A Green Stranger or Angel or Fairy? March 27, 2017
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Lots of supernatural creatures from the Green Knight to aliens are green: and the general, though by no means universal opinion of folklorists has been that green is for vegetation. Here is one reference from the late 17C* that has confused Beach. We are in Westmorland in north-west England and this is from a one […]
Dead Rats, Stoned Teachers and Sergeant Monday June 14, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Sergeant Monday was a festival in the north-western English town of Kendal for the installation of a new mayor. Basically this was a Saturnalia for the children of the town: and by ancient convention any students in school would be ‘battered out’ by older boys, who would intimidate teachers into silence. Hundreds of kids would then […]
Huge Erratic Boulders: the Westmorland Thunderstones April 10, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Thunderstones are a well known European and, indeed, international phenomenon, flint arrowheads or stone axes which were believed, by our early modern ancestors, to have descended from the sky in lightning storms. The typical praxis was that a sheep would be killed by a bolt of lightning and the family would discover, near the animal, […]
