Medieval Archives

Gary: Welcome back to the
Medieval Archives podcast, the

podcast for medieval news,
history and entertainment. I'm

your host, Gary, a.k.a. the
Archivist. In today's lesson,

we're talking about origin,
myths and early medieval tales

of Britain, with Dr. Amy Jeffs
and Amy's first book, Story Land.

She examines the origins of
Britain from Noah's flood to the

Norman invasion. And there are
some great stories to tell,

including the incredible story
of Albina, who ruled Britain was

seduced by demons and gave birth
to a race of giants. Her second

book, titled Wild Takes You on a
Journey from Desolation to Hope,

through seven chapters of
insightful reflection. She

retells stories from medieval
texts with vivid description and

unique perspectives. Now, one of
the standout elements of both

books are the illustrations
which Amy created in the episode.

You'll find out how she created
them and how the creation

process helped her through the
lockdown quarantine period we

all dealt with. If you have any
questions or comments or want to

suggest a topic for the show,
send those over to podcast at

Medieval Archives XCOM. You can
also leave us a message on the

voicemail line.

7207221066. You can find all the
links to Story Land in Wild and

Amy's social media and the show
notes at medieval archives dot

com slash 89. So let's get to
the talk with Amy Jeffs and the

origins of Britain.

They were joined by a
medievalist and art historian,

Dr. Amy Jeffs, who's the author
of two books on Medieval Britain.

Thanks for being on the show,
Amy.

Amy: Thank you so much for
having me, Gary.

Gary: So your first book was
Story Land, and that's the

Origin Myths of Britain. But
before we get into that book,

what is your start in medieval
history and how did you become a

medieval historian?

Amy: I always thought I'd go to
art college. That was my kind of

dream growing up. But then
somehow sort of a paints made 16

year old version of myself ended
up going along to the open Days

of Oxford in Cambridge at my
school with taking us on trips

to and I ended up sheltering
from that. I think it was really

it was really hot. And I went
into Blackwell's bookshop in

Oxford and out of curiosity
picked up a book on old English,

and I sat down and started
reading it and was just

entranced. And then the
Cambridge Open day happened

quite soon after that and a
Ph.D. student read me. I went

into the Department of
Anglo-Saxon Norse and Celtic,

which is a subject, a very niche
undergraduate course. They offer

that. So here in the UK, we we
specialize very early on. We

don't kind of continue with a
broad range of subjects and we

start university, we go straight
in and, and there's a

particularly specialist course
in Cambridge called Anglo-Saxon

Norse and Celtic, which is a
little bit like classics for

Northwestern Europe. And I went
into that department and sat

down with a Ph.D. student who
read me a passage of Old Norse.

And again, I was just my
imagination was just completely

ignited by this moment. And she
was really cool. And I was like,

Oh, this is amazing. So anyway,
I applied and got in and just

spent the most joyful two years
studying old English language

and literature, Old Norse
language and literature,

medieval Latin and a touch of
medieval Welsh. Also. That was

they offered a wonderful course
called Code Ecology and Paleo

Graffiti, which looked at the
history of manuscript

construction and book history as
well as the history of scripts.

And because it was in the Middle
Ages, there was a very strict

hierarchy of scripts and what
you could or couldn't use for

writing scripture and so on. And
as that progressed, I became

more and more interested in
manuscript illustration and

medieval art, and I started
sitting in on lectures I didn't

actually have to go to in the
art history department on early

medieval art and gone into
inlaid jewellery and carved

Wales bone caskets and just
loved it so much that I jumped

ship in my third year into art
history, carried across much of

many things that I'd learned
about language and literature

and medieval languages. I'd
borrowed papers in old French

and middle English. It just it
just kind of all came with me

into art history. And then I
carried that on through to my

master's and my PhD, which moved
up from the kind of early

medieval period into the 14th
century, focusing on English

illuminated manuscripts. And in
the at the same time, I did an

internship at the British
Library on a digitisation

project for manuscripts dating
700 to 1100 or 1200, I think all

from England and France, and
also digitizing pilgrims

souvenirs and medieval badges at
the British Museum. So the

British Museum project really
took me up to the Reformation.

