Links

From around and about the internet:

Lit Crit blogs:

Coming soon....

Folk Resources:

The Sacred Text Archive:  You need a ballad? A folktale? Want to check the variants between Child39A and Child39D, and what's the version of Matty Graves where it talks about his wife? All that and SO MUCH MORE.

Folktexts: A library of folktales, folklore and mythology. Brilliant scholarly resource.

Mudcat. Best online community. If it's a folksong, they know about it. Particularly brilliant for working through the mystery of half-remembered fragments.

Child Ballads online: What it says on the tin. The text, transcribed.

Better know a Child Ballad:  Blog going through Child's magnum opus, one ballad at a time. Has links to performances, gives a reader reaction, and summarises Child's infuriating and over-long notes. It is not complete. At the time of posting, it has got to Child16.

History Resources:

Beneath Thy Feet: A closer look a graveyards as a source of history and narrative. Fascinating and dark.

Art, beauty and well ordered chaos:  History of dress and fashion blog, written by a re-enactor.

The Newton Rebels: An important history of popular dissent. A community run history of the first Levellers.

Interesting stuff:

Tangerine and Cinnamon: Absolutely brilliant! A scholarly and engaging look at the links between politics, food and identity. A must for anyone interested in political discourses, or how our choices say far more than we might think.

The Spooky Isles: Short articles on more or less everything that could be considered spooky in, around and related to Britain. The site's a bit of a pain to navigate, but it's full of interesting stuff.

Creative Endeavours:

Where would I be with DraculaBites? Bram Stoker's masterpiece as it was never meant to be told as our intrepid vampire hunters take to Twitter to share with the world observations too private for their diaries.

I'm sceptical of most writing advice, but Roz Morris  talks sense and is, in consequence, brilliant.

Mirabilis - Year of Wonders is an alternative history of a year that begins with a green comet lighting the sky. This presages a year of, well, wonders when all that is fictional and fantastical leaks into the ordinary world. Linked to it is an insightful and intelligent blog.

Web comics:

Center Of Somewhere: Luke Foster's sweet and silly tales of small town weirdness. Mysteries, friendships and really bad poetry nights. What more could you want?

Girls with Slingshots: Wonderfully funny webcomic about women in the States barging through life, sex, ghost cats, talking plants and the way alcohol solves everything. By Danielle Corsetto.

Chester5000: Jess Fink's elegant and sensual erotic romance about an inventor, his wife and robot lover he created for her pleasure. Perhaps understandably, NSFW.

Fiction and stories:

Excellent short fiction courtesy of Goblin Books: Dark and funny, veering more towards political satire of late. Well worth a read.