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William Mackenzie (1851–1935) retired from teaching – but not from working with wood and angling – in 1915 and began writing his reminiscences of life on Skye, the notable families and clerics of the island, and its landscapes, legends, history and traditions. Originally appearing as articles in the Oban Times and as a book, Skye: Iochdar-Trotternish and District, Old Skye Tales, with additional articles, was first published in 1934.

This well-illustrated volume introduces 55 herbs and explores their hidden meanings and their places in lore, language and literature. From the healing properties of Feverfew and Chamomile to the ritualistic uses of Tarragon and Bay Laurel, each entry explores etymology and historical uses, and features a line from literature celebrating the herb in question.

For centuries a curious tomb in a church on the Hertfordshire–Essex border inspired stories about the dragon-slayer Piers Shonks, whose giant bones it was believed to contain. Hadley has embarked on a journey through English history and landscape to discover the real person behind the folk hero, producing this meditation on the importance of belief and memory in the battle between storytellers and those who try to silence them.

The Fergus romance, written in Old French but set in Scotland, tells the story of an Arthurian knight who may be based on a 12th-century lord of Galloway. This prose translation is accompanied by notes that elucidate literary and topographical references as well as revealing how the skilful poet wittily subverts the themes and conventions of the genre’s seminal works.

This guide to superstitious lore is in two parts: the first examines the lighter side, detailing the historical and mythological roots of beliefs including hanging horseshoes over the door, telling stories to the bees and touching wood; the second looks into the darker side, with stories of hagstones, broken mirrors, black cats and the Evil Eye.

In legend, Theophilus loses his position of authority and signs a contract with the Devil to regain it. Repenting, he asks the Virgin to intervene with Christ for forgiveness. He gets his pardon and when the Virgin retrieves the contract for him, Theophilus tells his story to his bishop and congregation. This study explores issues raised by the legend, among them feudal bonds and the Virgin’s powers of intervention, and their representation in text and visual art. No jacket.

From Scandinavia to the Pacific Islands, ancient cultures around the world have developed rich mythologies to answer humans’ most fundamental questions. This abridgement of Coleman’s sizeable reference work focuses on recurring themes, such as the significance of twins, dogs and rainbows in different belief systems. It also covers the mass of stories clustered around specific legendary figures, especially King Arthur, and events including Creation and the Trojan War.

Jason’s quest for the golden fleece, Echo’s doomed love for Narcissus and the visits to Hades by Ulysses and Aeneas are among the 49 Greco-Roman myths retold here by expert storytellers of the 19th and early 20th century. Inspired by the versions of ancient authors, they recreate an age when mortal heroes mixed with vengeful gods and faced such dangerous creatures as the Sirens and the Minotaur.

The death of Lord Kitchener when the battleship carrying him on a secret mission to Russia struck a German mine stunned a nation at war, and gave rise to various conspiracy theories. Suspicion fell on the IRA, the Boers, and even the British government, who disliked him intensely. Drawing on recently declassified documents, this history separates truth from fiction to reveal what really happened that day in June 1916.

Robert Bly retells six classic fairy tales, including The Six Swans and The Frog Prince. Drawing on the work of a range of thinkers, including Kierkegaard, Freud and Jung, he offers analysis from a male perspective of how each story captures the essence of human nature.

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Tales of the wonders of Braesil, off the west coast of Ireland, by sixth-century monks; the fabled continent of Atlantis, mapped by Athanasius Kircher in 1644; or Crocker Land, the ‘last great geographical enigma of the North’, supposedly sighted by Donald Baxter Macmillan in 1914 … For centuries seafarers have believed in islands that never existed. Dirk Liesemer tells the story of 30 such ‘phantoms’, along with maps based on those of cartographers from Angelino Dulcert (fl.1325) to Google Earth.

Judgement Days that never happened, too many pieces of the True Cross, spirit mediums, the forged evidence against Dreyfus, a fake Modigliani nude, and pseudocides ... Exploring the ‘vast swamp of morally dubious incidents’, this history reflects on how the unsuspecting are duped, as well as the dishonesty and ingenuity of the deceivers. All the most notorious forgers and confidence tricksters are here, along with some well-intentioned trickery such as Britain’s Operation Mincemeat during the Second World War.

Folklore and mythology are full of fantastical creatures that never existed but still exert a powerful hold on our imaginations. This A–Z catalogue of fabulous zoology surveys humanity’s attempts to understand the natural and supernatural worlds through fictitious giant beasts, shape changers and composite monsters, including mermaids, manticores and those (such as the unicorn) that were engendered by misdescriptions of real animals. Off-mint.

