10 am - 5 pm Saturday 20 November 2021
£20 / £15 concessions (Advance tickets)
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL
Tube: Holborn
Speakers include Author Syd
Moore, Alixe Bovey, Jeremy Harte and Mark Norman of The Folklore Podcast.
This event is live and will
be live streamed.
Dr Alixe Bovey - Albion’s giants: Gogmagog, Brutus and the conquest of Britain
Dr Alixe Bovey is a specialist in medieval art history based at the Courtauld Institute of Art, where she is Head of Research
Mark Norman - Dark Folklore
A new book from Tracey Norman (author of the acclaimed play WITCH) and Mark Norman (creator of The Folklore Podcast) leads you on an exploration of those less salubrious facets of our past, highlighting those aspects of our cultural beliefs and social history that are less 'wicker basket' and more 'Wicker Man'. This talk examines some of the themes of the book, which will be available to buy on the day.
Fearsome Fairies: Haunting Tales of the Fae - Elizabeth Dearnley
they belong flit about so oddly, often at your elbow when you least expect it, and looking close into your face, as if they were searching for someone - who may be thankful, I think, if they do not find him.'
There was an enormous fascination with fairies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which popularised depictions of benevolent winged friends and things of fragile beauty. But in wider folklore, the creatures of the fey are of a much more unsettling and otherworldly stock. Taking inspiration from folk tales and medieval legends, writers of weird tales and ghost stories such as Arthur Machen, M R James and Charlotte Riddell proved that fairies, elves, goblins and their ilk were something to be feared and respected as our ancestors did.
Tim Flight - Basilisks and Beowulf: Monsters in the Anglo-Saxon World
Drawing on literature and
art, theology and a wealth of first-hand evidence, Tim Flight reveals a people
huddled at the edge of the known map, using the fantastic and the grotesque as
a way of comprehending the world around them.
For the Anglo-Saxons, monsters helped to distinguish the sacred and the profane; they carried God’s message to mankind, exposing His divine hand in creation itself. At the same time, monsters were agents of disorder, seeking to kill people, conquer their lands and challenge what it meant to be human even. Learning about where monsters lived and how they behaved allowed the Anglo-Saxons to understand their place in the world, as well as to apprehend something of the divine plan. It is for these reasons that monsters were at the very center of the Anglo-Saxon worldview.
Tim Flight obtained a doctorate in Anglo-Saxon Literature from Magdalen College, Oxford, in 2016. Since then, he has been writing full time, and has contributed articles to History Today and BBC History Magazine, among many other publications, His book Basilisks and Beowulf: Monsters in the Anglo-Saxon World will be available on the day.
Jeremy Harte - A Stake in the Landscape: Crossroads Burial in History and Legend
Until 1823 it was the law that suicides should be buried in public disgrace, their bodies shoveled under the roadway and pierced with wooden stakes. Even at the time, this inhumanity looked baffling. Was it a survival from some more primitive time, with superstitious locals trying to pin down and exorcise a potentially harmful ghost? The old folklorists liked to think of suicide burial as something archaic, kept going by peasant ruthlessness and legal inertia into later, more merciful times. But they were wrong.
Outcast burial was not a response to suicide itself, but a way of pillorying exceptional offenders against the moral code, and it was at its most elaborate in times when that code seemed most under threat. In the Middle Ages the degrading burial of suicides had been rare – it only became routine in the 1570s, a way to impose Tudor ideologies of moral control through the physical humiliation of deviants. But often the shamed dead became village landmarks and reference points. Their scapegoat memory would outlast all trace of those who condemned them.
Jeremy Harte is a researcher into folklore and archaeology, with a particular interest in landscape legends and tales of encounters with the inhabitants of other worlds. His book Explore Fairy Traditions won the Katharine Briggs award of the Folklore Society for 2005, and his other publications include Cuckoo Pounds and Singing Barrows, and The Green Man. He is curator of Bourne Hall Museum in Surrey.
Sarah Moore was the subject
of a Leigh-on-Sea legend – an evil sea-witch who raised the Great Storm of the
Estuary, caused havoc about the town and sank a plethora of boats. When novelist Syd Moore (possibly no
relation) probed further she learned the true story of Sarah Moore.
Syd Moore is the author of the Essex Witch Museum Mysteries (Strange Magic, Strange Sight, Strange Fascination) featuring Rosie Strange, and two previous mystery books, The Drowning Pool and Witch Hunt.
Dr Stuart Dunn - Corpse Roads: Digital Landscape Archaeology
This talk explores how digital landscape modelling can help unlock the secrets of Britain’s ancient pathways. Focusing on “corpse roads”, pathways taken by coffin bearers over the countryside before the Enclosures, it discusses the significance of such routes, and how a mapped understanding of factors such as slope, elevation and distance can shed light on the stories behind them.
Stuart is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities and Head of the Department of Digital Humanities at Kings College London.
10 am - 5 pm Saturday 20 November 2021
£20 / £15 concessions (Advance tickets)
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL
Tube: Holborn
