Cornwall is a place rich in myth and legend, and the Cornish people are born storytellers.
Mazed is a collection of the traditional tales of Cornwall, retold in ways old and new. Over a hundred tales from Cornwall are told on this website, each with a map showing the tale's location.
The tales tell of witches and wreckers on the wild north coast, saints and mermaids in sheltered south, giants on the high moor and everywhere piskeys playing. The piskeys are Cornish fairy folk, sometimes helpful, sometimes full of mischief.
In the past these stories would have been told by wandering droll storytellers, sung in ballad form by balladeers and then told by anyone and everyone round the fire on a cold winter's night.
Mazed celebrates the droll tellers and folklorists who collected tales, and the places where the tales belong.
It breathes new life to old tales, telling them in animations or with illustrations, on the streets and in community settings, with puppets and people, in armchairs and on tricycles, scattering the stories back across Cornwall like the winds stirred by the old storm woman on Bodmin Moor.
Cornish Folk Tales of Place, by Mazed writer Anna Chorlton, features retellings of some of the Mazed tales and some.
Here you'll find tales of powerful mermaids, spiteful witches, crafty smugglers and woeful ghosts
alongside huge giants and elusive beasts.
It is illustrated by local artists and by members of the community who took part in Monochrome Mazed, a community arts project that gave people young and old a chance to illustrate their own local tales.
Published by the History Press (June 2019), the book is available from all good bookshops.
MAZED storytellers revive the tales using puppets of Bill Chubb, Liskeard's umbrella man and droll teller, Padstow folklorist Nellie Sloggett (aka Enys Tregarthen), and Victorian tale collectors Hunt and Bottrell.
LISKEARD MUSEUM 7 April 11am
THE PISKEY PATH
HELSTON CORNONATION PARK
BIG TOP 19 April 3.30 pm
LIZARD TALES
Hunt and Bottrell storytelling
Anna Chorlton reading
THE CASTLE BUDE 29 May 2025 11am
THE PISKEY PATH
Mazed features in episode of Fred and Pete's Treasure Tales on CBeebies, BBC TV
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001s8td/fred-petes-treasure-tales...
MAZED WEST, a celebration of the folktales of West Cornwall, is our current project.
CORNISH TALES FOR KIDS podcast https://open.spotify.com/show/0Cm4m0AhduEPPqyuC9q8I3
THE PISKEY PATH, suitcase puppet show of Cornish tales, features Hunt and Bottrell, tale collectors
Tales from mid and west Cornwall are being added to the website.
See our facebook page for event updates.
Mazed takes the tales onto the streets of Cornwall with CORNISHIBAI, featuring specially commissioned illustrations in a copper box mounted on a bicycle. https://www.mazedtales.org/content/cornishibai
If you would like a visit from a storyteller please contact us.
Copyright of each of the unique Mazed tellings belongs to the storyteller.
MAZED was originally an ambitious transmedia community project, nominated for a Celtic Media Festival Award for Innovation in 2014. Stories from South East Cornwall were told in schools and at tea treats, then 12 stories were chosen by the communities of the places they came from to be animated. The animations featured on an app..now gone.. but can be seen on this website.
They also inspired a limited edition Mazed Tales book, available from South East Cornwall libraries.
MAZED NORTH retold and reillustrated North Cornish tales.
If you've lost something; your keys, your pen, or your way on the moor...Or, if you've forgotten what you were going to say or what you went upstairs for... you'll have been MAZED BY THE PISKIES. The only way to cure the piskies' maze is to TURN YOUR POCKETS INSIDE OUT.
The tales on the Mazed website are there to be retold - tell them and make them your own.
PREPARE TO BE AMAZED.
