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1000 results for “northfolk”
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@northfolk I love this tale! And Anais Mitchel with Jefferson Hamer does a beautiful version of Child Ballad 39, Tam Lin https://youtu.be/c3yTEUnyYDA.
#childballads #anaismitchell -
I loved #KenRussell's take on the legend in #TheLairOfTheWhiteWorm, particularly #AmandaDonohoe's boy scout seduction scene. My favourite film director, who embodied the #StarTrek imperative to boldly go where no one has gone before.
If you haven't seen the film, here it is in full on the #InternetArchive. I'll be giving it another watch now you've reminded me.
https://archive.org/details/the-lair-of-the-white-worm-1988.flv-2
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@northfolk @folklore @folklorethursday Michael Scot indeed had a long legendary afterlife as a sorcerer — here's a 15th-century manuscript (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana MS plut. 89 sup. 38) where he's ascribed authorship of a magical demon- and ghost-summoning ritual!
It reads "Experimentum Michaelis Scoti nigromantici.
Si volueris per demones habere scientiam..." (An Experiment of Michael Scot, Necromancer.
If you should wish to have knowledge by demons...) etc. -
@northfolk might not be quite what you're after but do you know #FolkonFoot?
At its best, a walk and chat with a folk musician interspersed with "live" performances of a few tunes
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@FrlSchramm @northfolk
It’s under-appreciated how few #musicians are “cool.” Many great players are too shy to hold conversations with strangersWhy do people think they take all those drugs while on tour? 😵
Music shops are full of #guitar geeks who laugh at #accordion players for being just like them
It saddens me, as an #AccordionHistorian, that Accordion and Guitar World Magazine (1930s-1960s) did not evolve directly into the 1980s #GuitarWorld magazine 🤘🏽❤️🔥🪗
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@Virginicus @NatureMC @northfolk @folklore
As a dually appointed representative of the MADL (Monster Anti-Defamation League) I have a CAD order for Mr. Virginicus. Long have we suffered under the ideal that "we are the invasive species." Humans are the newest race!! We were here before you ever rubbed two sticks together.
Unless Mr. Virginicus ceases his hate speech, we will be forced to take immediate action.
#yokai #jinn #goblins #DontBuyTheHype Monsters did nothing wrong. -
Happy October! It's a dull, grey one today, so instead have some photots of a couple of evenings ago.
This is the month of boggles and beasties and all things uncanny, so I'll be trying to share some local tales over the month.
Pictured here are the three peaks of Eildon in the Scottish Borders, associated with all kinds of mysterious happenings, from fairy realms to King Arthur to Old Nick himself. Also a notable landmark, visible and recognisable from just about every raised point in the region, perhaps the reason they feature so heavily in local folklore. These photos were taken from thirty miles away.
#Northumberland #ScottishBorders #Eildon #Folklore #Photography #Autumn
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Happy October! It's a dull, grey one today, so instead have some photots of a couple of evenings ago.
This is the month of boggles and beasties and all things uncanny, so I'll be trying to share some local tales over the month.
Pictured here are the three peaks of Eildon in the Scottish Borders, associated with all kinds of mysterious happenings, from fairy realms to King Arthur to Old Nick himself. Also a notable landmark, visible and recognisable from just about every raised point in the region, perhaps the reason they feature so heavily in local folklore. These photos were taken from thirty miles away.
#Northumberland #ScottishBorders #Eildon #Folklore #Photography #Autumn
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Happy October! It's a dull, grey one today, so instead have some photots of a couple of evenings ago.
This is the month of boggles and beasties and all things uncanny, so I'll be trying to share some local tales over the month.
Pictured here are the three peaks of Eildon in the Scottish Borders, associated with all kinds of mysterious happenings, from fairy realms to King Arthur to Old Nick himself. Also a notable landmark, visible and recognisable from just about every raised point in the region, perhaps the reason they feature so heavily in local folklore. These photos were taken from thirty miles away.
#Northumberland #ScottishBorders #Eildon #Folklore #Photography #Autumn
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Happy October! It's a dull, grey one today, so instead have some photots of a couple of evenings ago.
This is the month of boggles and beasties and all things uncanny, so I'll be trying to share some local tales over the month.
Pictured here are the three peaks of Eildon in the Scottish Borders, associated with all kinds of mysterious happenings, from fairy realms to King Arthur to Old Nick himself. Also a notable landmark, visible and recognisable from just about every raised point in the region, perhaps the reason they feature so heavily in local folklore. These photos were taken from thirty miles away.
#Northumberland #ScottishBorders #Eildon #Folklore #Photography #Autumn
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Happy October! It's a dull, grey one today, so instead have some photots of a couple of evenings ago.
This is the month of boggles and beasties and all things uncanny, so I'll be trying to share some local tales over the month.
