You’re gotta be familiar with Sacred Texts, right? Their wonderful website collects many old and beautiful books and stores them online for us to read at our leisure. They have just added a brilliant title, the Folk-Lore of Shakespeare by T.F. Thiselton Dyer which was published in 1883. It is often hard to see the history of the Fey between the eras of the Mythological past that we have been covering in the stories of the Irish Mythological Cycle and the modern re-telling of folk-tales and memories that have been recorded by folklorists. Examination of the Elizabethan beliefs through the works of Shakespeare is a superb idea and now this book is available to study again!

Sacred Texts say:

This is a comprehensive studies of the folklore aspects of Shakespeare, providing a full-spectrum exposure to the cultural background of Elizabethan society. The Reverend Dyer, who also wrote Folk-lore of Women, delves into the source of innumerable passages in Shakespeare which were mysterious even back in Victorian times. Although usually he manages to clear up the mystery, in few instances he has to admit defeat.

This book is vital if you want to really understand Shakespeare’s cultural context and times. He covers everything from the supernatural (fairies, witches, mermaids) to the mundane: games, weddings, dance, punishments, proverbs, animal lore. You can read it straight through, but it is also a browser’s delight; you never know what bit of the bard lodged in your mind he will shed light on next.–J.B. Hare, April 16th, 2009.

Find the book on the  Sacred Texts website.

Originally posted 2009-04-30 09:45:37. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

The Longman Of Wilmington Pic: A Blog Of My Travels

The Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Devizes (Wiltshire, England) has decided to extend its current White Horses and Hill Figures exhibition until February next year after the show of intricate landscape carvings at the Devizes venue witnessed ‘tremendous’ visitor numbers.

Plenty of guests visited the museum to explore the display of chalk figures depicted in hills, looking primarily at the white galloping horses and military badges stamped throughout the county and beyond.

Berkshire’s Uffington White Horse, Sussex’s Long Man of Wilmington and the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset are among the sites whose mystiques are unravelled, charting their creation, stories, legends and folklore as well as the work required to preserve them. Related ephemera, unseen items from the WHM’s collections and artistic interpretations of the designs also feature.

“We are so pleased to be able to give even more visitors the opportunity to see this fascinating and visually stunning exploration of some of the most beautiful and iconic features of the landscape. Later in the autumn we will be transforming the exhibition by adding a whole host of exciting and original new artworks by locally, nationally and internationally important artists,”

said Exhibition Officer Jenna Spellane.
Exhibition continues until February 27 2011.

Source

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You can also now download a Celtic Myth Podshow App from the iTunes store. This is the most convenient and reliable way to access the Celtic Myth Podshow on your iPhone or iPod Touch. You’re always connected to the latest episode, and our App users have access to exclusive bonus content, just touch and play! To find out more visit the iTunes Store or our Descripition Page.

If you come to the site and listen or listen from one of our players – have you considered subscribing? It’s easy and you automatically get the episodes on your computer when they come out. If you’re unsure about the whole RSS/Subscribing thing take a look at our Help page.

Pic: Overlook

Overlook Press announced the publishing of a new book that attempts to determine the truths behind the Merlin myth. They say: Merlin: the very name summons up images of the wizard of Camelot—magician, prophet, and counselor to Arthur. The legend is famous but the truth is less well known: Merlin was a real historical figure, a champion of the old way of the Druids, a British man who hailed not from England or Wales, as traditional wisdom would have it, but from Scotland. Adam Ardrey, who stumbled upon some of the hidden sources of Merlin’s life while researching the history of a Scottish clan, offers compelling evidence that links a very real Merlin figure into the histories of other real and prominent 6th century figures. Ardrey brings back to life Merlin’s role in the cataclysmic battles between reason and religion in 6th century Britain—battles that Merlin would ultimately lose.

Continue Reading »

Originally posted 2008-08-22 10:46:46. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Pic: App Shopper

The Science of Fariy Tales by Edwin Sidney Hartland is now available as a downloadable App for your iPhone or iTouch from Apple’s App store. You can get it for $0.99 in the US or £0.59 in the UK – now that’s what I call a bargain! The Science of Fairy Tales was originally published in 1891 and is available on Sacred Texts as well, so we might include some sections from this fascinating book in future shows.App Shopper reports that: A fairy (also fey or fae or faerie; collectively, wee folk, good folk, people of peace, and other euphemisms) is the name given to an alleged metaphysical spirit or supernatural being.

