The Three Ravens Podcast

The final of the three very special interviews Martin conducted with some of the biggest names in Welsh folklore and ghostlore, in this episode it's this inspirational Peter Stevenson!
As we chat about from the outset, Peter is, as far as anyone we know of can tell, the greatest living authority on Welsh folk tales.
Author of books including Welsh Folk Tales, Welsh Folk Tales for Young and Old, Welsh Folk Tales of Land and Sea, and Moon-Eyed People, about the Welsh diaspora in America, Peter has been working in folk art, music and storytelling for his entire career.
He is perhaps best known in some quarters as an illustrator. Some know him as a fine artist. Others perhaps know him as a filmmaker. Either way, his preoccupations with three themes unite his work - landscape, people, and story.
In this ranging chat, Peter discusses his life and career, his perspective on the country he calls home, and the very nature of 'Otherness.' From ghost stories to ladies who decide to live in the No Man's Land between sea and cliff, the Mari Lwyd to the important of music to Welsh folk culture, we hope you enjoy the chat and feel inspired by Peter's favourite Welsh folk tales of all.
Afterwards, Eleanor and Martin take a moment to unpack some final reflections we've come to across Series 7, try to pronounce the longest place name in all of Wales, and sign off with a big thank you to our entire community of listeners and all the people who have helped us learn all we have along the way.
We really hope you our series about Wales has been as fun for you as it has been for us, and will speak to you again on Monday for this month's Forgotten Melodies Bonus Episode all about Drinking Songs, including new versions of Bring Us In Good Ale, All For Me Grog, and The Barley Mow, arranged and performed by us!

Visit Peter's website: https://www.peterstevensonarts.co.uk/

The Three Ravens is a Myth and Folklore podcast hosted by award-winning writers Martin Vaux and Eleanor Conlon.
Released on Mondays, each weekly episode focuses on a historic county, exploring the heritage, folklore and traditions of the area, from ghosts and mermaids to mythical monsters, half-forgotten heroes, bloody legends, and much, much more. Then, and most importantly, the pair take turns to tell a new version of an ancient story from that county - all before discussing what that tale might mean, where it might have come from, and the truths it reveals about England's hidden past...
Bonus Episodes are released on Thursdays plus Local Legends episodes on Saturdays - interviews with acclaimed authors, folklorists, podcasters and historians with unique perspectives on that week's county.
With a range of exclusive content on Patreon too, including audio ghost tours, the Three Ravens Newsletter, and monthly Three Ravens Film Club episodes about folk horror films from across the decades, why not join us around the campfire and listen in?
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The second of three very special interviews with some of the biggest names in Welsh folklore and ghostlore, in this episode it's author, folklorist and collector of antique Welsh texts, Dr Delyth Badder!
As we discuss at the outset, we learned of Delyth's work through her book The Folklore of Wales: Ghosts, which came out the year Three Ravens launched. Her co-author, Mark Norman of The Folklore Podcast, spoke of it way back in Series 5 when he was our Local Legends guest for the English county of Devon.
Finally, Martin had a good excuse to invite Delyth for a chat, and in this interview she shares her own story - including that of the haunted home she grew up in - along with her journey from medicine and pathology into folklore studies.
She shares her favourite examples of Welsh folklore, unpacks what she thinks separate and unite the English and the Welsh, and unpacks the Afanc for us finally, making sense of that bizarre crocodile/beaver hybrid who, it turns out, is not at all a crocodile or a beaver...
Also including Delyth's top recommendations for books and podcasts covering Welsh folklore, places to visit and ideas to bear in mind, we then finish with an extra little bit at the end where Eleanor and Martin discuss the challenges of understanding Welsh maps pre-Henry VIII.

We really hope you enjoy the episode, and speak to you again on Saturday for the concluding part of the trilogy - a chat with multi-award winning author, storyteller and illustrator Peter Stevenson!

