Animal Folklore: A Mole in the Hand
Today, moles are usually unappreciated residents of our gardens and fields, but they are embedded in folklore and for centuries were used in remedies.
The Scottish Play and the Welsh Wizard: Witches in Punch Cartoons
From its beginnings in the 1840s until the late twentieth century it was Shakespeare’s Three Witches who inspired the majority of cartoons featuring witches in Punch.
Speaking to the Dead: Necromancy in Magic and Folklore
So, what is necromancy and what does it have to do with folklore? Come with me, and let’s enter the peculiar world of death divination…
Black Arts and Talismans: Huw Llwyd, the Real Welsh Wizard
Huw Llwyd, the Welsh wizard, has been immortalised in the folklore and fairy tales of Wales, his fantastic exploits told and re-told down the ages.
The Werewolf Panic of the 1970s
In the autumn of 1972, numerous Swedish newspapers described how werewolves were causing people to panic in a town in a town in southern Sweden. According to the articles, fearsome werewolf attacks caused a “werewolf panic”, children were “paralysed with fear”, and one article even said that the following concerning the werewolves, “three school children killed!