folk custom – Bone and Sickle

Benandanti versus Witches

By boneandsickle | October 19, 2026

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:04 — 52.7MB)

In this episode we return to the topic of the Benandanti, or “good walkers,” those mysterious spirit-travelers of northeastern Italy, who claimed to leave their bodies at night to battle witches. Drawing upon the records of the Roman Inquisition from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we explore a remarkable body of folklore involving nocturnal battles, wandering souls, magical healing, and increasingly sinister encounters with the Devil.

We begin with a little audio teaser involving contemporary witchcraft legends from Friuli, the region in which most of our Benandante cases unfolded centuries earlier. There, in the coastal town of Grado, on Epiphany Eve, terrifying sea-witches known as Varvuole arrive by boat, shrieking through the streets and threatening naughty children. Amid audio snippets of their bloodcurdling screams, we consider certain parallels between the Varvuole and Frau Perchta, Bone and Sickle’s favorite Epiphany Eve witch.

Sea Witches, Varvuole, arrive in the harbor of the Grado.

Next, we revisit the earliest recorded Benandante cases, those of Paolo de Gasparutto and Battista Moduco, whose testimonies describe vast armies of spirits gathering on Thursday nights during the seasonal Ember Weeks. Armed with bundles of fennel stalks, the Benandanti battled witches wielding stalks of sorghum, with the outcome determining the prosperity of the harvest. We hear of mysterious captains, elaborate banners, and thousands of combatants gathering in fields extending into neighboring territories.

We also learn how the spirits of the Benandanti could escape their sleeping bodies in the form of mice, and why disturbing those abandoned bodies might have fatal consequences.

Pausing to examine the peculiar weapons and timing of these battles, we explore the significance of fennel and sorghum, the Catholic Ember Days, and the recurring association of Thursday nights with witches’ gatherings throughout Europe.

As our investigation continues, we encounter testimonies in which the Benandanti’s original mission of protecting the harvest begins to give way to other supernatural concerns.

First, we hear from Caterina la Guercia, who describes her deceased husband’s nocturnal journeys in processions of the dead. Next comes Toffolo di Buri, whose accounts introduce witches devouring children, transforming into cats, and committing other atrocities. We then examine the extraordinary case of a midwife who turned a newborn infant over a roasting fire to protect it from witchcraft.

Our next witness, the cowherd Menichino della Nota, transports us into a more mysterious, dreamlike world in lurid testimony provided word-f0r-word by our very own Mrs. Karswell. We follow his spirit into the biblical Valley of Josaphat, where shadowy figures drift like smoke through misty fields scented with unseen roses. As inquisitors question him about the conventional witches’ sabbath, we discover how stubbornly he maintains that his supernatural companions serve God rather than the Devil.

Moving into the seventeenth century, we encounter increasingly troubling accounts in which the distinction between benevolent Benandanti and malevolent witches begins to dissolve.

The testimony of Maria Panzona introduces spirits traveling as butterflies, supernatural animals, magical substances, and a mysterious woman enthroned beside a well. Known as the Abbess, this imposing figure gradually emerges as the Devil himself. We follow Maria’s increasingly contradictory revelations through descriptions of witch initiations, journeys to Heaven and Hell, and her eventual imprisonment.

Next, we meet Giovanni Sion, whose nocturnal adventures involve magical ointments, fabulous treasures, feasting, and encounters with a horned Devil. We hear how Sion is branded with a heated fork after refusing to renounce the Holy Trinity, and how his testimony mixes professions of Christian loyalty with disturbing accounts of diabolical rituals.

Our final case takes us into the darkest territory yet. Michele Soppe, a Benandante who claimed to heal victims of witchcraft, describes gatherings presided over by the Devil in the form of a horned donkey. His testimony grows increasingly horrifying as he confesses to a pact with the Devil, the renunciation of Christianity, and the supernatural murder of children, including his own nephew.

Throughout these investigations, we trace the gradual transformation of the Benandanti from defenders of agricultural fertility into figures increasingly indistinguishable from the witches they once opposed. Along the way, we also consider how inquisitorial questioning may have influenced the extraordinary stories preserved in the historical record.

Finally, returning to Grado, where our journey began, we listen to a traditional Friulian charm intended to drive away the shrieking sea-witches. Invoking saints, storms, ogres, apparitions, and other supernatural terrors, this curious incantation offers a fitting conclusion to our exploration of the haunted fields and nocturnal spirit-world of old Friuli.

