Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

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 […]

***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 […]

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 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 […]

Regular readers will know that I have long had an interest in fairy wings. There have been several posts and even an article in 2019. I have tried to defend a position that fairies get wings i) in Britain; and ii) that this happens in the late eighteenth century. Certainly, when I did my research […]

Supernatural fashions come and go. One generation ghosts are hopping around in shrouds, then they are carrying their heads under their arms, next we have clanking chains… Fairy fashions, though, as I argue on the latest episode of Boggart and Banshee, are surprisingly constant. I offer here my three fairy fashion rules. Rule 1: ‘Uniform […]

*This is the subject of Chris and my most recent Boggart and Banshee podcast* **For the source file; and for other Puca books and pamphlets** William Butterfield’s run in with the fairies at Ilkley is one of the best-known encounters in British supernatural folklore. An account appeared in the first number of Folk-lore Record in […]

The subject of this month’s podcast is Ann Jefferies (1625-1713), a Cornish fairy witch. An accompanying Pwca book is available on Amazon: Ann Jefferies and the Fairies A Source Book for a Seventeenth-Century Cornish Fairy Witch Introduction: Ann and the Fairy Witches Ann Jefferies (aka Anne Jefferies, Ann Jeffries etc) started seeing fairies in 1645. […]

Introduction Take three children, an adolescent, a score of dancing elves, an unnerving chase and a stile. What do you get? Perhaps the scariest British fairy encounter. The Dancers It was summer 1757, and about midday. At Lanelwyd House to the south of Bodfari (Wales) four children decided to play outside, as the adults prepared […]

1873, 2 women see a weird humanoid on the road between 2 Bedfordshire villages. Was it a ghost, a fairy, death or an itinerant tramp?

In nineteenth century Britain we have several references to ghosts and fairies attacking newly constructed railways…

There are several reports from early twentieth-century Ireland of crowds of boys chasing leprechauns. This is the best attested of what we might call ‘leprechaun riots’ (named for ghost riots): Belief in the fairies, the ‘good people’ is still prevalent in many of the country districts in Ireland. During the past few days the superstition has been revived in […]

It is rarely that this blogger is flabbergasted about something on fairies: but today he was fair blown away by this sentence concerning the fey on the Isle of Man, published in the early spring of 1902 in a Liverpool newspaper. Fairies are not encouraged at any other time of the year, only on New […]

Lilly and the Fairies at Hurstwood In 1652 William Lilly (1602-1681), a wealthy London business man, bought Hurst Wood (aka Hurstwood), at Hersham, Surrey: in the late 19C OS map above note ‘The Hurst’. It was a substantial property including a house with thirteen hearths and eighteen acres of Parkland. So what did Lilly do […]

Introduction It was only a matter of time… In English ‘fairy’ has several different meanings. The primary one is, of course, a supernatural creature with or without wings. But somewhere down the list is a gay man. Where does this idea come from and when did it gain currency? Who Cares? It could be argued […]