Old Songs

Stories of Love and Death from Traditional Ballads

By: Amy Jeffs, Gwen Burns

Narrated by: Amy Jeffs

Old Songs fuses short stories, histories, lyrics and music in an enthralling reimagining of traditional folk ballads. Sunday Times Bestselling historian Amy Jeffs and her creative collaborators combine forces to create a rich compendium, singing of travel, mystery, magic and the essential urges of humanity.

Featuring iterations of fairy tales and sinister descendants of Greek myths and bible stories, as well as a cast of lesser-known characters with names like Tam Lim, Child Wynd and Maisery, Old Songs threads a tapestry of Britain's landscape, history and cultures. At the base of hills we can visit to this day, elf queens kidnap hapless poets and carry them through rivers of blood; and at the foot of a tree whose offspring still stand in the forests of Northumberland, a girl mimes combing the hairless head of a dragon who was once her brother.

In spellbinding tales of brown-skinned girls who danced on their lovers' graves, of golden-masted ships captained by the Devil, of fiddles that cried "Murder!", of men kidnapped by fairies and boys married at fourteen, we find narrative motifs as ancient as humanity itself.

In the histories interconnecting the stories, we find the fantastical rooted in the everyday, bringing to light the real experiences of great swathes of people to whom such story-songs were not only familiar, but a way of escaping into the extraordinary and returning gratefully home. Bringing enchantment to familiar landscapes, ballads were created anew by each singer and passed down from fireside to fireside, at the knees of childhood nurses, in manuscripts and in early printed pamphlets. Now, ten stories are gathered here, beautifully recreated for modern readers.

Praise for Amy Jeffs

'This gorgeous book should live on the bookshelves in every house that cares about the idea of Britain, what is was and where it came from' The Times

'A beautiful retelling of British myths and exquisitely illustrated too' Daily Express

'I have fallen so completely in love with this book... just one of the finest, most covetable things around' Katherine Rundell

'A thing of beauty' The Herald©2025 Amy Jeffs

Critic reviews

Mesmerising

The stories absorb you instantly . . . A treat for those captivated by the medieval, grisly and historic

An astonishing collaboration of words and images that immerses readers in a magical folkloric world . . . These remarkable stories dice with the dangers around us and within us, and they challenge us to emerge triumphant.

She has inspired me no end (Charlie Cooper, via Cotswold Life)

This is experimental storytelling of the highest order and required reading for anyone who cares about the roots of our culture