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  St George is sometimes associated with the colour green, vegetation and fertility. This links to the dragon, as these beasts were blamed for making land barren by obstructing or poisoning water sources. They often lived in or near rivers, lakes and wells. By slaying them, heroes allowed pure waters to flow and made the land fruitful again. #MythologyMonday #folklore #mythology #history

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  Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem 'Jabberwocky' may be based on the County Durham legend of the Sockburn Worm. This foul-smelling, poisonous dragon, who lived on an isolated peninsula in the River Tees, was beheaded by a local noble. Jabberwocky describes how "The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head, He went galumphing back." Carroll's father was the rector of the nearby village of Croft. In the village church is a carving said to have inspir...

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  In the 1700 and 1800s, vampire legends had quite an influence on political, social and economic discourse. Karl Marx, who enjoyed reading horror tales for relaxation at bedtime, wrote: "Capital is dead labour that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks." He also referred to "the were-wolf's hunger for surplus labour" and stated that "the prolongation of the working day quenches only in...

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  St Mary's Churchyard, in the seaside town of Whitby, which appears in Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'. The Count's 1st victim on English soil is a Mr Swales, who is found on a churchyard bench with his neck broken and 'a look of horror on his face'. Stoker took the name from a gravestone in the churchyard - the stone is still there and the name, though faint, can still be made out. Many of the gravestones have no body buried beneath as the dead wer...

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  A famous young dog was Greyfriars Bobby. Bobby - a Skye terrier - accompanied his master, a nightwatchman, on his rounds, becoming a familiar sight around Edinburgh. The master succumbed to TB and was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard. Legend asserts that Bobby refused to leave his grave, despite the efforts of the cemetery caretakers to shoo him off. Eventually, a shelter was built for Bobby and he remained guarding the grave for 14 years, becoming a local and national celebrity. Every day, at the...

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  @humanhorseshoes You do wonder about some people - like the muppets who cut down the tree on Hadrian's Wall.

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  @humanhorseshoes Why do they want to move? It's not because of ghosts, is it?

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  @humanhorseshoes Interesting story, thanks.

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  The 3 female vampires in 'Dracula' may have been inspired by the 3 witches in Macbeth. This dark play was often staged at the Lyceum Theatre, which Bram Stoker managed. His boss, actor Henry Irving, was a model for the Count. This photo is from a trailer for the 1931 film 'Dracula'. #FolkloreSunday #Folklore #gothic #ShakespeareSunday #books #literature #vampire #vampires #mythology #Shakespeare #weird #theatre #horror

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  The notion that Macbeth is an unlucky play, whose name should never be mentioned in a theatre except during performance and rehearsal, only seems to have emerged in the early 20th century. Between the 1st and 2nd World Wars, a ritual evolved in which anyone who said 'Macbeth' instead of 'the Scottish play' had to leave the theatre, turn round three times, spit, curse then knock to be let back in. Though a 'fake history' of disasters dating back to...

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  @EricBranse@mastodon.scot Thanks for sharing,. Maybe the curse is real!

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  The theatrical harlequin character - an astute servant & nimble trickster - first appeared in Italy in the late 1500s. He's believed to have originated from a devil figure in French medieval mystery plays. This figure, in turn, was based on a folkloric demon, known as Hellequin, that scoured the countryside searching for damned souls to chase to hell. Devils often have trickster-like attributes in European folklore. This painting of a harlequin, from 1890, is by Paul Cezanne. #FairytaleT...

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  Route 666 (now mostly renumbered 491) was an American highway that wound through Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. Due to the associations of 666 with the Antichrist, the route was rumoured to be cursed. The road was said to be haunted by a phantom 1930s car that forced drivers off the road, a demonic smoke-and-fire-belching truck, and skin walkers, dangerous creatures from Navajo myth. There were also accounts of a ghostly female hitchhiker and UFOS, which allegedly created timeslips - me...

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  In late March, St Clement Danes Church, London, holds a ceremony in which oranges & lemons are given out to local schoolchildren. The church claims to be the one in the famous 'Oranges & Lemons' rhyme - these fruits were once brought ashore at a nearby quay. The church's bells play the rhyme's tune three times a day. Confusingly, another London church - St Clement's Eastcheap - also claims to be the one in the rhyme and ships unloaded citru...

