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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 -
@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. -
@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 fifth birthday to the sweet girl who comes on so many adventures with me. #DogsOfMastodon #ChocolateLabrador #RescueDog
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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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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
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The next stop on my genealogy mini-tour was the village of Motcombe, just over the border into Dorset, where my 3x great-grandfather's family came from.
I didn't find any direct ancestors in the graveyard, but I did find some not-so-distant cousins - I almost missed this great slab of a memorial, because I wasn't looking for anything this big and grand. One branch of the family, at least, seem to have been yeoman farmers rather than landless labourers like my branch. I think this may also have been the oldest gravestone in the churchyard, the only one I saw with dates back to the 18th century.
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One of the reasons I was in the South West was chasing some family history. I've been annoyed that I hadn't researched this branch at the time I lived in Wiltshire for a couple of years, so I never visited the places, so I decided to take a trip.
This is the village, situated on Cranborne Chase, where my great-great-grandmother was born (and her mother, and previous generations). They left after her father, a farm worker, died, and ended up on the Isle of Wight.
The first thing I found was a lovely community shop that sold me a cup of tea, and then a poke around revealed some of the older secrets: the 17th Century Bennett Arms pub; the village pound (a medieval enclosure for holding stray animals); and, most uniquely, the plague stone - originally the base of a medieval stone cross, later used as a boundary marker, and then to place supplies for the plague-stricken neighbouring village in 1665.
#Wiltshire #History #FamilyHistory #Genealogy #17thCentury #CranborneChase
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Old Sarum was an Iron Age fort at the junction of several trade routes, then a Roman settlement, then an important early medieval town. The Normans built a castle and a cathedral there, and it was probably the site at which William I was presented with the Domesday Book.
Lack of water on the top of the hill and bad relationships with the soldiers who garrisoned the fort led to the relocation of the Cathedral in the 13th Century, to New Sarum, now Salisbury. Old Sarum was gradually abandoned, and is now left to the grass and the rabbits.
Legend says that the site for the new cathedral was chosen when an arrow was shot down into the valley, landing where the building now stands.
#History #Folklore #Wiltshire #Medieval #Prehistory #RomanHistory #OldSarum
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From Salisbury, I walked out of town and took the Portway, part of a Roman road later used as a Medieval track, up to Old Sarum, the original ancient settlement of the area.
It was lined with berry-laden hawthorn, blackberries past their best, rosehips, and flowering ivy, and humming with insect life, but I didn't see another person on it.
#Salisbury #OldSarum #RomanRoad #AncientPaths #OldWays #Hedgerows #ThePortway
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From Salisbury, I walked out of town and took the Portway, part of a Roman road later used as a Medieval track, up to Old Sarum, the original ancient settlement of the area.
It was lined with berry-laden hawthorn, blackberries past their best, rosehips, and flowering ivy, and humming with insect life, but I didn't see another person on it.
#Salisbury #OldSarum #RomanRoad #AncientPaths #OldWays #Hedgerows #ThePortway
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From Salisbury, I walked out of town and took the Portway, part of a Roman road later used as a Medieval track, up to Old Sarum, the original ancient settlement of the area.
It was lined with berry-laden hawthorn, blackberries past their best, rosehips, and flowering ivy, and humming with insect life, but I didn't see another person on it.
#Salisbury #OldSarum #RomanRoad #AncientPaths #OldWays #Hedgerows #ThePortway
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From Salisbury, I walked out of town and took the Portway, part of a Roman road later used as a Medieval track, up to Old Sarum, the original ancient settlement of the area.
It was lined with berry-laden hawthorn, blackberries past their best, rosehips, and flowering ivy, and humming with insect life, but I didn't see another person on it.
#Salisbury #OldSarum #RomanRoad #AncientPaths #OldWays #Hedgerows #ThePortway
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From Salisbury, I walked out of town and took the Portway, part of a Roman road later used as a Medieval track, up to Old Sarum, the original ancient settlement of the area.
