Ballad Tales: an anthology of British Ballads retold

by Kevan Manwaring (Editor)

A ballad is a song that tells a story and many traditional British ballads contain fascinating stories – tales of love and jealousy, murder and mystery, the supernatural and the historical. This anthology brings together nineteen original retellings in short story form, written by some of the country’s most accomplished storytellers, singers and wordsmiths. Here you will find tales of cross-dressing heroines, lusty pirates, vengeful fairy queens, mobsters and monsters, mermaids and starmen – stories that dance with the form and flavour of these narrative folksongs in daring and delightful ways. Richly illustrated, these enchanting tales will appeal to lovers of folk music, storytelling and rattling yarns.

192 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2017

About the author

Kevan Manwaring is a prize-winning writer & lecturer in creative writing who lives on the ancient downs of Wiltshire. He is the author of over twenty books including The Windsmith Elegy series of Mythic Reality novels; Desiring Dragons, Oxfordshire Folk Tales, Northamptonshire Folk Tales, The Bardic Handbook, and Ballad Tales (ed.). He loves walking in other worlds, but sometimes he prefers to ride his Triumph motorbike.

Winner of the One Giant Write SF Novel Competition

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great collection of reimagined ballads. Some of the retelling s are better than others but overall the spirit of the stories remains the same. Small snippets about the original ballad accompany each story and those let to some significant rabbit hole
excursions on my end.