Victorian Urban Legends: Fine Art February 25, 2025
Author: Beach Combing | in : UncategorizedA couple of fine art urban legends. We live in a world where painting no longer has the same social value: what would be the modern equivalents of these? Drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com
A man who was furnishing saw in Wardour-street an old portrait which he admired, but for which the dealer asked, as he thought, an excessive price. Several times he returned endeavouring to beat him down, but without success, and, on his last visit, he found the portrait gone. Shortly afterwards he visited a friend who, in showing him his pictures, pointed out the identical portrait with the remark that it was one of his ancestors. ‘Ah! precisely, precisely,’ remarked visitor but you don’t know how uncommonly near was being ancestor of mine!’
Gloucester Citizen (13 Jun 1893),
A capital story reaches from Vienna. A distinguished Austrian painter recently exhibited at the Kunsterhaus an historical picture in which was seen very fine head of an old man. Shortly afterwards a mysterious personage called on the artist and desired to knew the name and address the model who had served him for that splendidly-executed head. After some explanation the painter gave the desired information, and the police forthwith proceeded the lodging this strikingly-handsome old man. In portrait the detective had recognised a dangerous criminal who had some time before escaped from prison.
Dundee Evening Telegraph (13 May 1880), 3
This last one is not really an urban legend, but it is irresistible…
Here is a good story of a doctor and a painter’s wife. The doctor’s name does not appear, but the painter was Meissonier. Mdme. Meissonier sent for the family physician in a great hurry. He came, thinking some illness had overtaken the artist. But it was not the artist, was only lap-dog. He pocketed his pride, and attended the patient, who soon recovered. At the end of the year the bill came in, but there was item for attendance on dog. Mdme. Meissonier noticed the omission, and told the doctor to charge. He would not charge; he said he could not charge, he was not a vet. He was very glad to be kind to the dog, etc etc. The lady insisted. ‘Well, said the doctor, the hinges of my garden gate are rusty, ask M. Meissouier to bring his brush and paint them for me.’
Dundee Evening Telegraph (26 Jan 1892), 2
Headingley Monster February 24, 2025
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Here is a weird and disturbing story from the Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 16 Apr 1912: Leeds Family Terrorised; Woman Bitten. For three months past, a strange little beast has been alarming a Headingley household. It has been variously held to be weasel, a rat, or some strange creature from the East. On several, occasions the animal […]
St Charles Fort? February 23, 2025
Author: Beach Combing | in : UncategorizedCharles Fort was a fiercely eccentric and independent individual who collected, in the early twentieth century, anomaly reports, as some of his contemporaries collected cigarette cards. He described and lovingly collated these anomalies in five books he published between 1906 and 1932: after thousands of visits to libraries, most in New York. These books are […]
Are Mermaids Fairies? July 1, 2024
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Medieval, Modern
Chris starts our new podcast episode (Mermaid 101) with this question (see title) and I answer ‘yes’. Mermaids (which have featured for over a decade on this site) are social supernatural beings who happen to live in the water rather than on land. They are essentially marine fairies. But there is an important difference in […]
Early Modern Fairy Sex Spell June 1, 2024
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
This month’s podcast is on sex and the supernatural. The most extraordinary text I ran across in preparing for our hour ride is the following spell from an early modern English text, edited by Frederika Bain in her ‘The Binding of the Fairies: Four Spells’, Preternature 2 (2012), 323-354. It describes the ritual you should […]
Karl Banse: The Man Who Made the Case for Mermaids May 1, 2024
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Just a quick post as we move towards the summer. The podcast goes on with me and Chris recently talking about fairy artifacts, the Philip experiment (‘how to invent a ghost’) and this month ‘spectral evidence: the supernatural in court’. I, meanwhile, am diving into mermaid-lore, a love that started many years ago on this […]
The Wood Diva February 5, 2024
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
***I’ve been absent for a couple of months because I was locked out of the account! Just to let you know that Chris and I continue to do our podcasts and there has been an episode on medieval x-files and now bird spirits. This is a fragment of an article on Fairy Census 2 I’ve […]
The Dancing Fairies of Sennen Cove: December 12, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
This month Chris and I have been enjoying, on the Boggart and Banshee podcast, a fascinating fairy encounter at Sennen Cove, a hamlet, in Cornwall. In 1888 two young women go out to the well at midnight, up on the hill behind their house. I’ve put on this Victorian OS map a red line for […]
The Modern Western Ghost and Its Zombie Origins November 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval, Modern
This month’s Boggart and Banshee podcast is on ghosts and shrouds (Shrouded in Mystery: The Origins of the Iconic Sheeted Ghost). As often with Chris’s choices I didn’t at first get the point: I can only get so excited about textiles… But my attention picked up as I realised (ever the slow learner) that the […]
Horse Spirits: Colt-Pixy or Pixy-Colt? October 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
The latest episode of Boggart and Banshee is on horse spirits and Chris and I disagree on, well, just about everything… There is also a fun accompanying book with seventeen different tales of horse spirits (UK, US). However, you can listen to the podcast for that. I’ve, instead, been caught up with one very simple […]
The When of Levitation in the West September 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Fun and games on the latest Boggart and Banshee podcast with almost an hour given over to questions of levitation and teleportation. As always when I talk to Chris there were revelations, things I’d not realised before. The point that really blew me away was the chronology of levitation. I had assumed that people had […]
The Fairy Census: End Game August 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite
In 2014 (inspired by Marjorie Johnson’s Seeing Fairies, which I had just edited) I started the Fairy Census. The aim was to gather together first-hand encounters with fairies; or unusual supernatural experiences that could be understood in fairy terms. It took me to 2017 to get to 500 encounters, which were then published freely online. […]
Immortals and Itinerants July 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
This month’s Boggart and Banshee Podcast concerns the immortals in our midst: the men and (in some rare cases) the women who are supposed to live for ever. I’ve long been interested in the most famous of these, the Wandering Jew: the individual cursed by Christ who traipsed from place-to-place imparting wisdom or (in some […]
Devil at the Wedding (Ritual) June 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Chris twisted my arm this month to do a podcast on wedding superstitions. I was rather pessimistic about how interesting this would be (dresses, jilting…), but after a couple of weeks of reading I’d changed my mind. As one folklorist explained things to me ‘it’s all about sex and death’. Here just to give you […]
The Voodoo Soldiers of Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh May 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
In 1836 some children discovered a hidden niche on the edge of Arthur’s Seat. In this niche were three shelves, two with eight and one with one miniature coffin and body. Each ‘unit’ had four elements: a coffin, a coffin lid, a doll and clothes. These coffins are the subject of this month’s Boggart and […]
