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…
‘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…
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…
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…