Objects of 'magic' and folklore do not always begin their lives as such. Often, they are natural objects or mundane artefacts, crafted for utilitarian purposes, which become objects of magic through processes of reutilization and redefinition. This is a process poignantly explored by fantasy writer Alan Garner in many -if not all -of his works, from the owl service to the weirdstone, but as a theme it is captured most overtly in his 1973 novel Red Shift. This paper offers a commentary on this novel, exploring how Garner uses fiction and folklore to illustrate the mutability and multiple-authorship of the magical object.He stumbled into the house. His fists were a ball of mud. She poured water over his hands into the bowl. The earth fell away. He was holding a smooth shape."I found it! I've found one! In the bank! Luck, Madge!" It was polished, grey-green, and looked like an axe head made of stone (Garner 1973, 50) It is now widely recognized in folkloristics that, as archaeologist Chris Fowler observes, 'Artefacts, like people, are multiply-authored' (2004, 65). An object is a product not just of its maker, but of the various users, finders, keepers, discarders, and concealers whose hands it may pass through during its life course. And those individuals, though separated by time, become enchained to each other through their sharing of the artefact, while through its multiple authorship, the artefact itself shifts mutably from one context to another; from one meaning to another. It has a complex biography (Kopytoff 1986;Gosden & Marshall 1999;Houlbrook 2014).Objects of 'magic' and folklore do not always begin their lives as such. Often they are natural objects or mundane artefacts, crafted for utilitarian purposes. The pumpkin in which Cinderella rides to the ball. The spindle upon which Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger. The poisoned apple of Snow White fame. They become rather than are objects of magic through processes of reutilization and redefinition.
