Fairies and the Folklore Society: 1878-1945

Sir Joseph Noel Paton - The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sir_Joseph_Noel_Paton_-_The_Quarrel_of_Oberon_and_Titania_-_Google_Art_Project_2.jpg

The great Victorian fairy fascination held its grip over culture into the early 20th century. In the wake of the Cottingley photographs, the dark folkloric sprites had seemingly transformed into benign nursery beings.

St Patrick’s Day Traditions: ‘My Patrick’s Pot on you!’

St Patrick’s Day Parade, Milltown Malbay, Co. Clare (2000). Photographer: Tom Munnelly

St Patrick’s Day, 17th March, is a key fixture in the Irish calendar, and indeed in many other places throughout the world. It may not have the wealth of traditions associated with the traditional Irish quarter days but its popularity and the festivities associated with it make it central to the Irish year.

Flower Folklore: The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

Holly Ringland

In the Victorian tradition, every Australian native flower has a meaning and, as she settles into her new life, Alice uses this language of flowers to say the things that are too hard to speak.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – a Bewitching Masterpiece of Mediaeval Poetry

The Green Knight in the Woods, from an original linocut print by Michael Smith ( © Michael Smith 2019, all rights reserved )

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is a fourteenth century poetic masterpiece. No mere Arthurian romance, it is a work of huge religious, spiritual and mystical power. In subjecting its hero to the hardest of temptations, it reveals the hollowness of the chivalric ideal, the weakness of men and the loneliness of the human condition.

A Forest of Folklore: The Easter Egg Tree

An Easter Egg tree window display in the “Easter in Salzburg” store in Salzburg, Austria. © Jennie Ziegler

Eggs—long symbols of fertility, rebirth, and love—inundate just-budded trees throughout eastern Pennsylvania each spring. While most states celebrate Easter with rabbit figurines, church festivals, and large baskets filled with chocolate gifts, “Easter egg trees” sprout up in American regions

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