Wild: Tales from Early Medieval Britain

Product Information

The seven chapters, entitled Earth, Ocean, Forest, Beast, Fen, Catastrophe, Paradise, open with fiction and close with reflection. Immersive . . . Her stories are arranged across seven chapters - Earth, Ocean, Forest, Beast, Fen, Catastrophe and Paradise. Jeffs, a medieval scholar with her own wild streak, introduces each in confident, forceful tones. She also sings six of her songs, accompanied by early musical instruments. Lucy Paterson, who has one of those warm, low, I had really loved the storytelling and art work in Storyland and when I found out that there was a sequel coming out covering the early medieval period in a similar fashion I was excited. Jeff's uses ancient Medieval Texts (mostly from the Exeter Book) to create some really great short stories all focused around the wilderness of England.

In Wild, Amy Jeffs journeys – on foot and through medieval texts – from landscapes of desolation to hope, offering the reader an insight into a world at once distant and profoundly close to home. Ongoing Covid restrictions, reduced air and freight capacity, high volumes and winter weather conditions are all impacting transportation and local delivery across the globe.The book is put together in a brilliant way: each chapters starts with Amy Jeffs' re-imagining and retelling a story from this period, enriching them with very human emotions, timeless wisdom, historically accurate facts, she effortlessly weaves art and artifacts from the time into the story and gives them new meaning by doing so. After the retelling of each story, she gives a detailed explanation in a very informative and entertaining way. I believe this is exactly the right way to keep these stories, cultures, ideas and values alive. This is how we can make people care about these extremely valuable treasures of an era long past. Jeffs is the narrator, providing a reading that is suffused with portent and otherworldliness. Listeners miss out on the author’s elegant wood engravings that adorn the print edition, though they gain a series of folksongs, written and performed by Jeffs, each of which adds a thrilling new dimension to these ancient fables.

Most listeners to The Folklore Podcast will be familiar with Dr. Amy Jeffs’ brilliance. Art historian, artist, and regular contributor to Country Life Magazine, Jeffs is a multifaceted individual, who pairs her linocut and wood-engraving artwork with her historically inspired writing. Her previous book Storyland, which focused upon the history and legends of the United Kingdom and Ireland as a whole, was covered in Season 7, Episode 108 of The Folklore Podcast. Wild: Tales From Early Medieval Britain, her new book published by Quercus Publishing, focuses not upon the history of the founding of Britain, but rather upon the life experience and mentality of those living there. Jeffs’ writing shows the reader that the abstract notion of the Wild, ever present to the medieval mind, is still accessible in the modern day. While people may no longer view the ocean as the “restlessness” that the early medieval folk thought of it as, the wandering seafarer remains a familiar figure throughout literature to this day. Similarly, the contemporary climate crisis echoes the experience of Lindisfarne before the Vikings invaded. Most now see us as living on the precipice of Doomsday. Jeffs ventures to show the reader a way to live upon that cliff’s edge with grace and perhaps even joy, through the celebration of unity that the monks used to create some of the most beautiful art of all ages. Jeff's tales are haunting and emotive, rich in sensory details; touch and temperature, noise and frosty fingers, the crisp of decay touched leaves, warriors call and sing. A natural world and wild landscape that bring old words shrouded time to imaginative life. Jeffs teases out nuance, divining moral and metaphorical meaning from each story, and questions ways that this living history of Britain impacts upon our present-day understanding of landscape. The writing throughout is celebratory and evocative."This came into the shop early and didn’t even have time to hit the floor before I had bought it I was looking forward to it so much. The seven chapters of the book each focus upon a theme: Earth, Ocean, Forest, Beast, Fen, Catastrophe, and Paradise. The chapters open with a reimagining of a poem or riddle from the Exeter Book, and end with the author’s reflections upon what was just written. While the writings are beautiful, they also add enough to the writing itself that I was tempted to reread and capture what I had missed the first time around.