The fairy is based on the fae of medieval Western European (Old French) folklore and romance. Fairies are often identified with related beings of other mythologies (see list of beings referred to as fairies). Even in folklore that uses the term “fairy,” there are many definitions of what constitutes a fairy. Sometimes the term is used to describe any magical creature, including goblins or gnomes: at other times, the term only describes a specific type of more ethereal creature.

Fairies are generally described as human in appearance and as having magical powers. Their origins are less clear in the folklore, being variously the dead, or some form of angel, or a species completely independent of humans or angels. Folklorists have suggested that their actual origin lies in a conquered race living in hiding, or in religious beliefs that lost currency with the advent of Christianity. These explanations are not always mutually incompatible, and they may be traceable to multiple sources.

Much of the folklore about fairies revolves about protection from their malice, by such means as cold iron (fairies don’t like iron and will not go near it) or charms of rowan and herbs, or avoiding offense by shunning locations known to be theirs. In particular, folklore describes how to prevent the fairies from stealing babies and substituting changelings, and abducting older people as well. Many folktales are told of fairies, and they appear as characters in stories from medieval tales of chivalry, to Victorian fairy tales, and up to the present day in modern literature.

About the Author:

A solicitor in Swansea and later Gloucester, who served as President of the Folklore Society, 1899-1901. His primary folklore interest was in the folktale and he rapidly became one the country’s leading experts in that field. His publications include English Fairy and Other Folk Tales (1890), an anthology of texts, and The Science of Fairytales: An Enquiry into the Fairy Mythology (1891), which attempted a theory of the subject, based firmly in the ruling doctrine of survivals and the belief that the expert can identify and apply the rules governing folklore.

 Hartland’s tour de force was the influential three-volume The Legend of Perseus: A Study of Tradition in Story, Custom and Belief (1894-6). In this he followed the conviction that tales encapsulate custom and belief of the past, and by tracing a particular story and its analogues across the world and across time, the folklorist can seek to understand the primitive mind of our ancestors. As his researches into folklore and anthropology deepened, Hartland moved away from a primarily narrative base to a more ethnological concern with primitive societies and the origins of religion, although he always used evidence from myths and legends in his argument.

Further books include: Primitive Paternity: The Myth of Supernatural Birth in Relation to the History of the Family (2 vols., 1909), Ritual and Belief: Studies in the History of Religion (1914), and Primitive Society: The Beginnings of the Family and the Reckoning of Descent (1921). As did others of his generation, Hartland clashed publicly with Andrew Lang in the journal Folk-Lore in 1898 and 1899. Another title, County Folklore: Gloucestershire (1892), although simply a slim gathering of previously printed material, is a source-book still useful today.

[Source]

Originally posted 2009-03-10 09:25:07. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Pic: Aldaron

NS Gill, About.com’s Ancient History specialist has blogged about Boudicca in some detail. She writes that Boudicca (also spelled Boadicea and Boudica) was the wife of King Prasutagus of the Celtic Iceni, in the east of ancient Britain. When the Romans conquered Britain, they allowed the king to continue his rule, but when he died and his wife, Boudicca took over, the Romans wanted the territory. They are said to have stripped and beaten Boudicca and raped her daughters.

As a result, in about A.D. 60, Boudicca led her troops and the Trinovantes of Camulodunum (Colchester) against the Romans, killing thousands in Camulodunum, London, and Verulamium (St. Albans). The tide turned and the Roman governor in Britain Gaius Suetonius Paullinus (or Paulinus) defeated the Celts. Continue Reading »

Originally posted 2009-06-24 08:51:50. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Pic: NegroTruc

Langourla is a small village in the Côtes d’Armor, in the North-West of Brittany. The oldest traces of civilization is the menhir of Coudre (other menhirs have been destroyed over the centuries). Langourla is an ancient parish; there are traces of its existence in 1211. Langourla territory once extended as far as Merdrignac and St. Launeuc, which spawned the parishes of Saint-Vrana and Mérillac: little by little, these two grew in the parish, but Langourla had the privilege of being the "mother church" of the three parishes. The parish was until 1312 administered by the Knights Templar.

