So the old stories are never forgotten

Long before there were books, there were fires. People gathered around them at night and told each other stories: of tricksters and river spirits, of clever daughters and foolish kings, of how the moon got its face. Those stories carried a people's humour, their fears and their hopes from one generation to the next.

Many of those voices have gone quiet. Some tales survive only in old, out-of-print books. Others live in the memory of a few grandparents. Every year, a little more is lost.

Bard's Bield is a fire that never goes out.

It gathers folk tales from traditions across the world, from Celtic shores and West African villages to the mountains of Japan, the forests of the Americas, the courtyards of South Asia and the olive groves of Palestine, and gives them a warm, quiet place to be read and heard again.

It is free, and it will stay free. There is no sign-up, no advertising and no tracking of what you read. A child in one corner of the world and a grandparent in another should be able to open the same story, by the same fire, at no cost.

Because a tale is only truly lost when no one tells it anymore. Every time you open one here, you are keeping it alive.