A century ago, the Orkney poet George Mackay Brown was settling into his first term at Stromness Academy. His schooldays were to prove a dismal grind, but English lessons brought moments of magic. He was especially intrigued by poems – ballads, mostly – signed simply ‘Anon’. The name of the poet was lost – and perhaps there hadn’t been just one but a host of craftsmen in the making of each of these wonders. They were the creation of a tribe, the inheritance of a community, songs ‘seraphically free/ Of taint of personality’. Today, as publishers bust themselves to promote the cult of individual authors, it’s a thrilling, liberating notion.

Amy Jeffs is an art historian, medievalist, artist and composer, whose Storyland: A New Mythology (2021) retold medieval tales of legend and landscape. In turning to ballads, she hopes to reacquaint us with old stories that ‘travel to us through a root system of real lives, with all their pains and predilections’ – stories that ‘provoke the kind of quiet, confident excitement felt in childhood, when something confirms magic to have been real all along’.

We may not today meet elves round every........

© The Spectator