Neil Philip
@neilphilipmyth
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Author, poet, mythographer and folklorist. Lover of cats, words, and laughter. Children's books and literature too.
Joined February 2018
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"Myth is the facts of the mind made manifest in a fiction of matter." Maya Deren's definition of myth in her book Divine Horsemen (aka The Voodoo Gods) is the best I have ever come across.
#TheHiddenMatrix
@unbounders
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These are the flowers that were on my wife Emma's coffin yesterday. Exactly what I asked for - wild and free and joyous. How Vicky the florist managed to find such beautiful blooms in the middle of December is a mystery.
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Well, this is a sad one. My soulmate of nearly 49 years, the wonderfully creative, kind and thoughtful Emma Bradford died last night. She had been very ill. She was at home and I was holding her hand. Here we are at Rousham, halfway between this and the otherworld.
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When the children’s author Roger Lancelyn Green inherited Poulton Hall in the Wirral, he discovered a locked room which contained an untouched library of early C18th/late C17th books. This may be the perfect dream inheritance. The house was then used to film The Owl Service.
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#FolkloreThursday
I wonder if governments might add a folklorist to their press conferences, so when say Nicki Minaj tweets a rumour legend/urban legend, instead of the scientists wasting their breath, the folklorist could explain why such folktales arise and how they spread.
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What a stunning photo. When we lived in an old mill, we saw kingfishers most days, but I gave up pointing them out to people because they could never see them. I have held a living kingfisher in my hand.
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I'm sorry I haven't been posting new content. Since Emma died in November, I have been struggling. Just not up to it. Now selling house, buying house, complete nightmare! I will come back to myself. But it will take time. The amount of stuff I have to get rid of... Bear with me.
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@neilhimself
I once had to do a reader’s report on a children’s book about an animated lightbulb called Flasher Goes for a Walk.
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@iconawrites
Ha! Did I tell you I knew PL Travers quite well towards the end of her life? I think she would have found this funny.
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For those following my inadvertently shared life travails, I have had an offer accepted on a really lovely flat in North Oxford - opposite the house where TE Lawrence lived. My cat Kiki is already trying the name Kiki of Arabia on for size.
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Well friends, after my stroke in March I am out and about again - this was at the Tate Modern’s wonderful (small) Joan Mitchell show on Wednesday. First non-medical trip out of the house. Mitchell was a great Abstract Expressionist painter, for those who don’t know her work.
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The eagle has landed! I'm so pleased with the heft, look, and feel of it. Thank you
@WatkinsWisdom
and
@megalithophile
. Thank you
@neilhimself
. I'm so excited I might burst. The book comes out on 11 October.
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You may all get fed up with me plugging the new edition of a 30-yr-old book, but I am so thrilled with The Watkins Book of English Folktales, to be published in October. I put my heart and soul into that book. Brilliant new foreword by
@neilhimself
. Special thanks to
@SimonGuy64
.
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I'm feeling much more positive, though deeply sad. Three months of wanting to kill myself, but now thinking of a new life - just put a bid in on a ground-floor flat in Oxford, room for me and my cat Kiki, though not for all my books!
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My darling Kiki by my side. She will not leave me alone if she knows I am sad. She really is such a sweet and caring cat. She's about 7, I think - didn't get a date of birth from Cats' Protection, but she feels like a March kitten to me.
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Want evocative street names? York has ‘em a-plenty. Mad Alice’s Lane is another I noticed this morning.
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Anglo-Saxon carving of Virgin and Child, Inglesham Church, Wiltshire.
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@LadyLiminal1
Best as I can! Lots of friends rallying round. 49 years of devotion is something you never get over. Everyone - and you couldn't have seated more than 3 more people - was in tears. Tried to bring laughter too. Emma was a happy person.
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How to design a children's bookshop? The Viennese philosopher Otto Neurath, posed this problem in the late 20s/early 30s, solved it by designing a room that was inaccessible to adults, but children could crawl into through a tunnel. Their book choices were their own.
