Elizabeth Blackwell: Pioneering Herbalist and Botanical Illustrator
If you’re interested in herbalism or plant lore, chances are that you’ve perused a herbal or two in your time. Culpeper's Complete Herbal: A Compendium of Herbs and Their Uses, Annotated for Modern He...
6 Juni 19min
Folklore and Storytelling: A Narrative Match Made in Heaven
Storytelling is something we all do on a daily basis, whether we’re aware of it or not. Maybe we’re telling a funny anecdote about something that happened on the way to work. Perhaps we’re recounting ...
30 Maj 51min
Revenants on the Redway with Dr Steph Lay
Dr Steph Lay is a folk horror writer, psychologist and researcher, gathering and sharing local stories of the unexplained for a project investigating whether the new city of Milton Keynes might be mor...
27 Maj 59min
Folklore and Cinema: The Trick Films of Georges Méliès
Visionary film director and stage magician Georges Méliès is perhaps the earliest filmmaker who saw the visual potential of folklore. Among others, mermaids, sirens, ghosts, devils, and sorcerers are ...
23 Maj 26min
The Folklore of Stringed Musical Instruments: The Viola, Irish Harp, Violin, and Guitar
Musical instruments appear scattered throughout various folktales. A drum lies at the centre of the Tedworth Drummer story. Pipers and drummers try to follow underground tunnels, only to mysteriously ...
16 Maj 21min
Theatre Superstitions: Whistling, the Ghost Light, and Macbeth
Going to the theatre can often feel like a magical experience. You sit in the dark, watching a story unfold in front of you, with your imagination filling in the gaps between the sets. It’s unsurpris...
9 Maj 48min
Cursed Artworks: Three Haunted Paintings and their Superstitions
Folklore and the arts are almost natural bedfellows. As we saw with the work of Newcastle-based painter Ralph Hedley, artists can capture local traditions for posterity. The Pre-Raphaelites created so...
2 Maj 20min
Divination Using Clouds, Flames, Ashes, and Dreams
Studying the shapes of things is a popular means of divination, relying on human pattern recognition abilities. Look at reading tea leaves and coffee grounds, or tasseography, which rely on spotting s...
25 Apr 16min
