Dark Side of the Sun: A Brief Guide to Midsummer Lore in Britain & Ireland

Each morning the sun rolls across the sky. In Estonia it was the hatched egg of the enchanted swallow bird, an emu’s egg bursting into flames in Australia, and a golden piece of bacon for the Nama people of South Africa. In the evening, it descends into the sea, as a bridegroom or warrior, golden rays transformed into spears or robes of light, hissing with heat as the waters close over it, before swimming back to the east. Sometimes in gloom-shrouded nights, we may imagine it will never return and we will be plunged into unyielding darkness, but still it rises and always will, at least for the next five billion years or so!

The Cailleach: Irish Myth, Legend and the Divine Feminine

The Cailleach, which translates as ‘old woman’, ‘hag’, and ‘veiled one’, exists in both Irish and Scottish Gaelic, and is an expression of the hag or crone archetype found throughout world cultures. 

Fairies in a Flat Landscape: the Fairylore of Suffolk

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.

Sardinian Folklore: Gino Bottiglioni’s Tales of Giants and Fairies, Elves and Plagues

have a confession to make: I’m a bibliophile. I have a small collection of very, very old books and still count the moment I touched a middle ages herbal worth more than my apartment as a highlight of my life. I mean, this surely doesn’t come as a shock here on #FolkloreThursday, albeit it does […]

The Devil in the Room: Researching the History of Witchcraft in Ireland

The narrative of witchcraft in Ireland is a subject often left out of major surveys of the wider history of witchcraft. Dr. Andrew Sneddon’s research explores the presence and complexities of witchcraft beliefs and traditions in an Irish context.

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