Born with a Veil

By boneandsickle | August 15, 2026

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:37 — 44.2MB)

To be “born with a veil” (or caul) was once regarded as far more than an unusual circumstance of birth. Being born with a caul—a portion of the amniotic membrane adhering to a newborn’s head or face—is exceedingly rare, but across centuries of European folklore it has been interpreted as a visible mark of destiny. Those born with one might be exceptionally lucky, possess healing powers or second sight, or enjoy supernatural protection. In darker traditions, however, the same sign could mark a future witch, vampire, or uncanny wanderer between worlds.

We begin with a quoted passage from Stephen King’s The Shining, in which it’s revealed that the psychically gifted boy, Danny, is born with a veil and then go on to explore the colorful vocabulary once used to describe the caul. Across Europe, the membrane was imagined as a cap, hood, helmet, veil, cloak, or even a “shirt.” Such expressions as the Scottish “sely hoo,” or blessed hood, and various European equivalents of “lucky cap” and “victor’s cloak” reveal how closely the caul became associated with good fortune.

Next, we explore the earliest written references to caul superstition. A fourth-century biography of the short-lived Roman emperor Diadumenian claims that he was born with a strange membrane resembling a diadem. The same source remarks that midwives sold preserved cauls to lawyers who believed they would bring success in court. Medieval clerical writings likewise condemn officials who carried cauls as charms to silence their opponents.

From there, the episode turns to the long practice of preserving cauls as family treasures. Surviving examples include a fragment enclosed in a locket made for John Monson in 1597 and the caul of King Frederik III, kept in a silver casket in the Danish royal collections. Seventeenth-century wills describe cauls mounted in jeweled gold settings and passed down as heirlooms believed to ensure a family’s continuing prosperity.

We then address the caul’s most famous power: protection from drowning. By the eighteenth century, cauls were carefully dried on paper and sold to sailors. Newspaper advertisements addressed “gentlemen of the Navy” and offered them as proven safeguards for long voyages. Dickens satirized the trade in the opening of David Copperfield, whose caul attracts only one bidder—an attorney offering cash and sherry, but refusing to pay enough to guarantee himself against drowning.

Caul kept as sailor’s charm displayed at Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.

Mrs. Karswell then shares some amusing 19th-century anecdotes found in the long-running Oxford University publication, Notes and Queries. One report has a caul-bearing child who hild floated like a cork whenever his mother tried to bathe him. Another describes a prognosticating caul that physically transformed in sympathy to events unfolding in the life of the person consulting it.

We then travel to Iceland, where fetal membranes were associated with the fylgja, a guardian spirit or external portion of the soul. The afterbirth could not safely be discarded, exposed to animals, or burned, lest the child lose this spiritual companion. Yet the caul’s magical potential also made it dangerous: witches were said to use it in love potions, and a seventeenth-century French royal midwife warned her colleagues never to preserve one because sorcerers might obtain it.

The episode then moves eastward, where caul folklore grows considerably darker. In Romania and Poland, those born beneath the membrane might be destined to become strigoi or other vampiric beings after death. In Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia, however, caul-born men could become supernatural defenders known as Krsniki or Zduhaći. Their spirits left their bodies at night to battle dragons, witches, night-hags, and rival spirit warriors threatening the community’s health, weather, and harvest.

Next, we encounter their Italian counterparts, the Friulian Benandanti, or “good walkers.” Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inquisitorial records describe men and women who claimed that everyone born with a caul was summoned in adulthood to fight witches during nocturnal spirit journeys. Their preserved “little shirts” were worn around the neck, blessed with prayers and Masses, and believed to protect soldiers or help lawyers win cases.

Finally, we return to the sea with the curious modern discovery of a preserved caul purportedly belonging to a survivor of the the sinking of the Titanic. Its provenance may be uncertain, but the topic at least provides an excuse to close out with a snippet of the uniquely grim yet lighthearted folk song, “When the Great Ship Went Down.”

Christmas is Carnival: Carols and Calendars

By boneandsickle | December 18, 2025

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:18 — 31.2MB)

Historically, the celebration of Christmas and Carnival could overlap, and there is some reason to believe that customs associated with the former were inherited by the latter.

A clue to this calendrical shift is offered by the Christmas song, “Carol of the Bells,” which uses the melody of an old Ukrainian New Year;s carol, one which dates back to the era in which New Year was celebrated in March (hence the springtime imagery of its original Ukrainian lyrics).

