Stuart France writes at:https://franceandvincent.com/
Category Archives: Folk Tale
Raven-Post…
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Fear Death-in-Life
Get death in life…
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Embrace Death-in-Life
Get life in death…
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So the story goes…
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From a lake such as this…
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A supernatural hand yielded forth, a sword!
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Can’t really see it, myself…
Field-Mouse…
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Field-Mouse was out gathering wild-beans for winter when Buffalo came down to the meadow to graze.
‘He will mow down the long-grass with his prickly tongue and there will be no where left to hide,’ thought Field-Mouse, ‘I will offer him battle, like a man would do.’
“Ho, Buffalo!” squeaked Field-Mouse, “I challenge you to a fight.”
Buffalo went on grazing.
Field-Mouse repeated his challenge but still Buffalo went on grazing.
With his third challenge, Field-Mouse laughed contemptuously at Buffalo’s inaction.
“You had better keep still, little one,” said Buffalo, still grazing, “or I will come over there and step on you.”
“You can’t do it!” squeaked Field-Mouse in defiance.
“If you don’t be quiet I will certainly put an end to you,” said Buffalo, quietly.
“I dare you!” said Field-Mouse.
Before Field-Mouse had quite finished, Buffalo charged at him…
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The Old Woman’s Hole…
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PC 963 Kraas turned and walked head-long into the sea breeze.
Her hair flicked in the wind like rampant flames.
“You know, I can’t help feeling we’ve missed a trick with this one.”
“It’s mentioned in the book,” replied Jaw-Dark pensively, “and in any case, it’s a pleasant enough spot.” He paused and bent down to look through a large eye-shaped ‘blow-hole’ in the promontory.
“What’s that?” said Kraas.
“Well, that depends…” said Jaw-Dark.
“That depends upon what?”
“…Upon your perspective,” finished Jaw-Dark.
“Nothing is ever straightforward with you is it?”
“The Irish name for this and other similar landscape features is Poll na Seantuinne.”
“Which means?”
“‘Hole of the Old Wave’.”
Just then the sea crashed beneath the promontory and the foaming waves, in the mouth of the sea cavern, a hundred feet below could be clearly seen through the ‘chasm-hole’.
“Seems an apt description,” said Kraas, “if a tad unnerving.” Her gaze followed the slow drag of the tide and then lifted to the sky where wisps of grey cloud scudded on the wind, “in the beginning,” she said, “everything was chasm and chaos.”
“There is though another interpretation.”
“Which is?”
“Poll na Sean Tiene means ‘Hole of the Old Fire’.”
“Okay, I can see where that might fit in with some of their concerns. Especially with all this baleful eye stuff.”
“Personally though I prefer the third alternative…”
“Ever the storyteller,” smiled Kraas, “Well, I’m waiting!”
“Poll na Seantuine, is the ‘Hole of the Old Woman.”
Kraas’ smile turned to a grimace, “Well, I wouldn’t go shouting that particular preference from the cliff tops if I were you,” she said through the grimace, and then added more seriously, “so which one is it?”
“Unfortunately for us and also quite possibly for them too, it is more than likely that it is all three of them.”
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Lands of Exile:
KITH ‘N’ KIN
Stuart France & Sue Vincent
The Beeley Stone, ‘liberated’ from the churchyard at Bakewell, stands proudly in the centre of its village green once more. While the locals enjoy the fruits of its restoration, Ben, who had led the daring raid against authority, still languishes in jail.
