All articles filed in Ars Magica

This is one of my favourite stories in this collection, because it’s obvious a magus with a Hermetic twist is loose in the background, mucking people about. let’s hear Burton’s take on the plot, in his weird mock-Jacobean English: Penta scorneth to wed her brother, and cutting off her hands, sendeth them to him as…

Let’s return to the Burton version of the Pentamerone. His summary of “The Young Slave” is “Lisa is born from a rose-leaf, and dieth through a fairy’s curse; her mother layeth her in a chamber and biddeth her brother not to open the door. But his wife being very jealous, wishing to see what is…

CHAPTER XXXIII: The Shining Line Alveric wandered on, alone of that small company of three without a hope to guide him. For Niv and Zend, who were lately led by the hope of their fantastic quest, no longer yearned for Elfland but were guided now by their plan to hold Alveric back from it. They…

We’ve completed the Pentamerone stories which were published for children in the Victorian period. Seventeen of the stories, however, were taken out as unsuitable. I won’t be recording them, but I’ll be using the Burton translation to summarize their plots and the hooks we can hang on them. Burton’s summary for the what’s now called…

A change of pace on the Venice material – I think that trying to draw all the folklore together, like I did with Cornwall, may be a fool’s errand. I keep heading off into the weeds. My plan is to keep adding the folklore I find, but to try and give the whole thing a…

This week I’m taking time to get the backlog of monsters sorted. As a sort of filler, here’s a poem about a troubadour trying to rescue a maid, by W.S. Gilbert, of musical hall fame. *** A Troubadour he playedWithout a castle wall,Within, a hapless maidResponded to his call.“Oh, willow, woe is me!Alack and well-a-day!If…

This section is where Dunsany starts paying off his earlier bits of folklore, so there’s not much new to discuss, but I do want to flag that Zironderel has the same attitude to magic that House Jerbiton does. Magic causes beauty, even natural beauty. Thanks again to Librivox and Michele Fry for the recording. CHAPTER…

The story which follows seems folkloric, but the MonsterTalk podcast has done some digging and found the places mentioned don’t seem to accord with real geography. The original writer was a bit of a racontuer, known for great dinner stories, so this may have been his own work. For example the reaction of the young…