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Villain or Victim: was Tom Otter wrongfully accused?
The tale of Tom Otter is one of the grisliest stories featured by the Lincolnshire Folk Tales project. The historical event fit for any true crime podcast had its own mythology grow up around it, fed by nineteenth-century audiences yearning for the macabre. Otter, a young navvy (or, in local vernacular, banker) working near Lincoln,…
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Ghostly Monks on Lincoln Edge
The Lincoln Edge outside the village of Bracebridge Heath, south of Lincoln, is supposedly haunted by a procession of ghostly monks carrying flaming brands.
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Newton’s Apple
Any schoolchild who has heard of Sir Isaac Newton is almost certain to know one thing about him: he was sitting under an apple tree when an apple fell on his head, and put into it the universal law of gravity.
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Saint Etheldreda’s Staff
The seventh-century St. Etheldreda (also known as Æthelthryth or Æðelþryð, and in religious contexts as Audrey) stopped at Stow on her journey from Northumbria to the Isle of Ely, to where she was fleeing in order to become a nun. She planted her ash staff in the earth, and it transformed miraculously into a mature, foliage-rich tree.
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Oud Taales Toud Ower Agean: Mabel Peacock, giving traditional stories a Lincolnshire twist
In two of her books of dialect fiction, the folklorist Mabel Peacock (b. Bottesford, 1856; d. Kirton Lindsey, 1920) includes several reworkings of traditional folktales. Her retellings are worth considering because she is a skilled storyteller in her own right, and allows herself to be unfaithful to her sources; it’s also interesting that none of…
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South Holland Shush
From Sutton St James to Fosdyke Bridge and back is a regular bike-outing for me: up to Long Sutton, through Lutton, up to Gedney Drove End, along to Dawsmere, then Holbeach St Matthew, Holbeach St Marks, Middle Marsh Road, and finally a neat little bike track beside the A17 to the Yacht Haven, where I…
Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project 