Ukrainian postcard commemorating the folk song”Shchedryk” source of “Carol of the Bells”

After a brief look at the variable date chosen to celebrate the New Year throughout European history, we take some time to rethink our modern understanding of what constitutes the Christmas season. The common notion that the season ends on December 25 or January 1, possibly including the weeks leading up to those dates, in historical understanding, was reversed, with Dec. 25 representing the start of Christmastide, which at the very least ran until Epiphany (Jan. 6) or Candlemas (Feb. 2).

The merger of Christmas and Carnival is not only aided by the historically later end date of Christmastide, but also the variable start date for Carnival. A number of regional dates preferred for those festivities are discussed with Germany’s initiation of festivities on November 11 being the earliest.

Another reason to suspect that Carnival inherited some of its customs from Carnival is the carnivalesque quality of the Christmas Feast of Fools celebrated anywhere from Dec. 26 to January 6. The wild, and sometimes dangerous revels celebrated on those days (and discussed in Episode 100) were ended by local bishops at roughly the same time that Carnival celebrations in France and Germany emerged, suggesting re-channeling of anarchic impulses and customs.

Our discussion then turns to the Roman New Year, the January Kalends, which likely inspired chaotic elements around the Feast of Fools. Of particular interest here are accounts of celebrants dressing in animal hides and horns. a custom that seems to have survived in certain Carnival traditions, including a number discussed in my Carnival book. One of these, the Kurent of Slovenia, who happens to be rather similar to the Austrian Krampus across the country’s northern border.

In Western Bulgaria too, another Carnival figure, the Kuker, in western regions also makes use of animal hides and horns (as well as bells). Bulgaria also provides us with an interesting 20th-century case study of the merger of the traditions of Christmas (or “Surva,” the Bulgarian New Year) merging with springtime fertility customs of Carnival, both strands being associated with the Kuker.

We wrap up with a brief look at Slavic celebrations of the Christmas cycle as Koliade (various spellings), a name for Christmastide and the customs associated with it, particularly door-to-door “good luck visits” incorporating short plays and songs, kolyadka in Ukrainian, the original of “Carol of the Bells” (Shchedryk/”Bountiful Evening”) being one of these songs

“New Year’s Carols” (Kolędnicy noworoczni) from “A Polish Year in Life, Tradition and Song” (1900).

The sources for this show are Mr. Ridenour’s books The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas and A Season of Madness, Fools, Monsters, and Marvels of the Old-World Carnival.

Pumpkins, Turnips, and Spooklights

By boneandsickle | September 30, 2025

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:36 — 59.0MB)

The Halloween Jack-o’-lantern, made from pumpkins in the US and originally turnips in the UK, began its existence as a wisp of glowing marsh gas or “spooklight.” We begin our episode with a montage of modern American spooklights including that of Oklahoma’s “Spooklight Road,” North Carolina’s Brown Mountain, and the flying saucers sighted in Michigan in 1966, famously identified by investigator Allen Hynek as “swamp gas.”

“Jack-o’-lantern” was just another name given to what’s more widely known now as a Will-o’-the-wisp — a wavering, bobbing light seen in marshy places, understood as mischievous spirit intent on leading travelers off course and into their doom in muck and mire. Flaming methane produced by rotting vegetation in such environments, is said to the the cause of the phenomenon, though the mode of ignition is still largely a matter of debate. The Latin name for such lights, ignis fatuus (fool’s fire), was also applied to phenomena having nothing to do with swamps, as it’s been used interchangeably with “St. Elmo’s Fire” to describe electrical discharges seen on ships; masts and other rodlike protrusions when atmospheric conditions are right. We hear a dramatic first-person account from 1847, in which St. Elmo’s Fire (identified by antiquarian Henry Duncan as ignis fatuus) appears on a coachman’s whip during a storm.

A mirage in a marsh. Coloured wood engraving by C Whymper. Gas. Contributors: Charles H Whymper (1853–1941).

We then hear what scientists of the 16th and 17th century made of ignis fatuus, often relating it unexpectedly to meteors or luminous insects, while mocking “the superstitions” who imagined it as wandering spirits alight with the flames of Purgatory.

