Here’s the link for the February 2018 transcripts. One episode went live early, so there’s an extra in there.
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The Priscillian Heresy and the Scilly Isles
Scilly was one of the last holdouts of the Priscillian heresy. It was linked to Manicheanism, sorcery and astrological demons. A covenant of Criamon astrologers disappeared from the islands after a great magical event. These things seem to be connected. Let’s look at the history of the heretical community. In this post, I’ll be using…
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The Pear Drum (The New Mother)
This is a traditional story, retold here by Lucy Clifford. It was a source for Neil Gaiman’s “Coraline”. It has two faeries contesting for a pair of feral children. The first mother has a series of prohibitions and she vanishes when they are broken, like a selkie wife, so the temptation to say she is…
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Dunsany short stories: The Worm and the Angel
The Worm and the Angel As he crawled from the tombs of the fallen a worm met with an angel. And together they looked upon the kings and kingdoms, and youths and maidens and the cities of men. They saw the old men heavy in their chairs and heard the children singing in the fields.…
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An early description of a giant squid, reimagined as a monster
What follows is the text of a pamphlet published in 1674, probably in London. It is usually called “A Full and True Account of the Strange Monster: or, Wonderful Fish Lately taken in Ireland.” but because I love how different this is to the modern day, indulge my quotation of the full title A true…
Read MoreIt’s late: sorry all. I’m in Australia, we are having a heat wave and my computer isn’t in an air-conditioned room. GFF Jan 2019 is go.
On the necessity of smuggling in House Mercere
I wasn’t going to write in detail about Cornish smuggling, because its golden age is three centuries beyond the game period. If you go onto Wikipedia, as it reads while I write, it says that there was no smuggling before Edward I established customs payments in 1275. That sounds plausible. On a whim I followed…
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Consuming Mystagogue
This episode went live early. Here’s a transcript of the episode as recorded. I may take a second bite at the cherry and write up the mystagogic path for the monthly collation. Why do faeries teach Mysteries? I was reading a story the other day which suggested that it was because it makes the acolyte…
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Caterpillars by E.F Benson
This week another story from E.F. Benson. E.F. Benson has only provided one story for this podcast previously: it was “The Room in the Tower” which provided the revener of Julia Stone. I wanted to share with you a different Benson story that would link into our Cornwall material. It’s been in the public domain…
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Poison maidens
Poison maidens occur in Indian folklore, where they are called visha kanya. They are assassins. Perhaps they are based on a real tradition of women taught to seduce and then poison the men to whom they are sent as gifts, but that seems almost entirely theoretical. In the more developed form, the maidens are raised…
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Games From Folktales 