Jeremy Harte’s exegesis of placenames [How Placenames Grow, reviewed NE169] is fired by the misuses to which they have been put, and more often than not by adherents of alternative viewpoints such as earth mysteries. In such impressionistic contexts, Balham (for instance) becomes the enclosure or home (ham, OE root) of Ba’al (ancient god, or […]
#10 Honest visions and toxic errors in the neo-antiquarian landscape Read More »
The terrestrial or landscape zodiac is one of the more outré concepts to emerge from the 20th century discussions of ‘earth mysteries’, and unsurprisingly has not fared well in the more materialistic intellectual climate of the 21st century. However, NE editor John Billingsley thinks the concept should not be dismissed outright, as it provides food
Walking myth into place: The damned landscape zodiac Read More »
Funeral paths, popularly known as corpseways, became a familiar topic in neo-antiquarian research in the 1980s when they entered discussions about leys as spirit roads. The association with leys faded, but they are still recognised as spirit paths of a kind, and often interact with hauntings and other supernatural encounters. In this book, John Billingsley
Journeys of the Soul: Vernacular funeral paths in Upper Calderdale Read More »
To tie in with the Sowerby Bridge Rushbearing Festival on the first weekend of September, we are pleased to be able to offer again Garry Stringfellow’s brief history of rushbearing customs in Sowerby Bridge and N England. https://northernearth.co.uk/books/ Also available by courtesy of the publishers is Peter Harris and Thomas Gough’s revised and heavily illustrated
Rushbearing & Ancient Measures books available again! Read More »
New uploads of articles by Janet Bord on holy wells in Wales, Bob Trubshaw on ways of seeing place, Eileen Roche on Treacle Mines, and John Billingsley on Britain’s last coal mine and mining traditions.
When Britain’s last deep coal mine closed, I found myself conflicted* between my environmentalist, folklorist and political identities, in all of which coal miners and their industry have played an important role. My overwhelming feeling in the end was one of sadness and loss, focussed on the communities and the values they represented. Folklore, they
The Last Shift: RIP Kellingley Coal Mine 2016 Read More »
Janet Bord considers the development of holy well research and interest through the lens of her work in Wales Davina Ware Little did I know what I was letting myself in for when I started researching the book which was published in 1985 as Sacred Waters: Holy Wells and Water Lore in Britain and Ireland. I
Researching saints’ wells in Wales Read More »
Eileen Roche dives into a folklore trope, and recommends ‘suspend disbelief here’ The subject of Treacle Mines has a long and interesting history, which I suspect will be of interest to some NE readers. I first became aware of their existence when some friends took me for a walk one hot summer’s day on
Stuart McHardy introduces the idea of geomythography, with an example of the insights to which this process may lead. Geomythography is a process of analysing landscape and society over time through evidence from oral tradition, archaeology, place-names, ritual and belief and the landscape itself. Significantly shaped hills – ‘paps’ – in various parts of
An Intriguing Find: Geomythography from Scarba and Jura Read More »
Bob Trubshaw unearths a more time-honoured terminology for earth mysteries research Should readers of Northern Earth be referred to as ‘earth mysterians’? Or as ‘neo-antiquarians’? Or what? Like Molière’s bourgeois gentilhomme, who discovers rather late in life that he has been speaking prose all along, it seems we have always been chorographers. No, not
The View from the Henge Bank: Northern Earth or Northern Chorography? Read More »