Witch Country

A wonderful wander with stones, witches and wizards!

In June, I journeyed along the Fife Witches Trail to stand at the stone we call Lilias Adies’ grave and to pay my respects to the accused witches of Scotland at Dunferlimne Abbey.

Happy Solstice Season to All!

Our three Gathered Tales were:

Goblin Combe: You’ll find many versions of this story, including the one in Folktales of England, by Katharine Briggs and Ruth Tongue, 1965

The Brecon Elves & the Wise Housewife: A Variation of a story that can be found in Folk tales of Wales by Eirwen Jones, 1978

The Fairy of the Dell: A short and sweet version of a tale told in Welsh Fairy Tales By William Elliot Griffis, 1921

Thank you to all who have supported me on Patreon this month - do check it out. There are free resources and bonus goodies each month!

Welcome to Midwinter!

Thankyou to Haley and Leigh who suggested I might add the Boscastle Museum of Witchcraft & Magic and the Maggie Wall Monument to my ‘To Visit’ List.

Our Tree Tales this month are of the Pine tree and Christmas Trees:

“In Germany the Christmas-tree is not a luxury for well-to-do people as in England, but a necessity, the very centre of the festival…For one thing, perhaps, in a land of forests the tree seems more in place; it is a kind of sacrament linking mankind to the mysteries of the woodland…at night it is a true thing of wonder, shining with countless lights and glittering ornaments, with fruit of gold and shimmering festoons of silver…The Germans have quite a religious feeling for their Weihnachtsbaum, coming down, one may fancy, from some dim ancestral worship of the trees of the wood.”

Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan by Clement A. Miles in 1912

Thoughts on this episode? questions? ideas? new witchy places I should explore? Say Hi on Instagram! @wildwoodsandwitchcountry

Starting Witch Country: A Journey through story and landscape and all things witch, with perhaps the most famous, infamous witches of England - the accused witches collectively known as the Pendle witches.

 "In 1633 we find that Pendle Forest was still of bad repute, and that traditions of old Demdike and her rival Mother Chattox yet floated round the Malkin Tower, and hid, spectre-like, in the rough and desert places of the barren waste..."

Found in Witch Stories by Elizabeth Lynn Linton (1861)

“This little tree belongs to the family of the rose queen, and wears the royal robes of that family-white blossoms and glowing crimson fruit. Queen rose is its first cousin; the apple, the pear, and the hawthorn are its brothers… we will call this tree by its own good old name, which is nearly forgotten. It is the rowan or roan tree that is, the whispering tree; the tree that knows the secret spells and mage charms; the tree of the witches, or, as it is sometimes called, the witchen or wiggin tree.

These strange names tell us of the old times when many a poor old woman was thought to be a witch with secret power to do harm. If she was ugly, cross, and ill-tempered, if she lived by herself and kept a black cat, then the country people were sure that she was a witch with the evil eye, and they were afraid that if they displeased her in any way she would look at their cattle and make them sick with one glance of her eye. One way there was of preventing harm; for the witch could not hurt cattle if they were under the charm of a bough from the rowan or witchen tree. Sometimes the sheep. and lambs were made to jump through a hoop of rowan wood; the dairymaids drove their cows with a rowan stick, and tied rowan branches over the stables and cow-houses”

from The Stories of the Trees by Mrs Dyson, 1896