Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Goodbye Christmas…

These nine stories were published in 1825, then somehow fell through the cracks of history. William Wilde (Oscar’s dad) claimed in 1852 that they were the best things out there on Irish folklore. Yeats later (from what Beach can see) pretended to have read them, but there is suggestive evidence that he had not. Here […]

We have literally hundreds of British and Irish fairy sightings from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and it is striking how often fairies are seen in battle garb: the fairy armies. Yes, there are important folklore traditions about fairies fighting each other: the hosts of Ulster against the host of Connaught, the host of Ireland […]

When these animals were frightening. The intricacy and unreality of the horns… Invisible, 8 Jan 2017: While the creature in the painting is a little Seussian, I don’t see that the horns are completely unrealistic. The Cincinnati Museum Center has a prehistoric elk skeleton that is utterly terrifying; the horns depicted aren’t that far from the genuine […]

***dedicated to RJ*** Fakelore – fake folklore – is a term which we owe to Richard Dorson, who first employed the word in print in 1950. Beach recently followed suit in an article and was surprised at the howl of rage from several readers. It seems that fakelore is off-limits in decent society: whoops! Here is Francisco […]

When the gown goes ‘boo’!

The originality of Victorian criminals is often breath-taking. Here is a particularly fine dodge and something that would have made a quite excellent Sherlock Holmes short story. A remarkable case of attempting to extort money is reported from New York. Some years ago, it may be remembered, a Mr Rosenbaum, in London, was annoyed in […]

The Wandring Whore was a mysterious late seventeenth-century English dialogue between a number of ladies of the night, which was published in five numbers 1660-1661. It is titillating stuff and, after some back and forth between these bawds, each edition included a list of London prostitutes. Of course the publisher did not approve. God forbid! […]

Dear Reader, Beach has been a bad blogger. The past week he has barely put a post up as he was – writing his new book… The book in question is about the supernatural in the island whose cold, harsh Atlantic sands you see above. Apart from crazy and happy writing hours still a lot […]

***Matthew gets it…*** 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 offered up previously here Sheridan le […]

Shortly before his emphatic and embarassing defeat. People carried on shoulders rarely end well…

Those Bolshevik bastards… Actually the four Romanov girls were shaved because of the measles (?)

Adorable. Could this be mass produced for the greater good?

‘integrates your money but segregates you’

This is one of those only in Ireland stories, which the British press loved in the nineteenth century. The tale originally came up in the Cork Examiner, but this text was taken from Bu He, 3 April 1869. An amusing instance of post mortem bequest and its consequences transpired at the Kanturk Petty Sessions on […]