Category Archives: Stories

There are stories of haunting here at the Kinrowan Estate going back centuries. Of patrons of our Pub who came back again and again at last call to hoist just one more pint of their favourite ale, of the gameskeeper … Continue reading →

Once upon a time, I fiddled away the entire night of a summer solstice under the stars with a Québécois band named Les Chèvres Dansantes. That means in English ‘The Dancing Goats’, the French Canadian name for the Northern Lights, … Continue reading →

Overheard in the Green Room one night… There, my friend. I am not good company tonight, but if you can stand the long face, I’ll buy the rounds, all right? Here, Reynard — a pint for this compassionate one, the … Continue reading →

The dragon was carved of a local stone in multiple pieces by a local firm after consultation with an artist who sketched out the dragon. It didn’t look like the Welsh national symbol but rather was more akin to a … Continue reading →

From: Ingrid, Steward of the Kinrowan Estate To: Our friends in the local area You are cordially invited to a weekend celebration of Summer which will be held the third weekend of June starting on that Friday afternoon. Now I … Continue reading →

I’m the lead publican here at the Pub, and, if I must say so myself, a damn fine concertina player even though I need to find more time to play these days. I’m also an avid reader, so I’ve made many … Continue reading →

Dear Ekentrina, I find myself restless this morning, even though I got barely three hours sleep, as the Pub stayed busy ’till past two. Blame it on three days of truly nasty weather that’s left the Spring work crews with … Continue reading →

G’Evening Anna, Oh, I meant to tell you that you missed a culinary treat last week. Iain asked Mrs. Ware to have the Several Annies prepare a traditional Cornish breakfast, including hog’s pudding (simply a white pudding) and Cornish potato … Continue reading →

From: Jack Merry, Booking Manager, Kinrowan Estate To: Simon Sterling, Agent for Banish Misfortune In talking to you last week about wanting to book one of the bands you represent, Banish Misfortune, I told you our terms for booking them … Continue reading →

Some hold that the Green Man is but a Celtic myth retold by the English as a sort of ethnic cleansing of the native culture. That is bullocks as there’s really no Green Men in English myth either no matter … Continue reading →

We don’t eat a lot of beef here, as we don’t raise any beef, which means we either purchase or trade for it with other farms in our area. So what beef we do consume is combined with other ingredients … Continue reading →

Some of the, errr, visitors we get here would rival anything from the Inn called World’s End. Such was The Crooked Man, as he called himself. Again I stress that only those with The Sight, the ability to see the … Continue reading →

A library catalogue is an index of all bibliographic items found in a library such as the one here at Kinrowan Estate. Our catalogue covers all thirty thousand or so books, chapbooks, maps and even art. The Catalogue includes data … Continue reading →

Dear Katrina, You missed the Raggedy Man this week. Only Hangadróttinn and Liath Evergreen remember his last visit which means that visit was a very long time ago. Centuries, perhaps, even. And an odd creature he is. Clothed in Autumn … Continue reading →

Like any good pub, there are of course rules at The Green Man Pub. Everyone is welcome, provided they can behave like a reasonable being. (I don’t say human as some of our visitors are most decidedly not human, although … Continue reading →

I haven’t seen him despite having The Sight but several persons down the years have said they’ve seen a man dressed in Victorian Era clothes and looking apparently quite solid. He looked to in his late fifties or early sixties, … Continue reading →

It was well past the witching hour on a night when a hard rain was beating against the windows in our Pub when the stranger clad in her woollen cloak dyed a black so dark that I wasn’t quite sure I … Continue reading →

Like visiting musicians who get food, drink, and a place to sleep, storytellers are treated in the same manner. So it was that a storyteller looking a lot like John Hurt’s character in Jim Henson’s The Storyteller came to be … Continue reading →

Time is never called in my recurring dream of pubs. — Ciaran Carson in Last Night’s Fun: In and Out of Time with Irish Music It is a hundred different late evenings in the deep of a hundred different winters in … Continue reading →

Nicholas Winter, the Global News Service correspondent who’s a friend of many folks here, just sent Bela and others lovers of Hungarian food a very tasty shipment of food and spirits from Budapest! The lucky soul got to spend December … Continue reading →

Most stories about the Fey, she told us, say there is a duality to the rulers that reflects the duality of Summer and Winter — a King who rules over Summer, and one who rules Winter, each with his own attributes, … Continue reading →

We indeed get some very queer customers in the Pub, particularly as the weather gets grimmer, but he was one of the oddest I’d ever seen for more years tending bar than I care to think of. Not that at … Continue reading →

Dear Anna, Did you know the Swedes make pumpkin ale? I’ve been researching the history of it and thought that it existed not ‘tall outside of Britain, Ireland, and North America where various small breweries such as ours are doing … Continue reading →

