I've been reading fairytales all morning; now I'm a sour fairytale anti-'shipper. Freud - as usual - Would Have A Field Day ( Read more... )

'This reaction of dread is also experienced by many witnesses of water monsters today and has been noted by both Tim Dinsdale and F. W. Holiday when interviewing them. Holiday wrote to Dinsdale: "When people are confronted by this fantastic animal at close quarters they seem to be stunned. There is something strange about Nessie that has nothing ( Read more... )

( Postal delays, c. 1821 )

'Many houses are still to be found in England with the horse-shoe (the grand preservative against witchcraft) nailed against the threshold. If any over-wise philosopher should attempt to remove them, the chances are that he would have more broken bones than thanks for his interference. Let any man walk into Cross-street, Hatton-Garden, and from ( Read more... )

My good old Cassell Dictionary of Witchcraft* seems to have missed just about all the prettier word-pictures from the Mora trials in Sweden.

( Even quotier than usual, today. )

The more Arthurian legends I read, the more I think that a) Mark Twain was dead on:

'Mainly the Round Table talk was monologues - narrative accounts of the adventures in which these prisoners were captured and their friends and backers killed and stripped of their steeds and armour. As a general thing - so far as I could make out - these ( Read more... )

I think I'm going to bear this story in mind next time a clearly guilty man gets off with a heinous crime:

( I amme sick to mye Hart of typeſettinge )

'But I can't stand it! I can't stand it! Being of the sex that's responsible for everything sensual and morbid or for those sacred, deadly ball games. Us - get this! me, even - the overturned vessel of doom, or standing as a symbol of it! I don't want to be an archetype. I will send Doctor Sangria a notice to that effect that follows:

Notice of ( Read more... )

'Countdown' keeps teaching me new words, and today it's 'simurg':

simorg; simurg; simurgh - (n.) a monstrous bird of Persian fable

Simurgs look like this:


( Read more... )

...or, if you will, A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible:

'According to [ancient Indian] legend, elephants - in days long ago - had wings and roamed freely around the sky, consorting with clouds. This stirs up, irrepressibly if inappropriately, images of the animated film 'Dumbo' by the late Walt Disney. Unhappily, however, a ( Read more... )