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  Yorkshire is home to several legends of phantom black dogs. One of the eeriest concerns an old packhorse bridge in the hamlet of Ivelet, Swaledale. The bridge is said to be haunted by a headless black dog, who leaps over the bridge's side into the water and can be heard barking at night. Glimpsing the dog is an omen of death - it's claimed anyone who does so will die within a year. The last sighting was about 100 years ago. The bridge also boasts a stone coffin rest - pallbearers...

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  Painting of the Last Judgement from Haukipudas Church, Finland, by Mikael Toppelius (1770s). Notice the 'biting corpse' in the lower left-hand corner. Toppelius was known for incorporating folkloric material into his Baroque style and the biting corpse may represent local beliefs in what might be termed 'the restless dead', more commonly known as 'vampires'. This area of Finland may have been influenced by Scandinavian ideas about such revenants. #...

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  A method for dealing with vampires found in Serbia and Albania is to remove the corpse's left sock and fill it with dirt from the grave. The dirt should be taken from the under where the head rests. The sock should then be cast beyond the village boundary in the hope that - as the vampire chases after this garment - they will stumble into water and drown. #folklore #mythology #death #vampire #vampires #paranormal #gothic #weird #history

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  Real attempts to deal with 'dangerous corpses' persisted in England long after vampires had been made into literary and theatrical spectacles. Four years after the publication of 'Dracula', a Devon farmer is recorded as saying the coffin of a "troublesome" woman would be buried upside-down so "her can on'y diggy downwards." During World War I, English soldiers are recorded as having buried a "huge, scowling&...

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  In Haiti, some believe that magical practitioners can put people in a death-like trance, steal them from their graves after their funerals, revive them to a semi-conscious state, and force them to work. Some Haitians who claim to have been through this ordeal can show others their graves and death certificates. Such folklore likely, in part, originates from the traumas of slavery. The Haitian penal code states: "The use made against a person of substances, which, without giving death, w...

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  As late as 2004, in the Romanian village of Marotinu de Sus, a farmer suspected of vampiric activity was exhumed. His heart was removed, taken to a crossroads and burnt. Ashes from the heart were made into a tea and given to one of the vampire's 'victims'. The person responsible was arrested, but defiantly stated: "All the villagers said this has been going on since the olden times. It's better to take the heart out than let the corpse kill children. The...

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  Some feel the Isle of Man is named after Manannan, a sea god who protected the island by cloaking it in mist. The name may, however, come from a Celtic word meaning 'mountain island' and the god may have been named after the island rather than the other way around. From Man's highest point, it's said that on a clear day you can see 7 kingdoms - England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland & Man, plus the Kingdom of the Sea & Kingdom of Heaven. #FolkloreSunda...

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  St Michan's Church, Dublin, has a crypt containing ancient mummies, believed to have been accidentally preserved by limestone in the walls, which keeps the air dry. Over the years, the mummies have included a 400-year-old nun, a six-and-a-half-foot man, commonly believed to have been a crusader, a body with its feet and right hand severed, and two brothers who took part in the 1798 rebellion. The mummies have been subject to vandalism. During an incident in 2019, the nun and 'cru...

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  One of East London's most gruesome legends is associated with the Bow Flyover. The notorious gangsters the Kray Twins murdered the criminals Jack 'The Hat' McVitie and Frank 'Mad Axeman' Mitchell. There has been much speculation about how their bodies were disposed of and some claim they were laid to rest in the flyover's foundations before being entombed in concrete. Other theories state the bodies were put in the heating boilers of local public b...

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  In St Levan's Churchyard, Cornwall, is St Levan's Stone - a boulder split down the middle. It's said that St Levan would sit on the stone to rest after his fishing trips. One day, he struck the stone with his staff and repeated this rhyme: " When with panniers astride, A packhorse can ride, Through St Levan's Stone, The world will be done." Thankfully, the split is not yet wide enough to usher in the apocalypse. Some have speculated that the st...

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  The town of Lanark, Scotland, hosts a strange spring custom called Whuppity Scoorie. On 1st March at 6.00 pm, a 'wee bell' is rung. This is a signal for children to start running around St Nicholas Kirk, making noise & whirling paper balls over their heads. After three laps have been completed, coins are thrown, for which the children 'scramble'. Some say the custom originated in attempts to drive off evil winter spirits. Others claim it recalls the relaxi...