So over the course of my studies,
I, I was had the great joy of

covering literature, history,
language, arts, as well as going

from the kind of fifth century,
from late antiquity all the way

up to the Reformation. And that
was that was just the most

wonderful adventure and has
informed everything I've done

since. Even the washing up.

Gary: Was always nice as a
teenager going into university.

Having someone that can inspire
you or mentor you into the into

the field that you want to go to
service. And I said, you found

that early on.

Amy: Yes, it's you. It's just a
string of marvellous teachers

when you look back.

Gary: And so your book storyline,
I think is the origin of

medieval Britain or I guess the
origin of Britain in general.

Yes. Why did you pick the origin
of Britain through myths to

write a book about?

Amy: My Ph.D. was on a 14th
century English manuscript

written in Anglo-Norman French,
the French that was being spoken

in England after the Norman
Conquest in 1066. And it it was

all about where Britain had come
from, its deep, deep, mythic

history, but written in a really
engaging way. It was it was in a

verse form, so much more
engaging than dense prose, and

it had illustrations on still
has still exists. It has

illustrations on every double
page spread which and they were

really kind of my supervisor at
the time said looked like it'd

been illustrated in ketchup and
mustard because it was a very

scurrilous kind of scurrilous,
swift dynamic, slightly messy

illustrations. But they are that
kind of movement to them and a

great deal of pace because
there's so many of them. And so

I became interested in how the
origins of Britain, these this

origin myth that was based on a
12th century text by Geoffrey of

Monmouth, of a big Latin prose
text about where Britain had

come from, Britain for Norman
readers. I was interested in how

that had been translated,
abbreviated, illustrated in

order as I argued to educate a
young the young chivalric

classes so people that were
going to be going off and

fighting or marrying people who
were going to be going off and

fighting. How these these
stories kind of fired them up

about being English or being
Christian and how text and image

did that. And so as I was
writing up my thesis, I moved

out of Cambridge. I went to a
town in Somerset where there

were a lot of artists, and I
became interested in printmaking,

and I started producing a series
of illustrations of this text by

Geoffrey of Monmouth of the
Brute legend, as it's called,

and it's called The Great Legend,
because it begins with this

character, Brutus, who's a
refugee descended from refugee

Trajan's, who founded Rome. And
he he's exiled, accidentally

killing his father, and he ends
up receiving a prophecy from the

goddess Diana,

journeying where he tells him
he's going to found a new Troy

and a race of kings in an island
in the western Ocean way on the

edge of the world. So it's
called the breach. After Brutus,

he then names this island,
Britain after himself. And and

so I started illustrating it.
And in the process of

illustrating it, I became
convinced of or received some

helpful advice, telling me that
these really were exciting

stories in and of themselves.
That Brutus is prophecy from the

goddess Diana, his encounter
with the giants that are

indigenous and the island of
Britain, formerly known as

Albion here. The events that
happen afterwards concerning the

subsequent legendary kings like
King Lear and his daughter

Cordelia, like Arthur and his
his counsellor Merlin will see

the king before him is the
Pendragon and his brother

Aurelius. All of these stories
were really fascinating because

of how they mapped on to modern
day Britain and just because

they're great stories. So that's
what the illustrations came from,

which was really the nucleus for
the book. And actually I should

also say just for anyone just to
introduce the book itself, how

those illustrations worked then
was that they would they each

illustrate a fictional retelling
of the medieval origin myth. So

I've then I've cherry picked
myths about where Britain came

from, from a variety of sources,
including Chronicles, but also

saints lives and romances. And
I've retold them as fiction in

chronological order, starting
from before Noah's Flood and

running all the way up to the
conquest, the Norman Conquest of

England, which has implications
for the whole of Britain, and

each fictional retelling story
is followed by a non-fiction

commentary explaining how these
myths were understood at the

time. So this is in the kind of
in the high Middle Ages, as we

call it, and how that came to
shape real political decision

making, real life wars,
especially things like the

conflicts between England and
Scotland, and how that therefore

came to shape the Britain that
we know today. So it is an

argument against myths and the
legend being Wimsey, it's saying

that these stories, whether or
not they're perceived as history,

are very, very powerful and have
political ramifications.