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I don't often take, or post, a selfie, but this one has my darling Kiki in it. She went out into the garden for the first time today, and had a good look around. Terrified the whole time that something bad might happen, but she sauntered back in without a care in the world.
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People often think that writers must resent libraries. But the reality is that libraries provide them with their livelihoods, by creating readers. Of all highly skilled professionals, librarians are perhaps the least celebrated. And without school librarians, where would we be?
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In 1982 I interviewed Mary Norton, author of the Borrowers books, only to discover my tape recorder had malfunctioned and nothing was recorded. But I've just found the notebook in which I wrote as we spoke. She told me the idea of the Borrowers was rooted in her childhood.
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I am reading Angela Carter's wonderful Virago Book of Fairy Tales, ahead of my zoom lecture today "Unhappy Ever After" (12 noon in San Diego, 7 pm in UK) and enjoying her notes. Graves' The White Goddess is described as "half-crazed but well-annotated".
#FolkloreThursday
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@neilhimself
My father-in-law, who just died aged 99, was the yoghurt king, appearing on Delia Smith’s cookery course. How much culture can a person take? When Peter was testing recipes, one with yoghurt and orange got the answer “It tastes like something you might lick off a wound.”
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Can I just say, I am overwhelmed by all the kind and gracious messages about this post. Have tried to "like" them as they come in, but will have missed some! I'm sorry I can't reply individually to each one of you. But all this love and support has meant the world to me.
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When Alan Garner’s Red Shift was published, William Collins entered it for the Booker Prize. The committee refused to even consider it, because published on a children’s list. Now his weird, compelling, profound Treacle Walker is on this year’s shortlist. Time in his whirligigs.
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How much research goes into a novel? Here’s an insight. And the novel’s so good you won’t notice the research.
Today's "All the Perverse Angels" thread is about language and, in particular, the challenges of writing a novel which includes 1980s first-person narrative, diary entries from the 1880s, and a book and pamphlet from the late 1600s. (Snippets from a letter to my publisher.) 1/7
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Nathaniel Hawthorne was aware of the existence of the library when he visited in 1853. "There is an old black-letter library, but the room containing it is shut, barred, and padlocked... Meanwhile the rats are devouring them, and the damps destroying them".
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My sweetheart, back in the house, and on my chest, after an adventure outside. She has such a lovely nature. After a hiccup in my flat purchase in Oxford, when it seemed as if I wouldn't be allowed a cat, everything now seems OK.
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One of Emma's last artworks, from January this year. I post it to wish everyone a joyous time, whether you celebrate Christmas or not. Cherish your friends and family, and take care of yourselves.
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#FolkloreThursday
In the 1850s Michael Aislabie Denham collected a vast amount of folklore of the north of England, known as The Denham Tracts, including a list of supernatural creatures with which in earlier times "the whole earth was so overrun." This is his list.
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Tomorrow is publication day! Thanks so much to
@WatkinsWisdom
and
@SimonGuy64
, to
@neilhimself
for his foreword, and to endorsers
@PhilipPullman
,
@profcarolyne
@mariamtatar
@cultauthor
@marina_warn
, Gregory Maguire, Jack Zipes, Andrew Teverson, and my saviour Diane Purkiss.
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Feeling a bit grotty, friends. I had to withdraw from my flat purchase, because the 3 other owners were imposing ridiculous conditions on my having a cat in a garden flat. So I am feeling a bit - well, flat. Grotty is a mutation of grotesque, as we learn on p.1 of Red Shift.
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@Will_Sutcliffe8
My wife’s grant application in the 70s had to be signed by the father. “If not father, why not?” Her mother signed it and just wrote, “Because mother.”
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Who remembers these groundbreaking, life-enhancing anthologies, that imported a wide range of exhilarating voices into UK classrooms in the 1960s and 70s. Not sure what's happened to my copy of the first book. There was a Junior Voices too. Hats off to Geoffrey Summerfield.
