The ballad of young Tam Lin

By Patricia A. Leslie

Subjects: Tam Lin (Legendary character), Scotland, fiction, Families, Fiction, historical, general, Scottish Romance fiction, Fiction, Folklore

Description: The place is the Scottish Borders. The time is 1790. Lady Janet Dunbar, just turned twenty, is a very proper young heiress, who has had a 'modern' education, and does not believe in tales about fairies and elves. But now she is with child, gossips' tongues are wagging, her father the Earl is furious and has ordered her to keep to her chamber until she agrees to reveal her lover's name... And Tam Lin -- the handsome, charming young gentleman to whom she so trustingly gave away her virtue on May Day -- has turned out to be the sworn consort of the Elf-Queen of Summerland. Can anything else go wrong in Janet's neatly-planned life? Well ... do Fairy-Folk dance in the woods? Strongly inspired by the original old Scottish ballad, set in 1790, and written in the spirit of Jane Austen as a historical comedy of manners, the story is blended with paranormal elements derived from real mythology, Celtic folklore, and contemporary metaphysical wisdom, with a dash of Shakespeare's 'Midsummer' blended in. The traditional Scottish ballad of Tam Lin has inspired many re-tellings. This is the first to set the tale in the late 1700s, and the first to continue the story in an ongoing family-saga series of fantasy-romances, generation by generation.