Dark Tales from the Woods
by Daniel Morden
Y Lolfa £7.99

AWARDED a Tir na n-Og (land of youth) award by the Book Council of Wales, this lively collection of traditional tales is pitched at readers aged nine to 11. It will also appeal to adults interested in the symbolic impact of folk fables and anyone with a lifelong relish for tales of wonder, crowded with characters but told in unfussy prose.  
 
Daniel Morden is a collector and adaptor of narratives, and an oral storyteller. In performance, his narration is enhanced by perfectly timed pauses, shifts in volume and changes in facial expression. In print, he creates the same sense of intimacy and directness through cadence, idiom and precise imagery.
 
The effect is ideal for the seven stories collected here, a selection of those told throughout 18th-century Wales by Abram Wood, the violin-playing “King of the Gypsies.”
 
As grimly graphic as the early, uncensored versions of Grimms’ Fairy Tales — eyeballs are plucked, horses beheaded, and gibbets robbed of corpses — their themes and landscapes are drawn from British myth and history.

Four of them feature a hero named Jack, a lad who lives by his wits, bravery and ambition but always retains a sense of morality. He meets princesses, wise women and talking animals. He tangles with dragons, tyrannical monarchs and, in a fascinating variant of the Gawain myth, the Green Man.  
 
Other tales involve witchcraft, involuntary shapeshifting, a confidence trickster’s virtuous revenge and, in Mary Maid of the Mill, riddles and songs with a genuinely chilling edge.
 
Brett Breckon’s black and white line illustrations complement Morden’s storytelling perfectly: each chapter has a detailed and striking full-page scene, and a title-page motif that prefigures the narrative.
 
Dark Tales from the Woods is a slender but entertaining collection that will charm readers of all ages. The laconic critique of cruelty and injustice in these tales, and their celebration of human resilience and generosity, remind us that folklore at its best is a literature of moral speculation.