Half Man, Half Myth - Storyteller

20/05/2026

I'm looking forward to going to the East Anglian Storytelling Festival this time next month; I'm not a booked teller but there are lots of "open mic" slots (without the mic I hope!)

28/04/2026

Bright-Browed, Oak-Hearted - Myth and Memory of our Ancient Isles. Is a new book by P.D. Brown. Filled with stories that take us into the past to evoke memories into the present. Available now to buy.

Stone circles, barrows and henges can be seen across the British Isles, they evoke a sense of wonder for a people about whose culture and beliefs we know next to nothing. Later cultures, that still lived when writing arrived in Britain, have had preserved some of their myths and memories, told by word of mouth until then, and have come down to us today. History, myth and legend were not discrete categories to them; there was only Story, stories whose yarns and threads are stitched into our landscape every bit as much as the henges and standing stones of the neolithic.
These tales are not set in a land faraway; they have precise locations, from Gwynedd to Moray, from Bamburgh to Thanet. It is through the power of story that these ancestral figures are conjured to life before the inner eye to live, love, fight and die again - and thus immortal; the vibrant ghosts of our early forebears, whose presence speaks in word and poetry a beauty, as enduring as the land itself.

25/04/2026

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1919512225/ref=sr_1_1?content_source=fb&fb_content_id=Q9-wBQHybz7ZlLg2rYDJTRaoxN5YPHZcK7OclEhH4UENXix5uFpdd87OxcuoANJRpQ&channel_type=fb&fbclid=IwY2xjawRZyX1leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETBhVWw4S1FrMnVPcDRzT0RSc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHs2XRMJ0MwcnriV0ULFKN7_gD1sF1QsioJesR3s5ln5r5BkwYJOsiXjBGtXE_aem_iSgGpZWI_y1zihyoUJ7ztg

Stone circles, barrows and henges can be seen across the British Isles, they evoke a sense of wonder for a people about whose culture and beliefs we know next to nothing. Later cultures, that still lived when writing arrived in Britain, have had preserved some of their myths and memories, told by...

20/04/2026

What's on my mind? Oaks, that's what's on my mind:

20/04/2026

ᚪ Ac, Oak. A as in ‘father’, ‘acorn’.

The Seasons’ doors, like twilight’s, made of oak,
The best of woods for doors, not in, not out,
Liminal threshold, home to Hidden Folk.
Guardian even out at sea, the stout
Ship’s wooden walls, the best of wood for all.
This tree, once spread by acorn-caching jays,
Is now undone; being best, to axe did fall
But loved no less and in our hearts it stays.
Yet there’s far more to oaks, it has been found:
Chemical warning signals by air from leaves
Against incoming insects; sugars stashed
Flow to the sick by root tips underground.
All this and more we know of oaken trees,
Like oak attracts the stroke of thunder’s flash!

19/04/2026

With Welsh Histories – I just got recognised as one of their top fans! 🎉 Illustration is from my soon-to-be published "Bright-Browed, Oak-Hearted" and features three tales from 'Yr Hen Gogledd' - 'The Old North'; when the north of England was still the land of several post-Roman Brythonic kingdoms: the three tales comprise one tale from each of the following Welsh Triads: The Three Fair-Womb-Burdens, The Three Nobles Retinues and The Three Chieftains Brought Low by Misfortune.

11/04/2026

I'd heard that the so-called "Giant's Grave" in Penrith Churchyard was reputedly the grave of Owain "a king of Cumbria" - could this be Owain ap Urien, the King of Rheged? The Owain who slew Aethelric of Bernicia, known to his British enemies as Flamddwyn - "The Firebrand"? The Owain who inflicted the last crushing defeat on the Angles. When Owain died a short while later, it was all downhill for Rheged.

As Owain's story and that of his father, Urien, is one of the tales I tell in my forthcoming book, "Bright-Browed, Oak-Hearted", I wanted to get a photograph of the grave for the book. However, on visiting the graveyard, the Giant's Grave turned out to be indeed the grave of Owain "a king of Cumbria" who died A.D.937 - 344 years after Owain ap Urien. Oh well.

This Owain of Cumbria was a Briton of Strathclyde; the Britons of Strathclyde expanded into The Lake District as far south as Keswick and the River Eamont in the early 10th century; it remained part of Strathclyde until about 1050, when Siward, Earl of Northumbria, conquered that part of Cumbria.

27/03/2026

I had a ball yesterday telling Irish stories in Leeds for Leeds Irish Health and Homes, great staff, lovely audience and yes, there was cake.

22/03/2026

ᛇ

Eoh (“eeoch” as in Scots ‘loch’). Sound value uncertain, yew tree.

Know time’s not straight but in great circles curved;
Try fell a yew; each year in rings of wood,
But risk a sight that might leave you unnerved;
The red sap oozing from that wound like blood.
Yews can accelerate their growth and even
Lie dormant but awake, and deer won’t browse
This tree that’s venerated by the heathen.
Evergreen Ancient! Shade within your boughs;
A spirit past that will outlive us all,
A solid, ghostly presence with no face.
Red berries speak of future generation,
Alive without, within dead heartwood’s hall;
Cavernous hollow, a central core of space,
A mystic, inner dark without dimension.