Once upon a Milton Keynes ... Buckinghamshire is an ancient county of Roman forts and highwaymen, motorways and urban myth. These are the Buckinghamshire folk tales of past, present and future: old tales in new towns, and new stories from old legends. Look out for witches and dragons, mind all those roundabouts, and whatever you do – don't eat the stew.

This book advances social scientific interest in a field long dominated by the humanities: stories, and storytelling. Stories are a whole lot more than entertainment; oral narratives, novels, films and immersive video games all form part of the sociocultural discourses which we are enmeshed in, and use to co-construct our beliefs about the world around us. Young children use them to learn about the world beyond their immediate sensory experience and, even in an era of interactive electronic media, the bedtime story remains a cherished part of most children’s daily routine. Storytelling is thus the first abstract formal learning method we encounter as human beings. It is also probably transcultural; perhaps even an immanent part of the human condition. Narratives are, at heart, sequences of events and presuppose and reinforce particular cause-and-effect relationships. Inevitably, they also construct unconscious biases, prejudices, and discriminatory attitudes. Storying (a term we use in this book to encompass stories, storytellers and storytelling) is complex, and this book seeks to make sense of it.

Lincolnshire, a county with many variations in the dialect, once nurtured many folk tales and though these stories may no longer be told as often as they once were, they still resonate within the rural landscape. From the dark tales of the 'Buried Moon', 'The Lincoln Imp', and the 'Werewolf of Langrick Fen', to the humorous tales of 'Ten-Pint Smith', 'The Lad that went to look for Fools' and the 'Farmer and the Boggart', so many of these tales are rooted in the county and take us back to a time when the people would huddle around the fire in the mud and stud cottages to while away the long winter evenings. Such nights would also inspire the telling of tales of witches, fairies, ghosts, giants and dragons. All the stories in Lincolnshire Folk Tales have been thoroughly researched and will be of interest to modern readers (and storytellers), both within the county and elsewhere.

Scilly has been its own unique land for centuries, separate from England and cut off from Cornwall by twenty-five miles of rough sea – yet until now its folk tales have been poorly documented. Let Anthony the droll-teller and his companions guide you on this voyage around the wonderful Isles of Scilly: a place of smugglers and shipwrecks, pirates and privateers, legends and long lost tales.