Local Legends #62: Peter Stevenson

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1:28Access and fees extra. See full turns at MintMobile.com. One of them said to us mates. Where shall we our breakfast take? We're the down, very, very, very, down, down. Welcome back to the Three Ravens podcast. I'm Martin Volk. And I'm Ellen Akonman. As you will know, if you've been listening along this week, we're doing something different with these final three local legends interviews of Series 7,

2:28as we're introducing them together and then having a little chat about them at the end. Well, also discussing some of the big lessons we've learned across the series. So far this week, we have spoken to broadcaster, author, and cultural historian Mark Rees, host of the Ghosts and Folklore of Wales podcast, and Dr. Deleth Bader, who runs FolkloreWales.com, and who is an author, pathologist, rare book collector, and a genuine expert in Welsh Ghost Law. Though today we have something really special for you. A chat with one of the most celebrated names in storytelling and the modern day's foremost expert in Welsh folktales. Peter Stevenson. Peter Stevenson is a multi-talented and acclaimed oral storyteller, an author and an illustrator whose work serves as a bridge between ancient folklore and modern visual art. Based on the west coast of Wales, he's widely celebrated for his ability to breathe new life into traditional myths through a unique blend of narrative

3:31and vivid atmospheric illustration. Peter is a renowned expert in Welsh folklore, having authored deeply research collections, such as Welsh Folktales from 2017, and the Moon Eyed People, Folktales from Welsh America in 2019, plus Welsh Folktales of Coastancy, as published last year, and Welsh Folktales for Young and Old, published in 2023. Beyond the written word, Peter is a captivating performer who uses crankies, which are hand-cranked, moving, illustrated scrolls, to create a magical cinematic experience for his audiences. He's also an accomplished fine artist. His artistic reach extends from classic children's literature, including work for prestigious publishers like Lady Bird Hodder and Storten, to work with independent filmmakers and a wider range of artists with whom he really enjoys to collaborate. He's also the organiser of the Aberwyst with Storytelling Festival and an award-winning fine artist, and an inspirational person whose work is all rooted

4:33in a sense of wonder. As ever, if you would like to support the podcast, please consider signing up to our Patreon. Membership Unlocks, ad-free listening to over 500 episodes, including all of Three Ravens Series 7 about the history and folklore of the 13 historic counties of Wales, plus loads of other Patreon-exclusive stuff. There are links in our show notes, and on our website, threeravenspodcast.com, where you can also find merch, ways to buy tickets to our upcoming live shows, and our blogs filled with links to historic and folkloric sites for every county we've spoken about. We will, of course, be back after this interview to have a chat about some of the things Peter has to say to give our final main reflections on Three Ravens Series 7, and to try and pronounce the longest place name in Wales. Yes, for now, though, let's get to it and talk about the serendipitous nature of a creative life, the stories that most inspire, the greatest living experts in Welsh folk tales, and a man who kindly prepared an entire set for me

5:37to see while I interviewed him, only he couldn't then get his webcam to work. A true local legend, Peter Stevenson. Peter, you are an author, a storyteller, a beloved illustrator, and through your books, you've celebrated both regional Welsh folk tales and national Welsh folk tales, we own three of your books, all extremely useful when we've been working on Series 7 of Three Ravens. Your CV is packed with interesting stuff, but take us back to the beginning, where did you grow up, and when did you begin to be interested in folklor? Well, I think it actually was those early days that I'd think began all this. I grew up in two different places, because my parents were from different places, so one was penclean in Wales, in North Wales,

6:38and the other was Lancashire. So that was my childhood for the first pretty much 20 years of my life, between the two places, and things that I do remember so many things now from that period, I know I was make, I love fairy tales from a very early age, folk tales, fairy tales. There were people in both of those places that would come around to the house or wherever we were living, and tell stories, just from conversation, and in Welsh, you know, it's a kind of, it also means conversation as well as story, which I think some things look very nicely, storytelling came out from conversation. So I would listen to my dad having conversations, and then just watching the folk circuit as well in Lancashire as well, which was very big when I was growing up. So I was in that climber right from a very early age, and I know that when I was four, I don't remember this, but I was making books and fairy tales.

7:41I would fold the paper, you know, like a bit of origami, and make a little bit, but ironically, I've got one here to show you. You know, you just fold paper or a three piece of paper, and you can make eight or 16 pages depending how you fold it. And I would illustrate it, write the story, sometimes fairy tales, sometimes I'd make up my own. So from the age of four, I think my life was actually set. Of course, I didn't know it then, but I read on doing that. By the time I got into my early teens, when I suppose I should have been out there, you know, from the punk circuit, but I was listening to really old feel recordings from St. Baggins folk museum or from various, you know, folk archives. And I loved it just listening to old people singing, or even young people singing these old songs. So it was right in me from the very early age. I didn't know anything about career or anything like that.

8:43I just knew what I loved. And they ended up without college. I think particles that didn't really have the qualifications, anything much else. This is where I stood gold because I decided I was studying illustration. I wanted to do what I've been doing all my life. Illustrated books and fairy tales, folk tales and contemporary stories too. And I fell on my feet because my lecturer there was a man called Tony Ross. And I don't know if you've come across Tony. He's probably one of the most famous children's book illustrators in the entire world. Right. Illustrated a lot of role-dial, all the ones that Quentin Blake didn't do. He illustrates all David Williams' books now. Tony's well into his 80s now, but he's still working. I know a remarkable man, and I just learned the roots from him. And while I was doing that, this was at Manchester Art College. I made contact with all the things like the Mummers groups, all the folkloric groups around Manchester, which was buzzing at that time.

9:46This would be mid late 1970s. So I did four years. He's going somewhere, I promise you. I don't know, I know. I also, I'm enjoying the journey, Peter. Well, it's such an unusual route in this, because I got asked to do a PhD. And at this point, I was asking a lot of questions about where these stories came from. I was intrigued by who told these stories. What were they about? Where did they, you know, when were they told? Who were they told by at what time? How long have they been told? Somebody in Manchester told me about the Institute for Dialect and Folk Life Studies, which is quite a mouthful. It is. It means university. So I went to see them, and they invited me to do an M-Fill there and then. They were working, they were part of the English department at Leeds, working out at a basement of a terrace house, very close to headingly cricket ground.

10:48It was breathtaking, but the two lectures there were certainly one of them was a truly iconic figure, Stuart Sanderson, who was the head of a lot of Scottish fairy tale collecting and folklore. And Tony Green, who was very similar in England as well, he was from Yorkshire too. So that was that, I did that as well. And what I was looking at in particular was I was going around recording folk drama. So things like moments plays and traditional dances and people telling stories, because what was intriguing me was that moment, and you will understand this as a a puppeteer or working with a puppeteer. That moment when a spoken narrative becomes performance, it becomes theatre. There's a little dividing line there. It's, you know, you kind of find yourself jumping across, you know, as soon as it is like, you know, somebody writes a screenplay, and then all these people are speaking the words. It's that little moment I got interested with that, that bit in the middle,

11:52which it's not quite defined. And that was it, my life was set by this point. There was still one part of my education to go through. I went back to the flit, back to the Wales, I think I finished. Because my mum would be my event. And through my mum, I got my first job. Well, to be honest, my only job, I'll explain this in a moment, at a place called Anter Eilhajal, which is in San Eilhajal, at the foot of a rival, the three peaks of the mountains, intentionally, the entrance to Penthene. So beyond that, not one, if you're coming in from England. And it was the very first village cooperative in the UK. And it's been set up because there'd been a kind of a young people were leaving. There was no work for them at that time. It was, you know, it was a place of older people. And youngsters, as soon as they realised they had to read a limit, they went off a lot of them went to our college,

12:53because it was fairly easy to get in, if I could just apply to. But they set up with public money, and in fact, they were in a pottery. And I got my first job painting, working with the potter, who was making the pots, and I was doing the illustrations on the pots. And we had sucked up. And, you know, I spent a lot of my time working there in the evenings, because I was firing the kiln, and, you know, I would, and my sleeping bag there, and the cushions. And I was just sleeping in the warmth of God. It was so warm, I remember it now. Yeah, I bet. Less fun in the summertime, more fun in the winter. Oh, absolutely. I was living at a very cold, tiny stone cottage, about 1,000 feet up the mountain, so... But it was also the political discussions in the pub at night, as well. I'd gone through this whole process, and there I was, at that point I felt I can do this. I can make books. I've got something I need to say.

