I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father's house". So begins one of the greatest tales in literature, an account of David Balfour's trials and tribulations as he falls foul of his miserly uncle who has him abducted on board ship in order to steal his inheritance. After rescuing Alan Breck on the high seas they are shipwrecked, witness a murder and are...

Ceredigion is a land shaped by mythology, where mermaids and magic mix with humans and where ordinary people achieve extraordinary things. This is a captivating collection of traditional and modern stories, including the submerged city of Cantre'r Gwaelod, or the 'Welsh Atlantis', how the Devil came to build a bridge over the Rheidol, the elephant that died in Tregaron, and how the Holy Grail came to Nanteos. All the while the tylwyth teg (the Welsh fairies) and changeling...

A lone man wanders from swamp to swamp searching for himself, a wolf-girl visits Wales and eats the sheep, a Welsh criminal marries an 'Indian Princess', Lakota men re-enact the Wounded Knee Massacre in Cardiff and, all the while, mountain women practise Appalachian hoodoo, native healing and Welsh witchcraft. These stories are a mixture of true tales, tall tales and folk tales, that tell of the lives of migrants who left Wales and settled in America, of the native and ens...

This book, a selection of folk tales, true tales, tall tales, myths, gossip, legends and memories, celebrates and honours unique Welsh stories. Some are well known, others from forgotten manuscripts or out-of-print volumes, and some are contemporary oral tales. They reflect the diverse tradition of storytelling, and the many meanings of 'chwedlau'. If someone says, 'Chwedl Cymraeg?' they are asking, 'Do you speak Welsh?' and 'Do you tell a tale in Welsh?' Here is the root ...

Just ask those mountains over there.They have heard these stories before.They have witnessed the floods.Through the travels of a Mesolithic Marsh Girl, Peter Stevenson tells the folk tales of the sea along the Welsh Coast Path. From bridge-dwelling bwbach and drunken mermaids, to swan girls, salmon children and the pirate Leekie Porridge of Tenby – follow Môrwen on a journey that blends pas...

The Grimms called them The Quiet Folk, in Māori they are Patupaiarehe, in Wales Y Tylwyth Teg: hidden people who live unseen, speak their own languages and move around like migrants, shrouded from our eyes – like those who lived in the utopian world of Plant Rhys Ddwfn off the west Welsh coast, where this book begins.In mythology, lost lands are coral castles beneath the sea, ancient forests where spiri...

These old Cardiff stories were told before they were written down. Told, remembered and passed on. And there have been people living in Cardiff for over 6,000 years, so who knows how old some of these stories might be? From the Celtic Silurian tribe who fought the Romans, to the working people who dug, carried and shipped the coal that made Cardiff great, to all the people who came from around the world to make Cardiff their home, these old stories are rooted in the land a...

Crossway church has served the community of the Elephant and Castle for over a century and from three different buildings. Today it is home to ten congregations, three day centres, and numerous community groups.This book traces some of the church's history against the wider context of urban ministry and the changing sociopolitical milieu of the region. It includes accounts from some of those who attended Crossway in the past, as well as other fascinating stories such as connections...

'there were only seven out of the twenty-six on whom we knew we could rely; and out of those seven one was a boy ...' When a mysterious seafarer puts up at the Admiral Benbow, young Jim Hawkins is haunted by his frightening tales; the sailor's sudden death is the beginning of one of the most exciting adventure stories in literature. The discovery of a treasure map sets Jim and his companions in search of buried gold, and they are soon on board the Hispaniola with...

Old Mortality (1816), which many consider the finest of Scott's Waverley novels, is a swift-moving historical romance that places an anachronistically liberal hero against the forces of fanaticism in seventeenth-century Scotland, in the period infamous as the `killing time'. Its central character, Henry Morton, joins the rebels in order to fight Scotland's royalist oppressors, little as he shares the Covenanters' extreme religious beliefs. He is torn between his love for ...

By Peter Souter. Hugh and Bella, are running to the same timetable, the timetable you're on if someone you love has just died, and they keep running into each other. They visit the same undertakers at the same time; Hugh's Mum is cremated immediately after Bella's husband; and they even end up in the same bereavement-counselling group. But Hugh and Bella are dealing with very different types of grief. Hugh's heart is like a toy that has never been taken out of the box, Bella's is like a be...

To explain and understand the patterns that attachment play in psychiatric and social problems a body of knowledge has sprung up which owes much to the pioneering work of the late John Bowlby. This book draws together recent theoretical contributions, research findings and clinical data from psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists and ethologists from Britain, America and Europe.