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Category: Folklore & Legend

“It’s tradition!” – The Flower Show & The Horn Dance

“It’s tradition!” – The Flower Show & The Horn Dance

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The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in the cancellation of many customs and traditional gatherings. Some, like the solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, have been cancelled two years running but a few have reappeared this summer in various town squares and village greens. For some others, their long term survival remains in doubt. A number of our customs may be ancient, most are not but probably all have adapted and metamorphosed over the years as plague, war, suppression and oppression and, not…

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The Curious Tale of The Green Children of St Martinsland

The Curious Tale of The Green Children of St Martinsland

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 ‘Another wonderful thing happened in Suffolk at St Mary’s of the Wolf-pits’ wrote the English chronicler Ralph of Coggeshall. Ralph’s contemporary, William of Newburgh, wrote a slightly earlier version of this tale. It’s not known whether Ralph was using William’s account or whether he had another source. Ralph wrote extensively in the 12/13th century recording stories and anecdotes heard from visitors to his abbey in Essex. Such stories could travel great distances between medieval abbeys, treasured by the clerics that…

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Fae winds & tiny lights – Portal to the Otherworld.

Fae winds & tiny lights – Portal to the Otherworld.

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Fae winds and tiny lights may sometimes alert us to subtle changes in our place of being, whether they appear in a tale or as we climb up a hillside. Either way they signal a risk of enchantment, a visit from something, or someone, supernatural and we must make shrewd and canny choices about what may happen next…. The wind bites. It is freezing cold. You walk up the path bent against the stinging rain. The threshold of the cave…

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Hal-an tow, Jolly Rumbalow – Making Merry in the May !

Hal-an tow, Jolly Rumbalow – Making Merry in the May !

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Hal-an-tow, jolly rumbalow!We were up long before the day-oTo welcome in the summerTo welcome in the May-o.The summer is a-coming inAnd winter’s gone away-o. Robin Hood and Little JohnHave both gone to the fair-o.And we will go to the merry greenwood, to see what they do there-o ~ Welcome to the merry and magical month of May! Out comes Jack, Robin Hood, the maypole and all the flowers in the greenwood, some with a ‘hey nonny -no’ and some without,…

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Jimmy Fish, the Artist & the King of Constantinople….

Jimmy Fish, the Artist & the King of Constantinople….

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This is a short tale about how a picture led me to discover two very different people and their very different lives. They both lived in the East End of London, one an artist, Reginald Knowles, the other the boy who lived next door. This boy was Jimmy Fish, the brother of my mum’s step-mother. I will never know when they first met, how often Reginald and Jimmy saw each other, if they chatted over the garden wall or whether…

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There Be Giants In Them Blue Remembered Hills….

There Be Giants In Them Blue Remembered Hills….

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The Giants of the Blue Remembered Hills of Shropshire… Ever since my small days I particularly liked folklore and legends concerning giants: wicked, kind, silly or funny giants they were all the same to me. Amongst my favourites were Jack’s adversary of ‘fee fi foe fum’ fame who fell down the bean stalk and Oscar Wilde’s ‘Selfish Giant’ whose heart was melted by a gentle child. Later I discovered there were older, more dangerous giants, movers and shapers who tore…

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Eadric Silvaticus: Legend of the Wildwood & Shropshire Folk Hero…

Eadric Silvaticus: Legend of the Wildwood & Shropshire Folk Hero…

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The Eleventh-Century Saxon Thegn Who Became A Nineteenth Century Folk Hero Eadric the Wild was one of the richest thegns (high ranking Saxon noblemen) in pre-Conquest Shropshire. He held land throughout the Welsh Marches and had much to lose following the Norman conquest. We know little about Eadric. Today his deeds are largely forgotten but his name survives through legend and folklore. In 1067 Eadric submitted to William swearing fealty to him along with other Saxon noblemen, including Harold Godwinson’s…

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“On the Holiday Times of Old”…

“On the Holiday Times of Old”…

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…Of Guising, Feasting and the Old Grey Mare In 1824 the Literary Gazette published a review titled ‘On the Holiday Times of Old’ lamenting the decline and passing of Christmas traditions. The writer, let’s call him ‘Gentleman’, wrote how ‘in vain do we look for “The jolly Wassel-Bowl” and the “Bore’s Head” with garlands gay and rosemary’ in a sad reflection on the neglect of the old customs. Our Gentleman reasons that this is due to the ‘sad effects of…

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Searching for the Lost Villages of Shropshire: Hangsters Gate

Searching for the Lost Villages of Shropshire: Hangsters Gate

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‘No traveller comes easily to a lost village. Such empty sites are not well served by public transport and many lack even the convenience of a metalled road along which to approach them. You must be friend to mud, to green lanes and unused footpaths, to rotting footbridges and broken stiles, to brambles and to barbed wire. It is a landscape which has forgotten that human beings may want access, and it may be pardoned for its forgetfulness. It is…

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Holdgate: ‘The Castle of a Man called Helgot’…

Holdgate: ‘The Castle of a Man called Helgot’…

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I submitted my thesis a few weeks ago and I miss my daily journeys into the murk and dark corners of the 12th century Welsh Marches. So, on feeling the need to escape for a few hours, away from Covid, Brexit and my woodsman husband’s looming redundancy, myself and Dan saddled up and journeyed over The Hill. It was a clear and sunny morning in late October and we headed north in search of a glimpse of the medieval past….

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Ghosts in the Landscape…Romans, Normans and a Georgian Woodsman

Ghosts in the Landscape…Romans, Normans and a Georgian Woodsman

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I wrote the following ‘short’ for the Folklore Society Newsletter some time ago. It is about the old mott and bailey castle in Brinklow, a village in Warwickshire near to where I sent some of my childhood. Many of us heard tales as children concerning the local landscape: secret passages, fiddlers lost in underground caves and old women roaming the hills. Brinklow ‘tump’ is a huge mound right next to an old lane. As we drove by with my grandma…

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‘Tis merry in hall, where beards wag all’…Traditions of Harvest

‘Tis merry in hall, where beards wag all’…Traditions of Harvest

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Come home, lord, singing come home, corn bringing. ’tis merry in the hall, where beard wag all. The farmer and writer Thomas Tusser wrote these lines in 1557 referring to the great harvest feast held after all the crops were gathered in and safely stored away. An important culmination of the farming year right up until the last century, the annual harvest featured many rituals and traditions but, with the arrival of machines and other labour saving devices, many were…

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