13:55I've got at least a start-up skill set for painting and writing. And my first book was published shortly afterwards by Jay and Dennis. And this was something people would say were Dylan Thomas's publisher. Yeah, that's mad. I couldn't have been pulled myself back into it now. It's ridiculous. I mean, I read all Dylan's books while I was at university, and here I was being published by his publisher. That was the Children's Book. The Children's Picture Book. I've frankly, I haven't cut through the rest really quickly, Martin. That was me. I was on the road. Never getting anything out. I do books. I do storytelling. I make a few films. I do, you know, that's been my entire life working for myself. Yeah, which is wonderful and exciting. And I think if you've never done anything else, probably not that nerve-wracking, because you're just following your nose and away from the sounds of it, and making the best decision in the moment, and before long you end up, actually, in a pretty happy place. I think it's the challenge for some people, I think,

14:57is when they've got the nine to five, and then they realise they absolutely can't abide it. How do they then get out? That one I find very difficult. And I was the other way around, because occasionally, if the world was drying up a little bit, I was thinking I ought to get her, as people kept telling me, a proper job. I've got loads of jobs and work. Yeah, you don't know how many jobs I have to do. But I realised I was the opposite of institutionalised. Yeah, actually, I've worked out, I've been making my own decisions. I can't work for somebody else really. I can work on short-term projects with different people. And for my bills, I've lasted many, many years, so kind of very happy working life, it really has. From that point on, I never left Wales after that. Right, and yet the axe and still lingers, doesn't it? Do you ever get annoyed with it? Do you ever think, come on, get out of my tongue?

16:00Well, I can switch between the two quite easily. But I think when it was my secondary years, my teen years, were in Lancaster, and then I was a college in Manchester, and then Leeds, so it's all northern. But it's so long ago now, but I seem to have been left with this kind of, when I'm talking, I'm in New Zealand at the moment, when I want to get back to Wales, it will come back again. I'm sure, I'm sure. And okay, so Peter, I'm going to reel off a list of titles of your books. Welsh Folk Tales, Welsh Folk Tales of Coastancy, Welsh Folk Tales Fat Young and Old, Moonlight People, Folk Tales from Welsh America, amongst others, you also illustrated the following Ladybird books, which is crazy. The Gingerbread Man, Tales from the Jungle Book, The Elves and the Shoemaker and the Enormous Turnip.

17:02If you are anything like Eleanor and I, you may well have grown up reading and coveting books with titles like all of those ones, the Ladybird books were certainly an institution for me. Did you imagine, I mean, you kind of answered this question already, but did you imagine when you were young that you were going to end up working on the kinds of books that you were reading when you were a child? I find that quite hard to answer because I don't think I've ever thought that way. I've just carried on doing the things I love throughout my life, and these things just kind of fell in, almost fell into my lap. One thing, as soon as one book's published, you're going to find this, you're working on your second book. I am. I'm currently working on one out of three. I'm sorry. No, I'm having fun. I can't remember exactly how that all happened, but I already had quite a few books published by that point, and then somebody contacted me and said, Ladybird,

18:02they were looking for, and then they contacted me and it wasn't me contacting them. About my life, I get contacted. Yeah, well, you got bothered by me, didn't you? You got bothered by me. Yeah, I'm getting to an age now, I did about 30 books for them, so it's quite a long time ago now, so there's two generations growing up, since then. And you wouldn't believe how many people come up to. There's one of Fred DeMine, who's in her 30s now. He said, you traumatise me in my childhood. I said, how did you traumatise it? The gingerbread man. But he said, the last picture, there's the series of three pictures of gingerbread man on the foxes' nose, and the fox posses him up in the air, opens his mouth and gobbles him down, and you see him without legs, then without arms, then without a body. Yes. And I thought, oh, yes, it's a bit very young.

19:04But that's also the story. I mean, that's part of the thing about folk tales at fairy tales, isn't it? But sometimes awful, awful things happen, seemingly for no reason at all. And I think that's part of the purpose of folk tales and fairy tales, is to help us understand that the world is full of things that we can't really comprehend. And sometimes they're wonderful, but also sometimes they're really awful. And you've kind of got to dust yourself off and carry on, haven't you? I couldn't agree more. I mean, many years ago, someone told me, an old man, an old guy in North Wales told me, that the tale of story is to embrace death within life. I've never forgotten that one. And it is, it's the role of the story teller, when, especially like me, when you're fairly close to the community, you're explaining a few things to people through the story, not the thing, not being tied up yet. But you're approaching those quite difficult things

20:05that are tricky to people to get their brains around. Yes, when you don't understand death, really. You know, well, remember the folk can't resource somebody dead, but it's a tricky thing, but the stories can help people. Oh, yeah. And all those things should be in stories, and they shouldn't be taken out. Yes, I like the idea, though, that people say, oh, you know, children struggle to understand death. Well, I'm in my 40s now. I still struggle to understand death. Anyone who says they understand death, I think, is pulling your leg. At least none of us do. I think as we get older, we know to be more scared of it. That's all that really changes. I'm just a bit too busy and thinking about the next thing you're doing, can you even think about it? I think that's my way through it. Yeah, I'm not going to worry about that one. I'm going to keep writing stories, and hopefully it won't catch up with me in the short run.

21:08I'm just kind of quite like the fact that one day there will be an unfinished book. I don't know which one it'll be. Might be the one I'm working on now, who knows? Well, make sure you leave it to someone good to finish. Okay, and so you mentioned North-Hose there before. You said, you know, you've stayed in Wales ever since, and you had these two sides from two parents, sort of English or Lancashire one, and then the Welsh side. When I first contacted you, and you know, we've been chatting back and forth for a while now, I said, I think you might be the living authority on Welsh Folk Tales. Do you think you're the living authority on Welsh Folk Tales? I was quite taken aback by that, and I mean, it's very really kind thing to say. I just don't think it is for me to say. And I don't think, I really genuinely don't think of myself in that way.

22:09People tell me I'm a bit too humble, but it's to do with being part of a tradition for me. These stories aren't mine. The stories that are told, I can retell them, and I can pass them on to people. It's not like when you write a novel and somebody then copies you. Not like that. With these kind of stories, they kind of belong to us all, and we also have different take on them. So I think that idea of being part of a tradition in that way that has been before and will be in the future, takes away all that idea about, you know, what you just very kindly said about me. I suppose I did pinch myself and have it to think, actually I haven't done quite a lot. Yes, I did. You haven't done so much. But to me, it's the case, I think of all the other storytellers in Wales, brilliant, brilliant people. I know you've just thought, you can't.

23:09And all the superb artists working within this tradition, as well, visual artists, performance artists. To me, we're all on a par there. We're all working together, while not, but sometimes literally working together. We all fit that bill. We're all part of the idea that will take Welsh folklore and Welsh folk tale forward. It's not just one person. Of course not, no, no. I wouldn't want people to take that as my implication. I just think that, well, you evidently started young with collecting stories and listening to stories and getting a sense of story, but you've dedicated your entire life to this. No, you can't. And the out of a lot of it for people like me is to see all of these books that you've written and go, blime each other. And then when I pick them up and read into them and also talk to your contemporaries, because at this point, I have spoken to quite a few people who know you as well. You said things like, why haven't you spoken to Peter Stevenson yet?

