Thomas Watersさんのイラストまとめ

Sorry to announce that I'm feeling unwell & therefore won't be speaking at @AyeWrite this evening. Whatever the nature of this pestilence, it's not worth the risk of spreading it to others.

Deeply sorry to all who bought tickets & the organisers. Now where's that fairy doctor?

You might think 'warlock' means a master of dark arts.

But not so. In Scotland’s Highlands, it was the name for what anthropologists call ‘service magicians’. In the Lowlands, they were ‘canny-folk’. In England, ‘cunning-folk’. In Wales, ‘conjurors’. In Cornwall, ‘pellers’...

Nice to see the hedgehogs survived their hibernation, and are back roaming the gardens at night.

Food from @LoveWilko seems to be going down well, after a two month+ long sleep.🦔

Didn't want to spook them with a flash. So here are some hedgehogs from @ExploreWellcome

Late 1700s & early 1800s Britain was in some ways an enchanted era, of great esoteric creativity.

Magic inspired awesome artworks, from the poems of Burns & Wordsworth, to the paintings of Henry Fuseli.

Below:

The Nightmare
The Night Hag
Fairy Mab
Puck, or Robin Goodfellow

Red - the witch hue

Old Mother Redcap. Archetypal English folk witch, with a long history & many homes. Jacobean Londoners told tales of her. So did folks in 1800s Derbyshire. Pubs were named after her in Sheffield & Luton, til lately. Blackburn still has one.

#folklorethursday

Picturing the fairies.

Three late C18th English satires, showing a sprite, goblin, and fairies dancing in a ring. In each case, nasty humans threaten to spoil the wee folks' fun.

Hand-coloured etchings from the collection of @britishmuseum.

@BDLSS Correction: the date should be C15th. It's been a long day...

Four demons, in watercolour.

From a c. 1775 German and Latin grimoire (book of spells, rites and incantations). Roughly translated title = A Rare Compendium of the whole Magical Art, by a Celebrated Master of this Art.

Courtesy of @ExploreWellcome.

#FolkloreThursday

To make money from magic, you needed a good story. A striking bio, like the c19th Irish 'fairy doctors' and fortune-tellers who said they'd spent years in the subterranean worlds of the wee folk.

'They were all gentleman there' one magician claimed, in 1837.

#FolkloreThursday

'The Fairy Doctor' by Edmund Fitzpatrick.

'The Fairy Doctor, or Fairy Man ... a somewhat analogous character to our White Witch ... never stirs out by day, but like an old spider, remains crouched in a corner.'

Illustrated London News, 31 December 1859.