Storytelling: The Buried Moon / The Dead Moon, English folktale

This story is usually called The Buried Moon.  A version of this story appears online, on a page cataloging Joseph  Jacobs' 1894 collection of English folk and fairy tales (More English Fairy Tales).  It also appears as a picture book called The Buried Moon, with the language slightly simplified by Amanda Walsh, who also created haunting Steven-Kellog-ish twisty illustrations for it.  Charles de Lint also has an homage-tale called The Moon is Drowning as I Sleep.

Like most stories I want to tell, this is a triumphant story, where good prevails due to bravery and cleverness.  The fens (marshes) are dangerous places at night, except on the nights of the full moon.  On those nights, the brightness drives the evil lurkers away, and lets travelers pass in safety, until one night when a traveler is led astray by a will-o-the-wisp.   The moon pities him, and even though it isn't the night of the full moon, she comes down from the sky to lead him to safety.  He is saved, but in her weakened state is caught in a snag, and captured and buried under a heavy stone by the vengeful evil lurkers, who are angry that she makes the night safe for humans once a month.

Now the humans have no moon at all, ever, and the fens crawl with evil, and anyone out after dark is lost.  In despair, the villagers search through the whole town to find the last successful traveler, and with his memory and the advice of a wise-woman (cryptic as always;  "search for a coffin, cross, and candle") the entire village arms themselves with light and heads into the deadly marshes at dusk of the next full-moon night to search.  The moon is found under the stone (the coffin) marked by the snag that caught her (the cross) and lit by the triumphant will-o-the-wisp who sits there gloating every night (the candle).  Once rescued, she rises up out of the night, and her brightness scalds the evil lurkers into nothing.  Now the fens there, and the adjacent villages, are the safest places in England to be at night.

This one has a lot of potential.  First, as a straightforward folk-tale, it packs a punch.  Evil marsh-lurkers and people and beautiful lady moons getting dragged down into the muck and buried, tortured or eaten?  Heck yes!  The people also get mad props because they manage their rescue with cleverness and bravery, not with fairy tricks or magic assistance.  Finally, the tragedy is a true tragedy.  The moon is caught, not because she's vain or careless or stupid, but because she was trying to help someone despite being weak, and her true powers are revealed after she's rescued.

There's also a lot of potential to pad it out a bit.  Does the moon save the traveler because she thinks he's handsome?  Perhaps they are lovers?  Perhaps the traveler himself is something supernatural, and that's why he tried to cross the fens after dark?

Why is this one village/town in the middle of fae-infested marshes?  What sort of people live in a town like that?  What if the old wise woman (or even most/all of the townspeople) were priestess or devotee of the moon?

What if the marshes were haunted by human spirits instead of / in addition to the original bogles, truckles, and kelpies?

What if the moon took the traveler back into the sky with her as she was rescued and left?

What if the fens were permanently brightened by moon-light, and that's the origins of fox-fire lights?



So much to play with, depending on audience and length needed.

Books and sources:

Wikipedia Article on The Buried Moon  

The Buried Moon
Amanda Walsh
ISBN: 0395593492

More English Fairy Tales
The Buried Moon
Joseph Jacobs
"original" version from 1894 collection
Available online and on Project Gutenberg

The Moon is Drowing as I Sleep
Charles de Lint
Collected in:
Dreams Underfoot
ISBN: 9780765306791
and in
The Very Best of Charles de Lint
ISBN: 9781892391964