Old Songs: Stories of Love and Death from Traditional Ballads - Hardcover

Old Songs

Fuses short stories, histories, lyrics, and illustrations
This enthralling reimagining of traditional folk ballads brings together Sunday Times Bestselling historian Amy Jeffs and Illustrator Gwen Burns. Together, they create a rich compendium that sings of travel, mystery, magic, and the essential urges of humanity.

A tapestry of Britain's landscape, history, and culture

Featuring iterations of fairy tales, sinister descendants of Greek myths and Bible stories, and a cast of lesser-known characters such as Tam Lim, Child Wynd, and Maisery, Old Songs weaves a vivid tapestry.

• At the base of hills we can visit today, elf queens kidnap hapless poets and carry them through rivers of blood.
• At the foot of a tree whose offspring still stand in Northumberland's forests, a girl mimes combing the hairless head of a dragon who was once her brother.

Spellbinding tales

In captivating stories:

• Brown-skinned girls dance on their lovers' graves.
• Golden-masted ships are captained by the Devil.
• Fiddles cry "Murder!"
• Men are kidnapped by fairies.
• Boys are married at fourteen.

These narratives reveal motifs as ancient as humanity itself.

Fantastical yet rooted in the everyday

The histories interwoven with these stories bring light to the real experiences of people for whom these story-songs were both familiar and extraordinary. Ballads enchanted familiar landscapes, created anew by each singer, and passed down through firesides, childhood nurses, manuscripts, and early printed pamphlets.

Now, ten stories are beautifully recreated for modern readers.

Praise for Amy Jeffs

• "This gorgeous book should live on the bookshelves in every house that cares about the idea of Britain, what it was and where it came from" – The Times
• "A beautiful retelling of British myths and exquisitely illustrated too" – Daily Express
• "I have fallen so completely in love with this book... just one of the finest, most covetable things around" – Katherine Rundell
• "A thing of beauty" – The Herald