The Moon-Eyed People: Folk Tales from Welsh America

A mining settlement in Appalachia is described as being unfit for pigs to live in, Welsh weavers make cloth for enslaved people, a monster is defeated by a medicine-girl, a Welsh criminal marries an ‘Indian Princess’, Lakota men who witnessed Wounded Knee re-enact the massacre in Cardiff, and all the while, mountain women practise Appalachian hoodoo, native healing, and Welsh witchcraft. These stories are a mixture of true tales, tall tales and folk tales, that tell of the lives of migrants who left Wales and settled in America, of the native people who had long been living there, and those curious travellers who returned to find their roots in the old country. They were explorers, miners, dreamers, hobos, tourists, farmers, radicals, showmen, sailors, soldiers, witches, warriors, wolf-girls, poets, preachers, prospectors, political dissidents, social reformers, and wayfaring strangers. The Cherokee called them ‘The Moon-Eyed People’. AUTHOR: Peter Stevenson is a professional storyteller and illustrator, and is the organiser of Aberystwyth Storytelling Festival. He recently made a series of films on Welsh landscape, artists, musicians and storytellers. He regularly does storytelling tours of North America and has told stories of Welsh America at Greenwich Village. He is currently curating an exhibition of Welsh folk art, storytelling and illustration at the Monongalia Arts Center, West Virginia. He has produced books internationally for publishers such as Ladybird and Hodder & Stoughton. This his third book for The History Press. He lives in Ceredigion, Wales.
20 b/w illustrations