Duncan Williamson was a Scottish traveller who went on to become one of Britain's master story-tellers. During his lifetime he was acclaimed 'the greatest English-speaking storyteller', 'the national monument of British storytelling' and, at his death, Scotland's 'greatest contemporary storyteller'. Fireside Tales, his first book, reveals this artistry and mastery in all its glory. This new edition is edited by his wife, Linda Williamson. Fireside Tales is narrated with an intense commitment to generations of the travelling people, who used animal fables, wonder tales and splendid horror stories to instil in their children moral judgment and a knowledge of right and wrong. At every corner the technical skill of the narrator is revealed, his ingenious mixture of conversation and action, frequent change of pace, use of the first person – all attributes of the born storyteller which compel attention, where tension and excitement are at fever pitch throughout. With a universality that can relate to every reader, this book represents one of the great collections of traveller stories.

On cold winter nights when early darkness enclosed the old travellers' camp, a father would turn round and take his children beside him. This is a collection of these stories.

This book looks at education in the context of several distinct travelling groups including Circus, Fairground and New Travellers. Cathy Kiddle argues that education is important for Traveller children in that it enables them to develop into independent learners and, through this, independent people, able to speak for themselves.

Introduced by Barbara McDermitt The telling of tales and the oral tradition in Scotland has long and honourable history, both in the annals of the folk and in the more formal pages of literary publication. Writers as different as Hogg, Scott, Stevenson, Cunninghame Graham, Buchan, Grassic Gibbon and Alasdair Gray have all drawn on the form or the voice or the features of the folk tale. Duncan Williamson, arguably the greatest traditional tale teller in modern times, is a master of this spellbinding art, and here in a single volume Linda Williamson has gathered together some of the most memorable tales in his repertoire. Transcribed from recorded sessions for the sound archives of the School of Scottish Studies, these twenty-six stories give us privileged access to the travellers’ fireside with stories of talking animals; of the broonie, selkies and fairies; of cunning Jack’s adventures; of kings and giants in long tales for the winter nights. ‘An extraordinary collection of stories.’ The Scotsman ‘Exemplary and delightful . . . [Williamson] is the inheritor of a rich and vital oral tradition . . . and is recognised as a master narrator.’ Times Educational Supplement ‘ . . . the bearer of the richest oral tradition in Europe.’ Herald

Authors, librarians, and critics from Pacific Rim countries share national and universal aspects of children's literature in the third of a series.

This book analyses the interplay between storytelling (with specific reference to oral retellings of authentic picture books), language learning, culture and emotions in the EFL pre-school and primary classroom. Using a multidisciplinary approach, it applies oral narrative studies, as well as research on shared reading with children and literature in picture books, to foreign and second language teaching theory and practice, while also discussing the impact of EFL storytelling on intercultural understanding. Although specifically conceived for teaching English as a foreign language, most contents apply to foreign/second language teaching to young children in general.

The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature examines the ways in which the cultural and political role of Scottish writing has changed since the country's successful referendum on national self-rule in 1997. In doing so, it makes a convincing case for a distinctive post-devolution Scottish criticism. Introducing over forty original essays under four main headings - 'Contexts', 'Genres', 'Authors' and 'Topics' - the volume covers the entire spectrum of current interests and topical concerns in the field of Scottish studies and heralds a new era in Scottish writing, literary criticism and cultural theory. It records and critically outlines prominent literary trends and developments, the specific political circumstances and aesthetic agendas that propel them, as well as literature's capacity for envisioning new and alternative futures. Issues under discussion include class, sexuality and gender, nationhood and globalisation, the New Europe and cosmopolitan citizenship, postcoloniality,

Romany culture is perhaps the most Indo-European of all. The ancestors of the Gypsies left India around 1000 years ago and mixed with every culture on the way to produce a variety of Romany dialects and well-known cultural achievements from Hungarian Gypsy music to the English Gypsy caravan. Such images somehow co-exist, however, with continuous persecution.