Samuel DenHartog's Blog: The Road to 1,440 - Posts Tagged "ireland"

Dear wanderers of the wondrous and the arcane,

As the year's wheel turns again, my latest literary venture, "Tales from the Celtic Druids," emerges from the verdant glens and mist-veiled highlands, rich with the fruits of my pilgrimage into the ancient past. In this collection, we journey through the fabled realms where the legacies of druids, heroes, and ethereal beings intertwine with the forces of nature and the echoes of ancestors.

These tales, steeped in the mystique of the Celtic twilight, are the legacies of druids, heroes, and the ethereal Aos Sí. Together, we will tread the secret pathways that weave through the Otherworld and back again to where the mysteries of nature and the whispers of the ancestors dance with the present.

Each tale is a tapestry woven with the golden threads of myth and the silver strands of legend, a lattice that spans the breadth of human emotion and the depths of the earth’s own memory. From the fiery forge of Govannon to the sacred wells of Brigid, we will encounter deities and demigods whose stories are as enduring as the standing stones silhouetted against the Celtic dawn.

Pull on your cloaks and ready your spirit for an expedition into the heart of the isles, where the old ways still murmur in the rustling oak leaves and the rivers sing the language of the land. Join me on this captivating odyssey where every stone circle and ancient grove is a portal to tales eager to be awakened.

Until our paths cross in verdant glens,
Samuel DenHartog

I’m excited to share with you all my latest project, “Fables from Ireland”, a collection that has been a true labor of love. This book brings together some of the most captivating tales from Irish folklore, each story steeped in the magic and mystique of the Emerald Isle. As I curated and retold these tales, I was struck by the richness of the legends and the timeless themes they explore.

One of my favorites in this collection is ‘The Hill-Man and the Housewife,’ a charming story about the intersection of the mundane and the magical. It explores what happens when the supernatural world brushes up against everyday life, reminding us that even the most ordinary tasks can take on extraordinary significance. Then there's ‘The White Trout,’ a tragic love story with an otherworldly twist that beautifully captures the Irish affinity for blending the magical with the melancholic. Other tales include the whimsical adventure of ‘The Fairies of Knockgrafton, ‘ where a hunchbacked man’s kindness leads to an unexpected reward, and the intriguing ‘Munachar and Manachar, ‘ a story about hard work and the pursuit of justice.

Whether you're a longtime lover of folklore or just beginning to explore these magical tales, I hope this book brings you as much joy in reading it as I had in bringing it to life.

After all the buildup, the story finally continues. In this latest installment, our four witches leave behind the familiar streets of East Haven and step into a fractured past where magic still lingers in stone and silence. The riverbank, once a place of quiet reflection, becomes the entry point into something far older. They find themselves in Alexandria during the last days of its great Library, where a secret coven entrusts them with a task only they can complete.

Each girl is pulled into a different thread of time and place. Laurel walks among the firekeepers of ancient Ireland. Susie finds herself in a village ruled by fear during the witch trials of England. Blanca witnesses the fall of a kingdom in Spain as earth magic slips beneath the soil. Andrea follows the wind into the depths of the Black Forest, where superstition and truth twist together. These chapters test who these girls are becoming and ask who they are willing to be.

The heart of this story lives in the way the past speaks to the present. Each setting reveals something elemental about the girls, both in terms of their magic and their character. The history they walk through is not static. It asks for something in return. It demands courage, honesty, and sometimes loss. As they recover the ancient texts, what they truly gather is a deeper sense of what legacy means and how much power lives in what we choose to carry forward.

Back in East Haven, life seems unchanged. But under the stillness, something new stirs. The girls have brought more than magic back with them. They carry memory, responsibility, and a bond shaped by everything they had to survive alone. In the quiet moments after the final page, that feeling lingers. The sense that what was lost has only been waiting to return. And now it has.