Five Reasons Fig Trees Are Folklore Royalty
No plants feature so often in folklore, in so many places, as fig trees. There’s a biological basis to many of these stories.
Hunting for Unicorns
Scotland is one of the few nations to have chosen a mythological creature rather than a real one as her national animal, and probably the only nation to have chosen an animal that no one believed actually lived there…
Skeleton Folklore: “I Can Feel it in My Bones”
Icy Sedgwick explores the folklore, beliefs, and superstitions associated with the human skeleton in traditional and contemporary cultures across the world.
The changing faces of ghosts in the Wild West … or what I learned from #FolkloreThursday
Let us begin with a ghost story. In 1872, fourteen-year-old Agnes McDonough announced that she was communicating with the spirit of her deceased father. She was part of a community of Irish Americans who settled in Virginia City, Nevada, home to the fabulous Comstock Lode and the Big Bonanza (giving its name to a famous television show). Crediting her father’s ghost, the young girl revealed insights about the afterworld, all scrutinized by a local priest who hoped to control the sensational aspects of the incident.
Frolicksome Women: The Folklore of Wife Selling
Wife selling is often claimed to be an ancient practice, carried out by brutish men to free themselves of unwanted wives, but the truth is far more varied and fascinating.