Elizabeth Hopkinson's Hidden Grove

Two mermaid dolls 27th January is the feast day of St Muirgen, also known as Li Ban or Liban. She appears in a number of old Irish annals, such as the Martyrology of Donegal and the Annals of the Four Masters. There's nothing unsual about that: the history of Ireland is crammed to bursting with saints and martyrs. But what's unusual about Miurgen is that she is a mermaid. According to the stories, she was three hundred years under the sea, until the time of the saints. At that time, a man called Beoan was on a mission to Rome, at sea in his curragh (ship) when the ship caught a mermaid (liban) in its nets. She told him she was the the daughter of Eochaidh from Lough Neagh, who was changed to a mermaid when her family was drowned. They brought her to land, where she was baptised by St Comhgall under the name Muirgen (traverser of the sea). The calendar of St Oengus says of her: My God loved Muirgen, A miraculous triumphant being. I love it that there is a mermaid saint! That som...

  This Saturday I became a full member of the Community of Aidan & Hilda , a dispersed New Monastic community inspired by Celtic Christian spirituality of the 1st millennium AD. Its members come from many different countries and branches of the church, but all follow a common Way of Life and daily prayer pattern, as well as meeting and supporting each other in various ways. (Mostly via Zoom since I’ve joined, for obvious reasons!) The vow-taking ceremony is called First Voyage of the Coracle, and the newly-vowed member is known as a Voyager. Any die-hard Narnia fans like me will remember a coracle as being the small, round boat Reepicheep the mouse finds in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader , and which eventually takes him to Aslan’s country. As a North Irishman and a medievalist, CS Lewis was influenced in writing Dawn Treader by the ancient Celtic tradition of the imrama journey, a symbolic, spiritual voyage that changes the voyager. One such example from medieval times is the V...

  “The holly bears a berry as red as any blood…” There are many berries we associate with Christmas time. I still need to get around to making this year’s frozen haws (hawthorn berries) into some kind of jam or syrup. (Blame the post-vaccine fatigue!)  I’d like to share with you three traditional Christmas tales about berries and cherries. The Miracle of Marjatta I retell this episode from the Finnish national epic The Kalevala in my book Asexual Myths & Tales. It’s a version of the Nativity story, told through the lens of Finland’s pagan past.  The maiden Marjatta (Mary) becomes miraculously pregnant by eating a cowberry that cries out to her, “Pick me!” When the pregnancy starts to show, one believes her tale, and she is forced to search around for a sauna in which to give birth. She asks Herod (here, the village headman) for use of his sauna, but he refuses. So she goes into a stable, where the cattle create a sauna with their warm breath. Her son becomes the one w...

  Beauty and the Beast is my favourite fairy tale. I will read just about any version of it. So I thought I would share with you some of my Beauty and the Beast collection, arranged into categories for your convenience. Classic tellings 1. Madame Le Prince de Beaumont This is the classic version on which most modern retellings are based. (I have it as an e-book). Although here, Beauty is one of six children (three brothers and three sisters) and no particular reason is given as to why the Beast was enchanted. The rest is much as we’ve come to expect: the impoverished merchant, the request for a rose, the sumptuous palace, the magic ring etc. 2. Madame de Villeneuve This is actually the older version. It is much longer and more detailed, with a lot of backstory about the enchanted Prince and the world of the Fairies. Interestingly, in this version, Beauty has a recurring dream about a young man “beautiful as Cupid” (a reference to the tale’s origins in the myth of Cupid & Psyche...

  It’s Ace Week! A week set apart to raise awareness of identities on the asexual/aromantic spectrum and to campaign on issues that matter to us. For example, why young people should learn about ace-spec identities in school. This year, I was asked by Stonewall to make a 59 second video on that topic, which should appear on their TikTok during this week. But I’ve also been reading. To help with my own writing, I asked around for recommendations of YA fiction with ace representation. Then I bought two of them and had a read. The books in question are: Loveless by Alice Oseman (author of Heartstopper ) and The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee. These are two very different books. Loveless is a contemporary story about a girl called Georgia who goes to university hoping to find the big romance that has so far eluded her, but ends up finding herself. The Lady’s Guide  is a historical adventure set in an unspecified part of the 18th century, about a girl called ...

We might not have seen much of them during the pandemic, but bookshops are still here for us. Personally, I've still been ordering through bookshop sites, even while I've been at home. And now that I'm tentatively stepping back outside, the one thing I look forward to most is time spent browsing in bookshops. But this week, I'd like to give a specially big shout out to the three bookshops who are now stocking copies of Asexual Fairy Tales and Asexual Myths and Tales . That's: Bookish Type in Leeds  [here] Gay Pride Shop in Manchester  [here] Lighthouse in Edinburgh  [here] THANK YOU!! And a big contratulations to my local bookshop, Waterstones Bradford Wool Exchange, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this month. Not only is it in one of the most beautiful historic buildings, but is a great supporter of Bradford Literature Festival. This week, I had my first proper visit since lockdown. Not only did I buy a couple of young adult titles with asexual representat...

  Today, I visited two famous caves in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire: St Robert’s Cave and the much more famous Mother Shipton’s Cave. Both are located by the banks of the River Nidd in the remains of Royal Forest of Knaresborough. Both once housed figures who were considered capable of working (or speaking) wonders. Both spoke truth to power in their day. So why is Ursula Shipton (neé Sontheil) remembered as a witch, while Robert Flower is remembered as a saint? I had been wanting to revisit both caves for some time. And to me, both felt like sacred sites. The cave where Ursula Shipton was allegedly born during a storm, is next to the mystical petrifying or dropping well. Water from a stream pools on top of a cave, then drops into a pool beneath, gradually turning anything in its path to stone. It’s an enchanting spot!  And round the side of that is the entrance to the “wishing well”, a cleft in the rock where the magical water pools, and into which you can dip your hand. Th...