24:09And I was like, I'm saving it for later. But nonetheless, there's an awful lot that you have collected and probably just internalised to take for granted that for a lot of us it's so exciting to find what you've done. Well, what we have been able to do this, I think, is I don't work as an academic, although I have an academic degree, as well as an art degree. So most of the books of folklore, or certainly in the past, it's not quite so true nowadays, many people are writing books of folklore. But in the past, it was academics. And they were having to fit that work in between their lecturing and all their academic duties. Now, I've never had that. I just plow on in my own little way. I work with them. I love working with academics. But I just work in my own way. So it's meant I've had a lot more time to do this. People say, what do you do? And I say, well, I'm an illustrator. I'm a storyteller. I write it.

25:10But they're all the same thing. Everything I do is about the folk tradition. And it doesn't matter which method I use, to put that over. It's all the same kind of subject. I've been in New Zealand since November. I've been used to be children's books while I've been here. And they're going through the printing process now. They're all finished. If we have a picture, I would show you. But I finally have a publisher, who's really interested in publishing some of these stories, as 32 to 30 page children's books. So this continues. It will always continue. I just need somebody there to either put the money or put a lot of the work for it. That's all. Of course. If we all had that, I'd have life would be dead easy, wouldn't it? And a history press, it's phenomenal. I mean, they're just, I mean, what may have achieved? My Nicola in particular, over these last few years has been immense.

26:12Yeah. Yeah. I think it's all really encouraging, as more and more people are engaging with the folk and related topics, whether that's art or music or dance, or of course, you know, storytelling in person or on the page. Another question I wanted to ask you there, before we leap headlong into just talking about whales and general and stories, is I wanted to know, do you believe in ghosts and why? OK. With these kind of questions, I can only answer with a story. Go on. So it will lead you segue very nicely into talking about whales. Hi, everyone. This is Karine, the voice of Simon Fairchild on the Magnus Ark Eyes. And today, I want to talk to you about boost mobile. Some things quietly drain you, like an expensive phone bill trapping your money month after month.

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28:16So in Wales, I don't know if you're the word of this, but we have Kalangaya. And it's in effect Halloween. Kalangaya is on the 1st of November and NOS Kalangaya the night before the festival is the 31st of October. When we now all go out doing trick-or-treating dressed as skeletons or ghosties and things. Now, I remember Kalangaya when I was very, very young, really young, and I remember as the kids coming round then, dressed in a very different kind of way who children now dress on Halloween. And the celebration was Kalangaya, not Halloween. I've watched Halloween take over throughout my life. What I'm coming to here is with Kalangaya, it was a moment in time where a community or an individual sat down and they remembered all the people they'd lost through the last previous year.

29:17It might be family, might be friends. We've just 10 years. We've just, you know, 50 years. It sounds quite corny. You think about the ancestors. And going back a long way, you think about the people who influenced you. My dad used to think about an iron pebbin. He was one of his great heroes who we wouldn't have any kind of health service without it, without an eye. And we all had this, my mum did the same thing. So, every Halloween, I do that. Now, in many ways, that's ghost, for me. Ghosts are coming into my life. I'm allowing them in at the same time as many other people allowed them as well. So, a community of people is doing the same thing. We're all thinking about this same person maybe you've been talking about them. For me, that's ghost. Oh, that's one aspect. Ghost is many of them, of course. So, when you ask me, are they real? I, of course, I mean, how can they not be real

30:20because we all know about them? Yeah. We could have a, we could have a discussion now about a particular ghost story. That makes it real. Yeah, exactly. You then have to make that lead. Is there somebody, something wandering around, looking ethereal? And, yes, I mean, the question of what are ghosts? Is a whole other question to are there ghosts? Which, yeah. Yeah, I could recommend an absolutely brilliant book with the local librarian here, God, for me. It's called a ghost. Gifts for Bipolar Gonzales. It's a graphic novel. It's simply one of the best books I've ever read on, Bearytale. And I say, Bearytale, it's about three girls who can't play instruments forming a pump band. And it's all about ghosts. It's all about the connection between past and present and how something in the mind of one of the girls becomes a reality because she meets this character from the past.

31:20And there is real easy to them. It's that kind of idea that I like, rather than something spooky wandering around an old house. Although, again, Martin, I mean, one of the other many things I do, I've worked nearly 20 years now with a festival called Abertoir. And that's A-B-E-R-T-O-I-R. It's the, well, horror film festival. And I do the posters for them. Oh, I am nice. I've got ghosts everywhere. I mean, they kind of brought me like crazy, yeah. And I have seen the odd thing as well. And I'm intrigued how the eye can play tricks as well. Of course, he's being come to get the corner of the eye. I walk the land a lot because that's really important to me. And occasionally I hear that here's things or see something. And when I do that, I'm very lucky. I live fairly close to the National Library of Wales. I go there, a bit of research.

32:21And you find out something happened on that spot. So I can't answer your question with a big yes or no. But it's utterly intriguing. And it fascinates me completely. How could it not do? I agree, wholeheartedly. I think one of the nice things about that question is, I don't think it'll ever be settled. But I also don't think that you can be interested in the folk without being interested in ghosts, because so many things that, whether we call them, the Tag or Fairies in England, or any other kind of goblin or Sprite or Coblin Eye, whatever we want to call them, boggots and boggles and boggies and all these things. I mean, ghost is just another name for all of these variations on. Absolutely. It's about people trying to explain their world, all the strange things that happen, and they happen to all of us every single day. And we need to find some kind of way to explain it to some degree.

33:27And that's what this is. Thousand years or more, people trying to explain these things. And, you know, we are now with dealing with stories about AI and, you know, 50 years ago, it was aliens, and so it goes on. Yeah, but there's always an alpha. Yeah, there is an alpha. Yes, I'm, yes. Yeah, yeah. My answer is yeah. Excellent. Okay. Well, let's talk about whales. And here comes a big question. Hey, I know it's two questions, really. I'm choosing. Whales is an entire nation. It's complicated. His history is extremely deep as are the roots of the country's cultural traditions. But if I were to ask you to try and delineate between whales and England, these two countries that have been joined together for so long, what main thing would you say, A, the English and the Welsh have in common, and B, what do you think sets whales apart?

34:31Oh, God, this, this could go on forever. You know, certainly one thing we both have in common is a border. Yeah, it's like saying death and taxes. So, you know, these things are certain to us. We have a border. That's the tricky, this, this kind of thing. And I used to write for a magazine called Planet, The Welsh International. It was my view of this. He's very international, rather than just from whales. Certainly when I was a kid, and certainly upon Penthene, South Wales was an alien country. I thought the guy ever went out, crossed the Gwesery. If we went anywhere, it was, it was hedging east, we would cross, cross that border by Chester, Liverpool, and Manchester. All the kids in portfolio, they supported Manchester United, or Liverpool. Ever to law, Manchester City. So, yeah, I've got to get all this right. But, but, he's went from rural Penthene into the, those football grounds, there'd be Saturday.

35:32Nothing went out. And there's no going to be room bill there at that time. I'm going back a long way here. So, I'd reward not actually knowing very little about South Wales. It only kind of came into my mind when I was at, I went to our colleague, and my two best friends there, one was from Bridgend, and the other was from Blackwood. In fact, he was Australian, from Blackwood. It's slightly confusing for him, but I'm sure he got there at the end. Yeah. But that was another early awakening for me. I love, and I mix backgrounds. People living in a country, but with mixed backgrounds. It's more how they behave than being a problem, not where they come from or where they were born. So, it was at that point, I started to see Wales as a, something more holistic, as as a country. What's interesting now,

36:34there seems to be more of an East West split. You know, travel is, I mean, I don't know if you know, you can't travel by train from North Wales to South Wales through Wales. You'd have to go into England. It's crazy. No train. There's no train link. It's a bit crazy. There used to be, but they closed it all down in the 1960s. But I think now, I drift between North and South, you know, I moved to Aberlustra within my 20s, so I like being in the middle. I think that's an artist trait as well, sitting in the middle, or just sitting on the edge, walking all this going around you. Yeah. There's quite a few people where I come from, which is a well-speaking area. And I don't, if you've spoken to any of these people, but as soon as you have another language as a first language, that does create a difference.

