In 2023, House of Legends, Candlelit Tales and Fair Folk Media came together to craft our first retreat.
For three days a group of mythic adventurers dreamed within the womb of a highland woodland, soaking ourselves in the stories of Scotland, Ireland and Scandinavia.
In 2025 we return on a breathtaking new site in the heart of the Scottish Highlands.
Join us in 2025 for The Song of Oak & Ash.
Scotland is synonymous with romanticism, mystery and magic. She is also a land whose spiritual traditions are largely forgotten, her ancient chain of mythic heritage severed.
Yet her stories speak of a wolf-riding crone who shaped mountains and islands with her hammer. Of a dream-steeped trickster who reshaped the seas with the tongue of a snake.
A short sail to the west lies Ireland, where monks recorded myths even as they warped them, and where the names of the gods still ride the tongues of storytellers. And to the north-east lies Scandinavia, whose longships brought piracy, then settlement, then a mixing of mythologies to these lands.
On this retreat we will gather round fires, at the loch’s edge and in the shadow of mountains to immerse ourselves in the lore of Ireland, Scotland and Scandinavia. These stories are our sacred heritage, our gateway to the gods of our ancestors.
Beneath waterfalls, on hilltops and at the rising of the sun, we will make ceremony together, answering that bone-deep urge to reach out and entwine with a living, breathing, ensouled world.
This is a co-creative journey. We will invite and support you to claim your own unique way of relating, being, knowing.
To create your own spontaneous ceremonies. To write your own prayers and sing them to the mountain. To tell the stories that claim you, whether your listeners are humans or trees or frogs.
To utterly open to what Fionn Mac Cumhaill calls ‘The music of what is happening now’.
We go to the mountains armed not with spears but with questions:
How can ancient story, folk song, tribe-making and newly-spun ceremony facilitate encounters with the old gods, legendary beings and mythic energies of these lands?
How can these meetings set us on the road of our individual mythic journeys?
How can these meetings give us the strength we need to navigate the wolf-time we live in?
Here’s what that looks like.
We will spend four nights in a stunning glen at the heart of Highland Scotland, where ancient peoples once lived in crannogs surrounded by soaring mountains.
We will hear ancient Celtic and Nordic tales told by master storytellers.
We will spend solo time by the loch and in old-growth forest, deepening into the landscape, the stories and whatever responses arise in us. On one day we will each take a solo pilgrimage into nature, with the hills awaiting those who hear their call.
We will take part in movement practices, awakening our bodies to receive the imprint of the tales.
We will connect the stories to the work of our hands through traditional crafting practices.
We will pay attention to our night dreams, our day dreams and the subtle speakings of stone, sunlight and crow feathers.
We will make ceremony together, drawing on the past, our own creativity and some freely-shared traditions of other cultures.
We will share ceilidh time in which everyone is encouraged to tell, sing, play. This was a highlights of our first retreat; we saw some wonderful new storytellers and singers awakening!
We will meet and partake of local medicinal herbs, particularly those which open our dreaming abilities.
At the heart of it all, we will hear powerful, ancient stories and songs in a setting which allows us to receive them deeply.
Emmas’s Experience in 2023
The Venue
Our venue this year is The Big Shed on Tombreck Farm, Loch Tay. Tombreck is a regenerative, organic, community-run farm situated on the north shore of Loch Tay. Above the site stands Ben Lawers, one of Scotland’s highest mountains, while between the farm and the loch lies a breathtaking woodland where we can freely roam. Full of waterfalls, pools and ancient trees, home to dragonflies, badgers and roe deer, all leading to a secluded beach… it could not be more perfect.
Your Hosts
Daniel Allison is the director of The Song of Oak and Ash. He is an oral storyteller, USA Today bestselling author and creativity coach from Scotland. He hosts the House of Legends podcast and is the author of Irish Mythology: The Children of Danu, Scottish Myths & Legends Vol. I & II, Finn & The Fianna and The Orkney Cycle.
Daniel’s Myth Singers Celtic Storytelling Apprenticeship provides a unique course of learning for beginning storytellers throughout the world.
Daniel is currently based in Thailand where he devotes himself to writing, storytelling coaching and martial arts. His chief interest is dreaming into the gaps in Celtic mythology; exploring the tattered edges of our surviving mythologies and discovering what creativity and ceremonial practice can bring to those spaces.
Aron Hegarty is a Cork-born and Dublin-based actor, writer, voice-over artist, storyteller and podcaster. Along with his sister Sorcha, he is co-host and co-founder of Candlelit Tales.
Aron’s style of storytelling and facilitation is full of both passion and playfulness, and he is sure to bring much energy and joy to the retreat. In the meantime, you can catch him on the recent SKY TV show Then You Run; other noteworthy film and TV credits include Game of Thrones, Ripper St and Vikings.
Aron's background was in hurling and sports as a youth. Injuries turned his path towards yoga, meditation and workshop facilitation. Having recently completed his yoga teacher training in India, Aron will be our yoga teacher on the retreat, both for cosy indoor sessions in the hall and beach yoga by the loch.
Danica Boyce is a paganism and folklore educator. Hailing from Western Canada, Danica is the host of the hugely popular Fair Folk podcast.
Danica’s courses focus on contemporary paganism, historical paganism and on the medieval European world. Popular offerings have included Abundance Paganism and Gathering the Gods. Her latest project is a newly-released course on ritual song.