Gary: The medieval Britons, they
looked at the myths from like

King Arthur and even farther
back, and that's how they

governed and that's how they
kind of lived their life or

tried to rule.

Amy: So it's really interesting.
And to what extent these these

old stories are perceived as
history, because I think the

broad brush strokes, yes, they
they believed that somebody

called Arthur had range. They
believed that kings like they

usurped King Vortigern, who
comes before Arthur had reigned.

Some of the retellings go into
far more detail than

maybe you can give retained any
historical veracity. So

contemporary chroniclers would
kind of argue amongst themselves

over what was or wasn't truth.
But either way, those histories

were seen as a set of moral
exemplar to guide contemporary

kings and barons and how to rule,
but also they were just

inspiring. So you know the story
of Arthur as it develops over

time. This this idea of the
round table of the of the

knights who when they sit at
that table, realize they love

each other so much, they will
die for each other. That bond,

that bond between Arthur's
barons was such a powerful idea

that it shaped politics. You say
Edward the first. He has a round

table made for his his Tonys and
kind of pageantry. And that's a

kind of battle of playing an end
of that that does the same,

imitating Arthur and his
celebrations with his knights.

And that's kind of playing at
the Arthurian ideal. But then it

becomes even more solid when he
finds the Order of the Garter in

the 1340s. And this is directly
modelled on the Knights of the

Round Table in an order of
barons and really the reigns

Before Edward the third had been
characterised by baronial

disunity and especially the
reign of his father. And so he

basically takes from literature
this idea of the order of

knights and makes it happen with
huge success.

Gary: Even back in the in the
medieval times they knew of

their history, even if it was
considered myth, they still

embraced it.

Amy: And it's also seeing
history as something that is

embracing nostalgia as well. I
think. I mean, we know of many,

I'm sure listeners can think of
many contemporary politicians

who hearken back to the good old
days in shaping the campaigns.

And so Edward the third, he is
drawing on a massive collective

nostalgia for the days of Arthur
and applying that to himself.

And so when he declares war on
France and is seeking to expand

in English domains that's not
seen as a new thing. Arthur had

conquered France. He go all the
way to Rome. He had 30 crowns

under his feet. And so that is
then presenting his contemporary

political ambition and his
objectives as just a completion

of an old campaign that was cut
short.

Gary: When you're going through
all the medieval myths of the

origin, all the origin stories,
did you find one that you

particularly enjoyed like a
favorite one, or did they all

spark the same inspiration for
you?

Amy: Yeah, I guess it depends
what kind of hat you have on. I

really enjoyed the origin myths.
What you right back at the

beginning of how the Britons
where they came from. So that

having come from Brutus and Troy,
the Scots, they had a story that

was a sort of reworking of much
older Irish myths that the Scots

had had their roots in Ireland
anyway, and so they kind of

reworked the story of how they
had come from Egypt

with a an Egyptian princess
called Soter, who was the

daughter of Rameses, the second
who is famous for having

altercations with Moses. The
stories of Brutus and Skater

came into play in a big way when
during the wars of Scottish

independence and the reign of
Edward, the first when he was

trying to claim Overlordship of
Scotland, and if if listeners

want to find out the sort of
nuts and bolts of that, then

I'll direct into the early
chapters of story land so that

as a historian, I'm really fond
of those stories that are really,

really interesting and really
impactful politically. One of my

favorite stories is about the
How Albion got its name. So

Albion is the name that Britain
has before Brutus arrives, and

there's a 13th century or a 13th
century sources that give a kind

of prequel to the Brutus legend
and say he arrives this island

called Albion. He renamed it
Brutus. How did Albion come to

bear his name? And it gives the
story of a great king in Syria

to Assyrian King, who had a huge
empire. And he also had 30

daughters. And the eldest of the
daughters is called Albina, and

they're all married to his
barons and hoping it becomes

jealous of the barons power over
them and of her father's power.