37:34Now, certainly when I was a kid, I was brought up in an atmosphere of people did not like the English. They blamed the English for what was happening in Wales for young people having to leave. There were many protests going on at that time. The language was under threat. And there was a lot of blaming, because we didn't have a Welsh government at that point. We were government policemen. So you can see, now that's changed. It's a large degree now. I don't know many people who, you know, there's not that kind of dislike of the English anymore. I think there's a really strong feeling. We just like people. We like talking to people now. Welsh people were given the feeling that they shouldn't speak Welsh. They were told they shouldn't speak Welsh many, many years ago. But now, Welsh has been being really embraced, more and more people learning it. There's nearly a million speakers now. Which is staggering compared to what it was.

38:34I really thought the language would die. A lot of us did. But there was a mostly peaceful protest movement over these years that we've built it up. But the language is fundamental to this. That's what separates us. But I think it's also the subject that joins us as well. Because it's about people who speak a minority language. Understanding how to deal with a much bigger country and people coming in. There is something strange going on at the moment where a lot of people are moving into Snowdonia. And they're kind of setting up things like well-being, I think it's kind of outward bound. It's not out of what people consider Welsh culture. So there's a bit of friction going on there at the moment. There's so many things here. Of course. It's a very long conversation. Yes, well, that's why I asked it. It's a difficult one. It's a big one. And another thing as well is, sorry, I can go on forever, but I'm sure you know about the Marie Lloyd.

39:35Yes, of course. The men who watched them yet. Which is now becoming a real symbol of Wales. It happens everywhere. But it's also all across England. And a lot of people in Wales don't have to understand that. If you're in the photoshoot, you do. But a lot of people don't. Are they you're in Kent, aren't you? So we're in Sussex. So right back in Kent. Yeah, where they've got the hornholes. Of course. Yeah, I mean, up and down this country, the number of different, slightly tweaks on. You've got them as obviously as well. Yeah, exactly. You know, the Derby Ram and so many different examples. That's very interesting. Yeah, I think it feels like the same thing, separate and join us at the same time. And it's about how we, how we deal with it, you know. I mean, I'm a great, it's just a great lover of people. I don't mind where people come from. A lot of conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, one of the things that I didn't clock until we started this whole process is

40:38Cumbri versus Wales as names. Because what you what you've said, if in essence, if I'm trying to point it down in my own mind, is language is and these tensions of language, they separate us, but they also create an interesting push and pull. And to call the people of Wales in Anglo-Saxon the strangers, because that's what that term means, is baked into the word. And then obviously Cumbri, having all the implications that it does around collective people, people belonging together, countrymen. I think that's a fascinating thing for the English to try and get over. But they don't seem to have. I agree. I do. I've always found when going to England, a lot of people just don't really aware of Wales. Yeah. Absolutely, they're not aware of the West Coast.

41:39And, you know, I've been writing this book about coastal travels. You know, Gwyneth, Mary Onnith, that part of the coast and Caribbean on are strongly well speaking. And I don't think there's plenty of people in England aren't quite aware of that. There is part of the United Kingdom or the United Kingdom. You know, it's what you call it at the moment. Where we do have this other language that is spoken by a million people. Yes. And it kind of almost, a lot of people don't think about that. Whereas in West Wales, of course, it governs so much of what we do. Yes, naturally. It only makes sense. And I also feel that we're not encouraged as the Brits, I think, as a collective, as the United Kingdom to necessarily learn very much about local history beyond our little bit.

42:41If we know any, then it'll be from where we're from. But I don't think we, personally, spend enough time talking about how just over the hill, they think X or Y, which we think might be a bit mad, but actually over here we believe more or less the same mad thing. We just call it different names. So is this push pull of the other, as you were mentioning earlier, it's a captivating one and a tricky one? It does feel the importance of language as well. We do need it to communicate, which is also why I do crankies in my story telling, because the pictures can communicate where the language might not. Yeah. That is a picture about my life working with visual art as well as spoken word. Of course, that makes sense. And now we come to the meat of the matter, really though. Eleanor and I, through three Ravens, I've now toured around the 13 historic counties of Wales,

43:44digging into each historic county's history, folklore and hotels. When I'll ask in this question of all of our local legends guests for these final three interviews about Wales to cap off our series, from your perspective, Peter, what are your three favourite folk tales or ghost stories from Wales, and why do you like them? Well, if you asked me this question next week, I'd choose three different ones. In fact, if you asked me this question in an hour's time, I would choose three different ones. So there's so many I love, and I am, I'm going to give you one of two options as well as the ones I've chosen. I guess it's where it's such a shame we haven't got the visual, because I've got one of these set up in a cranky that I've just gone out lovely. My first one is one I was told about 25 years ago from Canewith, which is new key in the centre of Carnegie right on the coast. My first came across it in a book by a lady called Myra

44:50Evans. Now, Myra, I then did an awful lot of work on. He was born in 1883. From a very early age, he was a really inquisitive girl, and her dad was a seamen, he had his own boat, and he told her stories, and she went round the hall of Canewith gathering tales, gathering stories. And she didn't publish them for many, many years, but she told them, and her mom taught her songs, but she was the kind of girl that just went and talked to all the old sea captains everybody in the town. And she put together an incredible collection of folktales, fairy tales, songs, recipes. These things are all connected. Everything, all Myra stories are set in a landscape, her landscape, and they all include food, they all include a shared acknowledgement that the people there shared a tradition. And guess what? Myra carried a sketchbook round with her,

45:55it looks like I do, and she would draw the people. And just like I do, I will go away after this, and I might draw you. I won't do it in front of you, though I could, but myra fills textbooks with drawings of the people who told the stories now. This was an eye opening to stories are so much more than a simple narrative. A narrative is a text out of context, Myra was a mistress of being able to put these things in context, so two of my choices came from her. A one was the story of Shani Pobman, it's been a favorite story of mine since I first started asking people in Kanye with about it, having seen Myra's drawings off her. I found that everybody in Kanye knew who she was. Because she lived on the beach in the next bay through K-newet, a little place called K-Bar,

47:01the little key, the little bay. And she lived in an old good-world coffee, there, and she kept chickens, and all her chickens had names over the years, you know, a really important research there, so I found the names of at least a dozen Shani chickens, you know, and you have to do this kind of thing. I love this story, but I got so obsessed with it, I'm not obsessed, I just loved this story so much, this was an old woman, in the 1880s, moved to this old ramshackle mud walled, thinly packed coffees on the beach at K-Bar. And when people said, you know, how does she manage there? And she said, well, I lived between the high tide mark and the clip, the no man's land, so I pay rent to no man. This was a strongly independent woman, and people the kids would door that they would go there and she would tell the stories,

48:01and it would sing songs, and, you know, this was between the high tide 1917, and I was quite astonished, even 20 years ago, people say, oh, I remember Shani, yeah, I used to play in her cottage, at least for people in Norway, Martin, and they were remembering a woman who died in 1917, so, folk memory, it really showed me how strong folk memory is, and Shani's story has become a folktale. I tell it as a folktale, I have a cranky with it, I made with my dear friend, Beleri Ann LeBlanc, who's a children's book illustrator, and eventually the two of us decided we had to make a children's book out of Shani's story, and in I think 2022, we finally got it together, and the book is out there, Shani is now in every single school and every single library across Wales,

49:02and it's actually in my local library here in New Zealand, which you believe, because they bought some of my books here for the library. There was old woman living on the beach and my did her own business, and was very grumpy about people. She's spread around the world, and I kind of knows what she would think about it now, but I think it's a wonderful thing, and as soon as I told people here about it, they were telling me about all the people who lived on the beach, just now where I'm talking to you from now, building old, you know, wooden houses to themselves. So that was what, that was Maira. Maira knew Shani when Maira was a very little girl, and she wrote down Shani's story, and that's what started me on this, because I was very lucky that I knew Maira's youngest daughter. Maira had a daughter when she was well into her 40s, just like my mum, my mum was 45, 46 when she had me. Wow! So I knew Yola, who was