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Susan Dickinson, the editor who picked Alan Garner’s Weirdstone of Brisingamen off the slush pile and also as publisher’s reader persuaded Bloomsbury to take a chance on Harry Potter has died. Editor of Alison Uttley and Judith Kerr too. Farewell, friend.
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There are people who add to culture, and people who detract from it. Here is someone who can’t help but add. This is how humanity progresses, even if it sometimes seems one step forward two steps back.
We have just reached 360,000 subscribers at 'Kids' Poems and Stories with Michael Rosen' - over 400 videos of poems, stories, interviews, jokes and songs. Very proud we've established this without any reviews or publicity, innit,
@J0e_R0sen
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@Joseph_Fasano_
There's an interview in which Ted Hughes says something like, being a writer in English is like living in an enormous mansion, and every room you go in, Shakespeare is already there. But you never see him on the stairs.
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#FairyTaleTuesday
Many of HC Andersen's fairytales end sadly, rather than "happy ever after". The last line of his last tale is "Everything ends up in the rubbish." Where do these persistent themes of grief, shame, and disillusion come from? THREAD
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Also in today's post, Folk Stories from the Hills of Puerto Rico by Rafael Ocasio, tales published in the Journal of
@afsfolklorists
in the 1920s, now reprinted with lively English translations. "Juan Bobo Dies When the Donkey Farts Three Times" just one of the delights inside.
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For me in the early '60s the Viking novels of Henry Treece were a gateway to a new, exciting and richly textured world. Who else loves these masterworks?
@neilhimself
@profcarolyne
@KathLangrish
@vikingverse
@NorseMythNews
@ClerkofOxford
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I found my Charles Keeping drawing - I knew it must be somewhere! We've been going through an old plan chest and finding all sorts of treasures.
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This is what the great Ronald Hutton just had to say. "The generally admitted and admired glories of English literature rest on a much more neglected popular tradition of story-telling. This collection brings that tradition back to life, in a wonderfully accessible form,
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I’ve never understood why Americans are frightened of the idea of the state providing medical help free to anyone who needs it. It is the bedrock of UK society, and has personally benefited me tremendously. Don’t let the NHS be bought piecemeal by Big Pharma. Good poem, too.
Michael Rosen salutes the NHS with a poem
The NHS is only safe with Labour
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In both Scottish and Irish Gaelic, the fairies are called the sìth (shee), the people of peace, the still folk. But although they can move silently, sometimes "the elves make a rustling noise like that of a gust of wind, or a silk gown, or a sword drawn sharply through the air."
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My darling Kiki, who has been such a comfort to me in my bereavement. When she senses I am sad, she won't leave my side.
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I took a photo of the beautiful moon tonight, without realising that the light from the kitchen would illuminate the sculpture, apple tree, and deck. I'm really rather pleased with the inadvertent result.
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Children’s librarians have done more to make the world a better place than politicians. If I were wearing a hat, I would take it off to them all.
I can attest that this is true. Children's librarians helped shaped the reader that I am today.
(art by Richard Scarry)
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Known for her verve and humour, Joan Aiken nevertheless writes seeringly about child labour and child poverty, underpinned by government reports and novels such as Frances Trollope's Michael Armstrong. This etching for that book is by Auguste Hervieu.
@LizzaAiken
@calmgrove
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I'm utterly engrossed in this new translation of The Book of Taliesin by Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams. It seems to me to be a great feat of poetry and of scholarship. New annotated versions of all 61 poems, such as the mysterious Battle of the Trees and The Spoils of Annwfn.
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@AnneLouiseAvery
So pleased that whatever/whoever upset you so much earlier has not stopped you tweeting your poetic and moving tweets. There are more kind and thoughtful people out here than there are nasty ones.
