Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

On this site we have frequently examined how fairies have changed through the generations. For example, the way that fairy wings have gone from being a minority convention in art to being practically de rigueur for the fay; or the way that the size of fairies has changed. However, these are superficial baubles in the […]

Nice mermaid story from 1886 (anon). A young man comes across a mermaid in Aberdeen harbour. Interestingly the experience ended in a police court. The latest ‘mermaid’ story is a local one. It evolved itself in the Aberdeen Police Court on Monday this wise: About seven o’clock Sunday a young son of the sea who […]

This story came out in the Pall Mall Gazette, in early January 1885. It has that sharp cordite smell of urban legend and is, truly, as the journalist says, ‘an amusing story’. Massive kudos to anyone who can send in other nineteenth or twentieth century examples: drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com An amusing story reaches us […]

Beach is happy to announce that just two days ago Gibson Square released Magical Folk: British and Irish Fairies (a topic close to the heart of many readers of this blog). The book is choc full of fairy experts and includes three chapters on European emigrant fairies in the New World. The authors are: Magical […]

***Invisible gets it – scroll down for answer*** The Index Biography is a quiz 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 offered up previously […]

This brief account was published in the press in 1827 (Anon). Within these last two or three days there have been several mermaids seen on the rocks at Trenance, in the parish of Mawgan. I will state the particulars at length, as I have been enabled to collect them, and which are from undoubted authority, […]

Ghost photograph fakes always have a certain interest, not least because they are usually so clumsily done. However, these, which appeared in the Tatler, 9 Oct 1907, were a cut above. There follow screen captures of the five photographs. The editor has written in ‘The making of ghosts has ever been a favourite pastime of […]

Beach would like to introduce to the sheer unadorned horror of the Irish turkey. Let’s start slow and, then, gradually crank up the volume. Willie Reilly of Gelsha was going home… It was fairly late: when he came to where Johnnie Connor lives now, there was a bend in the road and there was at that […]

This site has pioneered the study of fairy wings. In the last years a number of posts have pointed to the origins of fairy wings in Britain in the late eighteenth century; looked at fairy wings types; and even looked at how fairy wings were constructed by anxious mothers in the 1800s. Our colleague and […]

This interesting account appeared in the British press in 1827 (Anon). It describes excitement about mermaid bones, in Portsmouth and an unusual dinner. ‘Mombuss’ is Mombassa, which we have seen before connected to mermaids. Beach seems to hear Lieutenant Emory, two hundred years ago, leaning across the table and saying ‘capital meat, Captain!’ The skeleton of […]

June 1930 and various snooty Britons are opening their spanking new copy of Tatler, the house magazine of Britain’s upper middle classes and down-at-heel aristocrats. But what is this on page 25: ‘a spring time fantasy’ involving some posh tots! It would not be very difficult to imagine that Titania and her friends Peace-blossom, Moth, […]

This is one in the immortals series. Human beings who lived remarkably long lives (be they factual or fictional). First the report from 1825. Died on 13 the December, at Kingston, Jamaica, an old negro woman, Patience, alias Nancy Lawrence, supposed to be aged about 140 years. The precise age of this extraordinary creature could […]

Here is a Scottish account from 1833 (Anon) of what were apparently river mermaids. What is most interesting here is certainly the reaction of the community, though the resolution of the mystery has some entertainment value. Some time back, the inhabitants of some hamlets, situated near the Tay, a little below Dunkeld, had been kept in […]

A busy day in paradise, so Beach thought he would limit himself to sharing this charming parrot story. Mr Braham was John Braham (obit 1856), an early nineteenth-century opera singer: ‘he sang before Napoleon’s Josephine and gave lessons to Nelson’s wife.’ Part of the charm of the story is the parrot in the presence of two […]

A woman with a key around her neck haunts the French saloons. What is her story? Beach is always looking for Victorian urban legends (this one is 1870) and particularly sexual ones. Ask yourself this. Would this tale have appeared in a British newspaper if it had been set in London rather than Paris? The […]