University of Wales Press Where The Folk : A Welsh Folklore Road Trip

Russ Williams was raised on Wales’s stories, like the one about a mountain that would send you mad or turn you into a gifted poet if you camped out on it, the one about the lost civilisation drowned by the sea and the one about the bottomless lake leading down to the Welsh Otherworld.Stories of witches and giants and heroic kings, dragons and mad doctors, ghostly women, giant beaver monsters, vampire furniture and pirate-fighting monks. As entertaining as it is informative, Where the Folk follows Russ Williams as he travels in Griff, his creaky red Fiesta, in search of places associated with Wales’s legends, folklore and urban myths.In this joyful travelogue, not only does Russ recount some of Wales’s most interesting stories; he also explores the origins behind the myths, talking to experts and storytellers to find out how and why they might have come about, and what they tell us about Wales past and present.