THE VERY GREEN PARTY

John Clark. The Green Children of Woolpit: Chronicles, Fairies and Facts in Medieval England. University of Exeter Press, 2023.

The story of the Green Children, a boy and girl, coloured green and in green clothing, who appeared mysteriously in the Suffolk village of Woolpit some time in the mid twelfth century has been around for centuries, hovering between folklore, fairy-tale, Forteanism, and most recently ufology. 

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TRACKING THE GRIFFIN

A. L. McClanan. Griffinology, the Griffin's Place in Myth, History and Art. Reaktion Books, 2024.

A book previously reviewed in Magonia (1) suggested that the image of this mythical beast was created in Greece and the ancient Near East as a result of travellers finding the fossil remains of prehistoric creatures, particularly the protoceratops. These bones were often found on or near the surface in the areas to the north of the Caspian Sea, and the story of the griffin was built around them.

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CHANCE'D BE A FINE THING

Nigel Pennick. Fortuna; the Sacred and Profane Faces of Luck. Destiny Books, 2024.

'Chance' is a difficult thing to understand, 'randomness' even more so. There is the old trick question: if someone tosses a coin nine times and each time it comes up heads, what should you bet on for the tenth toss? Well any mathematician will tell you that it makes no difference what you choose as each individual toss is a 50/50 heads or tails bet.*

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BLOOD, SOIL AND MORRIS DANCING

Matthew Cheeseman and Carina Hart (Editors). Folklore and Nation in Britain and Ireland. Routledge, 2023.

The manner in which the collecting, study and publishing of folklore has influenced the understanding of national origins and identities has become a matter of concern to many in the field, who fear that the subject has been exploited for nationalist and political ends. 

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DOUBTFUL ORIGINS

Simon Webb. The Origins of Wizards, Witches and Fairies. Pen and Sword Books, 2023

This book contains a mass of information and conjecture; all of it diverting, some of it convincing, much of it discredited. The author takes time (55 pages to be precise) to set the context, and to introduce his wide-ranging selection of traditions, concepts and images common across Northern Europe. 

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TO WIDDICOMBE AND BEYOND

Mark Norman. The Folklore of Devon. Exeter University Press, 2023.

There is a certain journalist/commentator who delights in informing us every April 23rd that St George, the Patron Saint of England, "is ackcherly Turkish". I wonder what he would make of the possibility that the old Devonian folk song character Uncle Tom Cobley is ackcherly German?

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A RATHER DULL DEVIL

Claude and Corinne Lecouteux. Tales and Legends of the Devil: The Many Guises of the Primal Shapeshifter. Inner Traditions, 2023.

The traditional folk devil really was a bit of a loser, no matter what his plans to steal gold, abduct virgins, capture the souls of the virtuous or just generally take over the world. Even if he was able to lure some lonely traveller or adventurous youth to actually enter Hell, they would nearly always escape by outwitting the rather dim demon, and usually taking a chest of gold - or some previously abducted virgin - with them.

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THE HOW-ANCIENT ENGLISH MORRIS DANCE?

Michael Heaney. The Ancient English Morris Dance, Archaeopress, 2023.

The title raises a question straight away, doesn't it? Just how ancient is the 'ancient' morris dance? It was certainly the view of many people that morris dancing was very ancient indeed, with roots stretching back to pre-Christian times. 

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TALES OF THE SEA

Axel Müller, Christopher Halls, Ben Williamson. Mermaids: Art, Symbolism and Mythology. ‎ University of Exeter Press, 2022.

Mermaids have not been around since the dawn of recorded time, but were first recorded in Mesopotamia. Actually the first depictions were of mermen who rose from the sea each morning in order to teach the skills of creating a civilisation to the Mesopotamians themselves.

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SAXON GOLD

Eleanor Parker. Winters in the World – a Journey Through the Anglo-Saxon Year. Reaktion Books, 2022.

Although this book is presented as an analysis of Anglo-Saxon material relating to the seasons and the calendar, the author's intention is also to introduce the reader to Anglo-Saxon poetry and to share her evident love of the poets' use of words. As a layman reading this book I found the author's enthusiasm infectious.

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DOWN IN THE FOREST

Dee Dee Chainey and Willow Winsham. Treasury of Folklore: Woodlands and Forests: Wild Gods, World Trees and Werewolves. Batsford, 2021.

