Tree of Leaf and Flame

Tree of Leaf and Flame is Daniel Morden's unique take on the tales of the Mabinogi. It's the perfect opportunity to hear these strange and fascinating tales retold by a storyteller who earns his living travelling Wales and holding audiences spellbound - just as the professional bards and troubadours did all those years ago. Tir na n-Og Award winner 2013.

About the Author :
Daniel Morden is a professional storyteller whose illustrious career has taken him all over the world, from Abergavenny to New York, the Arctic to the Caribbean. He visits many schools and libraries across the UK and is a regular performer at literature festivals across the country. Dark Tales from the Woods won the 2007 Tir na n-Og award.

Review :
A compelling cover and a captivating title will surely draw readers both young and old into the pages of this pocket-sized version of some tales of the Mabinogi, by the gifted storyteller Daniel Morden. His narrative technique is crisp and bardic. His simplicity of language and sentence structures balance the complexity of the stories themselves, which can so often be a hindrance to the understanding of younger readers. The repetition of half-remembered phrases, and the revisiting of traditional storytelling techniques, building to an inevitable crescendo of decisive action is hard to fault. Daniel’s treatment of some of the more horrific and risqué elements of this weird and sometimes ragged collection of legends is both sensitive and stark. Indeed, the whole essence of the book seems to be one of stark contrasts – difficulties in balancing power and love, kingship and domesticity, reality and fantasy, today’s world and the past, the half-living and the half-dead. The mirror image of Prince Pwyll as he exchanges his year-life with Arawn, seems to signify the very heart of the collection. Exchanges can be blessings or curses. Also at the heart of this publication are the evocative, and I must admit sometimes disturbing, scraperboard images by the talented Brett Breckon. The design and restrained colour of the tree and its branches on the textured dust jacket is hard to resist, and I particularly like the simple chapter-heading vignettes of the four creatures involved – the stag, the starling, the field mouse and the eagle, so evocative of the Four Branches themselves. Brett’s interpretation of the text is best when he concentrates on the humanity of the protagonists. Brân, Pwyll and Gwydion convince the eye, which may well be puzzled by the inanimate fountain and golden bowl of Annwn’s fortress, or the monstrous woman and the magic cauldron – to each his own preference. Daniel Morden’s voice seems to become that of Gwydion, the magicican storyteller himself. As the collection reaches its dramatic conclusion with the deaths of Lleu, Gronw and Blodeuwedd in the Fourth Branch, so the book’s title is cunningly revealed. A masterful interpretation in poetic prose. Like the narrator, I wish I could say that this is the end of the story, but our own unfinished stories of life’s pleasures and life’s troubles (even those of a young reader) will, I feel, continue to haunt us in the dual worlds we have encountered in this selection of tales. They have conjured up the world we know and believe in every day – Hereford, Gloucester, the Irish Sea, the Tower of London – as well as the mystical world of Celtic mythology, caught for Welsh culture and tradition in the tales of the Mabinogion. Together, or individually, we can follow in the footsteps of Pwyll and Pryderi and climb the hill at Arberth, where we too will be blessed or cursed by our choices. Ancient tales of magic and mystery retold by one the UK’s finest storytellers Tree of Leaf and Flame, published by Pont Books, is award-winning storyteller, Daniel Morden’s unique take on the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, an intertwining set of tales from the Middle Ages. Mysterious and dreamlike, they link two worlds: the everyday world we all inhabit, and Annwn, a magic Otherworld where nothing is as it seems. Tales of bold warriors, resourceful wives and scheming spellbinders are sure to cast a spell over the reader just as they do the storyteller himself. And what better way to enjoy these strange and fascinating tales than through the words of a storyteller who earns his living travelling Wales – just as the professional bards and troubadours did all those years ago? When asked what inspired him to write this book, Daniel Morden’s response was “I wanted to write a book I would have enjoyed reading when I was 10. I wanted to make these haunting, thrilling stories available to the young people I meet during my schools visits.” As well as being suitable for children of 9 years and older, Tree of Leaf and Flame also offers an accessible and unique take on the tales of The Mabinogi for adults. The book includes a useful pronunciation guide that uses common English words and syllables to help non-Welsh speakers pronounce names of characters and places. The striking scraperboard style illustrations by Brett Breckon convey perfectly the double nature of Daniel’s tales, that interplay of light and dark and good and evil which characterises the tales from the Mabinogi. The book is illustrated by Brett Breckon in the striking scraperboard style which attracted such praise in the companion volume Dark Tales from the Woods, published by Pont in 2006.