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Augustus Hare's 6-volume autobiography The Story of My Life is peppered with the tales which made him such a popular guest in Victorian homes. This one he heard from Mrs Hall Dare in 1894. It tells of a young girl who consulted a witch about her future husband.
#FairyTaleTuesday
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A selection of Elidors. The one on the far right is a bit special, because it contains my transcript of the extensive annotations made by the author in a book proof he gave to the critic Naomi Lewis, as well as a record of all the changes from typescript to printed book.
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I rather think this is going to be the 2022 equivalent of the 1943 Box of Delights, which profoundly influenced a whole generation of writers, including Alan Garner and Susan Cooper. Let’s hope the whole nation tunes in.
...The Dark Is Rising begins on Midwinter Eve, 20 December, and then unfolds over the following days, at roughly a chapter a day.
The first episode of our adaptation will be broadcast on 20 December, and go out for 12 days, so you'll listen in the 'real time' of the novel...
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Rather thrilled by this - The Owl Service, The Whispering Mountain, The Book of Three, The Snow Spider, The Grey King. The Blindfold Track, The Sword and the Circle, The Candle Man, The Children of Lily and - drum roll - The Tale of Sir Gawain.
Had some complaints* that there were no stories from last century in our
#StDavidsDay
selection, so here's 10 classics from our collection...
*𝘏𝘢𝘥 𝘯𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘴, 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴!
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Emma and me with the Headington Shark. 1990, I think. When you have known a perfect love, nothing else will ever suffice. We were so lucky, despite all the health problems of the last 13 years. Still lucky with all our friends, who are taking such good care of me in my grief.
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@MichaelRosenYes
You do not know how false a false friend can be until you have walked into a shop in France, hoping to preserve a wood floor, and asked for a preservatif.
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Some men once tried to frighten the naturalist Cuvier. One of them got horns, hoofs, and a tail, and appeared by Cuvier's bedside. "I am the devil," he said, "and I am come to eat you." Cuvier looked at him. "Carnivorous! horns - hoofs - impossible! Goodnight."
#FolkloreThursday
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This is much the best book I have read on the English folk song tradition, best read in conjunction with Roud & Bishop's New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs. Be warned it's 764 pp long, but Steve Roud's knowledge is so wide and deep it's very rewarding.
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Telling stories, listening to stories, writing and reading stories - this is the ground of our humanity. Those who wish to ban stories or silence storytellers have forgotten what it means to be human.
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That’s a wonderful book, and a great quote. I met Blishen a few times, a lovely but quite shy man (the opposite of his co-writer the exuberant Leon Garfield). Edward told me that what he wanted as a writer was “more respect from the boss”.
'It is considered perfectly all right for a 45 yr old company director to read, say, Ian Fleming, whereas he would be thought odd if he read, say, Alan Garner -a much better writer.'
Joan Aiken in her essay 'A Free Gift' argues the case for children's 'literature'
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#FolkloreThursday
A village held a festival of lying, with a hone or whetstone as the prize for the biggest lie. The Bishop of Carlisle, passing by, asked what was happening. Shocked, he said, "I never told a lie in my life." The judges immediately awarded him the hone.
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Thinking of my friend Pauline Baynes tonight. She so wanted to publish an anthology of grief and loss. I thought there was no market for it. But now...? She was right and I was wrong.
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The poet Charles Causley gave me these two books of translucent poems written by his Primary School pupils. Every child is a poet-in-the-making, and an empathetic teacher such as Jill Pirrie, or
@KateClanchy1
can free that poetry.
@PNovelistGale
@causleytrust
@MichaelRosenYes
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That people don't appreciate the richness of Traveller and Romany culture amazes me. Think of all the wonderful stories and songs, and so much else.
People speak about preserving history and ancient cultures and at the same time call for the assimilation and eradication of Traveller traditions and culture.
Our history, culture, beliefs, and traditions make us who we are as a people, passed on for innumerable generations.
