Bee's were once described as 'Coorus craiturs’ and certainly, they play a key role in Shropshire Folklore. Read all about their prominence in the county, including the 'Telling the Bee's' ritual 🐝
Happy May Day! This is hand-pulled lino block print of the Jack-in-the-Green (or Jack o' the Green) an English folk tradition for May Day. Wearing a conical or pyramidal wicker or wooden frame covered in foliage so as to conceal the wearer, the Jack-in-the-Green leads a May Day procession, dancing often with musicians and other figures. 🧵1/2
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@TarkabarkaHolgy The challenge was fun, but also taxing. I hardly found time to visit other blogs, but then I usually wrote the post just the evening before posting. I am not sure I will participate again next year, unless I have a really good theme beforehand.
Podcasts play a huge role in preserving our #Folklore traditions, sharing #folk stories and traditions with new audiences + moving the lore onwards through #storytelling
We are in our second week of fundraising for series 2! It's wonderful to know we could bring this to life. Please share as widely as you can, and if you can, pledge as every little helps. We need to hit 100% of our goal to make this a reality.
Located on the Scottish island of Fetlar, the Haltadans is a circle of standing stones that folklore claims were once trows (Shetland's fairy folk). The story goes that they were still dancing in a circle when the sun rose one morning and turned them to stone. #MythologyMonday
I think Baba Yaga is one of my favourite witches in mythology and folklore. Appears as an old hag. Not a good or bad figure but very powerful. She has a house with chicken legs and flies around in a mortar and pestle. #FolkloreSunday#folklore#mythology
Podcast people! I've got some free time coming up - if you're looking for a guest, I'd love to chat about Shropshire folklore, ghosts, and weirdness ✨️
Kickstarter update!
Thank you to everyone who has supported! We are so close to our first mini target of £1,500- 20% of our overall goal. Please share widely and let people know about the project. Also, if you're able to pledge the kickstarter, it is below
#WritersCoffeeClub April 24 - When older novels use outdated or racist language, should they be edited for the modern world or left alone and viewed in context?
This is a pretty big issue for me. I translate 19th century German #folklore into English, and while I generally love those tales, many of them are... highly dubious, to say the least.
Take the tales featuring #antisemitism - there are unfortunately quite a few of them, and they are generally NOT subtle about this. No veiled metaphors, no subtext - plain text with uncoded language. So, how do I deal with them?
The first approach is the one taken by the Brothers Grimm, which is to just publish them verbatim. But to my mind, publishing in this manner without commentary is basically endorsement. And while the Brothers Grimm were likely okay with endorsing antisemitism, I am not.
Many recently-published collections of German folk tales instead just leave such tales out. But these tales, ugly as they were, were unfortunately a noteworthy part of the German oral storytelling tradition. And I feel that staying silent about this is an act of cowardice - and it is cowardice like this that allows the fascists to pretend that the #Holocaust was just a singular aberration instead of being part of a long history of bigotry and persecution.
The same goes for other dubious "morals" in those tales. Sexism, abuse against minors, anti-LGTB bigotry - they were wrong then and they are wrong now. I will talk about these tales and publish them, but I will also call out bullshit when I see it.
I'm so grateful for the love you've given myself and the project! It's so exciting to know we could make this script a reality!!! Please share and consider donating if you can!