50:02Maira's daughter, and Yola opened up all Maira's papers to me, so I found even more stories. It's just been incredible. One of those stories, and Maira wrote this in both Welsh and English, Maira was very strong about the Welsh language, but she did translate everything, she put everything into English as well, because I think she recognised, even at that early stage, but for the Welsh language to be understood, you do need to explain it to other people who don't speak Welsh. So throughout her papers, her stories are in both languages, even although she wrote him Welsh first. The story is in Welsh, there, there in Weren, which is the lady of the mill pond. Now, it's a lady of the lake story, but there's nothing exotic about this. This is set in a real mill pond, just outside Canewis in a place called Gilvachreddo, and the way it's put together is brilliant,

51:06because you can see it from both sides of this young man who falls in love with this girl he sees sitting on the edge of the pond, and again, the understanding of this is Calan Mai, this is Mayday, which is the partner to Calan Gaiaf, I was talking about earlier, when people from the other world can appear in this world, and there she is, this girl, and of course he falls straight in love with her, and but the conversations between the two of them, you begin to understand that time in her world is ticking along fast slower than in his world. I won't go through the whole story, if you know the lady of the lake story, if you kind of know where this is going, but it's called in a very heterodiggy on the way, and the ending is just, I think, just perfect, because she goes back to her world after he died, because he's aged,

52:07faster than she has, and she goes back and she leaves all her sons behind, but because time is so strange, she's back before they realize she's gone, so she's literally living in two worlds in the slow world and the new one, and I love that idea, and I know the mill house is still standing, it's a real place, the mill pond was there until the 1960s when it was drained, and there are stories of the child drowning in there, or a child warmer drowning in that, but not found anything in the press, but a few people had told me that, so they drained the mill pond, and when I first found the mill pond, the wheel was still there as well, and in a few years, about 10 years ago, it fell off and fell into the stream, so you can see you're dealing with what many people would think, something Arthurian, you know, the lady of the make, yeah, but it's also very, very real,

53:08it's part of people's real lives, these characters in that story, they're millers, they're real people, and even the girl becomes, you can understand her as well, as somebody may be coming from somewhere else, whose life, who leads her life in a slightly different way, you get this, but it's a story I absolutely adore, and I tend to tell it every single tale and my, every Mayday, somewhere, yeah lovely, and I will say on that, some of your illustrations of that story are gorgeous, if people in your books, they won't know, clearly you love it, clearly you love the tale, yeah, that's the one that just put out to me, I love that sense of time passing in different and different speeds, and people, two cultures, wherever this girl came from, she came from below the water, but hey, who knows, I love that idea, whenever you get cultures meeting,

54:10now the other one, I'm afraid this is going to drive a coach in the horses through your whole remit marting, I'm sorry about it, some of our best stories in Wales come from the Welsh Romany people, and they moved into Wales from, as far as we can understand, in about the mid 1700s, and they moved around, so they weren't confined to even the old counties, they moved, you know, there were certain roots, they moved in certain places where they settled, and where they told stories, and a lot of these were gathered, in fact on the seafront, in my hometown, in Ceredinion, from a man called Matthew Wood, the famous Wood family, and I honestly, I genuinely can't choose between two stories here, so I'm going to give you both a moment, okay, please, so one is, well one is a classic story, it's called the Green Man of No Man's Land, so back in No Man's Land,

55:14I like that idea of No Man's Land, and it's a classic kind of European style boat tale about Tiki Jack, you know, who slayed the ragged, slayed the giant, climbed the bean store, that jack, and he's in a lot of Welsh Romany stories, and Welsh Romany actually went over to the Appalachian mountains where I have a lot of connections, and his stories are there as well, you know, these were travelling stories, it's a really well known, I've done it and I put it in a couple of my books, it's a real favourite of mine, I love the imagery, and it's also about the swung girl as well, she comes into the story too, he's on a quest, it's a quest story, yeah lovely, I love that one as a standard fairy tale, but I'm really torn because there's a story called The Horse That Past Dold, or as I call it The Horse That Poohed Gold, it's just one

56:18of my favourite stories, and it's very much about the rich and the poor, and when I told this story a couple of years ago, I was working with an Appalachian friend, and we were touring around West Virginia, and he's a very well known singer-songwriter, and we've done an exhibition together at his work in mine, and then we went on a little tour playing in different places, and I just told that story, it's a warm up for his act, and in Appalachia where they are very conscious of people who have nothing, and a few people who have a lot, I've never known such whooping and cheering at the end of a piece of story telling, it was breathtaking, and I love that story, it just nails so many things that I believe in, well in which case we've ended up with four stories now,

57:19haven't we? I'm sorry, yeah, no that's absolutely fine, because I was going to say when we were talking about the first two, they're quite, what was it, their stories about ladies, and they're also stories about liminality, aren't they? About being between places, whether it's between land and sea, or lake and sea, or the other world and hours, or whatever, but then in the latter ones you've got the hero of Jack, who I always find a little bit more scary than I think people tend to think about him as, because he has a real appetite for going out and killing giants, a lot of the stories about him, you know, I've never met anyone who's so keen to kill anything, but Jack really loves to kill giants, and then the last one of course is a story about class, but in all of those stories, there's always the other, isn't there, because there's the rich in the poor, there's the giant and the not, there's the man and the woman, and there's the this world, and not this world, or the sea,

58:24whatever it might be, and there you are, you nailed it, that's what it fascinates me about all my stories, and everything I do, it's about, I mean that that book you mentioned, the moon and my people, stories from America, that's about the world's migrations, that's about people crossing, and then also some American people coming back here, coming back to Wales, it's all about movement people, and I've just finished a book about the Folk Tales of Water, which is rooted, it's not a sweet story, it's about water, it's about migrations, about people crossing boundaries, crossing borders, that's what intrigues me so much, and you know, you look at the papers today, anywhere, you know, of course, all our politics, it seems to be focused around people trying to escape war zones and crossing the water here to find somewhere to live, or, you know, certain governments, bombing other governments across the border, it's all about this dividing line,

59:32it's mad, isn't it? They need to read more Folk Tales Peter, that's their problem, isn't it? Absolutely, yeah. We all prefer things a certain way, like groceries. If you want groceries just how you like them, you gotta try Instacart. They have a new preference picker that lets you pick how ripe or unripe you want your bananas. Shoppers can see your preferences up front helping guide their choices, because when it comes to groceries, the details matter. Instacart, get groceries just how you like.

1:00:33Up to $600 in savings, that's money that belongs in your life, not trapped in a phone bill. Reclaim those savings for something you're actually into, an EMF meter, a thermal camera, or whatever strange corner of the universe you're currently exploring. Visit boostmobile.com to unlock your savings and take back control. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers pay $25 per month as long as they remain active on the boost mobile unlimited plan. Boost mobile January 2026 survey comparing average annual payment of AT&T, Ryzen and T-Mobile customers to 12 months on the boost mobile unlimited plan. For full offer details, visit boostmobile.com. If someone was planning to visit Wales, which place or places would you say they absolutely have

1:01:37to visit and why? For me, folk tales in Wales are about three things, which is landscape, people, and narrative story. So I'm going to break it down into those three. So landscape, I think they should walk the coast. Yeah, the coast walk. I don't necessarily mean do it all, just pick a bit of it, and they could even buy my book, and they could follow that food now. That's what that was designed for. Yeah, nice. You said it up really subtly. Now, I'm utterly biased there because I live by the coast in Caridigion, and that's my place. I love the sea and I love the water. But that's me. I think if you walk a part of the coast, you will begin to understand what Wales really is. And of course, if you walk it in Caridigion, you'll be able to see the dolphins as well. If you go to Emira Evans, collect it to her stories, you'll see the dolphins do that one. But I think in institution as well, there are two really

