailed to each door, pinned above each bed and carried by each of you in a catskin bag. The badger is a creature of the twilight, just like them, full of old magics and riddles. Witches are feared of badgers. Your village will be safe."

"We'd need many badgers for that much magic." said the Elders.

"Ah!" said the Trapper, "I know a place very near to here, where there are fields of badger setts. If we went down near the dusk with traps and clubs, we would easily find enough of them to keep your village safe."

So, having no other plans or ways of guarding against witches, The Elders paid the Trapper to take them to the field at dusk, and the green grass ran red with blood. The next morning, every house in the village was made safe from the witches.

And sure enough, that night, when they flew overhead, the witches stopped cackling, and screamed away over the hills toward another village.

The Trapper tipped his hat and thanked the Elders, then headed off slowly in the same direction as the witches.

The witches never returned, and no one in the village ever saw a badger again, or gained the fair fortune they could bring. 

I'm actually not all that keen on animals; I don't like dogs, cats or even goldfish and  I'm a vegetarian not because of some sort of 'Meat is Murder' principle, but because I really don't like the taste or texture. But a childhood of Watership Down and Wind in the Willows does predispose me to anthropomorphic animal fiction. And I actually have an adopted badger...he doesn't live with me or anything, but I get photos and updates about how he's getting on not being culled. So, I'm very firmly in the "don't like the idea of a badger cull symbolically" camp, though I gather there are some very sound scientific reasons also. Obviously, the debates around the proposed badger cull can't be reduced to folktales, but I just though I'd say, "I don't like it". If you don't either, sign the petition.