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.

Collectable Mermaids and the Myth of the Merrow

Feejee Mermaid, shown in P.T. Barnum's American Museum, 1842, as leased from Moses Kimball of the Boston Museum, papier-mache - Peabody Museum, Harvard University. By Daderot, Public Domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69554826

The early sirens, the ones Odysseus encountered, were not fish at all but bird-women, but they had those great siren qualities – bewitching songs and the will to lure the unwitting to a bad end.

Juraj Jánošík: An Outlaw Who Became the Slovak National Hero

A statue of Juraj Jánošík in Smetanovy sady in Hořice, the Czech Republic. By Ben Skála, CC BY-SA 3.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15071798

Jánošík, a young outlaw with braided hair, carrying a shepherd’s axe called valaška, and wearing rural clothing, is the unlikely hero of Slovakia who is also popular in Poland and the Czech Republic. Throughout the last three hundred years, he has remained to be the symbol of the fight for freedom, and he continues to inspire people to create more, fight for justice, and not to lose hope in the face of adversity.

Matlock Hare and the Three Hares Symbol

MatlockHare

Three – some say, is the lucky number. Others find it equally as unlucky, citing dark suspicions about Shakespeare’s ‘weird-systers’ in the equally infamous ‘Scottish Play’. Love it, loathe it, dismiss it, debunk it, or even worship it, there’s no doubting that somehow this single digit has provoked both mysterious interpretation and serious academic study and numerological […]

The Devil’s Instrument: Hardanger Fiddles and Norwegian-American Folk Music

Two carved wooden figures: A man playing a fiddle, and a woman playing a wind instrument.

The Hardanger fiddle is a staple of traditional Norwegian folk music, which connects people visually, bodily, and aurally, with their Norwegian heritage.

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