1:02:37important ones in Wales. One is St Pagan, which is the Welsh folk museum, and the other is that St Cardiff. The other is the National Library of Wales, which is a gold mine, the stories. There's still many there that they're still pulling out in old recordings that were never, you know, of their archive, but never transcribed. Most of them are in Welsh, so they could be translated. I don't think it's the Estesbarts. Go to the Estesbarts as well. I might come back to that, but then also, you know, find the stories that was to talk to, find an artist, you know, find the creative people who are working with the folk traditions. Just help sign one with them and talk to them. Yeah, I think that's a very good idea. As one of those people, I'm very happy when people come up and want to talk to me about stories. Very happy. You can do that until the cows go home. But I think part of what is important about that is the

1:03:40idea of actually encountering some folk, because it's a bit peculiar when one goes on holiday and stays separate from the people of the nation. You know, they might go to a series of different things, but they might not actually speak to anybody really. It's just a normal everyday person to get a sense what it's like in country X or Y. Yeah, well, we, you know, I would encourage anybody to go to the, I mean, we have a session in a pub called the Ship and Castle in Aberystwyth and it happens every Monday or the traditional musicians gather there. Nobody's getting paid. They just sit and play and, you know, it means your story gets cold and, you know, I'd say go there, you learn far more about what wealth culture is if you do that. You get the atmosphere as well and drink. Yeah, they'll have a range of beverages. You could choose whatever you like. You could complain about that. Yeah, go beyond visit Wales. No beyond the Tory sport. Dig deep. Yeah.

1:04:48Okay, second to last question. What's one thing about Wales, a piece of law, perhaps a tradition or a misconception, or something you just think is important to do with the country's legacy or culture that you would like people to take away from our conversation. I think in a serious mode an understanding of protesting Wales. Now, there's two, two friends of mine, Will and Morris and Owen Shires. Did his show a few years ago and I did a, they asked me to do a map of Wales to show where all the major protests had taken over the whole of history everywhere. And they put together a whole show. It was a great long epic show. They're both musicians, they're both singers. And it was, it was stunning and it really, what it did, it nailed, it was called Gatile Teard, which is about an understanding of land. And it's through something like that.

1:05:50What Owen and Will and did on that occasion. So many people began to understand Wales in a very different way. I actually did a painting of a map of protest in Wales. It's actually there. It's in the National Library of Wales now. Have a look at that and see if that will make you see Wales in a slightly different way because it shows all these different points in time where Wales has had to stand up for itself. Now, you'll get a completely different view. And I suppose I should say now, I mean, the Marry Lloyd is becoming so iconic. It's everywhere. It's just getting, it's becoming a symbol of Wales now. It's hard to avoid it anymore. It's there. And I love it. It's great stuff. When you see it chasing the kids and the kids chasing the Marry, and I just happened to have illustrated and written what I think is the first children's book about the Marry Lloyd. Yeah. So I probably would say that, wouldn't I?

1:06:51Yeah, you would. Slipping that in again. I think that's very sensible and smart to do. But I should say quickly, we do have a bit of a thing in Wales about when we do find our backs against the wall. We do call on mythology. We do call on the folkloric past. In the 1960s, when the language many people thought it was disappearing, and the government were encouraging people to speak English. We called on, well, our England door and the last Prince of Wales, suddenly became a major figure in Wales, having been forgotten for decades. And the other really interesting one was a Santestuan, who became, and almost forgotten the same from a small angle seek. And she became the patron saint of lovers in Wales, a way of fighting a kind of oppression at that time, through creating the patron saint of love. I love Greenwood because

1:07:52it's kind of loved that invariably goes a bit wrong, it's a bit wobbly love, which is a bit more realistic than by one time, but anyway, there we go. Yeah, yeah, now I'm with you there. I think love is so much more interesting than happily ever after, isn't it? Oh, I'm with a little bit. All right, and last question, Peter. If listeners want to learn more about the history on folkloric Wales, where would you recommend they look? I think you're setting me up to publicize my books here, right? I am in part. I mean, obviously you can share it out and be nice. I mean, you've already been nice to some important museums. They're doing all right. Yeah, go on. Pops and books. Yeah, I mean, too. I mean, you've reeled off a list of some of the things. I mean, I think the most folk tales of coast and sea is a really good one for anybody coming to Wales. You meet in it a 7,000 year old girl from the Mesolithic era, from a time when the sea levels were much, much lower, who would have at that time have been watching the water's

1:08:58rising, and at the time when people were nomadic, and we go back to Kalangaya at that moment when the veil opens on October 31st. He steps through the veil and she appears in our time. So that's a really good one. They're going to send serve folkloric history, not literal history. In Wales, a might illustrated book of Welsh folk tales, very much for kids. The number of children who have learned stories in there and told them to me in a few cases not knowing that I wrote the book. That's wonderful. That's brilliant. That's perfect. Last year, I wrote a book about Margaret Jones, now the name might not mean a great deal, but her illustrations will do. Everybody knows them. He was the first major illustrator of the Mabinogian. But was not really We talked about Mabinogian, but back in the late 1980s, early 1980s, she was given the

1:09:59commission by the Arts Council and I think the Bulls Council to illustrate the Mabinogian. And Margaret did the most wonderful job. These pictures are so iconic and she made a map of all the places in Wales where the stories happened because I've done a few of the Mabinogian first grantees set in the south to second in the north, third in the south, fourth in the north. So they're all across the Wales. And I was very fortunate to know Margaret. We actually lived quite close to each other and she lived to the age of 105 and only passed the way last year. So I've written a book about, I've actually written a book about Margaret and it's also there, it shows all her pictures, many of which have never been seen before. And it shows it through the eyes of this extraordinary woman who had an ability to see mythology in the way that we all do. But she had an extraordinary ability to place it into a single

1:11:01painting. So I'd recommend people get hold of a copy of that published by, hmm, a great name for a publisher in Cardiff. So away from that, I go, yeah, look at books by my friend Valerian LeBlanc and she's the children's book illustrator. She came from France, but she's illustrated many, many children's books and she also has illustrated the Mabinogian through volumes of it quite recently. Wow, but I'd also say you find many, many artists as well, you know, they're illustrating the Mabinogian. But listen to singers, look at the music, there's a really vibrant traditional music scene and contemporary music scene in Wales. It's, it always has been, you know, even going back to the 90s with Hepatonear and the Manix and Gorky's Zygotic Monkey, one of my favourite bands in the world. But listen now, go and seek out Carissa Banner. Carissa is a wonderful, wonderful, very contemporary artist and she also has been crossing

1:12:09these boundaries because she was given a commission to set certain English hope tunes to her music. She lives not far from me, so she's Welsh, first language. Yeah, look at Georgia Root as well, Georgia also does, you know, she broadcasts on Radio Cymru and she's developing a kind of contemporary language to describe Wales as well. And you just go through music in Wales and you will get a really, really good Gwenno as well, who speaks Cornish as well as Welsh. And he's a fabulous singer and I think she's just been on a trip to Japan to go around there. So we kind of, we are kind of musical nations, as they say, the art does get pushed a little into the background. So as an introduction, go in through music. There's way more people than I've just described as well.