It was lined with berry-laden hawthorn, blackberries past their best, rosehips, and flowering ivy, and humming with insect life, but I didn't see another person on it.
#Salisbury #OldSarum #RomanRoad #AncientPaths #OldWays #Hedgerows #ThePortway
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Challenge by @Steve_p_photos
1 photo per day for 26 days.
Titles start with 'A' and finish with 'Z'. Please don't repeat letters.
No people/human images.
No description in the toot.
Use alt text to fully describe the photo - a picture of a tree is not acceptable.
Copy the rules into the toot.#Photography #PhotographyChallenge #PhotographyAlphabetChallenge
Day 15: O
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I've been a bit absent from here lately, because I've been working on this. Any #Northumberland folk, please do check it out. Or if you're thinking of coming this way for a holiday or trip (which I highly encourage, it's a magical part of the world), do come my way!
#storytelling #folklore #storyteller #GuidedWalks #HistoryTours #MythsAndLegends #BritishFolklore #VisitNorthumberland #SelfPromo #SmallBusiness
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Requested by @maninthewoods who mentioned folklore about cows. Not sure how well this one fits the criteria, but it's a folktale, and there's a cow in it...
This is one of the many stories about St Cuthbert that we have up here.
After Cuthbert died on the Farne Islands, his burial place became a pilgrimage site; however, Viking raids made it unsafe, so a group of monks removed his coffin and took it away.
They travelled the countryside for a long while, looking for a safe place, and there are plenty of stories about their journey, but those will have to wait for another time.
One night, a monk had a dream, or perhaps it was a holy vision, that the saint's body would be safe at Dunholme. However, none of them knew where that place was or had ever heard of it.
Soon after, they encountered two milkmaids on the road. One was looking for her good dun cow, and the other said she had seen the cow away over at Dunholme. The monks followed the milkmaids until they came to a piece of land protected by a loop of the river and by steep crags. There was the dun cow peacefully grazing, and there they knew Cuthbert's body would be safe.
They buried his coffin and built a church over it. The church became a cathedral and a city grew up. Over the years the name Dunholme became Durham, and St Cuthbert's body still rests there, thanks to a wandering dun cow.
#folklore #FolkloreThursday #Northumberland #Durham #legends #OriginMyth #StCuthbert #EarlyMedieval
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A random #folklore musing I keep coming back to but have no answer to: where are Northumberland's sea stories?
We have a long and dramatic coastline, and a history of fishing communities, sea trade, and sea smuggling. But no mythical sea creatures, no ghosts of drowned sailors, and the sea itself is incidental even in the few folk stories set on the coast.
I have the odd theory, but no answer. Makes me sad to think that they might have existed but been lost!
#Northumberland #NorthumbrianStories #folklore #FolkStories #NorthumberlandFolklore @folklore
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A random #folklore musing I keep coming back to but have no answer to: where are Northumberland's sea stories?
We have a long and dramatic coastline, and a history of fishing communities, sea trade, and sea smuggling. But no mythical sea creatures, no ghosts of drowned sailors, and the sea itself is incidental even in the few folk stories set on the coast.
I have the odd theory, but no answer. Makes me sad to think that they might have existed but been lost!
#Northumberland #NorthumbrianStories #folklore #FolkStories #NorthumberlandFolklore @folklore
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A random #folklore musing I keep coming back to but have no answer to: where are Northumberland's sea stories?
We have a long and dramatic coastline, and a history of fishing communities, sea trade, and sea smuggling. But no mythical sea creatures, no ghosts of drowned sailors, and the sea itself is incidental even in the few folk stories set on the coast.
I have the odd theory, but no answer. Makes me sad to think that they might have existed but been lost!
#Northumberland #NorthumbrianStories #folklore #FolkStories #NorthumberlandFolklore @folklore
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A random #folklore musing I keep coming back to but have no answer to: where are Northumberland's sea stories?
We have a long and dramatic coastline, and a history of fishing communities, sea trade, and sea smuggling. But no mythical sea creatures, no ghosts of drowned sailors, and the sea itself is incidental even in the few folk stories set on the coast.