Along with marsh spirits exlusively dedicated to misleading travelers, ignis fatuus could also be a temporary form taken by shapeshifting fairy folk like Puck or Robin Goodfellow. We hear an example of this from the 1628 pamphlet, Robin Goodfellow, his Mad Pranks and Merry Jests. We also see the term appearing in literature of the 16th and 17th century as a metaphor for treachery or deception, in works by John Milton and William Shakespeare.

We run through the variety of colorful regional names by which Will-o-the-Wisps were known: Bob-a-longs, Pinkets, Spunkies, Merry Dancers, Nimble men, Hinkypunks, and Flibberdigibbets, as well as some female variants including Peg-a-lantern and Kitty with the Candlestick. In Wales, these mysterious lights could be omens of death, also known as “corpse candles,” or “death lights.” Appearing around the home of the dying or at the deathbed, they were also called “fetch lights,” as they would arrive when required to fetch the soul to the other side. In Cornwall, fool’s fire is associated with the piskies, in particular Joan the Wad and her partner Jack-o’-the-Lantern, the former having acquired a mostly positive reputation in the 20th century as a luck-bringer. Mrs. Karswell also reads some tales of ignis fatuus in the western counties, where the lights are called “hobby lanterns” (from hobgoblin) or “lantern men.”

We then shift gears to discuss the pumpkin form of Jack-o’-lantern, beginning with a well-circulated Irish origin story. A quick summary: the light carried in a hollowed vegetable (a pumpkin in the New World or turnip in the Old) represents the spirit of a notorious sinner, “Jack,” or “Stingy Jack,” who upon death finds he is too wicked for Heaven and too troublesome for Hell. Consquently, he is condemned to wander the earth till Judgement Day, given the peculiar lantern to light his way.

This, at least, is the most recent version of the tale, but when it first appeared in print, in a 1936 edition of the Dublin Penny Journal, there’s no mention of any hollowed vegetable, much less of Halloween — meaning this “ancient legend” actually evolved as Halloween folklore in the second half of the 20th century.

We then do a bit more myth-busting on the other side of the Atlantic, checking in on Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which also turns out not to mention Halloween, nor a carved pumpkin representing the Horseman’s head. When hollowed pumpkins first are mentioned by the 1840s, they are associated with Thanksgiving rather than Halloween, as in John Greenleaf Whittier’s 1947 poem, “The Pumpkin.” The next appearance of a Jack-o’-lantern, in an 1860 edition of a Wisconsin newspaper, is also not associated with Halloween but with an impromptu parade supporting Abraham Lincoln’s presidential run. It seems that it was only by the end of the 19th century that the hollowed, lighted pumpkin was linked with Halloween, while retaining associations with Thanksgiving into the early 1900s.

In the UK, hollowed and lighted turnips (occasionally beets or rutabagas) seem to have been around since the early 1800s. Originally, they’re not necessarily associated with Halloween specifically but as something created by mischievous boys eager to scare their neighbors whenever the vegetables became available for such hijinks. A Scottish source, John Jamieson’s An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language 1808), is the first to link them to Halloween pranks, and by the 1890s, we hear of lighted turnips being carried by costumed children (“guisers”) celebrating Halloween in Scotland.

Carved turnip used on the Isle of Man. Courtesy www.culturevannin.im

We then discuss the Jack-o’-lantern’s British evolution, namely, the replacement of the turnip with the American pumpkin, beginning with their importation in the 1950s. The process was slow, with both carved turnips and pumpkins used side-by-side in some regions, and the use of carved turnips longer retained in some regions. Of particular interest here is the Isle of Man, where the Halloween celebration of Hop-tu-naa makes exclusive use of turnip lanterns in costumed door-to-door rounds during which children sing a largely nonsensical song punctuated by the rhyming syllables “Hop-tu-naa.” An audio snippet of the song is provided courtesy of the Manx organzation Culture Vannin (https://culturevannin.im/).

We wrap up with some speculations regarding the disappearance of the Will-o-the-Wisp and its evolution through different forms, including the glowing swamp gas theorized to have inspired the 1966 Michigan saucer sightings (and our closing song by Lewis Ashmore and the Space Walkers!)

The Fates

By boneandsickle | July 9, 2025

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:48 — 57.0MB)

The Fates of Classical Antiquity not only survived in the form of related fairy-tale figures but also as the object of superstitions and rituals associated with newborns. In South Slavic and Balkan regions particularly, these customs represent a surprisingly long-lived and genuine case of pagan survival.