Visit Delyth's website: https://folklorewales.com/

The Three Ravens is a Myth and Folklore podcast hosted by award-winning writers Martin Vaux and Eleanor Conlon.
Released on Mondays, each weekly episode focuses on a historic county, exploring the heritage, folklore and traditions of the area, from ghosts and mermaids to mythical monsters, half-forgotten heroes, bloody legends, and much, much more. Then, and most importantly, the pair take turns to tell a new version of an ancient story from that county - all before discussing what that tale might mean, where it might have come from, and the truths it reveals about England's hidden past...
Bonus Episodes are released on Thursdays plus Local Legends episodes on Saturdays - interviews with acclaimed authors, folklorists, podcasters and historians with unique perspectives on that week's county.
With a range of exclusive content on Patreon too, including audio ghost tours, the Three Ravens Newsletter, and monthly Three Ravens Film Club episodes about folk horror films from across the decades, why not join us around the campfire and listen in?
REGISTER FOR THE TALES OF SOUTHERN ENGLAND TOUR

Visit our website

Join our Patreon

Social media channels and sponsors
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The first of three very special interviews with some of the biggest names in Welsh folklore and ghostlore, in this episode it's author, journalist, cultural historian and self-proclaimed punk, Mark Rees!
We begin with some merry badinage, discussing who Mark is and unpacking some of the important lessons we've learned from him and others across Series 7 - though the main event is a lovely chat that starts in Mark's home town of Port Talbot, via Mark's 'Lost Years' as a punk, through to the blossoming of his astonishing career as a D.I.Y. journalist, broadcaster, researcher, and author of wonderful books on the cultural history and legends of Wales.
At the same time, inspired by an early love of Ghostbusters, Mark has been chasing down spooks for a while now - and not just in newspaper archives. He has uncovered things, including new details in the Rhonda Street Poltergeist case, the Cursed Wall of Margam, which is now top secret and thoroughly locked away, and a real life Scooby Doo case about a Welsh dog that genuinely caught a ghost.
We're talking about what Mark thinks unites the Welsh and the English, and about those things that separate us. About the places in Wales he thinks people should go to and why, and about the people who inspired him, from Dylan Thomas and the 'Graveyard Poet' Thomas Gray to Peter Underwood.
With an extra little bit at the end where Eleanor and Martin both share regrets about things they got wrong across Series 7, and a big announcement about our third book, we really hope you enjoy the episode.
Speak to you again on Thursday for the second part of the trilogy - a chat with author, folklorist and expert pathologist Dr Delyth Badder!

Visit Mark's website: https://markreesonline.com/about/

The Three Ravens is a Myth and Folklore podcast hosted by award-winning writers Martin Vaux and Eleanor Conlon.
Released on Mondays, each weekly episode focuses on a historic county, exploring the heritage, folklore and traditions of the area, from ghosts and mermaids to mythical monsters, half-forgotten heroes, bloody legends, and much, much more. Then, and most importantly, the pair take turns to tell a new version of an ancient story from that county - all before discussing what that tale might mean, where it might have come from, and the truths it reveals about England's hidden past...
Bonus Episodes are released on Thursdays plus Local Legends episodes on Saturdays - interviews with acclaimed authors, folklorists, podcasters and historians with unique perspectives on that week's county.
With a range of exclusive content on Patreon too, including audio ghost tours, the Three Ravens Newsletter, and monthly Three Ravens Film Club episodes about folk horror films from across the decades, why not join us around the campfire and listen in?
REGISTER FOR THE TALES OF SOUTHERN ENGLAND TOUR

