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’...

Thread: fairy impostors in the Great Famine.

County Longford, central Ireland. 1847. A land of 'ruin and desolation'. Starving, desperate people trudge the roads and lanes, doing what they can to survive.

Near the village of Ballinalee lives Anne Lyons and two adult daughters.

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

Until recently, the differences loomed large. So let's start with a notable one of those.

In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, it's said that witches owe their evil abilities to a special organ, near the liver. See this video, about E. Evans-Pritchard's research on Azande witchcraft.

C19th fortune-telling manuals claimed you could choose a husband by the colour of his hair...

Black = 'apt to be cross and surly'
Fair = 'rather stupid, very fond of music'
Light brown = 'neither very good nor very bad'
Red = 'artful, cunning and deceitful'
🤷‍♂️
#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...