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BEVAN THOMAS

~ Writer, editor, storyteller

BEVAN THOMAS

Tag Archives: Celtic

Fairy Tale Flash Fiction: Fairy Shoemaker

17 Tuesday Mar 2026

Posted by Bevan Thomas in Flash Fiction, Irish Folklore

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Celtic, fairytaleflash, fantasy, fiction, flash fiction, folklore, Irish folklore, Irish mythology, mythology

For this week, the prompt for flash fiction submitted as part of #FairyTaleFlash is “St. Patrick’s Day, leprechauns, or fairies.” It’s interesting that in old Irish folktales, the leprechaun was one of the few fairies that actually had a job — he was their cobbler. The great W. B. Yeats suggested that the reason a fairy cobbler was so important was that the other fairies wore out their shoes with all their fancy dancing, which I always thought was a funny idea.

March 17, 2026

“The leprechaun bent over the fine fairy boot. Fixing them was ticklish – the sidhe imbued their footwear with strange spells, and didn’t care how much they wore them out. Hard to repair without shredding the magic, but was there a better way to earn a pot of gold?”
#FairyTaleFlash

Illustration by Warwick Goble

Fairy Tale Flash Fiction: Owain and Modron

06 Tuesday May 2025

Posted by Bevan Thomas in Flash Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Welsh Folklore

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Arthurian, Celtic, fairytaleflash, fantasy, flashfiction, folklore, King Arthur, Wales

For this week, the prompt for flash fiction submitted to #FairyTaleFlash is “mothers (human or animal) or fairy godmothers or stepmothers.” I decided to explore the birth of Owain, one of King Arthur’s warriors in the Welsh stories. The late French authors renamed him “Ywain,” and made him the son of Morgan le Fey. However, in the Welsh stories, Owain is the son of Modron, a mysterious entity who seems to have been a Celtic mother goddess.

May 6, 2025

My father lay with my mother by a river. Less than a year later, she gave to him me and my twin brother. Then she left. They say she was Modron, a mother goddess our people worshipped long ago. If she was a mother goddess, why was she not a mother to me?
#FairyTaleFlash

Image is a statue of Matrona, the Gaulish equivalent of Modron.


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    ♣ BLOG

    • Fairy Tale Flash Fiction: Fairy Shoemaker
    • Fairy Tale Flash Fiction: The Wounds of Selene
    • Fairy Tale Flash Fiction: Owain’s Ravens
    • Fairy Tale Flash Fiction: King Arthur’s Mood
    • Fairy Tale Flash Fiction: The Campfire

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