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My wife’s grandfather Ralph was a teacher. Retired, he taught a philosophy course at an adult education college. Exam was 1 question: What have you learned from this course? Student wrote, Not a dam thing. Got 99/100, 1 point deducted for the missing n on damn.
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Look what I found yesterday in the lovely
@BorzoiBookshop
in Stow on the Wold (where the wind blows cold). The very model of a fine Indie bookshop. We're lucky to have two fine Indie shops locally, Borzoi and
@Jaffeandneale
in Chipping Norton. Spoilt for choice
@wmarybeard
.
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Last photo of my darling cat Ariel. We said goodbye to her today, after 20 & a half years of loving companionship.
Love is the subject and love’s loss the text.
Grief breaks the heart and yet the grief comes next.
(The final couplet of Martin Johnston’s sonnet Grief).
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A new generation of women folklorists. Hooray, and best of luck to all.
MA Folklore Studies. Very proud to see nine of our Folklore graduates walk across the stage today! Congrats to them all! Great to hear "Folklore Studies" resound through St Albans Cathedral, heard by the thousand or so people attending - some intrigued people there no doubt!
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Newly re-published by Armadillo, my edition of Oscar's fairy tales.
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Has Servalan from Blake's 7 come back to haunt me? This is my darling Kiki. She won't leave me alone if she senses I am sad.
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Lots of my friends are posting pictures of What You Would Look Like As A Hippie. I don't need no application. This is me in 1974 (friend's room, hence space on the bookshelves).
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I managed to get all the way to Brecon and back to see this show at the Brecknock Museum and Art Gallery yesterday, and it's a beautifully curated and presented exhibition
@BrecknockMuseum
. Free and gorgeous. I don't know how well-known David Jones is as artist or poet outside UK
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As someone who spent their entire childhood reading, I can't endorse this strongly enough. Books are the entry into the world of imagination, which as Blake said, is the world of reality.
What factor has the biggest impact on children's life chances? Socio-economic background, or how well they do in tests? Nope: it's READING FOR PLEASURE. Kids who read because they enjoy it do better in every way than kids who don't. There is nothing more important.
#literacy
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Reading to children is incredibly important, but I also encourage reading to adults - it’s such a pleasure both to read and be read to. Also a great way to judge whether a book is well written or not.
I am forever thankful to my dad, who read the Greek myths to me every single evening when I was little. Reading to your children is one of the best things you can do to encourage a love of literature.
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685 pp. 101 texts from 14 languages. Beowulf, Sweeney Astray, the Aeneid, Dante, Sophocles, Baudelaire, Sorescu, Henryson, , Rilke, Cavafy, & much more - “the clear song of a skilled poet”. What a gift to the world, “master of verse-craft”. Brilliantly edited and a lovely book.
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This arrived yesterday
@DrFrancisYoung
. Excellent section on the ever-fascinating Goodwin Wharton who "lived at what was perhaps the last historical moment at which someone could simultaneously inhabit the world of high politics and the world of magic and fairy belief`".
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@EBGBeee
@neilhimself
And also, Lemony Snicket on accordion. When worlds collide… Talk about magnetic fields!
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If you ever need to say the name of Robert Louis Stevenson, the middle name is pronounced Lewis. He changed the spelling to appear more cosmopolitan, but not the pronunciation. This has been a coronavirus lockdown public service announcement.
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I have been reading a wonderful book about life & death by Rachel Clarke
@doctor_oxford
Dear Life. She is a palliative care doctor, so you would think it depressing but it is exhilarating. A great work of literature. Think Anatomy of Melancholy, or Oliver Sachs.
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This is basically me in 1963. Wrong colour hair, but I forgave that then and forgive it now. This book shaped much of my imaginative life. Meriol Trevor - a good writer, but not a great one, now forgotten. But not by me.
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When 3 facinating books arrive at once... Choices, choices, choices.
@amy_historia
@ClerkofOxford
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A special issue of The Dark Horse celebrating the centenary of that great writer George Mackay Brown, available to order from their website.
