Fabulous Folklore with Icy

Unlike place names, which often give us information who once lived somewhere, street names can be a different case entirely. Sometimes they bear the names of notable (and often now infamous) people.  Other times they refer to long-gone industries performed in the area - you can guess what happened on Cock Lane in London, site of the Cock Lane Poltergeist in 1762.  Or street names might be the last...

Place names are important and pass on a lot of valuable information, even if we no longer understand how to interpret it. Within them, they tell us who used to live in an area, or what natural features were important. Some of them even end up with a range of legends to explain names that might otherwise seem random or bizarre. Folklore attempts to explain their origins. I've talked about unusual p...

When I decided to write about goats in folklore, I thought I would find plenty of content. After all, they appear in mythology. Look at Amalthea, the goat reputed to have raised Zeus in Greek myth. Or the goats associated with the goatherd in the Auriga constellation. That's before we get anywhere near the sign of Capricorn. Yet in terms of actual folklore, there's less than you would expect. Unli...

Kimberly J. Lau is a professor of literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Erotic Infidelities: Love and Enchantment in Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber" (Wayne State University Press), Body Language: Sisters in Shape, Black Women's Fitness, and Feminist Identity Politics , and New Age Capitalism: Making Money East of Eden , as well as articles in a number of...

Pigs appear in folklore in somewhat unusual ways. Sometimes, they choose the location where a church should be built. Or they appear as phantoms, haunting misty moorland. Sailors or fishermen considered pigs unlucky, and wouldn't even say 'pig' at sea. If they met a pig on their way to the boat, they would postpone sailing. Some of them went so far as to ban pork products on board. While this supe...

Certain animals might spring to mind when it comes to folklore. Hares, horses, deer, cats - they all have an otherworldly quality to them. Would you consider the same of cows? There's a surprising amount of folklore about cows. They can be death omens, fairy cattle, consumption cures, or even the guardians of treasure. That's not even considering the deities associated with cows, or their appearan...

Following on from 2024's theme of the Folklore of Animals, this month we'll examine the Folklore of Agricultural Animals. This week, we'll explore the folklore, legends, and even folk medicine associated with sheep. Sheep are not native to the UK. Neolithic settlers brought them to Britain from southwest Asia in around 3000 BCE. Sheepskin and other wool textiles appear in the archaeological record...

Niina Niskanen is a Finnish artist, writer and a folklorist who specialises in Finnish, Baltic and Sámi Mythology. She is an online educator and hosted “Heart of Mielikki,” one of the first online courses about Finnish mythology for non-Finnish speaking audiences. Niina is also an artist with a BA in illustration. Her work has been displayed in numerous art exhibitions in Finland and abroad. Niina...

If you think of the phrase "to be in mourning", you'll probably imagine a Victorian scene. Perhaps a black-clad widow ushers similarly black-clad children to a desolate graveyard in the depths of autumn. Or maybe you picture a grand house, shuttered up against the world that continues outside, while life is paused for those inside as they grieve their loss. Clearly, humans have had mourning ritual...

According to legend, two green children wandered into a village in 12th-century Suffolk. No one knew who they were or where they came from. Their refusal to eat and unfamiliar language made locals wary. Over time, they gradually assimilated and told a fantastic story of their origins. Were they fairies? Lost children with big imaginations? Extraterrestrials? The fever dream of medieval chroniclers...

Dowsing is a fascinating form of divination since it is often used to find water, minerals, or even lost items. While other forms of divination like tarot or botanomancy seek to provide information, here the information is often of a tangible sort. Rather than telling a fortune, or providing a prophetic dream that must be interpreted, dowsing appears to relate information about the presence of som...

There can be a tendency to view folklore as antiquated customs, old legends, or outdated practices. Yet folklore is not disconnected from contemporary life, and is an ever-evolving part of our lived experience. Folk music and folk art are two obvious branches, yet dialect and language is another. Louise Pound refers to dialect as "a species of folklore" while J. D. A. Widdowson described language...

The Loch Ness Monster is perhaps one of the world's most enduring mysteries. Does a giant reptile really lurk in a Scottish loch? Has it somehow survived for millennia on its own? Or is it something darker and more dangerous? It is, after all, a monster. Its legend dates to the 7th century, although recorded sightings really begin in earnest in the 1930s. It feels somehow ancient and modern at the...

