Browsed by
Tag: #folklore

Down Through The Okey Hole

Down Through The Okey Hole

Comments 2 comments

Okey Hole. You may know it better as Wookey Hole, a village on the edge of the Mendip Hills, famous for its caves. Long ago it was known for its otherworldly nature. Today it’s one of Somerset’s main tourist attractions. There is little evidence of early human occupation in the caves but the last five hundred years have seen exploration, mining and recreational ‘pursuits’ impact directly, structurally and culturally. This has permanently damaged the delicate infrastructure previously untouched for millennia….

Read More Read More

Bailiffs & Boundaries: History in the Landscape

Bailiffs & Boundaries: History in the Landscape

Comments 0 Comment

This is a blog about how a18th century map, a 7th century abbess and folklore collection on the 19th century may hold clues about an old processional route across the South Shropshire hills. The ‘Map of the Wastes of Earnstrey’ was made back in 1712 and shows a number of ‘gospel places’ marked at intervals across the top of Brown Clee, the tallest of the Clee Hills in Shropshire. Gospel places are where gospels were read, often local landmarks, to…

Read More Read More

Morris & Mari’s: The Fragility & Strength of Tradition & the Ritual Year

Morris & Mari’s: The Fragility & Strength of Tradition & the Ritual Year

Comments 0 Comment

A hot day in August. I am thinking. I am sitting high upon the Hill with my dog, Dan. Dragonflies and swifts dart over bracken. The gorse is snapping and cracking in the heat. I’m thinking about the fragility, and strength, of ‘tradition’ and the ritual year: how we practice it, how many are aware of it and what importance does it have in todays society? Should we differentiate between ‘quiet’ local customs carried out by families and grand ‘statement’…

Read More Read More

The Spirit of Morwen, Pilgrimage & a Witches Brew of Memories

The Spirit of Morwen, Pilgrimage & a Witches Brew of Memories

Comments 0 Comment

Sea dragons, merry maids, sea witches and tempestuous seas are part of the lure of the otherworldly North Cornwall coastline. Artists, writers & poets have thrived and taken inspiration from its raw, and sometimes terrifying beauty. Its wildness & unpredictability is not for everyone but for myself it is part of that westward pull that has taken me from St Kilda to Kerry, from St David’s to St Just. November storms are sometimes exhilarating, often brutal, air howling as the…

Read More Read More

Tales from the Deep Earth: The Descent of Giants

Tales from the Deep Earth: The Descent of Giants

Comments 2 comments

Or, The Fall and Fading of Vadi… With All Hallows behind us and the ever darkening nights of winter ahead, this is the time of year to dig in and burrow down into the warmth of home and hearth and listen to, or read, stories. Our folklore and legends are full of tales of giants but what happened to them between their appearance as fearsome primeval entities and the much later blustering entities uttering fee fi fo fum? I wrote…

Read More Read More

The Curious Tale of The Green Children of St Martinsland

The Curious Tale of The Green Children of St Martinsland

Comments 0 Comment

 ‘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…

Read More Read More

Fae winds & tiny lights – Portal to the Otherworld.

Fae winds & tiny lights – Portal to the Otherworld.

Comments 2 comments

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…

Read More Read More

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

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

Comments 0 Comment

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,…

Read More Read More

There Be Giants In Them Blue Remembered Hills….

There Be Giants In Them Blue Remembered Hills….

Comments 2 comments

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…

Read More Read More

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

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

Comments 0 Comment

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…

Read More Read More

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

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

Comments 0 Comment

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…

Read More Read More

error: Content is protected !!