This dear man's—my early encourager's—centenary falls on October 17th 2021. One of 20th century Scotland's most remarkable writers, this special issue commemorates & celebrates his life & legacy & includes rarely seen photos, artwork & other textual matter. It's in press now. ❤️
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My mother staunchly maintained that in a heatwave, drinking hot tea would cool you down. I am here to tell you that this is not true.
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I will just urge everyone to read the short book-length poem Paris by Hope Mirrlees, published by Faber. It is an extraordinary modernist work, pre-dating and anticipating The Waste Land. The author was completely forgotten. It’s like discovering Apollinaire after a hundred years
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One of those which-to-read first moments,
@profcarolyne
@Dr_Dimitra_Fimi
I’m looking forward to both.
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This is a wonderful book, focused on Narnia but really about the realm of the imagination.
Just seen my book about the Narnia stories 'From Spare Oom to War Drobe' is half price on Amazon. Praised by
@neilhimself
: "Katherine Langrish takes us around a place we thought we knew ... and makes it finer and more interesting than before."
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It's official, The Watkins Book of English Folktales is on its way!
@neilhimself
closes his Foreword, "it’s better than just an important book: it’s a treasure-trove of living stories, and enormously fun to read. Enjoy!" Thank you,
@WatkinsWisdom
. Too excited...
@FairyTaleTuesday
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The Box of Delights. I am listening to the 1943 radio dramatisation that shaped the imaginations of so many children's writers - Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, Helen Cresswell etc. It's really good.
@nickswarb
@lifeinleaves
@Mat_at_Brookes
@one_to_read
@KathLangrish
@neilhimself
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to be about that high, and you’d live in this strange forest.
I used to look at everything so closely.
When I was ill in bed I used to wonder what it would be like for them in the house.
I had a great fellow feeling for the Borrowers."
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The tiny village of Idbury in the Cotswolds, where I live, has several folk rhymes about the weather, such as
Fog on the hill, water to the mill,
Fog in the hollow, fine day to follow.
#FolkloreThursday
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#FairyTaleTuesday
The poet John Clare knew a version of Cinderella in which she lost a glove, not a glass slipper. "The golden glove wi fingers small/She lost while dancing in the hall/That was on every finger tryd/And fitted hers and none beside". In his Shepherd's Calendar.
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@iconawrites
Favourite story she told me. AE took her to Innisfree. She arrived back at WB Yeats’ house with armfuls of blossoming boughs. He chose 1 carefully, put it in a vase, and left her standing on the doorstep with the rest. She took this as a lesson “less is more” rather than a snub.
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The C13th poet Thomas the Rhymer was shown 3 roads by the fairy queen - a narrow overgrown path to heaven, a straight road to hell, and a twisty one to fairyland. He stayed with her for 7 years then returned to the human world with the gift of prophecy.
#FolkloreThursday
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One of the most striking passages in the Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh is Enkidu's dream vision of the underworld, "the house which those who enter cannot leave." The dead dwell in the dark, clothed in feathers like birds, and eat dust and clay.
#MythologyMonday
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PL Travers told me that when she visited the Isle of Innisfree, she picked huge armfuls of blossom, and took them to WB Yeats. As she stood inside his door, he selected one spray and placed it carefully in a vase, leaving her holding all the rest. A silent lesson in Less Is More.
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@MichaelRosenYes
I was briefly expelled from grammar. Daily chapel. Headmaster, Philip, I see you are not singing the hymns. No, I read the words, and will only sing the ones I can sing sincerely. Then I have no choice but to expel you. You are expelling me for taking religion seriously? Yes.
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Myrsina (Myrtle) is a Greek Snow White. Abandoned at her mother's lonely grave by her jealous sisters, who can't bear it that the sun says Myrsina is the best of the three, she cries to bitterly even the trees take pity on her. A beech tree tells her to set her bread rolling and
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