We begin our episode examining the fairy godmothers of “Sleeping Beauty” as embodiments of the Fates. Mrs. Karswell reads a few key passages from the definitive version of the story included in Charles Perrault’s 1697 collection, Histoires ou contes du temps passé (“stories of times gone by.”) We learn how the fairies fulfill the historical role of godparents at the newborn’s christening. We also note the peculiar emphasis on the quality of what’s set before the fairies at the christening banquet, observing how a failure there leads the wicked fairy to curse the Sleeping Beauty.

Czech illustration — 1874 illustration by František Doucha for a Czech edition of Sleeping Beauty

We then explore antecedents to Perrault’s tale, beginning with the 14th-century French chivalric romance, Perceforest. A peripheral story in this 8-volume work is that of Troylus and Zeelandine, in which the role of Sleeping Beauty’s fairy godmothers are played by Greek and Roman deities, with Venus as supporter of Princess Zeelandine (and her suitor Troylus) and Themis cursing Zeelandine to sleep in a manner similar to Perrault’s princess. A failure to correctly lay out Themis’ required items at the christening banquet is again again responsible for the curse, though the awakening of Zeelandine by Troylus awakens is surprisingly different and a notorious example of medieval bawdiness.

Preceding Perceforest, there was the late 13th-century French historical romance Huon of Bordeaux, in which we hear of the newborn fairy king Oberon being both cursed and blessed by fairies attending his birth. From around the same time, French poet and composer Adam de la Halle’s Play of the Bower describes a banquet at which fairy guests pronounce a curses and blessings on those in attendance prompted again by their pleasure or displeasure at what’s set before them at a banquet. We also hear of the Danish King King Fridlevus (Fridlef II) bringing his newborn son to a temple of “three maidens” to ascertain the destiny pf the child in Gesta Danorum (“Deeds of the Danes”).written around 1200 by Saxo Grammaticus. And lest listeners think such appeals to the Fates were strictly a literary motif, we hear Burchard of Worms, in his early-11th-century Decretum, condemning the not uncommon among the Germans of his region of setting up offering tables for the Fates. By this point, the connection between how fairy godmother types are served at a banquet and offerings made to the Fates to ensure a cild’s fortune should be clear.

We then turn back to the Greek Fates, the Moirai (Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos) and the Roman Parcae (Nona, Decuma, and Morta). Particularly in the case of the Parcae, we hear examples of their connection to the newborn’s destiny in the celebration nine or ten days after the birth of the dies lustricus, during which offerings were made to the Fates.

The Three Fates by Bernardo Strozzi, late 17th c

We make a brief side-trip to discuss the Norns (Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld), the Germanic equivalent of the Fates. These are more distant cousins, not strongly associated with the newborn and his destiny, though we do hear a passage from the Poetic Edda, in which the Norns are present birth of the hero Helgi. We also hear a gruesome passage from the 13th-century Njáls Saga, in which the Valkyries weave out the fate of those who will die in the Battle of Clontarf.

The Anglo-Saxon equivalent of the Fates, the Wyrds, are also discussed, and we hear how the witches in Macbeth partook in this identity as the “Weird Sisters,” an association Shakespeare inherited from his source material, the 1587 history of Great Britain, known as Holinshed’s Chronicles.

We then turn our attention the Fates in Slavic and Balkan lands — the Rozhanitsy in Russia and Ukraine, the Sudičky among West Slavs, the Orisnici in Bulgaria, and the Ursitoare in Romania. As these customs survived into more recent times, there is a vast body of folklore to describe — much of it revolving around the setting up of offering tables and the communication of newborn’s destiny through dreams sent to mothers and midwives and confirmed by marks (visible or invisible) left upon the infant during their nocturnal visits on the third night after birth.

We also enjoy a couple entertaining folktales about Romania’s Ursitoare collected in the early years of the 20th century by folklorist Tudor Pamfile.

While such customs have since died out in Greece, customs related to the Moirai preserved into the early 20th century, as we hear in passages of John Lawson’s Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals, written in 1900.

We end with a brief look at christening parties in modern Romania, at which costumed Ursitoare play an increasingly major role, this paired with an introduction to the popular song “Ursitoare, Ursitoare.”

Romanian Fates attend a christening party. Ursitoare show by FormatiiNunta

Book Trailer

By boneandsickle | May 17, 2025

Here’s a new book trailer I put together for A Season of Madness: Fools, Monsters, and Marvels of the Old-World Carnival. This one’s slanted toward who may have been interested in my Krampus book. The book is available in the US at better bookstores, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, directly from the publisher, Feral House, and via other online booksellers.