Pictured here are the three peaks of Eildon in the Scottish Borders, associated with all kinds of mysterious happenings, from fairy realms to King Arthur to Old Nick himself. Also a notable landmark, visible and recognisable from just about every raised point in the region, perhaps the reason they feature so heavily in local folklore. These photos were taken from thirty miles away.
#Northumberland #ScottishBorders #Eildon #Folklore #Photography #Autumn
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Happy fifth birthday to the sweet girl who comes on so many adventures with me. #DogsOfMastodon #ChocolateLabrador #RescueDog
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Happy fifth birthday to the sweet girl who comes on so many adventures with me. #DogsOfMastodon #ChocolateLabrador #RescueDog
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Happy fifth birthday to the sweet girl who comes on so many adventures with me. #DogsOfMastodon #ChocolateLabrador #RescueDog
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Happy fifth birthday to the sweet girl who comes on so many adventures with me. #DogsOfMastodon #ChocolateLabrador #RescueDog
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Happy fifth birthday to the sweet girl who comes on so many adventures with me. #DogsOfMastodon #ChocolateLabrador #RescueDog
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I love looking down into this valley and knowing the layers of history both under and on the surface of the landscape:
On the distant, barely-visible hilltops opposite are Iron Age fortifications, which may very well have seen continuous usage through and after the Roman period, since we're well north of Hadrian's Wall.
The same ridge was where the Scottish army camped before the Battle of Flodden was fought in September 1513, on a moor just over the horizon.
The sloping hill in front is the medieval glebe land, belonging to the living of the church (St Michael and All Angels, just hidden behind the yew tree on the left), with the remains of the (probably) 16th Century Parson's Tower, and earthworks associated with the medieval castle and village.
Where the yew tree is now planted was the site of the old parsonage, likely built as a more comfortable replacement to the Parson's Tower after the end of border warfare in the 17th Century. Demolished in the mid 19th century, the parsonage was said to be a beautiful, atmospheric building, complete with several ghosts.
The castle tower visible here are 19th century; it underwent major rebuilding in the 18th and 19th centuries, but there are medieval foundations to several of the other towers.
I love taking people around this landscape and telling the hidden stories.
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A Hob is type of household spirit, so-called in parts of northern England and southern Scotland, but similar to the brownie found elsewhere, or to the tomte or nisse in Scandinavia. Mostly considered lucky, as a good hob will help with the house or farm work, they can also be mischievous nuisances and hard to get rid of. They may be survivals of the Old English cofgodas, pre-Christian household gods.
Here in the far north east of England, they're usually known as hobthrushes. My favourite hobthrush story involves none other than St Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne, who was bothered by a rowdy hobthrush while trying to meditate, and was forced to use all his ingenuity to trick the creature into leaving.
Some versions put the story in Cuthbert's later years on Inner Farne, but I prefer the location below, a small island where the saint was said to retreat from the arduous demands of bishopry, and which is still known as Cuthbert's Island, or Hobthrush Island.
#Folklore #FolkoreThursday #Northumberland #Storytelling #NorthumbrianFolklore #Lindisfarne #HolyIsland
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Putting this out because there might be some interest or thoughts here:
I have one of the most fascinating pieces of history research I've ever done sitting in drafts, and I don't know what to do with it. It's about rural crime, radical politics, a local power struggle between two strong personalities, and a young, abused, pauper girl whose name history has forgotten.
It's part genealogy (tangentially related to my family), part local history (although the other end of the country from my normal 'local'), big part social history (but I don't have much academic literature to refer to, it's all raw material). Lots of strands that tie together to shed light on a central story. The whole thing (in my opinion) casts doubt on several, well-established aspects of popular history of the area, and several individuals who feature in it deserve to have their stories told properly (not least a girl called Jemima Coot). I'm just not sure how to tell them.
Suggestions welcome...
#Histodon #History #EnglishHistory #19thCenturyHistory #LocalHistory
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Walked with my sister and her kids up the College Valley in #Northumberland the other day. It was windy, with patchy sun and cloud, and the odd short shower blown in. My sister, who works in peat bog management, was impressed with the apparent bog restoration in places. Tree planting going on (with flourishing woods planted 30-odd years ago), free-ranging native cattle doing their thing, and sphagnum moss and bilberry growing thick.
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Walked with my sister and her kids up the College Valley in #Northumberland the other day. It was windy, with patchy sun and cloud, and the odd short shower blown in. My sister, who works in peat bog management, was impressed with the apparent bog restoration in places. Tree planting going on (with flourishing woods planted 30-odd years ago), free-ranging native cattle doing their thing, and sphagnum moss and bilberry growing thick.
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Walked with my sister and her kids up the College Valley in #Northumberland the other day. It was windy, with patchy sun and cloud, and the odd short shower blown in. My sister, who works in peat bog management, was impressed with the apparent bog restoration in places. Tree planting going on (with flourishing woods planted 30-odd years ago), free-ranging native cattle doing their thing, and sphagnum moss and bilberry growing thick.