Few maritime disasters have captured the public imagination like the RMS Titanic. Perhaps it's because of the relatively recent nature of its sinking, compared to the loss of the Mary Rose warship.  The countless films, documentaries, and exhibitions probably help in prolonging fascination. New theories and reconstructions attempt to pin blame on one factor or another as the reason the ship sank....

In this month's episode of Fabulous Folklore Presents, I'm talking to Russ Williams, the author of Where the Folk: A Welsh Folklore Road Trip . Russ grew up in Caernarfon in North Wales, where he was raised on Welsh stories, like the one about a mountain that would send you mad or turn you into a gifted poet if you camped out on it, or the one about the lost civilization drowned by the sea, and th...

When we look at types of folkloric creature, we often encounter the same types in different places, such as mermaids or fairies. But occasionally, you encounter a creature so localised that it only appears in a single place. The Blue Men of the Minch are one such example. Feared by sailors, the Blue Men of the Minch lived in the straight between the Shiant Islands and Long Island. This stretch of...

If we think of submerged cities, lost beneath the waves, we're probably most likely to think of Atlantis, that thought-experiment that took on a life of its own. Closer to home, there's the lost Welsh kingdom of Cantre’r Gwaelod, believed to lie between Bae Ceredigion and Ynys Enlli.  Yet there are countless tales of submerged villages along both the west and east coast of England too, not to ment...

The humble mouse appears in a surprising amount of folklore. Both a harbinger of death if spotted in the house, and a medical remedy for a range of ailments, it seems the mouse both harms and heals. This reputation even stretches back to ancient Egypt, demonstrating just how ambivalent humans have felt about the tiny rodent for centuries. With strange origin stories, links to a Belgian saint, a us...

Welcome back to Fabulous Folklore Presents. This time, I'm delighted to be talking to Darragh Mason, a multi-award-winning photographer, author, and researcher. He studied photography at Dublin City University and has traveled extensively across Asia, Europe, and America, where he has written articles and published his photography. His work has taken him to post-war countries such as Bosnia &...

Humans first domesticated horses in around 3500 BC. Since then, they’ve pulled our chariots and carts, carried royalty and soldiers, worked on farms, and been steadfast companions. Horses are actually a prey animal, which perhaps explains their vulnerability to supernatural attack by witches and fairies.  Yet as the stories in this episode will show, they’re also famous for their speed, ability to...

Britain is supposed to be a nation of animal lovers, especially when it comes to pet dogs. According to the PDSA, 29% of UK adults own a dog, which gives an estimated population of 10.6 million pet dogs. While 29% isn't a majority, the number of pet dogs in the country has increased over the last few years. So it seems only fair to see how this popular animal appears in folklore. After all, I've a...

Human relationships with deer stretch back thousands of years. Archaeologists uncovered red deer skulls at Star Carr in Yorkshire which are 11,000 years old. No one knows what they were used for, if they had practical applications or were used in shamanic rituals. But it suggests some kind of relationship between humans and deer, even if we're not sure what that involved. Deer appear in mythology...

I’ve been sharing real-life supernatural experiences from Fabulous Folklore listeners for the past couple of weeks. It’s been brilliant to see how vulnerable people have been in sharing these, since talking about such things can often earn you a strong amount of scorn.  But I really think it’s important to preserve these stories, a) to honour the experience itself, and b) to create a space where p...

In this episode of Fabulous Folklore Presents, I chat to Scott Richardson-Read of Cailleach's Herbarium about Scottish cosmology, discuss the differences between Scottish folk magic and folk magic practices elsewhere in the British Isles, and talk about the value of ancestor work in Scottish folk magic. Scott is an independent researcher, published author, and activist with several master’s degree...

If you listened the real-life supernatural experiences I shared last week, you would have noticed two things. First, not all experiences are terrifying. Some can be affirming, or so regular as to have become commonplace. Second, they don’t need to be full-on light and sound shows to deeply affect someone. We’re likely to pay attention to a poltergeist dismantling a room or notice a crisis appariti...