Folklore

When Lanty M’Clusky married he set about building a house for his bride, and chose for it’s site a beautiful green circle such as the faeries might choose as a playground.  Although he was warned against this he thought the place was much too nice and...

A widow and her little boy lived in a cottage near Rothley, Northumberland. One Winters night the child was very lively and would not go to bed as he wished to sit up for a while longer, “for,” said he, “I am not sleepy.”  The mother...

A version of the story of the Fairy Widower, which appears in Robert Hunt’s, Popular Romances of the West of England, pages 120-126. It is very closely allied to ‘Jenny Permuen’, also to be found in Hunt. ‘Cherry of Zennor’ is a curious...

The Torness Trows – an eyewitness account This account was written in response to an article on trows published in a Scottish magazine in the 1960s. It came from an Englishman who had spent nearly two years on the island of Hoy during the Second World War:...

Corpse roads provided a practical means of allowing the transport of corpses to cemeteries that had burial rights. In Britain, such routes are have been given similar names such as: bier road, burial road, coffin road, coffin line, lyke or lych way, funeral road,...

The Wild Hunt was a folk myth prevalent in former times across Northern, Western and Central Europe. The fundamental premise in all instances is the same: a phantasmal group of huntsmen with the accoutrements of hunting, horses, hounds, etc., in mad pursuit across the...

Germanic Version When the winter winds blow and the Yule fires are lit, from the north of Scandinavia down to Switzerland, it is best to stay indoors, safely shut away from the dark forest paths and the wild heaths. Those who wander out by themselves during the...

The fairies of Britain vary as much in dress as they do in appearance and size. Most people, asked off-hand about the colour of the fairies’ clothes, would answer ‘green’ without hesitation, and they would not be far astray. Green is generally...

The belief that fairies were elementals – creatures made only of earth, fire, air or water – seems to have been common amongst medieval magicians, who devised complex spells and rituals for raising them and using there powers. One ritual recorded in an...

There is an ancient and universal belief inherent in all the native religions of the existence of an invisible realm, a land of youth, happiness and beauty, inhabited by Otherworldly beings. Most of us have from our childhood days heard mention of the Faery Folk, or...