Paul Simpson separates truth from urban myth in these stories of famous jail breaks, from the real events that inspired Catch Me If You Can and Papillon and notable escapees from Death Row to the first helicopter escape from prison.

King Arthur, long regarded as the leader of oppressed Britons against invading Saxon hordes, emerges from this fresh analysis as a boastful Irish raider who used his battles to carve out a kingdom in western Britain. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Carleton combines evidence from archaeology, literature and the study of place names to reconstruct the career of the 6th-century ruler, who he suggests was a pagan warlord, and to propose a new location for the renowned Battle of Badon.

Introducing this edition of Homer’s two epic poems, Michael Dirda writes that ‘few other works ... have so deeply entered our cultural bloodstream’. Here, in their entirety, are Samuel Butler’s prose translations of the exploits of Achilles, Agamemnon and Odysseus and their mortal and immortal adversaries.

In 1954 Professor John Heslop Harrison published his discovery of several plants on the island of Rum that were found nowhere else in Britain – they had, he claimed, survived the Ice Age. John Raven, a gifted amateur botanist, went to investigate and revealed Harrison’s claim as untrue, but academic botanists closed ranks and Raven’s report was never published. Karl Sabbagh tells the story of the two men and this strange episode of botanical fraud.

Graham Hoyland, who once found and filmed yeti footprints in Bhutan, investigates our enduring fascination with the ancient legend of this large primate unknown to science. He considers possible explanations for yeti sightings but also delves deeper into the strange world of ‘cryptids’ to ask why we want to believe in the existence of mythical beasts – and what our ‘post-truth’ world can learn from those reports that have been revealed as hoaxes.

Adam Ardrey follows up the detective work in his Finding Merlin with this account of his wider investigations into the legend of King Arthur. He reaches the startling conclusion that the historical Arthur came from Scotland, and also presents evidence to suggest that some of the story’s most familiar features – the Round Table, the Sword in the Stone and the Lady of the Lake – have their origins in the landscapes of the Scottish Highlands.

The myth of Camelot has been one of the most influential in the western tradition, with Arthur acting as a symbol of Christian rulership, national monarchy and romantic nostalgia. This illustrated survey of its long cultural history begins with the background of post-Roman Britain and follows the development of stories about Arthur and his knights, from medieval art and literature to Wagnerian opera and comic books.

The world of Native American mythology is inhabited by such fantastical and capricious characters as the shape-shifting trickster Coyote and the mischievous Blue Jay. The seminal study of these sacred tales was written by the Scottish folklorist Lewis Spence in 1914; this updated edition has a new introductory essay, commentary on Native American culture and stories from tribes not covered by Spence, such as the Inuit.

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After a brief history of the ‘Viking Age’, which saw the movement of peoples from Scandinavia to the British Isles, Eleanor Parker turns to medieval chronicles and legends about the Vikings or ‘Danes’. Although the medieval narratives often portray the Scandinavians as raiders whose purpose was plunder and destruction, Parker’s close study of the stories reveals other motives – including participation in English politics and the need to settle – and she traces the positive Viking contribution to culture and identity in England.

Francis Young, himself at the forefront of the search to locate the lost coffin of King Edmund, tells the story of the historical search for the real man behind the legendary East Anglian king killed by the Vikings in 869. The book traces Edmund’s progress from martyred king to England’s national saint in medieval times; and describes current research into Edmund’s burial in the abbey at Bury St Edmunds and the present whereabouts of his mortal remains.

Ancient Greek myth tells of ferocious female warriors called Amazons who lived near the Black Sea and slaughtered their male children. Could the story reflect a real matriarchal society, or perhaps a women-only religious cult? This book follows the author’s quest for the evidence, not only in ancient texts and artistic depictions but also in archaeological discoveries such as the graves of Iron-Age women buried with arrows, swords and armour.

Lost treasure, stolen pigs, Robin Hood, Bobby Shafto’s silver buckles... Excavated from old books of ballads and local archives, or preserved in folklore, the stories of each county are retold by local historians and storytellers in these Tales of Old.

Each of these invaluable introductory guides to today's critical terminology offers an original overview by a leading literary or cultural critic.

Intended as first introductions for students new to a subject, each of these guidebooks gives an overview of the fundamental principles of a subject area in an accessible format and jargon-free language.

From Bram Stoker’s Dracula to The Lost Boys, True Blood and Twilight, Erik Butler explores the popularity of vampires in folklore, literature, film, TV and how they continue to hold fascination worldwide.

From the birth of the gods to the aftermath of the Trojan War and Plato's myth of Atlantis, Kershaw tells the stories of Greek mythology and discusses the wide-ranging influence of these tales on western culture. The book's final section surveys the ways in which people have tried to understand and rationalize myths, from antiquity to the present.