Banshees (Rebroadcast)

By boneandsickle | March 16, 2024

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:39 — 43.1MB)

Banshees are spirits of Irish folklore, who warn of impending deaths. Originally considered fairies, their Irish name, bean sídhe, means “woman of the mounds,” those mounds (sídhe) being the ancient burial mounds believed in Ireland to be the home of fairies.

The banshee’s wailing, which betokens imminent death of a blood relative, is probably based upon the wailing of Irish mourners called “keeners,” from the Irish word caoineadh, or “lament.” You can hear some snippets of traditional keeners in this segment, incliuding a 1957 field recording released by Smithsonian Folkways.

Next we look at how the banshee’s appearance and behavior derives in part from that of Irish keeners, including some odd details having to do with petticoats. Her origins in the fairy world also has often suggested that she may be small of stature. We also examine some folktales involving combs lost by or stolen from banshees, and what you should or should not do should you find one.

While the banshee is attached strictly to particular families, she is not bound to the Emerald Isle. We hear some accounts of her following travelers to other countries, including a surprising tale involving a party aboard an Italian yacht.

The figure, as she’s known today, receives no mention in print until the 17th century. Mrs. Karswell reads for us what is probably the earliest account, retelling an incident experienced by Lady and Sir Richard Fanshawe, an English ambassador and his wife visiting Ireland.

This account also introduces the notion that a banshee may not originate in the fairy world, but may also be a vengeful ghost. We hear another tale in this mode associated with Dunluce Castle in County Antrim, a location known for its “banshee room,” a feature duplicated in Shane’s Castle, about an hour to the south. Both of these castle banshees are sometimes called “the red sisters,” so named for the color of their hair.

After a brief side trip to make note of figures similar to the banshee in Scotland (the caoineag) and Wales, the cyhyraeth and gwrach y rhibyn, we turn to older figures of the fairy realm regarded as banshees, but rather different from the figure born in the Early Modern Period.

The first of these is Clíodna, who was known as the queen of the banshees of southern Ireland, particularly the province of Munster. Unlike the modern banshee, a solitary figure who does little more than wail and make those well-timed appearances, Clíodna engages in romantic affairs, including a romantic rivalry with her banshee sister Aoibhell, a matter culminating in a magical battle with both transformed into cats.

Aoibhell also appears in an important story about Brian Boru, founder of the O’Brian Dynasty, whose army defeats an alliance of Vikings and Irish lords fought at the Battle of Clontarf, near Dublin in 1014. While Boru’s forces are victorious, he and his son are visited by Aoibhell, who heralds their deaths not with a wail, but music played on her harp from the fairy world. We hear a similar story about the Irish hero and demi-god Cúchulainn encoutering Aoibhell as a death omen.

Les Lavandières de la nuit, 1861, Yan' Dargent, oil, — Les Lavandières de la nuit, 1861, Yan’ Dargent, oil,

Cúchulainn also encounters a banshee-like figure of the type folklorists call, “the Washer at the Ford,” or in Celtic regions elsewhere, like Celtic Britanny, “the Midnight Washer.” The figures appear at lonely bodies of water washing bloody shrouds, or often armor, as they are particularly inclined to predict the deaths of soldiers and armies. We hear a particularly splendid account of one such figure from the 12th-century Triumphs of Torlough — one, which in its generous use of horrific adjectives sounds as if it were written by H.P. Lovecraft.

The episode ends with a quick look at a couple cinematic bamshees, including one which has earned a place in the nightmares of children encountering it in the 1950s-70s. The two movies we hear bits of are Damned by Dawn and Darby O’Gill and the Little People.

Banshee from "Darby O'Gill" — Banshee from “Darby O’Gill”

Christmas Superstitions

By boneandsickle | December 15, 2023

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:40 — 29.4MB)

The Christmas season is rich in superstitions. The whole period from the beginning of Advent, through the day itself, and especially throughout the twelve days (and nights!) between Christmas and January 6 or Epiphany are, in a sense haunted, a time when spirits are afoot and behavior is hemmed in by restrictions upon normal activities. Recently I stumbled upon a good collection of these folk beliefs in a volume from 1903 entitled Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World: (And subtitled, A Comprehensive Library of Human Belief and Practice in the Mysteries of Life). The book’s contents are indeed as comprehensive as that title, and from their section on Christmas, I’ll be sharing some of the more interesting examples.