And she convinces her sisters to
agree to kill their husbands so

that they can seize the throne
ultimately and rule Syria as

them as Queens. But the youngest
of the sisters betrays the rest

of them and tells her husband
and they're dragged before their

father, who punishes them by
casting them adrift in a

rudderless boat and they end up
getting swept up in a storm and

wrecking on the coast of an
unknown uninhabited island. And

Albania jumps out of the boat,
grabs a handful of sand and and

says, I'm claiming this. And
later she gives it the name that

she she names herself queen with
the agreement of her sisters of

this uninhabited island. And
they they learn to live off the

land, which it takes. It's a
poem, The medieval poem which

describes this, really
emphasizes that their kind of

bushcraft as they are learning
to set traps and catch deer and

fish and all of that. Ultimately,
they get really good at it and

they are able to feed themselves
very well and they've got the

run of the island and they're
really fat and happy, but they

realize that they are lacking
anyone to have sex with. And so

that and their collective desire
kind of is felt. It sort of

sends vibrations down into the
earth and and the devil detects

it. And he and his demons are
like, rise up and have a night

of passion with Albania and her
sisters, which gives rise to the

birth of the race of giants,
which is present in Albi. And

when Brutus arrives, this story
is a really problematic story to

retell. Now it draws on a lot of
stereotypes for representing

non-Christian women, let's say
medieval kind of tropes of

medieval Christian tropes of
doing this, which say a lot more

about medieval Christians than
they do about anyone on that

sphere. But but I also just
instinctively, despite her

murderous tendencies, kind of
identified with Albina and her

ambition, not that I would go
quite as far as she did, but I

think that it's just such a
great story. And I also, as a as

a child, would read a lot of
survival books. So I just liked

the idea of these 30 women

making rope and setting nuns and
fashioning spears and generally

kind of imposing it.

Gary: Yeah, it's a good story
and stories in history have to

be taken in view of the
historical context and not

modern day perspectives. So
that's always it's always tough

to kind of balance those to you
establish the origin of Britain.

And then your next book, Wild
Tales Tales of Medieval Britain.

Yes. Are those also myths? Are
those real tales that you found

from medieval Britain?

Amy: Did most of the stories in
story land well through to 15th

century? They're really from the
slap bang and the kind of

jousting tourneys, kind of
middle Ages. Wild tales from

early Medieval Britain goes back
into a kind of I mean, dark ages.

It says anathema to say that now
among academics. But there is

something really enticing about
the idea of kind of this misty,

mysterious world where
Christianity is kind of just

making inroads and bringing with
it the written word to Germanic

societies. I want you to reflect
on an old idea of the wilderness

through primarily focusing on a
group of poems known as the old

English adages, but just to
going to take a step back. The

book has seven chapters entitled
Earth, Ocean, Forest, Beast and

Catastrophe Paradise, and each
chapter, as in story Land, has a

story and a commentary in Wild.
The stories are not retellings.

They are short stories that I've
made up, but they are inspired

by fragments of poetry and art,
other forms of literature that

use the wilderness in really
interesting ways, or use an idea

of the wilderness in really
interesting ways. So for

instance, the first chapter
mostly inspired by an old

English elegiac poem that we now
call the wife's lament, is found

in a late 10th century
manuscript known as the Exeter

Book, which is a one of only a
very few surviving big

compendium of old English poetry.
And it was given to the Bishop

of Exeter, and he then left its
text to Cathedral in 1072 when

he died. And it's been there
ever since, which I think is

just wonderful. And it's got
animal lore, it's got 95 old

English riddles, some of them
really rude, it's got saints

lives, but it's also got a
collection of poems known now as

the Elegies, which are
distributed among the riddles,

but don't seem to quite be
riddles. So in the case of the

wife's lament, the narrator
seems to be a woman trapped

under an oak tree in what she
calls an earth hole. And she is

watching the kind of the slow
summer sun creeping by in this

northern landscape where the
days are endlessly long and

summer. And she is bemoaning the
fact that her Lord has left her

there and hasn't come back. And
it's really oppressive. The

atmosphere and the themes are
very much of isolation and

longing and yearning. And in
contrast to that, there's

another poem which I use in the
chapter on Ocean called The

Seafarer, where the narrator is
out on a frozen ocean all alone.