1:13:11Yeah, I mentioned Owen Shias again, I think Owen's quite wonderful. He fed all the, he did a lot of research on all the Caribbean songs and tunes and made a magnificent album and I think he's been shortlisted for the UK folk album of the year as well. I think it's a pleasure or this year. And yeah, and of course, how can I not mention the story tell us as well? They'll talk to Catholic all, they'll talk to David, maybe it's you, so just find these people and you know, you'll find them, they'll talk to you, they'll talk to you, they'll talk to you, they'll talk to you, they'll talk to you. Perfect. And finally, I am going to finish now. It has to be a reputation of being a bit stuffy, but if you really want to know what West Wales and what a whole of Wales is like, just go to the ice desert bot. It doesn't matter if you can't speak Welsh, just go there, take it in, just look at what's happening, just you will come away with a great understanding,

1:14:11there's visual art exhibitions, there's performance art, there's all kinds of things going on there, and you'll meet all the generations too. I think I've done well. Yeah, great. That's a load of recommendations, which is exactly what people want when they listen to a podcast like this one. I'm going to say two, two final things myself. The first one is, I was not talking about the Mabanogi now, should not be considered a judgment on the Mabanogi, or not Mabanogi. Eleanor and I have obviously spoken about it a fair amount on three Ravens, and yeah, it's absolutely fascinating, but there is always a danger of something that's that big, overshadowing some of the stories that live in those liminal places, so I think it's important to try and shout them up a bit. You've absolutely nailed it there, and it's why I kind of, I find that I would need more of an understanding of Middle Welsh, and there's plenty of academics

1:15:14who really understand it far better than I do, so I do tend to, I mean, it's part of what I do, but I tend to focus on these small, small stories. Yeah, absolutely, but small ones that represent big things as the key, isn't it? Absolutely. Yeah. And the other thing I wanted to say to you is, earlier on in this interview, pretty much at the start, you're talking about your own childhood and about growing up in this tradition of stories being around you, and when I told you about you being this authority on Welsh Votals, you said, well, one of the things that I do, or the main reason I do, this is to pass it on, they're not my stories, they're there for other people. The fact that all of these children are running up to Peter, and they are telling you your own stories, or the stories that you've collected and told, as if they're theirs, I mean, mission accomplished, surely, that must make you feel so proud. Yeah, and that was planned, that was completely intended,

1:16:16that was the reason I did that book, plus also Nicola at this request, when I mooted it to her, she jumped at it, and then said, yes, we'll do it in full colour and hardback, and you know, bless her. It's possibly, possibly the book I'm most pleased with, yeah, it's very hard to say, I mean, I've done illustrations with some great writers over the years, but I'm so happy for that one for exactly the reason that you've pointed out that it is passing on a tradition, children can tell those stories, they're written in that way, and written relatively simply, they've got illustrations to go by, and all the way up the back, I've put in three pages, showing them how to make a cranky box. Yeah, you did, which is very helpful by the way. Well Peter, thank you for several things, thank you so much for what you've done with your incredible career, long may it continue, let's hope we're just reaching the halfway mark,

1:17:17but also thank you so much for making the time to speak with me. As I said to you previously, you know, I feel like I spent quite a lot of time with you through your books, it's been an absolute joy to spend some time with you digitally, hopefully before long Peter will be in the same room at the same time, that'd be nice, wouldn't it? Well, that would be wonderful, and thank you ever so much for inviting me, it's been an absolute pleasure, I'm a real admirer of what you're doing, and yeah, maybe one day we will meet and I'll prove to you that I'm not just the disembodied voice. How about that then? Peter Stevenson, who, when I spoke to him, was in New Zealand, where he spends half the year writing and illustrating books. I think one of the most interesting aspects of your conversation with Peter is the way he describes kind of just trusting the process of being an artist, and believing that if you just keep on working and looking for opportunities,

1:18:21a creative career need not be out of reach. Well, it's true though, isn't it? You know, of all the people that we know who've written books or who make their lives as actors or artists and all sorts of fields, it hasn't necessarily been a route through to boundless riches, but provided they've committed to their projects, it has worked out for them, hasn't it? That's the thing, I know, because I've never had what might be called a proper job in that I've worked as an actor and a puppeteer and a playwright and a storyteller for my entire career, and added to that since 2023 podcaster and author, I can only too readily believe it, because my own experiences have borne it out. Yeah, whereas for me, I mean, I spent 15 years in education, mostly part time, but still I was too afraid of not having a steady wage to pay the bills, to give enough time over to actually doing the work. In the end, my health was what ultimately forced me to change and pursue a life less stressful, and in retrospect, I cannot quite believe how much it was stressing me out,

1:19:24for all those years, repressing the passion I had for writing things and researching the stuff I was really most passionate about. It is slightly ridiculous that we didn't launch three ravens during the pandemic, who cares, that was the time when everyone in the man was launching a pod cup, and if we'd started earlier, who knows what we might have accomplished, so I must say, getting where we are is by no means something I really believed we would manage. It was, without a doubt, a full, hardy plan to release series about not just the 39 historic counties of England, but also now the 13 historic counties of Wales, because my knowledge of Wales was extremely limited before we started our research, and now I can hardly believe that we've somehow done it, released the episode, and we've got all these accompanying stories for every historic county. It is crazy. And I'm also really pleased with the stories we found and the waves we re-told them. We've already been excitedly looking ahead to three ravens series eight, and the folklore of the 13 colonies of the United States, but we didn't want to talk a little bit

1:20:28about our overall reflections of Wales and its legends now that we've reached this point. Yeah, and there are a few things that I've come away thinking. The first is that there is in a lot of Welsh stories, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, a kind of melancholy. It's not in all the tales, of course, but in England I genuinely did not find quite so many stories that had such sad or futile endings. Neither have I expected this, but having become all of a sudden very nerdy about Welsh history, I mean I've been at every opportunity dropping cool facts about Wales in today-to-day conversation across recent months. I'm been loving it. Keep turning around and going, gosh, do I actually now know quite a lot about Wales? Come to understand why perhaps quite so many Welsh folk tales have this melancholy edge. Yeah, we have, and it's because it seems the people of Wales from time to time have had it really flipping rough. Of course, the Edwardian

1:21:31invasion was definitely difficult, but before that the Roman conquest was even more brutal. The middle ages and all the warring kingdoms at the time followed by the behaviour of the marcher lords, various squashed rebellions, the many usurper princes. I mean, I don't know, the stories of the Welsh really winning feel unfortunately few and far between, don't they? Which is quite strange because during the 19th century in the Golden Age of Folklore collecting, Wales was by and large a country on the rise. It had all these incredible booms in primary production, especially gold to start with and then copper, slate and coal, only then global economic conditions changed and so did the economic fortunes of the whole country. The even the most successful and celebrated famous Welsh prince, or as I think of him, King of Wales, in the great. He has a folkloric life where he's cuckolded and he brutally murdered his own dog. I mean, whether it's heroin with the wake or robin herd or guy at warwick or any of the

1:22:35English heroes of old, none of them have the shades of darkness that you'll find in a stories of most Welsh folk heroes. And another thing we both found was quite a lot of challenging stories about the grim fates of women. This is not a uniquely Welsh phenomenon, it has to be said. Plenty of medieval English stories feature women having a bad time. But we were both struck by how male-focused many of the most famous Welsh stories were and how, although women's names were often the title of those tales, they often weren't really about the women themselves. Yeah, our conclusion about this is not so much that the stories of women in Wales did not exist, of course, but rather it seems likely that women were not the people asked to offer up their stories during the antiquarian phases of folklor collecting through into the 19th century. And again, to emphasise, this isn't to say that there are not some stories about ladies, but compared to equivalent materials in England, it seems that the values of patriarchal society

1:23:37dominated female narratives out of Welsh folk tales, which is a real shame. Obviously, all the local legends guests we've spoken to, not least Mark, Stelith Bader and Peter, have all been working to address this issue and to recenter discussions around folkloric women. And we're both sure that if we were to engage in this process again in 50 years' time, this problem will likely have been solved. New research is being undertaken all the time, and so, other we've done our best, our reading for this series, has been almost entirely well entirely via English translations of texts that are often quite old. It is therefore over to the Welsh speakers to untow what before has been missed or minimised and to bring those stories forward. Yes, including more tales of Welsh victory, ideally, and of things working out. Just it works out in the end. It feels something long past to you. And now, Eleanor, you have set us an impossible challenge here and we can only hope to fail at it,