Danica’s combination of rigorous scholarship with bold, contemporary ideas and a living pagan practice make her a unique and greatly exciting teacher.
Sorcha Hegarty is a Cork-born storyteller and the co-founder of the wildly popular Candlelit Tales. Along with her brother Aron, she has enjoyed a decade of collaborative, eclectic and diverse storytelling shows rooted in Irish Mythology.
Driven by their shared passion for Irish mythology and expression, Aron and Sorcha started retelling ancient stories to a near-empty room upstairs in a Dublin pub one rainy evening in November 2014. By the fourth week, the room was full, and so was the hall outside.
Sorcha has a uniquely expressive, naturalistic and modern style of telling, never hiding away from the challenging aspects of myth yet fully embracing them in all their dark and strange beauty. Her vast knowledge, keen insight and brilliant humour make her a superb contributor, and we can’t wait to share stories with her in the woods.
Sam Gillespie is a whistle and wooden flute player, guitarist, singer and songwriter from Northumberland. As one half of the duo The Brothers Gillespie, Sam tours widely, sharing songs that describe relationships with wild places and the experience of finding oneself in a world alive with soul. The brothers have opened for Lankum and Sam Lee and recently headlined Knockengorroch’s longhouse, and Sam regularly leads traditional music sessions in Edinburgh and beyond.
Says Sam, ‘Our music is inspired by the still wild soul of the land in which we live, a land alive with presences, not owned by anyone. It is about seeing with the eye of the heart and recovering our imaginations. It is about finding home, belonging and each other in a world which is singing to us as we sing to it’.
A massive hit at our last retreat, Sam will soundscape the stories with improvised music on a variety of instruments, as well as playing in ceremony, solo and perhaps alongside your story in a ceilidh session…
Practicalities & Pricing
The retreat runs from the evening of Thursday 11th September to the morning of Monday 15th September 2025. We will officially close the retreat on the Sunday evening, so those who need to get to work the next day can depart.
Our Sunday evening campfire session will be an informal, unstructured ceilidh with an emphasis on soothing and uplifting songs and stories; an easing back into our regular rhythms.
We will be camping on the lawn just outside the Big Shed, where there will always be tea, coffee and hot showers available, as well as a cosy, heated hall space for meals and indoor sessions.
There is the option of bringing your own tent or purchasing our glamping or super-glamping add-on’s, which include accommodation in pre-erected bell tents provided by Turtle Tents (who hosted our first retreat).
Everyone will need to bring outdoor clothing suitable for the Scottish Highlands.
For those who would find camping or glamping difficult, there are plenty of hotel/BnB options nearby. We would rather have you on-site if that’s within your capabilities, and we ask that you are on-site punctually for group sessions. Some sessions will start pre-dawn, others will finish late.
Our resident chef will provide high-quality, mostly-local vegetarian food from a light supper on Thursday evening to breakfast on Monday morning. Let us know of any dietary requirements.
There is a decent amount of parking space, though we do encourage lift-sharing (details to follow). We will arrange pickups for those coming on public transport.
Cost
The cost of the retreat is £450, all-inclusive with an extra charge for the glamping/super glamping package.
We are bringing you some of the finest teachers and performers in the field, so we think this represents superb value!
We are offering a deposit scheme this year to make payment manageable.
Please review the terms and conditions before going ahead.
Travel Information
The retreat will be held on the banks above Loch Tay at the Big Shed, near Aberfeldy in the Scottish Highlands. (https://www.bigshed.org.uk/). This is a top notch community-run event space beneath the mighty Ben Lawers. We have hired the whole space and will have both indoor and outdoor workshop spaces available.
What 3 words location: https://w3w.co/artichoke.cuts.tortoises
Address: Lawers, Aberfeldy PH15 2PB
If you are coming to Scotland from overseas, we advise you to fly into either Glasgow or Edinburgh Airport, it’s roughly the same distance to the venue from each airport. If using public transport to get to the retreat, you should travel onwards to either Stirling or Perth via train and pick up one of the public buses towards Craggantoul. You can also get a train directly to Pitlochry and continue on public transport, or organise a private taxi to take you to the site. The drive is around 1 hour from Pitlochry.
There are multiple options to get to the site, approaching from various directions. Loch Tay has plenty accommodation options along its banks, including self-catered options, guest houses and hotels in the villages of Kenmore and Killin at either end of the loch.
We will set up a ridesharing group nearer the time to support people with travel to the venue.
You Will Experience:
ancient stories told by master storytellers in stunning locations
traditional and original music and song from renowned musicians
ceremonies with teacher plants including mugwort and cacao
ceremonies on the mountainside, in the forest and in Loch Tay herself (don’t forget to bring a towel)
nature connection exercises
a choice of morning practices including yoga with Aron, Muay Thai with Daniel and dream work with Sorcha
a period of solo time engaged in dialogue with the natural world, with facilitated integration afterwards.
storytelling, folk song and songwriting workshops
a special night-time ceremonial story immersion
ceremonial music played by our superb resident piper, John Anderson
nourishing and lovingly-prepared food
guidance on deepening your own pagan/animistic/spiritual practise
optional 1-2-1 integration work
ceilidh sessions where everyone can take a turn to tell, sing or play
That’s what we’re offering. We hope you’ll join us.
“A transformational experience beyond what I could have imagined’”
“It was sublime... I can’t wait to be back!’”