So this is happening in the
wilderness, his feet shackled by

frost. They're dreaming of
former joys and trying to find

solace in the idea of eternal
life as the only tree and

lasting joy. And they seem to me
to use extreme portrayals of the

wilderness to express quite
subtle psychological situation

and to just to talk about
emotion, really, which is really,

when we think about the Middle
Ages, I think we can often see

it as quite an emotionally
stunted age.

Gary: Yeah.

Amy: Oh, kind of. Doughty
Knight's kind of thrusting their

chins forward and and going off
on quests and being very terse,

but these, these poems are
really emotionally complex. And

I bring in some Welsh and an
English poem as well, which does

a similar thing, but slightly
differently in relation to a

minor outcast in the woods for
his because he's so ill that

he's being cast out of this
community. So yeah, the first

chapter takes the character of
the from the wife's lament, and

I've sort of spun a ghost story
out of it. And in the commentary

I then reflect on the idea of
how the Earth was understood as

a place of burial, of that the
Earth itself was kind of seen as

like a gigantic version of the
human body. I became interested

in an article by a scholar
called Sarah Semple, who argues

that the narrator of the wife's
lament might be, Actually, I

want to say it without giving
you any spoilers, but she

explains it. She explores the
idea of prehistoric burial

mounds and how they how when the
Germanic migrants who would

become the English landed in
Britain, they found a landscape,

as they would have on the
continent, covered in in

prehistoric monuments and burial
mounds. And they added to those

themselves in that within that
prior to that conversion. And

but in the in the later period
when they have converted, these

places become steeped in
superstition because of their

association with pagan burials.
They were often the sites of

pagan shrines that were then on
the boundaries of territories,

of civilized territories. And so
they start becoming increasingly

in the later Anglo-Saxon period
somewhere that they bury

criminals. And this might be to
do with a belief that these

monuments were inhabited by
demons, elves and goblins and

that sort of thing, and that the
souls of the executed dead might

be trapped there. Yeah, that's
an example of how sort of

starting with the elegy and the
book then moves broadens out

into an exploration of that,
that kind of element in general.

But it also brings in the Franks
casket to the British Museum,

the first chapter, which is what
beautiful Wales Bones is a lot

beautiful. It's kind of clunky,
but it's what it is is amazing.

Is it made of Wales bones?
Probably eighth century

Northumbrian caskets, about the
size of a shoebox for a small

person for a child. Yeah and

it's got each of the panels is
has been carved with scenes from

stories and those stories are
derived from classical sources

from the Bible. It's got Romulus
and Remus, for instance,

circling the sea. Well, it's got
the three Kings visiting the

Virgin and Child. It's got a
theme from a Germanic known

Germanic story about Weyland,
the goldsmith dragging a woman

caught by all the hills so that
he can impregnate her and wreak

vengeance on her father. It's
got an unidentified scene of

somebody standing, a woman
standing over a burial mound or

a funeral pyre. It's not quite
clear with a cup. And it says

that Hoss wept for air tie and
the sorrow mound and ruins

around the outside, which as
it's an uncontested, otherwise

uncontested story, we don't know
what that means. So I've brought

that into the short story as
well. So it's just that's how

the book kind of rolls out. And
I'm hoping the trajectory of the

each chapter, beginning with the
Earth, ocean forest, fun beast,

catastrophe, paradise as there
is broadly upward trajectory

from kind of the earth to the to
the heavens and likewise has a

kind of ultimately very hopeful
message, but in the process

reflects on early medieval ideas
around mortality and the

apocalypse and such lovely
themes as that.

