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A podcast full of Scottish folklore, folk history and folk traditions brought to you by Scottish Storyteller and author, Eileen Budd
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Eileen Budd connects Scottish tales and customs to the records, places, rituals, and working lives that kept them in circulation.
Scottish Folk lets Eileen Budd move between archival detail and traditional storytelling without flattening one into the other. A discussion of chapbooks follows Dougal Graham from Jacobite eyewitness accounts to his work as a printer, while the Beltane material compares…
A blackened Beltane oat cake decides who leaps the fire; your history lessons rarely get this strange.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Scottish divination, a personal banshee account, and a giantess from four chronicles keep belief close to the ground.
Scottish Folk treats supernatural belief as a practical way of reading the Scottish landscape. Smoke, clouds, and the first sight at the end of a house become omens, while a boar, raw meat, herring, and clan animals each carry their own charge of meaning.
A Scottish fire festival is traced through hilltop flames, regional rites, and embers carried home for good fortune.
Beltane comes through as a sacred fire festival tied to the arrival of summer, with Scotland marking it around the 1st or 2nd of May and Ireland traditionally carrying the celebration through the month.
A warm, companionable gathering of Scottish folklore, from the Witch of Mar to Brawn's enchanted search.
Scottish folklore settles into a warm, tale-by-tale rhythm, starting with the Witch of Mar and the Caeliac's supposed palace in the Forest of Mar before moving to Brawn, a pig sent after a shining pebble, an elder leaf, and a maiden's kiss.
A loose seasonal return where school visits, bakers' customs, old cures, and Scottish folklore meet.
The episode frames Scottish folklore as something still tied to season, place, and everyday practice. It moves from Eileen Budd's school visits across Scotland into stories, customs, cures, and warnings carried forward from older traditions.
A deft Scottish journey from Jacobite chapbooks to hawthorn folklore and the Queen of Elfland.
Scottish Folk Podcast opens a bright window onto Scotland's cheap print trade through Dougal Graham, the farm labourer turned peddler who learned printing in Glasgow and ran a press of his own.
Whisky lore told as living folklore, not museum trivia.
Eileen Budd uses whisky as a doorway into Scottish folklore, moving from Lindor's Abbey and the 1494 record of aquavita to smuggling, wedding-day mischief, and farm rituals. The piece treats those stories as living culture: funny, local, and tied to place rather than trivia.
Mountain history, told close to the road.
Rowdy paranormal lore with the lights flickering.
Phoebe Judge narrates true crime history and interviews the authors who uncovered it.
Dramatized deep dives into American history, from the Galveston hurricane to Harper Lee's Mockingbird.
Dana Schwartz narrates the violent lives of monarchs, warlords, and queens.
The host shares a Scottish folk story about a dairymaid with a magical gift for communicating with animals, who transforms after fairies come to claim their promise.
This inaugural episode of The Scottish Folk Podcast features host Eileen Budd introducing herself as a Scottish storyteller and tradition bearer, sharing her background and research, and beginning to tell the story of Spunky Janet, a 19th-century love charm seller from Dundee.
This episode explores Scottish animal folklore and its connection to nature, rituals around life events like birth, and cultural parallels with figures like Chief Seattle.
This episode of the Scottish Folk Podcast shares requested stories from Scottish oral tradition, including family submissions and historical folk tales, starting with a spooky story from 1730 about William Souter and Bishop Thomas Rattray's interest in the undead.
This episode of the Scottish Folk Podcast retells the epic Scottish folktale 'The Mermaid,' beginning with a poor fisherman who encounters a mermaid offering fish in exchange for his firstborn son.
This episode explores Scottish folk beliefs about fairies, contrasting them with modern depictions and explaining their association with the dead, underworld, and burial cairns.
This episode explores enduring Scottish folklore stories, particularly an origin tale about humans emerging from the natural world, inspired by an oral history project.
This episode of the Scottish Folk Podcast features a traditional Scottish folklore story about a man named John who encounters a bear while on a quest to save his sick father.
This episode explores the fascinating connection between female deities and snakes across various cultures and time periods, from ancient Minoan goddesses to biblical Eve and Celtic/Christian figures.
This episode of the Scottish Folk Podcast shares traditional Scottish stories from oral tradition, including tales about ghosts, demons, and mythical creatures like water horses and kelpies, starting with a story about a young healer's tragic love and a magical spell.
This episode shares a historical mystery from 1938 about an unidentified man found in a remote Scottish river, discovered during research for an oral history project in Glen Esk.
This episode of the Scottish Folk Podcast features ancient Scottish folklore stories, including a tale about a Selkie (a mythical sea creature) and a man of the earth exploring themes of love and belonging to the sea.
This Yuletide special episode features a Scottish Gaelic Christmas song performed by collaborators, with historical background on its origins.
This episode explores the story of Dr.
This Scottish Folk Podcast episode discusses Samhain traditions, promotes a bagpipe history podcast, and shares an Arthurian legend from Gaelic tradition.
The host shares personal experiences from a busy week of storytelling events in schools and at festivals, highlighting community engagement and Scottish folklore.
Eileen Budd shares stories about poaching in Scotland, including techniques like ferreting, historical figures like Roch Sonny and Davy Grey, and the role of women in poaching and smuggling, blending folklore with social history.
Eileen Budd opens Scottish Folk Podcast Season 2 Episode 1 by saying she has been away since Samhain because of school visits, private events, and in-person storytelling work.
Eileen Budd opens the Scottish Folk Podcast’s Beltane episode with Scotland’s 1st or 2nd of May fires and Ireland’s month-long Beltane observance.
Scottish Folk moves from Dougal Graham's Jacobite battle accounts to the Flying Stationers who sold chapbooks from packs, stalls, and auctions.
A 1984 Iceland survival case, where a steersman spent six hours in freezing water and later tested with seal-like fat, sits beside Scottish tales of witches, selkies, and horse charms.
Host Eileen Budd introduces the Scottish Folk Podcast, sharing a handwritten poem she discovered in a thrift shop book, which reflects on the small, joyful moments in life.
This episode explores the history of whisky in Scotland, focusing on illicit smuggling in the 18th and 19th centuries, the clever tactics of smugglers like Lizzie Rattray and Robert Armour, and how this underground trade shaped legal distilleries.
This episode explores Scottish traditions of divination and fortune telling, including methods like smoke gazing and cloud interpretation, along with the significance of various omens and visions in predicting the future.