Celtic mythology is unusually well suited to romance, because so much of it already is romance — bargains with the otherworld, women who can leave whenever they choose, gods who fall for mortals and handle it badly. These stories are set in modern Ireland, mostly, with the old world pressing through: a bog find, a…
3 min read
The Magic of Celtic Romance Celtic mythology offers one of the richest traditions of romantic storytelling in world literature. Selkies and human lovers, fairy queens and mortal champions, gods who cross between worlds for love — these ancient stories speak to the deepest human experiences of desire, devotion, and the transformative power of connection. Key…
1 min read
The Celtic mythological tradition is one of the richest sources of romantic storytelling in the world. Long before the modern romance novel existed, the myths of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales were telling love stories of extraordinary power: tales of selkies and human lovers, fairy queens and mortal champions, gods who fell for mortals and changed…
3 min read
The river Boyne was in spate when Eithne Gallagher arrived at the Brú na Bóinne visitor centre, having driven four hours from Cork in weather that alternated between biblical rain and the threatening pause between showers that the Irish called “a grand soft day.” She was a folklorist — the last tenured folklorist in the…
9 min read
The music came from underground. Orla Kavanagh heard it first on Midsummer’s Eve, walking home from the pub in Knocknarea at an hour when the sensible people of County Sligo were in bed and only the foxes and the fools were abroad. She was neither fox nor fool — she was a traditional musician, a…
9 min read
The seal skin was hidden in the chimney of the old croft house on the headland above Achiltibuie, wrapped in oilcloth that had been there so long it had become part of the stonework. Caitriona MacLeod found it on the afternoon she moved in, when the removal of a bird’s nest dislodged a stone that…
11 min read
The concert hall was empty when Ailsa Drummond arrived for the evening rehearsal, which was unusual. The Lyceum Chamber Orchestra did not typically abandon its Tuesday rehearsals, even when the weather turned foul, even when the heating failed, even when the second violins contracted a collective stomach ailment from the sushi restaurant they insisted on…
9 min read
The bells of Saint Elara had been silent for eleven years when Margaux Delacroix arrived to restore them. The church stood at the edge of the village of Briarthorn, where the Somerset levels met the Mendip Hills in a disputed borderland of mist and ancient grievance. It was a building of considerable beauty and even…
10 min read