MY INTEREST IN EXPLORING the legends and folklore of the British Isles was largely fostered by the opportunity to teach a course about them on the Oxford Experience Summer Programme at Christ Church, University of Oxford, over a number of summers in the 1990s and the following decade. Other Junior Year Abroad programmes, notably Advanced Studies in England, also gave scope for developing my work and my thinking about these tales, and I thank Barbara White, Shirley Fawdrey and a good number of students for their support in this regard. Juliette Wood did much to encourage my interest in folklore. More recently, working with Maria Cecire on her D.Phil. has been an inspiration; discussions with David Clark, Tom Birkett and John Blair have thrown up all kinds of insights. I am grateful to Damian Ward, Simon Jones, Rudi Winter and Sigurd Towrie for kindly allowing me to use their photographs and other illustrative material. Henry Hudson has been a great help in reading and commenting on an early draft; my brother, David Larrington, has also read a draft and his wonderfully eclectic knowledge has left its imprint on this final version. Special thanks to Alex Wright at I.B.Tauris, who persuaded me to put these ideas into writing, and to Samir Shah and Max O’Brien for taking the book’s ideas forward into another medium altogether.