I have the odd theory, but no answer. Makes me sad to think that they might have existed but been lost!
#Northumberland #NorthumbrianStories #folklore #FolkStories #NorthumberlandFolklore @folklore
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A random #folklore musing I keep coming back to but have no answer to: where are Northumberland's sea stories?
We have a long and dramatic coastline, and a history of fishing communities, sea trade, and sea smuggling. But no mythical sea creatures, no ghosts of drowned sailors, and the sea itself is incidental even in the few folk stories set on the coast.
I have the odd theory, but no answer. Makes me sad to think that they might have existed but been lost!
#Northumberland #NorthumbrianStories #folklore #FolkStories #NorthumberlandFolklore @folklore
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A theme of #MonsterSlaying for #MythologyMonday.
Most people know the tale of the Lambton Worm from Co. Durham, but fewer people seem to be aware that NE England and the Scottish Borders have a plethora of similar worm stories. The Longwitton Worm in Northumberland lived in a burn that rose from a healing spring, and could only be killed when drawn out of the water. The Linton Worm in the Borders was killed by a local laird, using a burning peat on the end of a lance (the same method used in the legend of the Stoor Worm, all the way up in Orkney), and is commemorated by a medieval (said to be 12th Century) stone carving of the event above the door of Linton Kirk.
My favourite one to tell is cheating on the theme, because the Laidly Worm of Spindlestone Heugh, near Bamburgh in Northumberland, isn't slain at all, but to tell you what happened to it would be to spoil the story...
#mythology #folklore #Northumberland #ScottishBorders #DragonFolklore #stories #storytelling #legend
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I can't get out very far on walks at the moment, but luckily I don't need to go more than a few steps from the back door to feel like spring is coming. The hazel tree (which produced a good crop of nuts last year) is in full bloom of catkins and blossoms.
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Imbolc. St Brigid's Day. 1st of February.
Imbolc is recorded in early medieval Irish sources and was also historically celebrated in Scotland and the Isle of Man. It's generally believed that the origin is older, pre-Christian, and the date is important to many modern pagans as the start of spring. It's also the feast day of St Brigid, mother saint of Ireland, and traditions included the weaving of Brigid's Crosses from rushes. Many believe that Brigid is a Christianised version of a pre-Christian goddess, although she is also recorded as a real historic figure who founded the Abbey of Kildare. It may be that two figures have been conflated.
Imbolc is not recorded as ever being celebrated here in Northumberland, but the reasons for celebrating it as an agricultural festival would have been just as important here. The season for sowing, the start of the lambing, the return of the light, and the promise of warmer, less lean days to come.
#Imbolc #SaintBrigid #StBrigidsDay #folklore #folkways #FolkHistory #SaintsDays #history #spring #February #Pagan #RuralLife #OldWays #sunshine #nature #wildflowers #northumberland #aconites #snowdrops #landscape #landscapephotography
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And the online ticket shop is also up and running! Tickets are available for my open-air storytelling sessions from April to June, with dates for later in the summer to come.
If you're going to be around Northumberland or the Scottish Borders this summer and enjoy folktales and legends, stories in the open air, or want to try something new and different, I'd love to see you here! The experience has been described in reviews as "magical", "entrancing" and "wondrous" - and it's very affordable too, with adult tickets at £6 (concessions and family tickets available).
There will also be one or two special evening events on certain nights of the year, with tickets for the Beltane Fireside night already on sale.
https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/spindrift-stories
#Northumberland #VisitNorthumberland #ScottishBorders #ThingsToDoNorthumberland #FamilyEvents #NorthumberlandHolidays #Storytelling #Storyteller #Events #SelfPromo #SmallBusiness #Folklore #Folktales #Legends #MythsAndLegends
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Took myself away from staring at a computer screen and wrangling websites to walk the hound. Beautiful blue and gold evening, looking towards the Cheviot Hills. A January wind, but the promise of spring around the corner.
#Northumberland #Photography #Landscape #CheviotHills #NorthCountry #January