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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…
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A Witch of Kirton in Lindsey
A servant we had from the neighbourhood of Kirton Lindsey [sic], North Line. told me when her mother was confined [pregnant], a man in the village “witched her,” so that she could not move in bed, nor could the bed be moved until the man came and “unwitched her”
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Don’t Be Frit
Rory Waterman, who leads the Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project, discusses what planted the seed.
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Breathing Life into Lost Things
Hollie, the author of (among other things) The Bleeding Tree: A Pathway Through Grief Guided by Forests, Folk Tales and the Ritual Year (Rider/Ebury, 2023), discusses the importance of Lincolnshire’s folk heritage to her writing.
Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project 