HAG: Forgotten Folktales Retold, edited by Carolyne Larrington

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Nov 13, 2024

∙ Paid

“‘See, a holloway is a barrier between one man’s land and the next. It’s the most in-between sort of place there can be, so when you’re walking here you can be sure you’re walking with the pixies. They’re tricksy and they’re always watching, but if you’re good in your heart, they’ll be good to you. This is their land before it’s ours,’ he prompts her,
‘And we don't muck about on it,’ she finishes.”
— from “The Holloway” by Imogen Hermes Gowar

title: HAG: Forgotten Folktales Retold

editor: Carolyne Larrington

authors: Daisy Johnson, Naomi Booth, Irenosen Okojie, Kirsty Logan, Mahsuda Snaith, Eimear McBride, Liv Little, Emma Glass, Natasha Carthew, Imogen Hermes Gowar

published: 2020 (after the 2019 podcast Hag exclusively—unfortunately—on Audible)

publisher: Virago Press

genre: short stories; folk & fairy tale retellings

setting: Ireland & the British Isles, modern day

main themes/subjects: folk tales, oral story-telling, women’s stories, supernatural worlds & creatures (boggarts, fairies, mermaids, &c.), symbolism of bells, British Imperialism & Catholicism trauma, immigration, domestic violence & abuse, childbirth & miscarriage, folk songs, charter myths, ethnography, Victorian ghost & fairy tales, sapphic romance, intersection bw beauty & horror, bw joy & grief, heroin addiction ~> evil reality-obscuring fairy magic, the toll trauma takes on the body & the psyche, water, family legacy, heritage & inheritance, small village life, old ways, temptation & betrayal, fairy sight ~> hope / beauty / light, curses & gifts, isolation from community due to christian patriarchy & culturcide, selflessness & healing through kindness, vulnerability of women & children, justice & the mythical feminine

“‘Can you see me? Can you see me?’ She laughs, her laugh is choking and cruel. She reaches out with her quick, stick arms and grabs me by the hair, she slams the heel of her hand into my mucky eye. She blots out the image of the beautiful mother and babe for ever.
. . .
‘Which eye do you see me with, Eira?’ Her words are slow and slurred. She is shaking violently. ‘You can see it now, can't you? Which eye? WHICH EYE?’”
— from “The Dampness is Spreading” by Emma Glass

my thoughts:

This was an interesting [re-]reading experience for me & a great example of how differently a reading experience can be at different times in one’s life, particularly after certain life experiences or acquiring new knowledge & perspectives. I initially read this book in 2020 & didn’t fully resonate with a lot of the stories but rereading it last month with the #ArchaeoBookclub folks, & listening to it on the audiobook (technically podcast) recordings, was a whole other & much more rewarding experience.

premise: “Each of the authors in this collection was given a different traditional tale as a prompt for her re-imagining, stories [from their current or childhood homes] that stemmed from very different parts of the British Isles. . . Those original stories are no longer than a couple of pages at most; some indeed are only a paragraph or a few verses long, but each author spins a brand-new tale out of the raw stuff she was given, sparkling, fresh iterations that transpose these universal themes into contemporary life. Although the source tales deal with topics that are always already modern, always relevant, their traditional trappings can seem old-fashioned and quaint, dulling their urgent voices and blunting their impact. But in this new collection, shorn of their three-legged stools and horses and carts, their shiny gold coins and soldiers' muskets, they are set directly in dialogue with the modern.”

Initially conceived of as a podcast series, these new stories are meant to recreate the “intimate dimensions” of their original oral storytelling format before their collection by ethnographers in the Victorian era & dissemination via print by which these tales are nearly exclusively known today.

“Human existence so often calls for exploration through the imagination, through metaphors, images, narratives that give shape to emotions and conditions, to our sense of being and our struggles to survive and thrive. The supernatural and inexplicable, the selkie, the boggart, the mermaid, the Green Children and the fairies return then, tapping into a powerful sense of continuity from past into present and onwards into the future.”
“For our everyday is not a disenchanted place, however loudly our commuter trains rattle along their tracks or however tall the tower blocks stand in the place where the trees once grew.”
— from the Preface by Carolyne Larrington

execution: While I definitely thought some of the stories were more successful than others (“The Droll of the Mermaid” being especially good) at achieving the goal of channeling those oral-storytelling vibes, all of the stories I thought approached the idea in other ways that were equally interesting & legitimate.

