Scotland doesn’t lack in songs about being forsaken in love. But according to Ewan MacColl, who recorded the song I Courted A Wee Girl in 1956, typically the hero shrugs it off. “In this curious little song, however, the jilted lover, after attending his ex-sweetheart’s nuptials, just lies down and dies” The song made the […]
Journal
Folk horror from Wiltshire: The Blood Stone at Luccombe Spring, starving out the Vikings at Bratton Camp, the White Horse of Westbury and the nature of folklore
The Luccombe Valley below Salisbury Plain and Bratton Camp, just visible in the upper right. In the foreground are two of the four barrows in the valley, with one of the others being the site of the Bloodstone. While wandering on Salisbury plain one day I came across a hidden valley and as I […]
On the mystery of a white horse carved into the slopes of Bratton Downs … the White Horse of Westbury
Looking down on the White Horse of Westbury from atop Salisbury Plain Nobody really knows when or why a chalk horse was carved onto the side of Bratton Downs, below the iron age Bratton Camp. The current version has evolved over the past two centuries into its rather literal shape today. An 18th century engraving […]
On Valentine’s Day: Surviving a broken heart, finding hope in Edgar A. Poe and Annabel Lee’s metaphoric necrophilia
Though it’s tempting after reading Annabel Lee to believe Poe thought otherwise, sometimes love dies. There’s always a choice involved. Someone has to make the decision that this is it. If it’s not you, it’s a blow that’s hard to recover from. To start with, you don’t want to. Your love didn’t die. You want […]
On the abandoned village of Port, in Donegal Ireland … wind swept, wet and wild, the folklore of Irish music and the ideal place to go drowning
Top: The Glengesh Pass, Donegal, Ireland The top of Glengesh Pass in Donegal, Ireland is breathtaking. You’re in one of the most remote corners of the country here, sparsely populated, windswept and wild. You’re as likely to hear Gaelic spoken as English, for life hasn’t changed a whole lot over the past hundred years. The […]
On pagan sexuality, getting laid in the seventies, the great god Pan, the Marquis de Sade and the mating habits of goats
Top: Statue of Pan, The Eagles Nest, Northport, Long Island Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced. Marquis de Sade I credit my parents with instilling in me a love for pagan sexuality. Not intentionally – they didn’t advocate any kind of sex. It’s something that was only mentioned a couple […]
On Byron, the glory and agony of love, and the curse and blessing of loving but one
Top: In the grass at Knowlton Henge There can be a dark side to living and loving with passion – the loss of the one you adore. It’s Byronically ironic that the poet known for breaking hearts never shied from expressing the pain he found in his own. Love seldom comes in easy to open […]
An Irish folk tale, Maid of Mullaghmore and memories of Muckross Head, county Donegal
I once spent about a week hanging out with Caoimhin Mac Aoidh, noted Donegal fiddler and historian, particularly on all things Donegal fiddle. He wrote about the tune Maighdean Mhara Mhullach Mhoir, or The Maid or more precise, The Mermaid of Mullaghmore. I was driving up the coast of Donegal, on the way to the village of Teelin, […]
Why do lovers leap? Native American myths and a lookout from Rock City, high above Chattanooga, Tennessee
Mark Twain wrote in the nineteenth century that there were fifty locations along the Mississippi River that claimed the title of lover’s leap. In fact, they are spread out not only across this country, but others as well. Nobody knows where, or even if there was a place where this legend springs from, a single […]
Old Sarum ley line with Salisbury Cathedral and Clearbury Ring, from Old Sarum’s ramparts
The Old Sarum Ley was identified by Sir Norman Lockyear, and runs from north of Stonehenge to the western bank of Frankenbury Camp, near Fordinbridge, Hampshire. This photo was taken from Old Sarum, an Iron Age hill-fort, which became a Roman town, then Saxon and eventually a fortified castle and cathedral, once the residence of […]