Gary: Things we need to think
about. Both of the books are

pretty heavily illustrated, and
you brought this up earlier from

the illustrations you saw. Did
you? You created all the

illustrations for both of the
books.

Amy: I did. And that's how it's
really begun each time. Story

Land as I've already described
how the line cuts came out of my

page D project and Wild. The
first illustrations add to that,

and actually the illustration is
now the cover and the

illustration for the Earth
chapter I did before the book

was a twinkle and the first
weeks of lockdown here in

Britain during the pandemic. And
that was a the radio and the

news and things were were
reminding me of the old English

elegies because they were
talking about exile and

isolation and loss and they were
talking about transience of all

human experiences. It all became
quite poetic in some ways, as

well as being very horrifying.
And yet here in the UK we had

the most beautiful spring and it
was like there were no planes in

the sky and the roads were
silent and it was this glorious

weather and birds were singing
and there was a real disjunct

between what you could see out
the window and what you knew was

happening in the world and what
humanity was experiencing. It's

like the opposite of the old
English elegies, not so much the

Welsh Elegies that that video
and even which are similar, but

they employ contrast very
effectively. But the wife's

lament is and in The Seafarer,
in reasons I've described, they

mirror the emotions of the
narrator. With the weather, it's

a real it's just through and
through pathetic policy. And and

so I sat outside one day and
carved a block of maple with an

illustration of the of the
figure from the wife's lament,

standing under an oak tree in
this kind of dark cave and felt

as though it was, I don't know.
It was just a kind of what to do

with all of these weekends. And
maybe reflecting on on what I

was hearing in the news, and
that became a wood engraving. So

this is a technique is different
from woodcut, which is often

quite is on a larger scale and
done on a piece of wood, cut on

the plank, wood engravings done
on the end, grain of a piece of

timber like boxwood or maple
wood, very close grained, and

they're often very small. So the
illustrations in wild a 7.5 by

ten centimetres and they're
reproduced to scale. So it'll

feel like a letterpress book you
inside your drawing, your image

of stain the block with black
ink, first of all. And then I

draw on it in pencil so that if
you tilt the block in the light,

you can see your drawing very
clearly. And and then I use a

sharp tool called appearance to
incised little lines, which will

show up white in the final print.
And this was a good medium to

use in lockdown because I
couldn't get to the studio, so I

didn't have a press at home. And
so with these small engravings,

I could just use a boon burnish
or the burnish so I could place

ink up the block, put paper on
top, and then use a piece of

antler or the back of a wooden
spoon to rub the paper on, to

press it really hard onto the
block by rubbing under and

transfer the ink that way. And
then I spent a couple of days

just auditioning this print of
the woman under the oak tree.

And then I did a series inspired
by the Elegies. And then when

the publishers came to me after
story lines and said, Have you

got an idea for another book? I
thought, Well, I've got the

collection of illustrations just
ready to have words put around

them. And so that was how World
came to be.

Gary: In modern day. We have
audio books, but we can't show

illustrate scenes in audio books.
So you decided or somebody

decided, I'm assuming you
decided that the illustrations

were going to be replaced by
music, folk songs. Did you make

those songs and how did you
decide to do that?

Amy: I think audiobook is such
an exciting medium because it's

relatively new in terms of the
how widespread and popular it is

now. I mean, I know we've got
audio books going back way, way

back with them, but everyone's
listening to audiobooks these

days and I, I think they can be
so much more than just a reading

aloud of a book. And when it
comes to medieval, using the

Middle Ages as a key for
storytelling, you can't get away

from the fact that stories were
everywhere, in every medium in

medieval culture that are
painted onto the walls of both

chambers and woven into
tapestries and in song or spoken

over instruments, and they're on
caskets and all kinds of things.

I'd also I've been producing
songs anyway, because I'm not

I'm not a highly trained
musician or anything like that.