There was a rumour that circulated in the nineteenth century that there was buried treasure under the menhir so much digging and excavating resulted in the foundations of the menhir becoming very unstable. Eventually it slipped to the side at the angle we can see it at today. A menhir is a dressed stone originating in the Iron Age (somewhere between 3500 and 2000 BCE) and possibly providing evidence of Druidic activity in the Langourla area.  We’re probably all familiar with the term ‘menhir’ from the Asterix (our favourite Gaul) books, but what does it mean? The word comes from two words in the Breton language: maen "stone" and hir, "long". Long-stone is an excellent description

The Miracle Oak

Right next to the Chapelle Saint-Joseph, stands the Miracle Oak. The Chapel is home today to a 15th century stained glass window in the west gable which watches over the miraculous oak . This old oak is dead, but his carcass remains. A new oak tree has been replanted in the same place and its trunk is now mixed with the remains of the old oak. Today, the Miracle Oak is still a wonderful symbol of the death and rebirth within nature. Already revered in the time of the Druids, the oak is a legendary symbol of fertility. Traditionally, women wanting a child or a husband had to rub their buttocks on the tree at night to make their wish come true. According to Caroline in her Blog, Miscellany, young women who rub their bottoms against the trunk on St Joseph’s day will be either married or pregnant within a year (accounts vary, although it might be worth clarifying before you visit…). The ritual was still being followed in the 1920s, and this kind of legend is not uncommon in Brittany although such fertility rites more usually involve rubbing against a menhir.

Death By Mattress and the Four Oxen

Pic: NegroTruc

The chapel of Saint-Gilles-des-Prés is located southwest of the town, near the village of Plessis. Its construction dates back to mid 15th century. The archives of the parish tell that by the year 1450, Gilles de Bretagne died smothered between two mattresses in the castle of Saint-Hardouin Launeuc. His body was to be transported to the Abbey to Boquen Plénée-Jugon. The four oxen that were pulling the funeral bier stopped at the place that the chapel is now built. They refused to go any further. The priest and others in the procession then began to pray to God and Saint-Gilles to come to their aid. One horse then struck a rock with its hoof and you can still see the hoof-mark today. The animals once more carried on to Boquen and Saint Gilles had a chapel built in his honour.

Langourla, as we mentioned earlier, is in the Côtes-d’Armor. The Côtes-d’Armor is a department in the north of Brittany, in northwestern France. Côtes-du-Nord was one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790. It was created from part of the former province of Brittany. Its name was changed in 1990 to Côtes-d’Armor (ar mor meaning the sea in Breton). The name also has a historical connotation recalling the Roman province of Armorica. The inhabitants of the department are called Costarmoricain but the inhabitants of Langourla are called Langourlaciens. Fascinating, huh?

Originally posted 2009-08-06 08:51:20. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Pic: BBC

The BBC reports that an ancient Perthshire yew has made the top 10 in a list of the most important trees in the UK. The Fortingall Yew, which grows at a churchyard near Aberfeldy, could be up to 5,000 years old and is among the oldest living organisms in Europe. Local legend has it that Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who oversaw the crucifixion of Jesus, was born in its shade and played there as a child.

Continue Reading »

Originally posted 2008-07-28 10:06:12. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Pic: BBC

An historic hill claimed as the place where King Arthur married his queen is for sale. Part of Castle Hill at Knucklas, near Knighton in Powys, is being sold under action later in November. According to legend, Guinevere, daughter of the Welsh giant Gorgyrfan Gawr, became betrothed to Arthur on hill’s grassy slopes.

It was also the site of a Norman castle built in the 13th Century, before being destroyed by Owain Glyndwr’s forces. The castle was built by the Norman knight Roger Mortimer to help keep the Welsh population in check, but it was later overrun.

There are only traces of the castle left on the hill now. The land is being sold in two lots on 27 November. Estate agent Jenny Layton from McCartneys in Knighton said it was a “rare opportunity to purchase a site of historical importance”.

Source

Details of the Land Auction can be found here

Originally posted 2008-11-03 10:24:15. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Pic: iguana jo

Scotland’s oldest settlement, dating back 14,000 years, was near Biggar, in South Lanarkshire, archaeologists say. The site may have been a camp used by hunters following migrating herds of reindeer or wild horses across plains that are now covered by the North Sea. Its discovery by the Biggar Archeology Group means humans have lived in Scotland for 3,000 years longer than previously thought. Until now the earliest evidence of human habitation in the country was at Cramond, near Edinburgh, which had been radiocarbon-dated to about 8400 BCE.