The show closes with a recording of a song sung by costumed Swiss holiday figures known as Silvesterchläuse. In the hinterlands of the Canton of Appenzell-Ausserrhoden, the se Silvesterchläus, groups of men and male youths wearing huge bells and ornate costumes, go door to door to offer seasonal blessings and sing songs like the one you will hear.

Swan-Upping and Other Curious British Customs

By boneandsickle | June 18, 2023

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:54 — 30.8MB)

Explore some curious British Customs with us, including those of Midsummer, swan-upping, egg-hopping, St. Bartholomew’s knives, and the violent tradition of St. Michaelmas “ganging.” Our source for this episode is the 1911 volume by T. F. Thistelton Dyer, British Popular Customs Present and Past. Illustrating the Social and Domestic Manners of the People. Arranged according to the Calendar
of the Year.

Spirits of the Corn

By boneandsickle | October 2, 2022

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:05 — 58.5MB)

Spirits of the corn (grain) fields from the United Kingdom to Russia have been imagined as embodiments of the harvest and guardians of the fields, sometimes evolving into fantastically cruel fear-figures in the process.

We begin with a look at the Scottish and English ballad “John Barleycorn,” first appearing as a broadside in 1568. The suffering hero of the song, “Sir John,” allegorically endures the brutal process of being buried, harvested, threshed, and eventually turned into beer. We hear some snippets of the song from The Watersons and Fred Jordan.

Some, like the turn-of-the-century mythologist James Frazer, imagined the ballad as an allegorical representation of ancient human sacrifice ensuring good harvest, and while that’s not generally believed now, by way of evidence, Frazer assembled an invaluable and encyclopedic catalog of now extinct agricultural folk customs in his 1890 magnum opus, The Golden Bough.

We examine a number of rituals, documented by Frazer, in which the spirit of the fields is said to take up residence in last grain to be harvested, often as an animal. One such creature, around which a substantial mythology has been spun, is a goat-like being called the Habergeiss. I’ve mentioned this bit of Alpine folklore previously in the context of Krampus and Perchten traditions, but here provide a more in-depth look at the many ways in which it’s been imagined.

Habergeiß at Nicholas play in Tauplitz. Photo by Wolfgang Böhm.

Also from German-speaking lands, the Bilwis, a sort of goblin or witch said to protect fields but more often described as a nocturnal thief of grain, employs small sickles attached at its feet. We also hear some methods of defeating this sort of mischief as described by Jacob Grimm.

Another German bit of folklore discussed is the Rye Wolf, often closely associated with a female embodiment of the grain. While more broadly referred to as the “Corn Mother,” she assumes her most fearful aspect in German rye fields, where she becomes the Rye Aunt (Roggenmuhme).

An extremely comprehensive and grisly catalog of her terrifying traits was compiled in Richard Beitl’s 1933 study, Investigations into the Mythology of the Child. We take a loving and lingering look at some of these horrific aspects and hear the Rye Aunt described in a tale from the Grimms as well as a story from 1926, told as true (even then) by the grandmother of Otto Busch, author of Thuringian Legends.

We also examine a lighter side of this figure, literally lighter, as she only appears at the hour of noon. Particularly common more in northeastern Germany and Slavic lands (Polednice in Czech, Poludnitsa in Russian) in English literature, she is usually called “Lady Midday,” or “The Noonday Witch.” Not only does she function as a fear-figure preventing kids from running into the fields but also serves to warn workers to cease their labors at the hour the sun is hottest lest she strike them down with exhaustion, pains, or madness.

A couple Czech films featuring this character are discussed — 2016’s The Noonday Witch/ Polednice and 2000’2 Wild Flowers/Kytice. The latter is based on an 1853 anthology of folkloric tales (Kytice) folkloric by Czech poet Karel Erben. Mrs. Karswell reads for us a recent translation of “The Noonday Witch.”

The show closes with some cinematic scarecrows, primarily a smuggler disguised as a scarecrow created by Russell Thorndike for his 1915 novel, Doctor Syn: A Tale of the Romney Marsh. We hear some clips from adaptations of Thorndike’s work, the 1962 Hammer film (with Peter Cushing) The Night Creatures, and Disney’s 1964 production The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh starring Patrick McGoohan.