Deadline: October 31st, 2018
Payment: One penny Sterling per word, with a minimum payment of £10 Sterling for poems and very, very short stories,

I am looking for stories and poems for a new anthology that involves British Folklore.

The stories may be short or long, even as long as a novelette. The stories or poems can be of horror, humour or psychological. But, I don’t want any twee stories.

I will pay one penny Sterling per word, with a minimum payment of £10 Sterling for poems and very, very short stories. For illustrations, I will pay £30 for ‘header’ illustrations to a story, £100 for full page illustrations and £200 for the cover illustration. All rights are reserved by the author and the artist. If your story, etc. has been published elsewhere, please let me know where and when the work was published.

I would like to have all the material in by Halloween this year as I would like to have enough to keep me busy over Christmas. The anthology, hopefully, will be ready for release by February/March 2019.

Contact me by email ([email protected] or [email protected]) or by post to Jon Harvey, 56 Mickle Hill, Sandhurst, Berkshire, GU47 8QU, UK.

The following is a list of festivals, people and creatures of British folklore that I can think of. There are likely to be numerous others that either I don’t know or have forgotten about:

There are festivals like Beltane (the Gaelic May Day festival), Samhain (the Gaelic celebration of end of the harvest) normally held on the night of the 31^st October and there are other festivals held in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, such as Lughnasadh, which is similar to Samhain.

There are folk such as the ‘The Green Man’, ‘John Barleycorn’, ‘Wayland Smith’ and ‘Herne the Hunter’. There’s the ‘Wild Hunt’ or the ‘Eternal Huntsmen’. And don’t forget the ‘Wicker Man’.

As for creatures, there are Dryads, Hamadryads, Nayads (although the latter two are creatures of Greek mythology), Selkies, Faeries, Elves and Pixies.

Fairyland is supposed to be a special place, full of wonders. However, time there runs much slower than time in the real world. One minute in fairyland could mean a decade or so in the real world. If a traveller enters the land of fairies and then come back, centuries may have passed. Once they step back into the real world they will die and their bodies will crumble into dust.

Pixies and faeries have numerous names in various parts off Britain:

The Welsh Tylwyth Teg form the collection of types of pixies: Ellyllon (elves), the Bwbachod (household spirits similar to brownies and hobgoblins), the Coblynau (spirits of the mines), the Gwtagedd Annwn (lake maidens) and the Gwylion (mountain spirits resembling hags)

Cornwall has piskies, pizkie or pigsies and the Knockers (like the Welsh Coblynau, spirits of the mines).

Scotland have the Aos Si which are supposed to inhabit ancient sites.

By the way, I have heard the Coblynau/Knockers myself in the coal mines of South Wales.

Via: Atlantean Publishing.