ballads Archives - Bone and Sickle

Trolls in Medieval Literature

April 27, 2026 boneandsickle ballads, EPISODE, folk tales, folklore, Germanic, Iceland, legends, literature, medieval, Middle Ages, monsters, Norse, Norse religion, Norway, saints, storytelling, troll-cats, trolls, witchcraft, witches

Trolls, as presented in medieval literature, are vastly different from the creatures we encountered in our last episode’s collection of[…]

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Rhymes for Those Who Can Neither Read Nor Run

January 31, 2026 boneandsickle ballads, books, Britain, children's literature, England, EPISODE, folk music, folklore, frogs, ghost stories, gothic literature, history, literature

Gammer Gurton’s Garland, published in 1784, is one of the earliest collections of English nursery rhymes, and contains verses both[…]

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Villainous Victorian Women

November 14, 2022 boneandsickle ballads, Britain, broadsheets, crime, EPISODE, execution ballads, folklore, gore, history, horror, murder, murder ballads, poison, Victorian

Our survey of villainous Victorian women examines six individuals associated with some of the most ghastly crimes of the era,[…]

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