I used to sit down at the piano
when I was struggling to find

the emotional crux of a story,
because when you're retelling

medieval stories, you've got to
find, I think, the thing in it

that matters to you emotionally
so that you can try and engage a

modern readership and enjoy the
process yourself. So I would sit

down and try and find a chord
sequence that kind of sounded

like the story or what I cared
about in the story and maybe put

some words to it. And I did the
same with Wild, and I thought,

and it's such an immersive world
anyway, the Elegies are so

immersive. It just seemed right
to try that out. And it was.

It's great because it's not it's
not authentic at all in the

sense of it's not on the liar or
using any medieval instruments

apart from the Voice.

But I hope it is authentic in
the sense that though it's all

in the service of the story. So
the first the story for the song,

for the Wife's Lament chapter,
the Earth chapter, is a kind of

scandi noir, metal, seething
sort of song. But then the one

for the Heaven chapter, the
Paradise chapter, is poorer and

a lot more kind of traditional
in that sense, and perhaps more

euphoric and hopefully beautiful.
And so I hoped that it would

like, as the illustrations do,
just kind of give a give an

extra emotional nudge to the
reader to kind of feel what that

chapter has to offer, as well as
kind of immersing themselves in

the non-fiction, the facts and
the quotes from Bede and what

sort of things that are in there
to.

Gary: Me gives the reader a
reason to pick up both books.

The physical book and the audio
book to experience the same

story, but in a different way.

Amy: Yeah, and it's a shame,
isn't it, if you know, because I

mean, I've got young children,
so I guess it's like, yeah, when

you have young children, it's
quite hard to sit down and read

for starters. So it's really
great to listen to audiobooks.

If your work is practical, then
it also is. It's an opportunity.

If you want to listen to
something to engage in

literature that way. So I listen
to a lot of audiobooks when I'm

making pictures, but it also is
a shame if the if the audiobook

is is, as you say, like lacking
something that the physical book

has. So I hoped that by offering
music it was a different product

and that would be, yeah. And you
could feel as though you were

getting the audiobook and
something that more right.

Gary: Okay, so what is in the
future? Do you have any other

books planned?

Amy: I do, I do. I'm not sure.
I'm not sure if I meant to say I

like. So it's so close to being
announced.

Gary: Stay tuned.

Amy: Yeah, Please stay tuned
because there's a book coming

out this autumn. It's imminent.
It's all going to be kind of

hitting social media in the next
couple of months and it's in the

same vein as story, land and
water sort of theories. Then

it's in that series and it's a
similar sort of aesthetic and a

similar sort of structure of
stories and commentaries. And

it's and it's contingent on that
on their worlds. And so for me,

it's so exciting because it's
really building up a secondary

fantasy worldview, actually,
because in both of these books

and in this next one, you're
kind of putting medieval goggles

on. There's magical realism. One
does can happen, Giants can walk

the earth, miracles can occur,
Wales can pose as islands and

drag you to the abyss. But the
great thing about this current

project for me is seeing all of
those connections yet again and

and seeing them kind of get more
complicated and bigger as as

this world emerges. So I'm
hoping that for readers of Story

Land and Wild, this next one
will keep on reinforcing what

the other two have put in place
and add to it as well. In this

delicious world of the medieval
imagination, there is such a

thing.

Gary: Excellent. All right. Well,
thank you for being on the show,

Amy. Where can people find you
online and where can they get

your books?

Amy: You can find me on
Instagram. As Amy just

underscored, author on Twitter
as Amy underscore Historia,

which is the Latin for history,
and it will be great to see you

on there and I will keep posting
about forthcoming projects.

Thank you guys so much for
having me. It's been lovely.

Gary: I enjoyed the talk with
Amy and we'd like to thank her

again for taking time out of her
busy schedule to come on the

show. You can find the links to
Amy's book Storyline A New

Mythology of Britain and Wild
Tales from early medieval

Britain in the show Notes and
Medieval Archives dot com slash

89. There's also links to her
Instagram and Twitter accounts.

You should follow one or both of
those to stay up to date about

her upcoming book. It sounds
like another great read. If

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