For 24 hours, on the last Tuesday of January, the town of Lerwick goes more than a little mad. “There will be no postponement for weather”. That’s a defiant boast by Shetland’s biggest fire festival, considering it’s held in mid-winter on the same latitude as southern Greenland. But it’s true: gales, sleet and snow have [...]
Archive for the ‘British Folklore’ Category
Up Helly Aa – Shetlands Viking Fire Festival 2012
Posted in British Folklore, british history, scotland tours, shetlands, sightseeing, Up Helly Aa, Viking Festival on February 1, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Top 10 Ancient Origins of Christmas Traditions
Posted in British Folklore, british history, Celts, christmas, Christmas Tours, Christmas traditions, Druids, England facts, english culture, Stonehenge, Wiltshire on December 14, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The lights are up, Noddy Holder’s voice is ringing in your ears and you’ve already eaten all your advent chocolate in a gluttonous frenzy. Yes it’s Christmas; that time of year reserved for frantic last-minute shopping, burnt turkeys and half-drunk carols in the front room. It’s also the Christian celebration of Jesus’ birth, of course: [...]
Ancient trees: Britain’s oldest inhabitants
Posted in British Folklore, british history, countryside, England facts, english culture, History, Wiltshire on October 22, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
If you find yourself gasping, “Wow, that tree’s fatter than anything else like it around here!” the chances are you’ve probably found an ancient tree What is an ancient tree? The definition varies from species to species, so a silver birch may be ancient at 150 years old, while an oak of the same age is [...]
Halloween – Celtic festivals – Samhain. October 31st
Posted in Avebury, British Folklore, celtic festival, Celts, England facts, english culture, halloween, History, samhain, stone circle, Stonehenge, Stonehenge private tours, wessex, Wiltshire on October 15, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Samhain marks one of the two great doorways of the Celtic year, for the Celts divided the year into two seasons: the light and the dark, at Beltane on May 1st and Samhain on November 1st. Some believe that Samhain was the more important festival, marking the beginning of a whole new cycle, just as [...]
Little England.
Posted in battles, British Folklore, british history, english culture, histories, History on September 17, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Three very different national histories are marred by their refusal to admit neighbours into the narrative, writes David Cannadine from the Financial Times. “There are,” John Julius Norwich notes with pardonable exaggeration in his lively and engaging volume on the subject, “a thousand histories of England, ranging from the scholarly to the popular, the impartial [...]
King Arthur’s round table may have been found by archaeologists in Scotland
Posted in Archaeologists, British Folklore, british history, Celts, english culture, Glastonbury, Glastonbury Abbey, Glastonbury Tor, King Arthur, sightseeing tours, wessex, Wiltshire on August 30, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Archaeologists searching for King Arthur’s round table have found a “circular feature” beneath the historic King’s Knot in Stirling. The King’s Knot, a geometrical earthwork in the former royal gardens below Stirling Castle, has been shrouded in mystery for hundreds of years. Though the Knot as it appears today dates from the 1620s, its flat-topped [...]
Avebury Stone Circle – Strange Wiltshire
Posted in archaeology, Avebury, British Folklore, british history, neolithic, prehistory, sightseeing, silbury hill, Stonehenge, strange wiltshire, wessex, Wiltshire on August 12, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The ancient standing stones at Avebury, lie between Swindon and Devizes on the A4361. Avebury rings are a World Heritage site and attracts thousands of visitors annually, who are no doubt intrigued by the mystery that surrounds their construction. The henge is believed to date back to around 2600BC; just what motivated our ancestors to [...]
British Folklore – The Moonrakers, Wiltshire.
Posted in British Folklore, Devizes, England facts, english culture, moonraker, sightseeing tours, strange wiltshire, wessex, Wiltshire on July 18, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Stories of yokels getting the better of townies pepper British folklore – perhaps the best known being one reading of the Nottinghamshire legend The Wise Men of Gotham . Rivalling that tale is the Wiltshire story of The Moonrakers, so dear to the heart of the county that to this day anyone born in Wiltshire [...]
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