For example the story “The Sisters” felt more like your typical contemporary literary short story & had no supernatural elements, but the original story that inspired it was, fascinatingly, from a letter written by a man to a “gentlemen’s magazine” in the Victorian era & the “moral” of that story was a very male-centric caution against dueling & message about the importance of brotherhood, while Little’s story was essentially the modern femme version: a) the modern short story / essay is how women tell & share stories today, b) the “moral” had more to do with the trauma of imperial colonialism & homophobia isolating vulnerable women, & c) the underlying message was about sisterhood & female relationships. The structure of Little’s story-line did mirror the tone & beat of the original which I thought tied them both together brilliantly.

writing style: literary, inspired by oral story-telling traditions; “The Droll of the Mermaid” *excelled* beyond expectations here particularly.

characters: diverse, femme, vulnerable, brave, & queer.

story/plot: tackling some very heavy themes in a very dark, liminal, beautiful, supernatural, & tense, very earthy, light-of-the-moon, & fog-of-the fen kind of way. . .

worldbuilding: brilliant—if you’ve never been to the British Isles, you will feel as though you did after reading this book.

“If he was a man of hymn and verse he would have sung for his family's protection have them grow old without this weight, float them into the sunset to the tune of their own choosing; death and dying played out on some slow distant beat, not this deafening version of defeat.”
— from “The Droll of the Mermaid” by Natasha Carthew

My favorite stories were “A Retelling” & “The Droll of the Mermaid” (although I didn’t like the narrator for this one so I read it outloud to myself 😂—the writing was the most stunning of all the stories). I also very much enjoyed “Sour Hall” (especially the sound effects in the reading for the podcast), “Between Sea & Sky” (I loved the use of the song & singing in the reading performance), & “The Dampness is Spreading” (the scariest one & my favorite performance). All of the stories were genuinely excellent, though. The only ones I struggled with were “The Tale of Kathleen” because of a personal thing re: the narrative style (but I very much appreciated the choice & still felt that it was objectively a good & beautifully written story), but on a second reading—where I just focused on the language—I liked it a lot more to the point where it’s probably a favorite in terms of just the writing. I also struggled with “The Holloway” because it was just really hard to read & the ending wasn’t very satisfying & I kind of thought it should have been. . . idk.

However the best part of this reading experience was getting to listen to all the interviews at the end of each story on the podcast episodes (sad that I don’t think the two new stories commissioned for the print edition were ever recorded though). They were so fascinating & informative & opened up a whole other dimension of details & appreciation for me as a non-Irish / non-British reader! Can we have these for every book that’s published?? kgr8thx.

i would recommend this book to readers who love dark contemporary literary fairy tale retellings with queer, working class, immigrant, & feminist themes & rep. this book is best read on the podcast if you can access it—it’s an audible exclusive which is so stupid—but if you can find it elsewhere somehow I highly highly recommend it.

final note: I think this book (& Tolkien’s PERILOUS REALM) has really gotten me back in the mood for short stories which is good because I have sooo many on my shelves that I need to get to.

“And if tales of her spirit seen dancing there surfaced, it should be remembered such stories are common enough. They are almost to be expected and should be looked sceptically upon—depending, of course, on how much of the rest of this story you believed anyway. . .
As for me? I leave the island and I leave the past, or as much as I can. Meaning: now there's only you. So, I hope you put your best foot forward as you heard all this and, if you didn't, you might want to have a think about that.”
— from “The Tale of Kathleen” by Eimear McBride

CW // quite graphic, jsyk: including miscarriage & childbirth, domestic violence, disowning by a homophobic parent, death of an estranged parent, drug (heroin) addiction, HP mention (The Sisters)

spice level: 🌶️🌶️

season: Dark Season (Samhain → Ostara)

music pairing: contemporary Irish & British Indie folk music, especially of the witchcore variety, also:

If you haven’t already, consider upgrading to a paid subscription to see more of my expanded annotations & favorite quotes from this book below. . .

& if you are a free subscriber who hasn’t used your one free access yet this would be a good one to use it on because it is basically a very long extended review with tons of quotes & more of my thoughts on each story so you would definitely be getting your credit’s worth.

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to Stop and Smell the Books to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

HAG: Forgotten Folktales Retold, edited by Carolyne Larrington

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

title: HAG: Forgotten Folktales Retold

genre: short stories; folk & fairy tale retellings

my thoughts:

further reading:

Longlist—

Click on the star ratings beside the titles I’ve read to read my reviews/thoughts about the book.

I earn commissions from the sponsored links to my shop on bookshop.org which allow me to keep my content like Book Reviews & Reading Lists free to all subscribers. <3

All graphics, images, & photography © Stop and Smell the Books unless otherwise indicated.

If you haven’t already, consider upgrading to a paid subscription to see more of my expanded annotations & favorite quotes from this book below. . .

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial