Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project
A project exploring the origins, legacies, connections and futures of folk tales in Lincolnshire, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2/2024-7/2025) and hosted at Nottingham Trent University.
Our books:
Rory Waterman, Devils in the Details: On Location with Folk Tales in England’s Forgotten County (Five Leaves, 2026), exploring folk tales across Lincolnshire, and the places associated with them.
Anna Milon and Rory Waterman (eds), Lincolnshire Folk Tales Reimagined (Five Leaves, 2025), featuring fourteen of Lincolnshire’s finest writers reimagining local folk tales.
● news
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Rory Waterman I’m not a ‘guest writer’, I’ll confess: I was the project lead on the Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project during its funded period, and now keep the website going on my own. But please excuse the indulgence. My new book, Devils in the Details: On Location with Folk Tales in…
● Latest Articles
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Black Dog (also Black Shuck or Hairy Jack)
In most traditions, phantom dogs are usually sinister or malevolent, or even portents of impending death; in many Lincolnshire stories about them, however, they are…
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The Holbeach Gamesters
The tale of three men who were playing cards in the Chequers Inn, Holbeach (which closed a few years ago), and talking about a friend…
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Fan o’ the Fens
A beautiful young woman from near Louth, called Fanny and known as Fan o’ the Fens, lives with her widowed mother, who complains that a…
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Shag Foals: the Lackey Causey Calf
Susanna O’Neill writes about the Lackey Causey Calf, which tried to lure people into a stream between Wrawby and Brigg with the lights of its…
● About the project
‘Lincolnshire Folk Tales: Origins, Legacies, Connections, Futures’ is a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/Y003225/1), and is led by Dr Rory Waterman and the Research Fellow Dr Anna Milon in the School of Arts and Humanities at Nottingham Trent University. The project explores the origins, legacies, intertextual and social connections and futures of Lincolnshire folk tales (LFTs), and is intended to facilitate wider engagement with this heritage from writers, the general public, and scholars.
Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project 