Before Poe, before Coleridge, before Blake, the otherworld was cast in verse by nameless bards of the ancient Scottish ballad tradition. The ballad is our usual vehicle for the heroic and the tragic, as in The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens. But, in the mirky forests of medieval Britain, a witches brew of Celtic, Germanic, and Christian ingredients gave us another tradition.
Imperium Press presents Ballads Weird and Wonderful, twenty-five poems of the dark, the grotesque, and the unearthly. With equally unearthly illustrations by Vernon Hill, this collection is perfect, for when the veil between this world and the next grows thin.
