In the early 17th century, the celebrated London engraver William Hole created some of the strangest maps of Britain ever commissioned to illustrate Poly-Olbion, a vast 15,000-line topographical poem by Michael Dayton (1563-1631).
The exhibition “Spellbound: Magic, Ritual & Witchcraft” at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford examines the history of magic over eight centuries, and shows how our ancestors used magical thinking to cope with the unpredictable world around them. Nick Swarbrick reviews the exhibition and the subjects which it explores.
Suffolk might seem the very last place to look for fairylore; after all, most of us have grown up with the idea that belief in the fairies flourishes in wild, untamed places, and specifically in the ‘Celtic’ areas of the British Isles – Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Ireland.
Scottish lore contains some of the darkest and strangest figures in folkloric history: shape-shifters, blood-suckers, monsters without skin.
Incorporating folklore can add authenticity, richness and whole new layers of meaning to historical fiction. Novelist Melissa Harrison explores how traditional practices and beliefs around the harvest informed her creative process when she was writing her new book, All Among the Barley
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