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Walked with my sister and her kids up the College Valley in #Northumberland the other day. It was windy, with patchy sun and cloud, and the odd short shower blown in. My sister, who works in peat bog management, was impressed with the apparent bog restoration in places. Tree planting going on (with flourishing woods planted 30-odd years ago), free-ranging native cattle doing their thing, and sphagnum moss and bilberry growing thick.
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Walked with my sister and her kids up the College Valley in #Northumberland the other day. It was windy, with patchy sun and cloud, and the odd short shower blown in. My sister, who works in peat bog management, was impressed with the apparent bog restoration in places. Tree planting going on (with flourishing woods planted 30-odd years ago), free-ranging native cattle doing their thing, and sphagnum moss and bilberry growing thick.
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Late afternoon dog walk. I love this view, looking across north Northumberland to the Borders and the three peaks of the Eildon.
On those distant slopes, Thomas the Rhymer met the fairy queen (or 'queen of an unco' land' as she was in the oldest version we have) and went with her into the hills.
There, many years later, Canobie Dick tried and failed to wake the sleeping King Arthur in a torchlit chamber under the same hills.
A landmark visible from virtually every raised point in the whole region and easily identifiable, no wonder it was used as the site of a Bronze and later Iron Age settlement, then the Roman fort of Trimontium, and went down in legend as a place of magic and mystery.
#Northumberland #ScottishBorders #Folklore #Landscape #LandscapePhotography #EildonHills #History #LandscapeHistory @folklore
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Blue skies and Autumn temperatures suddenly arrived.
Large skein of geese flying overhead, arriving with the colder weather. Folklore says they bring the snow to the hills, and we did have frost overnight.
Traces of history hidden in these photos: where I stood at the top of the hill, above the river, used to be a farm called Henlaw, the name probably referring to "waterhens" aka moorhens. The farm is just a few bumps in the ground and the name is long forgotten and appears on no modern maps, but down below you can still see the marks of the plough on what is now pasture prone to flooding and waterlogging.
Down below is Sandyford Farm, marking an old ford across the river, and the point at which the Pallinsburn runs into the river - the burn said in legend to be named after Paulinus, the missionary bishop who baptised King Edwin of Northumbria not far away from here.
Across the river, in unmarked crop fields, is suspected from a wealth of metal finds to be some sort of early medieval site - unconfirmed, but the archaeologists do keep coming back. A medieval road ran there too, down to a bridge said to be where troops crossed for the battle of Flodden a few miles away.
#Northumberland #landscape #history #histodons #medieval #RuralHistory #LandscapeHistory #folklore #DogsOfMastodon #Autumn #October
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A few more of my southern trip: stopped in on a couple of old favourite spots, Avebury and West Kennet.
#Avebury #StoneCircle #WestKennetLongBarrow #PreHistory #AncientEngland #Pagan #Neolithic
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The fairy court in Northumberland was once up the Hartburn from Rothley, they say, until the actions of an over-proud miller offended them and saw them take themselves off up to the area around Dancing Green Hill and the Hurl Stane, near Chillingham, where the white, fairy cattle still roam.
But there's a lot of them up the Henhole too, and an outpost near Elsdon and Otterburn, all of them seeming more related to each other and to the other wild, little people of the moors than they are to the more lordly fairy folk of Eildon and the Borders.
#FairytaleTuesday #FairyStory #Folklore #Folktales #Northumberland #FairyLore #AncientEngland #Mythology @folklore
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And finally, I stopped in Shaftesbury, the old market town that my family members would presumably have known well as it's just a few miles from their villages.
According to tradition, Shaftesbury was once known as Caer Palladwr in Celtic Britain; actual recorded history dates to the 8th century CE, by which time where was an important minster in the town. Alfred the Great built the abbey here in the 9th century and placed his daughter, Aethelgifu, there as the first abbess. The body of King Edward the Martyr ended up buried here after this murder in the late 10th century, and Cnut died here.
It was featured in the Domesday Book and the abbey continued as an important site until the dissolution of the monasteries. After this, Shaftesbury continued as a market town, but faced decline as industrialisation took hold in the country. Thomas Hardy wrote of it:
"Vague imaginings of its castle, its three mints, its magnificent apsidal abbey, the chief glory of south Wessex, its twelve churches, its shrines, chantries, hospitals, its gabled freestone mansions—all now ruthlessly swept away—throw the visitor, even against his will, into a pensive melancholy, which the stimulating atmosphere and limitless landscape around him can scarcely dispel."
I didn't feel any melancholy, I have to say - even though I arrived at the end of a grey day at the tail end of September, after the abbey had closed for the day. I'd have liked to spend more time there.
#Shaftesbury #Dorset #History #Wessex #Medieval #AlfredTheGreat