Don and Wen, arrested and released without explanation in Ireland, now plot an erratic course through the wild places of Wales, while Jaw-Dark and Kraas, seeking the legendary stone of Fergus Mac Roy, have been separated in the most uncanny of circumstances…
As the darkness closes around them, the Black Shade haunts the moors above Beeley and, in the shadowy rooms of the old tower, an ancient and even stranger story begins to unfold…
Mister Fox and the Demon Dogs…
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Something untoward is about to happen
on the edge of Langsett Forest…
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The Langsett Foxes have their Fire Festival
usurped by a Pack of Hellish looking Hounds…
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And you think Charles James Fox will be okay with that? …
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Bone-white winter gleams in the moonlight. Silent shadows hunt in the night…. The Hunter’s Moon sails above dark hills, caught in the empty fingers of the treetops. A mysterious company gathers to kindle the flames of the dance; arcane patterns of fire woven in the blackness to the beat of the drums. Silent as ghosts in the darkness, others follow their trail, lurking in the night to watch… and wait… seeking their chance to usurp the forest throne… Old Fox wanes with the fading year, his fur touched by the silver of frost. Can he hold his realm against the ghostly challenge of the Demon Dogs? Yet all is not lost. They have seen it in the smoke… three magicians use their arts to breathe life into the spirit of Fox…
A Graphic Novel from France and Vincent
featuring the elusive Mister Fox.
Available on Amazon UK, Amazon US and worldwide.
For more details of Mister Fox, visit his earth…
The Celebration of Mister Fox: more and less…
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…More, because our Foxes are one-third Man
And also less, because our Foxes are one-third Man.
Huh?
Man’s individuality makes them more yet,
By its very nature,
That individuality has to be less than whole.
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Unlike Animals all the species of Man,
And there are many, can be traced back to one common ancestor,
And they have named her Lucy, which means ‘light’…
‘We did too, see Foxes,’ objects my Companion, ‘proper ones!’
Well, quite…
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The Celebration of Mister Fox: bestial cluster…
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Bear and Wolf,
And Dog and Fox are all closely related.
It is tempting to imagine a common ancestor;
Bigger than Wolf but smaller than Bear.
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But the official line has something
Much less rapacious originally slink down from the trees.
To replace what?
The Dinosaurs whose more agile brethren had taken to the air.
I wonder what Linnaeus would make of the Mister Fox procession,
As it snakes its way through the alleys and walkways
Of the Saturday night revelers, encouraging all to join its wake.
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“We saw Foxes!” says my companion.
Well, yes and no…
We saw something less
And something more than Foxes…
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The Celebration of Mister Fox…
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I never knew Holmfirth in the days of mill workers and clogs.
I really got to know her in the Post Industrial gloom,
Of swish Cafe Bars,
And cosy restaurants,
All day drinking parties frequented by the nouveau riche…
Who leap from still moving taxis,
Done up to the nines, dressed to kill,
While up on the hill,
Something feral is stirring…
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Something ancient and unsought…
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So, as the lazy cars slow crawl,
Through tight-cobbled streets,
Held up by roaming party-goers,
Soft parading their unsteady path from the park…
And boozers sing boldly in the late afternoon heat
With rabid mouths, foaming,
Never quite finding the beat…
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A beast is preparing,
to be unleashed,
In the dark…
The Marsh King’s Daughter III…
Hi-ho the Carrion Crow, bow and bend to me…
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…There usually is.
Perhaps one reason for the tale’s obscurity these days is its perceived, overtly, Christian message.
This takes the form of a priest who is captured and tortured by Helga’s Viking fosterers, provokes in her the first stirrings of love and compassion and affords the young girl opportunity to embrace the process which results in the fusing of her day/night time personalities and her achievement of wholeness in mind and form.
However, the culmination of this process is complicated somewhat by the priest’s death at the hands of robbers and his subsequent appearance in a dream vision and by the denouement of the tale which sees the Changeling Child whisked away to heaven by the priest only to return a short time later and find her original home now long lost to the ravishes of time.
The Rip Van Winkle like nature of the priest’s ‘heaven’ may give inkling to the original story source for this episode, as might his appearance on horse-back wielding his cross much like a knight would wield his sword.
As an other-world component of the story the Christian priest is perhaps less dramatically successful than he might be as a ‘Fairy King’ or ‘Lord of Light’ but still gives us pause for thought and contemplation as to the precise mode of consciousness his figure represents.
That’s almost all, folks…
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‘What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
long live the weeds and the wildness yet.’
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All photographs – Sue Vincent.
All epithets – The Grateful Dead, ‘Mountains of the Moon’.
Epitaph -‘Inversnaid’, Gerard Manly Hopkins.
Stuart France 
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