Flotsam and Jetsam washes up here..
Quirky bits of history, folklore, custom and belief I find floating around and have got distracted into when I am trying to concentrate on something else.
Also a repository of ideas, background, things that don’t fit elsewhere or would otherwise get thrown out.
Green Knowe
Green Knowe: Ghost Children and Christian Folklore A house surrounded by flood and inhabited by ghost children. Whispers on the stairs. A toy horse rocking by itself. Plague deaths. Legs blown off in war. Demon trees… This twee book for children is sounding like a spectral children’s companion to the Woman in Black. It is […]
Read more..→Christmas and Crib
Christmas Trees, Caves and Cribbage. The strange connections between the game of Cribbage, a bronze age boardgame carved in a cave and the first artificial Christmas trees in Babylonian temples. “In the woods there grew a tree and a fine tree was he..” Crib is an odd game of weird rules and counting systems, it […]
Read more..→Fireworks
Memories of Bonfire Night and Halloween. Bonfire Night/Halloween is without doubt my favourite time of year. The autumn nights, the evening chill, the approach of winter, the palpable sense of excitement in the air. This might be due to some primal stirring of stags bellowing, goblins kicking around orange leaves to make them whirl in […]
Read more..→The Folklore of Potatoes
“As Lucy’s mum smoked and thought more calmly about the police and Fries she idly wondered if Fries were so addictive because they put something like nicotine in the flavourings… Of course, she did not think Fries put nicotine in their Fries for more than a second but there had to be something. After all, […]
Read more..→Woodwoses & Misericords
A Woodwose Under Your Seat. Last year I went to a talk on Woodwoses. These shaggy wild men wielding clubs, and depicted in medieval artefacts as diverse as bed hangings and silver spoons, can still be found hiding in Churches. The talk, by Matt Salusbury, was mostly about those Woodwoses holding up fonts and above […]
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