Visit our website

Join our Patreon

Social media channels and sponsors
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For this week's Local Legends interview, Eleanor is chatting with author Francesca Simon MBE.
We were pretty amazed when Francesca agreed to join us - she's very well known, the author of over 60 books, including the award-winning Horrid Henry series.
Henry and his horrid exploits are hardly the only string to Francesca's bow, though.
She’s written a lot of other fiction too, often inspired by mythology, like The Sleeping Army and The Lost Gods. One of her books, The Monstrous Child, based on Norse mythology, was adapted into an opera which premiered at the Royal Opera House.
What a lovely coincidence, then, that Francesca’s most recent book, Salka, is a gorgeous retelling of Carmarthenshire’s most famous legend, the tale of the faerie woman of Llyn y Fan Fach.
A tragic romance dealing with the bitter consequences of not being truly understood, Salka is Francesca’s version of a tale which has been told and retold many times, and always in slightly different ways. Unusually, Francesca first adapted the story as a cantata, 2022’s The Faerie Bride, which premiered at the Aldeburgh Music Festival for two voices, choir and symphony, but the story still had a hold on her - and so Salka was born.
Francesca and I had an excellent chat about writing, opera, and the magic of the place which inspired Francesca, drawing out the presence of the ocean in her work, which has captivated her since her childhood spent on the beaches of California, to Carmarthenshire’s enchanting fairy lake.
So gather round the Three Ravens fire and listen in, for a chat about a tale with a very long shadow, and the life and career of a true Local Legend: Francesca Simon.
We really hope you enjoy this episode, and will speak to you again on Monday for a special interview with Mark Rees of the Ghosts and Folklore of Wales podcast!
The Three Ravens is a Myth and Folklore podcast hosted by award-winning writers Martin Vaux and Eleanor Conlon.
Released on Mondays, each weekly episode focuses on a historic county, exploring the heritage, folklore and traditions of the area, from ghosts and mermaids to mythical monsters, half-forgotten heroes, bloody legends, and much, much more. Then, and most importantly, the pair take turns to tell a new version of an ancient story from that county - all before discussing what that tale might mean, where it might have come from, and the truths it reveals about England's hidden past...
Bonus Episodes are released on Thursdays plus Local Legends episodes on Saturdays - interviews with acclaimed authors, folklorists, podcasters and historians with unique perspectives on that week's county.
With a range of exclusive content on Patreon too, including audio ghost tours, the Three Ravens Newsletter, and monthly Three Ravens Film Club episodes about folk horror films from across the decades, why not join us around the campfire and listen in?
REGISTER FOR THE TALES OF SOUTHERN ENGLAND TOUR

Visit our website

Join our Patreon

Social media channels and sponsors
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this month's episode of the Three Ravens Bestiary we're talking all about Leprechauns, hot on the heels of St Patrick's Day!
We begin by setting some context, particularly around the cultural changes that took place across the 19th century in Ireland, from the sensational success of Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies in 1808 via the "Great Hunger" of the mid-century up to the birth of the Gaelic League.
During this Celtic Revival, and spurred on by the success of Sir Walter Scott, this period in Irish life saw the Leprechaun reborn - though not as the cutesy, bright green gnome we're familiar with today, but as a "solitary fairy" famous for mending shoes and being, at best, amoral.
Yet, is this new conception of the Leprechaun really all that Irish? Might they have more in common with the Scottish Redcap or the Welsh and Cornish 'Coblyn' and 'Knocker' fairies than the Lucky Charms marshmallow-hoarding cereal mascot?
To find out, we leap back to the very start of the Leprechaun's story, from the water sprites known as "little people" in 8th century legends via a raft of Medieval sagas which give Leprechauns an all-new origin story.
Could they in fact really be the withered remnants of Celtic gods, also written of in Wales and Gaul and Roman Britain, reshaped by the shame of defeat?
As usual, expect deep dives into obscure places, monsters so terrible they fix your face into a mask of terror, and a bunch of linguistics as well.
So if you can't hear one tapping away, mending shoes in your nearest hedgerow, we're offering the next best thing.
Without the risk of your wishes crumbling to leaves or dust right before your eyes...
Speak to you again on Saturday for Eleanor's Local Legends interview about Carmarthenshire with author Francesca Simon MBE!
Three Ravens is an English Myth and Folklore podcast hosted by award-winning writers Martin Vaux and Eleanor Conlon.
Released on Mondays, each weekly episode focuses on one of England's 39 historic counties, exploring the history, folklore and traditions of the area, from ghosts and mermaids to mythical monsters, half-forgotten heroes, bloody legends, and much, much more. Then, and most importantly, the pair take turns to tell a new version of an ancient story from that county - all before discussing what that tale might mean, where it might have come from, and the truths it reveals about England's hidden past...
Bonus Episodes are released on Thursdays plus Local Legends episodes on Saturdays - interviews with acclaimed authors, folklorists, podcasters and historians with unique perspectives on that week's county.
With a range of exclusive content on Patreon, too, including audio ghost tours, the Three Ravens Newsletter, and monthly Three Ravens Film Club episodes about folk horror films from across the decades, why not join us around the campfire and listen in?
Learn more at www.threeravenspodcast.com, join our Patreon at www.patreon.com/threeravenspodcast, and find links to our social media channels here: https://linktr.ee/threeravenspodcast
REGISTER FOR THE TALES OF SOUTHERN ENGLAND TOUR

Visit our website

Join our Patreon

Social media channels and sponsors
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.