From time immemorial, the forest has been a liminal space for humankind. Onto this dark, sometimes dangerous environment has been projected many of the fears of our species. In the modern world we can be forgiven for forgetting just how dense and dark woodlands used to be and how much of a physical barrier they were, especially to travel. 

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SHOCK! HORROR! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

Simon Young. The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends. University of Mississippi Press. 2022.

I have always felt that not enough attention has been paid to the disastrous effects of cycling. Now held as the key to a new urban utopia of fume-free, polar-bear friendly, sustainable transport, it seems the Victorians had a more critical view of dangers of the then novel machines. They identified a number of afflictions resulting from excessive cycling, for instance the Bicycle Face.

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LITTER PICKING

Ceri Houlbrook. 'Ritual Litter' Redressed. Cambridge Elements, Cambridge University Press. 2022.

Perhaps the most significant part of this book's title are the 'scare quotes', as much of this slim volume is devoted to exploring the meanings of the two words contained within them. It is a follow-up and extension of the author's two previous books, which have looked at two examples of potential ritual litter – coin trees and lovelocks, both examples of the practice of placing a semi-permanent deposition on the environment as a marker of ones presence.

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MEETING THE DEVIL IN THE LANE

Jeremy Harte. Cloven Country, the Devil and the English Landscape. Reaktion Books, 2022.

You might think that bumping into the Devil on the way home from the pub or from work might be a rather terrifying experience – bottomless pit, eternal fires, that sort of thing. However in this book Jeremy Harte shows us that if you keep your wits about you, you can avoid such a fate, and might even turn a bit of a profit.

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EARTH MOTHERS AND A GREEN MAN

Ronald Hutton. Queens of the Wild. Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe. An Investigation. Yale University Press, 2022.

In his introduction to this book, Ronald Hutton explains that for most of the last century and a half the concept of 'pagan survivals' dominated thinking about folklore and folk traditions, particularly in England. The idea grew that in the period from the Christianization of Saxon England until the religious upheavals of the Reformation, and in some cases even beyond that, Christian belief and practice had been a veneer over deeper pagan beliefs.

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THE MAPPING OF BOGGARTDOM

Simon Young. The Boggart: Folklore, History, Place-names and Dialect. Exeter University Press, 2022.

This book is a work of folklore archaeology. In his preface Simon Young says that he is making an attempt “to recreate the boggart-lore of Victorian and Edwardian times.” Like all archaeological research this is done by excavating for fragments to put together a coherent picture of a particular culture at a particular place and time. 

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THE MONSTERS THAT MADE US

Tim Flight. Basilisks and Beowulf : Monsters in the Anglo Saxon World. Reaktion Books, 2021.

This is a well-researched and thought-provoking book, which shines a light on some of the cultural origins of our instinctive human fears. Fear of wolves, of snakes and serpents, of dense forests and deep seas, fear of isolation, fear of chaos and disorder. It tells us much about monsters and Anglo Saxons, but also quite a bit about ourselves.

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DARK FOLKLORE

Mark and Tracey Norman. Dark Folklore. History Press, 2021.

Dark Folklore, it seems, is all around us, from when we get out of bed in the morning – or at least try to if the Old Hag isn't sitting on us – to when we attempt to get to sleep again at night, trying not to think about the headless terror that walks down our street at midnight. Even in the broad light of day we may encounter Slenderman lurking in the undergrowth in our local park, or stumble into the traps and trips of our Internet browsing.

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CRIME, PUNISHMENT AND SONG

Stephen Sedley and Martin Carthy. Who Killed Cock Robin?: British Folk Songs of Crime and Punishment. Reaktion Books, 2021.

Music, especially popular music, can be held up as a mirror of the times from which it came. The lyrics can tell us about what society regarded as noteworthy, thus giving us valuable insights into our collective past. Although music seems to be mostly taken up with affairs of the heart there are other subjects that are included in the massive body of work that comprises human-produced music. 

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THE TREE STILL SINGS

The Singing, Ringing Tree. Network Blu Ray 2021

I have to confess that my first viewing of The Singing, Ringing Tree wasn’t during my infancy when it was screened by the BBC. If you read through many of the responses to the film on IMDB then most viewers encountered, during their childhood, a disconcertingly scary film. From 1964 right through the 1980s it frightened new generations. 

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