Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Love or hate Gandhi, and God knows there are plenty of reasons for both, there is something remarkable about this abortive correspondence between he and Hitler (see below the post): ‘correspondence’ might not be the right word as Hitler never wrote back. The first letter dates to late July of 1939 when the world was […]

Giles Milton, When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain, History’s Unknown Chapters I’m always a sucker for these books…

This is a one of these stories where the problem is not with the facts but with interpretation. As it involves human facts it is not a very happy story: be warned a little girl dies. We are in 1871 in Ashton-under-Lyne just outside Manchester. Mr F. Price is the coroner and he held his […]

Laura Cumming’s The Vanishing Man: by all accounts ‘a great detective story’.

You are living in the middle of the nineteenth century and, man or woman, you have failed to get your mate for life. Perhaps you regret, saying, ‘no’ to the third son of a duke: or perhaps you regret asking twelve daughters of men in ecclesiastical offices. The point is that, tick toc, time is running […]

Beer Day in Iceland, end of prohibition, 1989

Perhaps the real key to the Red Fairies problem is language. As we have established they are referred to as y Gwilliaid Cochion Mowddwy in Pennant our first extensive source. Let’s work backwards. Mowddwy refers to their region, modern Mawddwy. No problem there. Cochion refers to a deep red colour. Again no problem or controversy. (Some […]

Colorised image, beautiful face 25 Feb 2016: it has been pointed out multiple times now that this is not a 19 cent teacher but probably Edwardian. Leif can speak for all those readers who objected: The Nineteenth century teacher photograph is lovely, but do double check the date. Women wore long hair throughout the 19th […]

One curious folklore tradition survives about ‘the red fairies’. This is David Pennant our earliest extensive source. The traditions of the country respecting these banditti, are still extremely strong. I was told that they were so feared, that travellers did not dare go the common road to Shrewsbury, but passed over the summits of the […]

Victorians on the beach

One of the most curious aspects of the Red Fairy legends in the belief that the Red Fairies survived up until the nineteenth century as a race apart in the locality. This was elevated to high pseudo-science. Here is a passage from The British Race (1909) In Merioneth there is a red-haired, ruddy-skinned people, with […]

Three young Blackfoot men, in Alberta 1887

Imagine the scene: 1555, Lewis Owen, vice-chamberlain is passing down the road with a small bodyguard and his son-in-law, on the edge of Powys in central Wales. As they pass down the track, they come to several felled trees across their way in the midst of ‘thick woods’. Are the men anxious? Perhaps not at […]

Dear Reader, January that jumping-in-a-cold-pool-feeling as term begins, even if kids as always nice. Long hours, and early mornings. Up at four twice this week to try and make things work: though in truth today I managed somehow to sleep in till six. Thanks, as always, to the multiple linkers: Amanda, Invisible, Chris S, Joan, Ricardo, Wade and […]

Stone, Slav Outposts Wends etc. Looking forward…