Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview
  • The Children's Fire

  • Heart Song of a People
  • By: Mac Macartney
  • Narrated by: Mac Macartney
  • Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
  • 4.9 out of 5 stars (37 ratings)

£0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

The Children's Fire

By: Mac Macartney
Narrated by: Mac Macartney
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £11.99

Buy Now for £11.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

Silver Award Winner, 2019 Nautilus Book Awards!

The Children’s Fire forges a trail into Britain’s wild and ancient Celtic past. It locates the fragments of a story that still has resonance today; the pulse and surge of an older wisdom that cracks the mendacity of the shopping mall’s vacuous promise. It is a passionate evocation of a generous, inclusive, diverse and spiritually significant world - the world of our longing.

In the winter of 2009 Mac Macartney walked from his birthplace in England across Wales to the island of Anglesey, once the spiritual epicenter of Late Iron Age Britain, navigating by the sun and the stars, with no map, compass, stove, or tent, and in the coldest winter for many years. The Children’s Fire records that journey and seeks to lay bare the aching loss of knowing and understanding sacredness as it applies to everything ordinary that brings joy to the human heart. It asserts the emergence of a new story; the story of a people coming home to a truth made all the more poignant having so painfully broken faith with nature, our deeper humanity, and the paradise we fouled with such casual disrespect. It is a love story and part of a larger narrative that is surfacing all around the world. It seeks to reclaim our future and name it, beautiful.

©2018 Mac Macartney (P)2020 Practical Inspiration Publishing
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

Courting the Wild Twin cover art
Wilder Journeys cover art
Backpacking with the Saints cover art
Hagitude cover art
The Gathering Place cover art
Bardskull cover art
Gathering Moss cover art
Braiding Sweetgrass cover art
How to Be an Elder cover art
Take Back the Magic cover art
Anam Cara (Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition) cover art
The Upside Down Mountain cover art
Stars at Night cover art
Erosion cover art
Small Graces cover art
John Muir cover art

Critic reviews

"Few amongst us have both the integrity of spirit to undertake a genuine earth-walk and the poetry of soul to write about it afterwards in such passionate, powerful terms. Mac Macartney is one who has both. In this time of great turning, when we each must examine our heartfelt relationship to the earth and the more-than-human world around us, Mac's journey is a guiding light and an inspiration, a paean to the possible, to the best that we can be. With strength in the vulnerability, spanning the wide, wide spectrum of what it is to be human on this earth at this time, there could not be a more important - or timely - work." (Manda Scott, author of the Boudica: Dreaming series)

"Mac Macartney is a prophet of cultural renewal, an interrupter of the Western egocentric-consumer worldview, a wild man, an elder, a humble pilgrim, perhaps a present-day druid, and an enchanting storyteller. In The Children's Fire, he recounts his three-week solo journey on foot, without map or compass, through the scarred but still-sacred lands of his native Britain to a mythic, real, holy isle - a dreamtime pilgrimage to reclaim his/our original human wildness and belonging to the land, undertaken on behalf of the children of all species seven generations hence. You won't want to be left behind. Join him." (Bill Plotkin, author of Soulcraft and Wild Mind)

What listeners say about The Children's Fire

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    32
  • 4 Stars
    5
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    28
  • 4 Stars
    4
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    28
  • 4 Stars
    4
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Be brave and listen

There are personal challenges buried here that are undeniable. Be brave and listen. You might hear something important. I did.

thank you Mac

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

An awesome story

Incredibly narrated and written by Mac M. So much gut wrenching truth and exquisite storytelling in these pages. Inspiring, heartfelt, moving, motivating, educational and thoroughly thought provoking. Like my trip to Embercombe another life changing experience in the pages of this book leaving me with a deep reminder to be close to nature, build communities and to honour all beings. With immense gratitude to Mac for sharing his beautiful gift to the world and for walking the path.
This is a must read ❤️

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Food for the soul

A deep story blending one man's journey home with the history of this island. Amazing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Deeply refreshing!

Refreshingly deep and honest. Speaks to me of a sacredness that is both raw (wild with the unpredictabilities of life) and at the same time refined through the crystallising lens of a continuous (almost relentless) personal & intergenerational living. One that is rooted in something that is forever 'contemporary' and more meaningful. Very grateful for this story, this song, this sharing — shaOne

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A beacon of hope

An honest, heart felt account of one man's journey, this book calls us to remember our cultural stories and refind our true nature. Enjoyable, inspiring, powerful.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

incredible story told with heart

Mac has intertwined his own journey across wales with the journey of the tribal people of the land and created and inspiring call to action for all of us who care about the future.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Mending what is broken, Love and care for the earth.

This book has inspired me and challenged me. I hope I will be changed in perspective, thought and action by this book and the wonderful teaching of Mac and others like him who love our earth for my whole life.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Powerful and important!

This is a riveting travel story with profound lessons throughout. An important book for this time when we need to be remembering the wisdom of our ancestors.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Children's Fire

Evocative weaving of history and modern day Druidic journeying. I will be lighting my children's fire too.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

An experience I didn't know I needed

This is one of those books that I do not quite know how to review because who you are, where you are in your life, and how you think about the world will make a profound difference to how you process what Mac is offering up. The walk he undertakes both is and is not the point of the book, for the journey is – like so much else in life – not being undertaken for the sake of having made it but for what it could be, is, and may become. And if that sentence has left you thinking I’ve lost my mind then this is pretty much definitely not the book for you.

For me it was an experience I didn’t know I needed. It made me uncomfortable and in sitting with that discomfort I have been able to unpack some very important aspects of both my spirituality and how I live from day to day. It is a book that asks a lot of you, in both opening your mind to the various ideas Mac is sharing and in opening your heart to the world in a way that, in our capitalistic society, feels radical and almost frightening.

Do I agree with everything that is written in these pages? No. Does that matter? Also no. It is a book that can transport you a very long way, if you let it, and to me that feels like a very good thing.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Mac himself and I do think it added something to the whole experience.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!