The Fabled Coast - Legends & Traditions from Around the Shores of Britain and Ireland
 
Along the shores of the British Isles - lands ‘with more edge than middle’ - legends and traditions flourish: sailors’ yarns and the songs of sirens , mystical islands and drowned cities with tolling bells, ghost ships on Goodwin Sands and fantastic beasts, from the little otters that cared for St Cuthbert to the monstrous ‘fish call’d the Kraken’.
 
In this compendium of maritime legend and lore, the renowned folklorists Jennifer Westwood and Sophia Kingshill retell the stories heard along the English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish coasts, exploring their imaginary geography, fantastic zoology or historical origins with extraordinary erudition and an engaging enthusiasm.
 
From the Scilly Isles, where the Association, doomed by a hanged man’s curse, was wrecked on the Western Rocks in 1707, to Shetland in the far north, where six fishermen from Yell captured a mermaid in 1839, and across to the west coast of Ireland and possibly a glimpse of the magical island of Hy Brazil, this is a journey along thousands of miles of shoreline soaked in myth, where even the people and events of history are tinged with enchantment.