Sunderland Ghost Riot and Prophecy July 26, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernThis story is interesting as a particularly elaborate ghost riot. Usually nineteenth century ghost riots took place when someone saw something or pretended to see something and next thing there were ten thousand people, a dozen injured bobbies and a lot of broken window panes. This one has a much more precise if curious rumour […]
Victorian Urban Legend: The Gold Watch July 25, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernCrime is the most profitable part of Victorian Urban Legends. Enjoy, for instance, this one, it is an absolute peach: When the office of the City Recorder was filled by Mr. Silvester, it was on one particular occasion the recorder’s duty to try a prisoner for picking a man’s pocket of his purse. The prisoner […]
Snowball Atrocities #3: Geo-Political Snowballing July 24, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernSnowballs were the weapon of choice for young toughs out on the town in a blizzard. But they were also a way that furious crowds could show their contempt for various political or religious speakers. You could hurt and humiliate your enemy without running the risk (or not too great a risk) of finding yourself […]
Volcano or Leopard Skin? July 23, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : PrehistoricIt is regularly cited as the earliest map in the world (‘the greatest find in cartographic history’); it is ‘certainly’ our earliest landscape painting. Here, at level VII, in one of the world’s first cities, Çatalhöyük in Turkey, is a remarkable mural. A group of tessellated squares that appear to be houses painted beneath a […]
Rabbit Death at Manassas July 22, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernIn 1863 some Confederate troops had a horrific experience at Manassas: this is important for understanding the rabbit incident that follows. So steel yourself, reader. On the morning of July 21, 1863, our regiment, the 5th North Carolina State Troops, under Col. Duncan K. McRae. ordered to double-quick across Bull Run and charge a Battery […]
A Sumerian Heliocentric Universe July 21, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : AncientBeach got this email from ANL, an old friend of the blog, a couple of months back and he wondered whether any enthusiast, astronomer or logician can help: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com Something about circles has been bothering me for some time, and I was wondering whether you or one of your readers can […]
Medieval Marvels: Carving Liquid for Stone and Marble July 20, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : MedievalBeach has sometimes looked, in this blog, at the marvellous works of Gervase of Tilbury, 104. Here is another from his book of curiosities. A liquid that allows for the moulding of stones. In our times, during the papacy of Alexander III [1155-1181], when I was a boy, a phial was found at Rome full […]
Arab Embassy to Dark Age Scandinavia July 19, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : MedievalThe Vikings were attacking everyone in the ninth-century and this included the Arabs of southern Spain. After their most famous raid, in 844, when Seville was memorably captured by those northern psychos, the Emirate of Seville did something quite extraordinary. He decided to send an embassy to the Viking homelands to buy them off. This […]
The Coming Destruction of Minneapolis! July 18, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernMinneapolis is in a cavey region. It is also true that the discovery of the Schieks Cave in 1904 under downtown Minneapolis did cause some panic, but the concern was more about perceptions in a growing and prosperous city than danger. Little in the way of precautions seem to have been taken. Enjoy then this […]
Fairies are Oh So… Neolithic July 17, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : PrehistoricIn his early career as a fairyist, Beach gently kicked at the idea that fairies and vegetation were connected. All this modern nonsense about fairies in roses (‘she was small with pink taffeta wings and…’) was probably getting on his nerves. But he’d now like to apologise to folklorists, to historians, to fairy-believer and, should […]
Intelligence vs Wisdom in Public Debate July 16, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : ActualiteBeach has previously railed against the tyranny of experts, pointing out that experts should be proffered as much respect as they have knowledge of their field: a dentist knows a lot more about teeth than a neurologist knows about the brain; a garage mechanic knows a lot more about cars than a sociologist knows about […]
Witch Wars in Devon! July 15, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern1869, the Empire is at its height, teeming millions walk through Britain’s mighty metropolises and out in the Devon countryside the locals are consulting witches. A witchcraft case reported from South Devon. Two or three young women living at Dittisham fell ill. Their mothers, thinking they had been illwished – that is, looked upon with […]
The Drumming Well July 14, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernThis is one of these paranormal legends that just seems to have no parallels: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com. In Northamptonshire there was a well that drummed (!) on occasions of national importance. ‘[155] When I was a school-boy at Oundle, in Northamptonshire about the Scots coming into England, I heard a well, in one […]
Living on Other Planets July 13, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernBeach recently, while looking for ghosts, ran across this in one Daniel Defoe’s work. This is what it would be like to live on other planets according to an intelligent eighteenth-century thinker. In Saturn they are to live without Eyes, or be a Kind so illuminated from their own internal Heat and Light, that they […]
Fairies in Old Oaks? July 12, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernBeach recently came across this curious sentence in Della Hooke’s Trees in Anglo-Saxon England (103). ‘Fairy folks are in old oaks’ and on closer examination the rhyme is everywhere. It appears, for example, twice in Katharine Briggs, Dictionary of Fairies at 159 and 313. Needless to say that has also travelled, like a spore, across […]