Ghosts and a Bleeding Corpse in the Courtroom March 9, 2018
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Introduction In that wonderful book by Andrew Lang, Dreams and Ghosts (1897) there is a description of a phantom finding its way into a British courtroom in 1829 (pp. 143-144). Lang did not have access to the British Newspaper Archive – what fun he would have had there! – so his reference is brief and unsatisfactory. Here is […]
Herne the Hunter: the Twelve Basic Facts August 7, 2017
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
For the unacquainted Herne the Hunter is a southern English bogie, who haunted a tree in the park at Windsor Castle on the Bucks/Berks border. Almost all writing about Herne is overlaid with speculative points and useless comparisons. This post offers, therefore, an absolute basic version of the legend focusing hard on our early sources, […]
Buckinghamshire Fairies and Little Witches July 12, 2017
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern
Fairy legends are common in the Celtic fringes and the north of Britain. They are to be found in northern England and south central England: they also occasionally crop up in the English Midlands. However, they were as rare as gold dust in south-eastern England and East Anglia by the time that folklore records were […]
The Undead in Medieval Buckinghamshire! March 2, 2013
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
**Dedicated to the Count who sent this in*** In the last few months we’ve done several medieval undead stories. Here is one more from the delicious quill of William of Newburgh. In these days a wonderful event befell in the county of Buckingham, which I, in the first instance, partially heard from certain friends, […]
