Step across the hedgerow into old England and listen: the countryside still keeps its oddities. The old world still whispers.
Fairy Gold, collected by Ernest Rhys, assembles tales from old English folklore into a compact, elegiac English fairy tale collection that sits at the intersection of charm and strangeness. A classic folklore anthology in tone, it preserves the cadence of Victorian fairy stories while recording the blunt humour and moral edge of British folk legends. Readers encounter brief narratives about liminal moments and uncanny returns, stories that thrive in the margins between hearth and hedgerow. These magical creatures tales and enchanted forests stories are pared-down, direct, often wry - precisely the sort to work as bedtime stories for children or as a family read aloud book for several generations. Those with an interest in nineteenth century England will find in the diction and detail a revealing record of how ordinary people imagined the uncanny. Fans of Andrew Lang's fairy collections and Joseph Jacobs's stories will recognise the same appetite for reclaimed informality and cultural memory. Rather than an academic compendium, its selections favour voice and hospitality; language is plain, cadence alive, and the result is a book both approachable for new readers and rewarding for connoisseurs of british folk legends. Teachers, storytellers and parents will find it a steady source of short, memorable narratives that slip easily into an evening's reading.
Republished by Alpha Editions in a careful modern edition, this volume preserves the spirit of the original while making it effortless to enjoy today - a heritage title prepared for readers and collectors alike. For casual readers it offers immediate, quietly strange pleasures; for classic-literature collectors it serves as a faithful witness to the period's revival of folk material. Presented with respect for provenance and readability, this edition is equally at home on a bedside table and on the shelf of a discerning library of British folk culture.
