Put ‘christmas trees’ into Google and it returns about 1,350,000,000 results. They’re an intrinsic part of the festivities, yet you actually have three main types of conifers to choose from: pine (Pinus), fir (Abies), and spruce (Picea). Oslo has sent a Norway spruce to London every Christmas since 1947, displayed in Trafalgar Square (Woolf 2020: […]
#FolkloreThursday
The Folklore of Ivy: Christmas, Divinations, and Magic
A range of plants enjoy connections with Christmas, not least due to their status as evergreens. At a time of year when many plants have shed their leaves, these plants offer a welcome burst of colour. Ivy (Hedera helix) is no exception, and even features in Christmas carols such as ‘The Holly and the Ivy’. […]
Folklore of British Caves: Treasure, Cannibals, and Brownies
There is something deeply primordial about caves, these strange spaces that allow us to move inside the earth. It’s hardly surprising that they’re often considered the entrance to the underworld, or that they become places to hide things. Caves are understandably replete with stories of treasure, lost graves, and hidden booty. Earlier in the week, […]
Folklore of Tunnels: Hidden Networks and Lost Pipers
Tunnels seem to accrue more folklore than most. Perhaps it’s because we can’t see where they go when we can only see the entrance. Or perhaps we’ve been so primed by fiction to believe tunnels must lead somewhere that we love the idea of a secret world beneath our feet. Some tunnel legends are common […]
Catacombs Folklore: Ghosts, Vampires & the Holy Grail
The concept of catacombs dates to first-century Rome, where the catacombs provided underground tombs. The Romans didn’t permit burial within the city walls, and while pagans cremated their dead, the Christians had to find other solutions. Jewish communities already used the catacombs and Christian communities adopted them in the 2nd century. They’d fallen out of […]
Wizard’s Cave or Smuggler’s Cave: Treasure in Tynemouth!
Tynemouth Castle and Priory stands on a lonely promontory intruding into the savage North Sea. Legends tell of underground passages and dungeons below the Castle and Priory site. Among this network lies a cave, often known as Jingling Geordie’s Hole, Jingling Man’s Hole or the Wizard’s Cave. The entrance apparently lay on the north side […]
