About the Podcast
Tales of Britain and Ireland is a podcast telling Myths, Legends and folklore from all across Britain and Ireland and throughout their history, in no particular order.
The show is written and presented by Graeme Cooke and recorded in South Yorkshire.
Each episode is followed by a short and inexpert discussion section focusing on the origin, themes and my impressions of the tales.
The story telling style always has an underlying humour, but aims to treat each story with a tone that reflects the tale. While many of the tales can be enjoyed by all ages the podcast has an adult audience in mind. Any particularly adult-only NSFW episodes have advisory info at the start of the episode and are tagged as such on this website. (Some of these stories go some very weird places)
Most episodes feature one story but some feature multiple shorter tales. There are also a couple of ongoing larger arcs from the Mabinogion and the Fenian Cycle.
Stories covered so far have involved, but are not limited to: Boggarts and imps, paranormal petrification, deals with the devil, elves, faeries, witches, Sídhe, spectres, cauldrons, badger in the bag, pudding stealing bears and a lot of animal transformation. Accompanied by romance, megalomania, births, deaths, marriages, deaths at marriages, lust, war and many 19th Century Folklorists. Oh and of course, justified murder-princesses, which crop up more often than you think. Princesses have a lot of people to be justifiably murdery at.
If you want to listen dive in wherever you feel or you can check out my favourite episodes here: Tales of Britain and Ireland – Favourite Episodes
You can find out a bit more about the website and what’s here: Welcome to the Website.
I hope you enjoy the podcast!
About the Host
Graeme Cooke: Inexpert podcast host variously from “The North”. A product of Northern Ireland, Newcastle, Liverpool and Sheffield. Not as violent as the stereotypes of those places would suggest. Do enjoy a drink though.
I’ve no CV-able experience in the area of folktales to put here but they were a huge part of growing up for me. This has have led to a life-long interest in folk-music, fantasy literature and games, an enjoyment of long walks in the countryside and tangentially to a strong desire to visit as many historic sites that I can shake a stick at. Particularly if haunted.
The podcast started as an excuse for all the reading and research I was doing in this area anyway, and to justify all the books I was buying. I also hoped to be able to share just a little of the interest and joy I feel discovering these stories.
I am very pleased to have reached the number of episodes I have and am very lucky to have received some positive feedback as well.
Please do feel free to reach out and let me know what you think. Signing up to Patreon, leaving comments and reviews are all very welcome but not obligatory.
Above all else I simply hope that you enjoy listening to these stories as much as I did telling them.
Graeme
November 2021
