Online Talk: The Legend, Lore and Spirit of the Water Horse: From Ancient Myth to Celtic Folklore

Date 4 November 2025 19:00 - 20:30

Location Online talk

Speaker Stephen Miller

The Legend, Lore and Spirit of the Water Horse: From Ancient Myth to Celtic Folklore

A Folklore Society online talk

Tuesday 4 November, 19:00 GMT

Stephen Miller talks about his new book The Legend, Lore and Spirit of the Water Horse (https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-0364-5248-3), which brings together the various legends and traditions of the water horse that have arisen over the centuries, in mythology, folklore, literature and the visual arts.

He explores the meaning of such stories and with the identification and association of such phenomena with natural, supernatural and mythical presences. The many connected folk tales and legends of such water spirits share an ambiguous moral teaching, conjuring with the romance and mystery of water, as a sacred, cleansing and also untamed and disruptive natural and supernatural agent. Are such seeming incompatible manifestations linked? And what is their relationship with the human psyche and their place in the cosmological order of things?

Stephen Miller is an author, independent book reviewer and published poet, who lives in London. He is an alumnus of King’s College London and the author of five monographs, including The Book of Angels (2019), The Green Man in Medieval England (2022)—previously nominated for the Katharine Briggs Annual Book Award—and his latest, The Legend, Lore and Spirit of the Water Horse (2025). He has contributed to a wide selection of journals and periodicals and written various articles for De Gruyter’s Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception (CHOICE ‘Outstanding Academic Title’ recipient, 2020).

Tickets £6.00 (£4.00 for Folklore Society members with the Promo Code: log in to the Members Area to get the Promo Code): book via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-legend-lore-and-spirit-of-the-water-horse-tickets-1857025656729?C

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Image: photo Stephen Miller