1:24:38which is to pronounce the longest place name in Wales. That's right. It is the name of a Welsh village in Anglesey. It's 58 letters long, so more letters than there are in the alphabet long and translates as St Mary's Church in the hollow of the white hazel near the rapid whirlpool and the Church of St Cecilio of the Red Cave. Yes, it was, in fact, a name made up in 1860 as a publicity stunt to create the longest railway station name in all of Britain. And I think, because this is your idea that you should have a go at it first. I really want to know what the what three words is for this place. Oh, if it's very brief. Okay, I've got it written in front of me. I haven't got any, any phonetics written down, so I'm just going to have a go at it as it appears. Yeah. So, Planver, Paul, Gwyn, Geich, Gokery, Quig, Drob, Wyrch, Antisly, Gok, Gok, Gok. Okay. That may have been too many, Gok, Gok, Gok's, but it was pleasing, so I can't. Maybe, yeah, you just keep going. And also, they were headed for the record in the first place. They wanted the

1:25:41longest name, which is how to make the Gok's. Okay, I want to have a go. Planver, Paul, Gwyn, Geich, Gok, Gok, Gok. That's my best go. Listeners, you decide who did it better or who did it worse. I think she probably, I think I did it worse. I'm not sure I did it particularly well, because they were extra Gok, Gok's, which, yeah. I can imagine that Welsh speakers listening may be pulling their hell and hell and hell, but yeah, I hope you're proud of yourself. I'm very proud and I thought we couldn't let zero seven pass without at least trying to mangle it. I suppose at this point, the main thing I'd like to say, though, is thank you, dear listener, for accompanying us on this latest leg of our journey through the half-forgotten histories and folkloric landscapes of the wonderful world in which we live. Stepping across the border out of England over offer's dyke. It's a little bit nerve-racking, but we've had a lot of fun with it

1:26:45and we're extremely thankful to all the work of the authors of the books we've read and the people we've spoken to directly who've helped to guide us on our way. Every single day, Eleanor and I thank the lucky stars that we have the privilege to do what we now both do for a living. Financially, it is a bit hair-raising, especially when events from overseas come crashing up against little old us, but at the start of three Ravens series seven, Eleanor still had two regular days a week teaching drama lessons and public speaking, and now three Ravens is supporting us to work on the podcast full time. This means because of you and all the people who listen to us, we're doing the things we most love every single day. And as we hope that comes across in every episode, we really do enjoy everything we do for three Ravens. Look, if we didn't, we would stop doing it. Which means moving forward provided the podcast continues to grow. We might just now we set to pursue our dream job side by side with one another and with you. Thank you for listening

1:27:49to us. Thank you for spreading the word to your friends and family and supporting us in whatever ways you can. To our amazing Patreon community, thank you so, so much for being the foundation on which this whole endeavour is built and roll on a three Raven series eight, which will start in the summer for which we will not just be crossing over a land border, but we're crossing the Atlantic Ocean all the way to America. We have so much reading to do and other stuff as we'll discuss on our April update episode, which will be out next Wednesday. Before then though, on Monday, we will be releasing our brand new episode of forgotten melodies, our series about the history of folk song types with new recordings of trad tunes by us. It's drinking songs this time, including new versions of bring us in, good ale, all for me, grog and the barley mo. Do please be sure to give that one a listen. Thanks again to Mark Reese, Dr. Deleth Bada, and our guest for this episode, Peter Stevenson. Learn more about Peter's work at Peter Stevensonarts.co.uk.

1:28:54And we will speak to you again soon, though while our local legend has gone that way, we'll go this way. And remember, don't whistle till you're out of the woods. Our theme song is the traditional folk ballad three Ravens, performed by Elana Conlon, Ben Harbour and Katie Summers, and our logo is by Ollie James Dare. The three Ravens podcast is a rust and stardust production written and produced by us, Elana Conlon and Martin Vorgues. Thanks for listening. Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to fantasy fanfellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the fantasy

1:29:57fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson. And I'm Steven, your bookish internet goofball, but you can call me the smash daddy. And we are currently deep-diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn, but here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before. That's right. Hey, hey, so each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chip. And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert, he'll be wrong. Newsflash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts. Cancer De Colón, since when you detect yourself early, it's more stable in 9 out of 10 people. Use the test of colo guard in the privacy of your house and send it back to get your results.

1:31:00The test of colo guard is an option with a recipe to detect the cancer of colón in people of 45 years or more with rice and rice. The positive results must be followed by a colonoscopy. You can give results to false positives and false negatives. The colo guard test doesn't replace the colonoscopy in patients of high rice. No use colo guard if you've had a name, if you have an inflammatory disease or some kind of serious illness, or a person's personal history of the colonoscopy. Ask the colo guard test for more information in Spanish, visit colo guard.com.de. Hey, this is Adam Grant, host of Ted's podcast, rethinking with Adam Grant. If you heard of Bill, it's the intelligent finance platform that uses AI to help you avoid costly errors and optimize cashflow. In fact, Bill reports that over 90 of the top 100 US accounting firms trust them to manage, move, and maximize money, proven by over a trillion dollars in secure transactions. Eliminate the friction and start scaling with the proven choice. Visit bill.com slash proven to talk with an expert about automating your business finances

1:32:02and get a $250 gift card as the thank you. That's bill.com slash proven. Turns and conditions apply see offer page for details. Right, we're back to talk a bit more about the Tales of Southern England tour. We are. And as a reminder, bookings are open right now. The link is in our show notes at the bottom of this episode. And Tanya and Mike, who run travel pro consulting, are awesome people. When you register, it's them you're talking with. Tanya and Mike initially got in touch with us because their long time listeners to the podcast and they also run a travel company and they decided, hey, why don't we combine our love of travel with our love of the three Ravens podcast. And low, the Tales of Southern England tour was born. And so Tanya and Mike, working their magic, have curated this eight day tour around southern England. If you come, places that the trip stops off include proper visits to iconic places in seven of England's 39 historic counties. And if this tour works, as in enough people come,

1:33:06Tanya and Mike have been chatting with us about possibilities for tours around other groups of historic English counties, as well as possibilities for international three Ravens tours of this kind. But this one has to work for, however, and spaces are limited. So, dear listener, you can book double or solo rooms. Absolutely everything to do with the Tales of Southern England tour itself will be taken care of by Tanya and Mike. Their company is called Travel Pro because guess what? They do this stuff professionally and have been travel pros for several years. Then let's meet up, talk about cool stuff together and visit some genuinely incredible places. Of course, there are episodes to go with the places on the tour, two laps around each of these historic counties, Middlesex, Bach, Oxfordshire, Summerset, Wiltshire, Hampshire and Kent, learn before you go or listen on the trip. But how awesome is the idea of going on an eight day holiday with the kinds of people who listen to three Ravens? Think of

1:34:07the friends you could make, a whole bunch of witches, all rampaging round castles asking questions. It's going to be awesome. And that's the thing. The ambition is to transform the traditional sightseeing tour into a journey of historical investigation. This small group experience has been curated by us and features live storytelling and analysis from us at sites directly related to past episodes. Just one example, The Queen of Bones, Eleanor's story from our first lab Kent episode, series one, episode nine. The story also features in our book Three Ravens Folk Tales. Well, the tales of Southern England tour takes you to Canterbury where you'll be able to look at the tomb of the woman herself, Joan of Navar, and then visit Leeds Castle where she said to Haunt in the form of the Leeds Castle Spectre. Also in Canterbury Cathedral, you can see the tomb referred to in Martin's tale about iconic English ghost story writer E. F. Benson from our

1:35:09second lab Kent episode story The Stain of Vice, proper creepy. Yeah, so we'll have so much to talk about when we meet up, so much stuff for you to see if you can find as you go from place to place and you can book yourself on the Three Ravens Tales of Southern England tour right now. Just select a room type, double or single occupancy, register your information and Tanya and Mike will contact you directly. The link is in the show notes and we'll hope to see you on the tour, which departs September 19th, 2026.