Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Perhaps the real key to the Red Fairies problem is language. As we have established they are referred to as y Gwilliaid Cochion Mowddwy in Pennant our first extensive source. Let’s work backwards. Mowddwy refers to their region, modern Mawddwy. No problem there. Cochion refers to a deep red colour. Again no problem or controversy. (Some […]

Colorised image, beautiful face 25 Feb 2016: it has been pointed out multiple times now that this is not a 19 cent teacher but probably Edwardian. Leif can speak for all those readers who objected: The Nineteenth century teacher photograph is lovely, but do double check the date. Women wore long hair throughout the 19th […]

One curious folklore tradition survives about ‘the red fairies’. This is David Pennant our earliest extensive source. The traditions of the country respecting these banditti, are still extremely strong. I was told that they were so feared, that travellers did not dare go the common road to Shrewsbury, but passed over the summits of the […]

Victorians on the beach

One of the most curious aspects of the Red Fairy legends in the belief that the Red Fairies survived up until the nineteenth century as a race apart in the locality. This was elevated to high pseudo-science. Here is a passage from The British Race (1909) In Merioneth there is a red-haired, ruddy-skinned people, with […]

Three young Blackfoot men, in Alberta 1887

Imagine the scene: 1555, Lewis Owen, vice-chamberlain is passing down the road with a small bodyguard and his son-in-law, on the edge of Powys in central Wales. As they pass down the track, they come to several felled trees across their way in the midst of ‘thick woods’. Are the men anxious? Perhaps not at […]

Dear Reader, January that jumping-in-a-cold-pool-feeling as term begins, even if kids as always nice. Long hours, and early mornings. Up at four twice this week to try and make things work: though in truth today I managed somehow to sleep in till six. Thanks, as always, to the multiple linkers: Amanda, Invisible, Chris S, Joan, Ricardo, Wade and […]

Stone, Slav Outposts Wends etc. Looking forward…

***James got this… scroll down for the answer*** The Index Biography is a new form of biography pioneered by this blog and introduced in a previous post. The creator must find a biography of a famous individual from history, they must turn to the index and write down eight peripheral facts about the individual’s life. We […]

When Beach was at university he lived about six floors up just under the roof of a marvelous Georgian building. Every day a bird used to visit his room and fly around inside impressing all Beach’s friends and casual visitors who thought that he’d turned into a Celtic saint. The real reason for the bird’s […]

Muravchik, Making David into Goliath One of the tragedies of the postwar period…

1984. He’s not Nixon but…

What is the first recorded use of cannabis? There follows what is unquestionably the first European reference, though it relates to a Steppe people. Herodotus (4,73) is here describing the Scythians, the barbarians beyond the Black Sea, a region note that Herodotus may have visited: certainly he had lots of surprisingly accurate information about Scythian […]

Padraig Og O Ruairc, Truce: Murder, Myth and the Last Days of the Irish War of Independence The catastrophic winding down of the struggle in Ireland