His accent was thick, understandable if you listened carefully, English though it be, it sounded more Welsh in cadence than English. And he was a burly man, well over six feet tall and stocky to boot with grey eyes and … Continue reading →

Dear Love, I see from the papers that your tour with Leaf & Tree is getting glowing reviews across Canada. Hopefully this letter will reach in Halifax before your last performance there. (I know I can email you anytime but … Continue reading →

If you’ve visited us and been here when it was raining, you know why we put in a modern heating system. Heating with wood was cold, really cold in the winter, and miserably damp when it rained. I mentioned that … Continue reading →

Greetings Annbjørg, About that theatre I mentioned — we’ve had a theatre in the round for nearly forty years now, ever since the a particular Steward developed a deep affection for theatre. He noticed that the very old stone livestock auction barn either … Continue reading →

Remember the Clue film with Tim Curry? Well one of Iain’s Library Apprentices did remember it fondly and she decided to organize a similar game recently as she thought it’d make a splendid diversion in the Winter here. She limited … Continue reading →

Istanbul, Turkey 23rd of November, 1926 Global News Service It’s a cold morning here as I sip my Turkish coffee outside a small smoked-filled cafe near the Grand Bazaar. It’s been just three years since Ataturk and his military allies … Continue reading →

During the early Victorian Era, the Head Gardener at the time, Jacob Niles, persuaded the Steward to invest in a conservatory. According to the journals kept by him and the Steward, the deciding factor was that it could be used … Continue reading →

Oh, come on in and join us. Mackenzie and I were admiring the repair job our resident bookseller and binder did on one of the older Estate journals as I had need of the information on the proper apples for … Continue reading →

Overheard in the Green Room one night… There, my friend. I am not good company tonight, but if you can stand the long face, I’ll buy the rounds, all right? Here, Reynard — a pint for this compassionate one, the … Continue reading →

Just past Midsummer, and life around the Kinrowan Estate offices has started getting a little weird. Oh, all right, a little weirder. I’m reporting in from the Estate building on a beautiful warm day. I’ve been noticing that the young … Continue reading →

Though we have long since adopted new technologies here at the Kinrowan Estate for providing heat, including electric radiators from low head hydro on the river that runs through our lands, and deep thermal power pumps (expensive but worth it), … Continue reading →

Herne. His voice was like moss on the bark of an ancient tree… deep and smooth, making you expect velvet. And then you touch the bark and it is cold, cold and with a hardness like stone under it. I … Continue reading →

Dear Anna, Katrina and I enjoyed our visit in Stockholm with you over the last fortnight. We hadn’t enjoyed the wonders of Stockholm since we were there nearly a decade back as it’s hard to get away for enough time … Continue reading →

More Midnight Wine? A bit of smoked savannah slinker? Some snow-white strawberries from the other side of that Border? What tickles your fancy this fine morning? I was eating a very late breakfast with a few other Green Man staffers … Continue reading →

Dear Peter, Here’s my thoughts on the history of writing retreats here The first recorded one was in the Twenties, a small group of mystery writers, no one that anyone reads now, but who were all fairly well-known at that … Continue reading →

Dear Svetlana, Glad to hear that your trip to Ukrainian-speaking Canada went well. It’s amazing how much of their culture, including language, they’ve retained, as it’s well over a century since their ancestors settled there! So you want know about … Continue reading →

It was three in the morning, the time most babies are born and more people die than at any other hour. The Pub was empty but for me and The Old Man writing in his journal as His Ravens looked … Continue reading →

From: Jack Merry, Booking Manager, Kinrowan Estate To: Simon Sterling, Agent for Banish Misfortune In talking to you last week about wanting to book one of the bands you represent, Banish Misfortune, I told you our terms for booking them … Continue reading →

One of the finest ales I’ve ever encountered was while I was busking in Reykjavik one cold November day when it was getting far too cold to make a profit. I looked around and saw a pub near the corner … Continue reading →

All the gardens here are by long standing tradition an ongoing collaboration between the Estate Head Gardener and the Estate Head Cook. So you ask, how does that work out? Quite well actually . . . Keep in mind that one is … Continue reading →

If you’ve got a bit of time to spare, I could use your help! Remember me mentioning a couple of weeks ago that the fellow violinists in the Huddled Masses Violin Ensemble (at their reunion somewhere in central Europe) insisted … Continue reading →

Greetings Anna, You’ll be tickled to know that Jack is putting back together the Medieval music group called Danse Macabre that he had here well over twenty years ago. Of course, there’ll be new musos including my wife, Catherine, joining … Continue reading →

A library catalogue is an index of all bibliographic items found in a library such as the one here at Kinrowan Estate. Our catalogue covers several hundred thousand or so books, chapbooks, maps and even art. The Catalogue includes data … Continue reading →