Mark Norman 
Telling the Bees and Other Customs 
The Folklore of Rural Crafts

As featured in The New York Times…
Throughout the history of civilisation, traditional crafts have been passed down from hand to skilled hand. Blacksmithing, brewing, beekeeping, baking, milling, spinning, knitting and weaving: these skills held societies together, and so too shaped their folklore and mythology.
Exploring the folklore connected with these rural crafts, Telling the Bees examines the customs, superstitions and stories woven into some of the world’s oldest trades. From the spinning of the Fates to the blacksmith’s relationship with the devil, and the symbolism of John Barleycorn to a ritual to create bees from the corpse of a cow – these are the traditions upon which our modern world was built.

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Mark Norman is a folklore author and researcher. He is a council member of The Folklore Society and has been on the judging panel for the Katharine Briggs book awards for the last 3 years. He is also the creator and host of The Folklore Podcast. Listened to around the world, the podcast looks at all aspects of traditional folklore and has enjoyed over half a million downloads since it started 3 years ago, with lively audience engagement. Mark speaks around the country on folklore-related subjects, and also writes newspaper and magazine columns plus web articles on the subject. He lives in Devon.