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Folklore & Custom

Folklore & Custom

Most of these still happen. A garland king ridden blind through a Derbyshire village, a tar-and-canvas horse danced through Padstow on May morning, six wells dressed in pressed petals for Ascension Day. Beside the customs sit the harder things – a skull that will not leave its farmhouse, a bell that answers from the harbour mud – kept by the people who still will not break them.
22
May
Highland cattle being driven between two bonfires on open moorland at dusk, with figures of parishioners watching from a low slope behind the fires.

Beltane – the cross-quarter day that opens summer

On May eve in the Highlands, into the 1840s, cattle were driven between two fires onto summer ground. Beltane is the cross-quarter day that opens the warm half of the year.
4 min read
28
Apr
A black-sailed Padstow 'Obby 'Oss towering above a crowd in white shirts and red neckerchiefs, a Cornish flag held high, bunting strung across the narrow street.

The Padstow ‘Obby ‘Oss

Padstow on the north Cornish coast holds one of England's strangest May Day ceremonies. Two rival 'Osses, the May Song on a loop, white from dawn.
3 min read
28
Apr
A human skull resting on a worn wooden shelf in a stone alcove, with a small window cut into the stone wall to the right.

The Screaming Skull of Bettiscombe

A skull has sat on a shelf at Bettiscombe Manor in west Dorset for two hundred years. The story is Victorian. The skull is two thousand years old.
3 min read
28
Apr
The fifteenth-century tower of St Nicholas Church, Canewdon, rising above flat Essex farmland under heavy grey cloud.

The Witches of Canewdon

A flat Essex village by the Crouch has carried a folk belief for two centuries: as long as the church tower stands, six witches in Canewdon.
2 min read
14
Apr
English parish church in spring, churchyard with ancient yew trees, unmown grass with primroses, moss-covered stone boundary wall.

Holy Week in the English Countryside

Holy Week in the English countryside was not simply a week of church attendance. It was a week when the normal rules of rural life were suspended, replaced, or inverted — and so on, truncated to roughly 50 words.
2 min read
14
Apr
Bosham village and Holy Trinity church reflected in the tidal creek at high water, overcast sky, flat calm water.

The Buried Bell of Bosham Harbour

A church bell stolen by raiders and lost in Bosham harbour. The legend says it still rings beneath the water when the tenor bell is struck.
1 min read
14
Apr
Elder branch with clusters of creamy-white elderflowers, soft natural light, green hedgerow out of focus behind.

Why People Refused to Bring Elder Indoors

Across England, people refused to bring elder wood indoors or burn it on the fire. The belief was absolute, and nobody recorded why.
2 min read
14
Apr
Close-up of fern fronds from below, showing the clustered spore cases on the underside, soft dappled woodland light.

Fern Seed Folklore

For centuries, people gathered fern seed at midsummer midnight because it granted invisibility. The difficulty is that ferns do not have seeds.
2 min read