A large scattering of flints was first found in the field near Biggar a few years ago but the site was initially thought to be late Neolithic and was later classified as an Iron Age settlement after radiocarbon dating of charcoal found there. However, recent analysis of more of the flints revealed that they were from the end of the Upper Palaeolithic period, 14,000 years ago.
Their true significance was realised by Torben Ballin, an expert in stone finds, and Alan Saville from the National Museums of Scotland. Mr Saville said: “There would have been a temporary camp site where the flints were found, so there’s a faint possibility that there might be post holes and waste pits there.” He added that the chances of finding that evidence were “fairly slim, but we live in hope”. He said the diggers from Biggar were planning to go back to the site in the summer to explore it further.
Saville hailed the discovery as “a breakthrough that we have been hoping to find for years and years”. He added: “We always thought that there must be Upper Palaeolithic occupation in Scotland but we never actually found material which was conclusive enough, so it is a breakthrough that we can now say there is absolutely no doubt that people were here.”
“The tool types involve particularly a couple of tanged points (projectile heads), but also burins, end-of-blade scrapers, and a piercer of so-called Zinken-type, as well as there being evidence for a certain type of blade-core preparation technique known as en eperon,” Saville said. A burin was a flaked rock tool with a chisel-like edge probably used to remove flesh from bone. “Eperon” means “spur” in French. Here it refers to a blade with a thick-ended butt at one end. The toolkit suggests there were at least two major technologies in early Britain: Hamburgian and Creswellian. The latter was characterized by “Cheddar points,” tools with trapezoidal-backed blades.
The flints, which included end-of-blade scrapers and piercers, were found to date from around 12,000 BCE. They are similar to those found in southern Denmark and northern Germany, which have been dated accurately to that time. It’s now believed people from those regions made their way to Scotland via a large land bridge called Doggerland, which connected the island of Great Britain to mainland Europe during the last ice age. The individuals in this case likely belonged to the Hamburg culture, known for its reindeer-hunting prowess.
The settlement may be ancient for Scotland but it is positively modern compared with finds in England, where there is evidence of a human settlement near Lowestoft on the east coast that dates back 700,000 years. The Biggar Archaeology Group now plans to carry out further excavations at the site to see what other artefacts it can find.

Source

Originally posted 2009-05-17 10:41:10. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Proposed Slane Bypass Pic: Save Newgrange

Vincent Salafia of Save Newgrange tells us that the Irish Times has reported that new consultations are being ordered to discuss the Slane Bypass that is threatening the ancient home of Angus Og, the Brugh na Boyne – the monument that is now called Newgrange. Click on the image to the left to see the detail.

The Irish Times reports:

A NEW round of public consultations on controversial plans for a dual-carriageway bypass of Slane, Co Meath, has been ordered by An Bord Pleanála, with October 15th set as the closing date. A public notice advertising the new round of consultations was published recently in national newspapers. The original consultation period closed on February 25th last.

An Bord Pleanála had sought additional information from Meath County Council on the road scheme, including whether an alternative route running to the west of Slane had been examined. The current proposal, which is being advanced on behalf of the National Roads Authority (NRA), would run to the east of Slane, some 500 metres from the boundary of Brú na Bóinne World Heritage Site.

The appeals board also sought alternative designs for a new bridge over the river Boyne, noting that the cable-stayed bridge originally proposed would be visible from the World Heritage Site. It also wanted the council to produce more detailed archaeological and geophysical reports on investigations of 44 archaeological sites that would be affected by the original scheme.

The information was sought “in order to clarify certain points in the environmental impact statement [EIS] and assist the board’s assessment of the likely effects on the environment” of the road. This followed complaints to An Bord Pleanála by the Save Newgrange group, former attorney general John Rogers SC and leading archaeologist Prof George Eogan that the EIS was flawed.

Save Newgrange spokesman Vincent Salafia said:

“We will be waging an international campaign over the next month, particularly in Northern Ireland, to get as many objections as possible filed with An Bord Pleanála.”

Save Newgrange

Irish Times

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You can also now download a Celtic Myth Podshow App from the iTunes store. This is the most convenient and reliable way to access the Celtic Myth Podshow on your iPhone or iPod Touch. You’re always connected to the latest episode, and our App users have access to exclusive bonus content, just touch and play! To find out more visit the iTunes Store or our Descripition Page.

If you come to the site and listen or listen from one of our players – have you considered subscribing? It’s easy and you automatically get the episodes on your computer when they come out. If you’re unsure about the whole RSS/Subscribing thing take a look at our Help page.