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This Ubiquitous Ghost
The ubiquitous ghost in question – which I find my work now haunted by – is known regionally as Black Shuck, Gytrash, Barguest, Moddey Dhoo, Padfoot and Skriker: broadly, the Black Dog. Typically identified as a black canine that might originally appear as a normal dog, but in some way shows itself to be something…
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The Genesis of the 1975 Tom Otter Drama
It was customary for PGCE students to present a play at the Lincolnshire Show at the end of the summer term, and it fell to me to devise and direct that year. To be honest, I was stumped until I happened to catch a performance in Sleaford by a Mummers troupe of the tale of…
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Fen.Folk Zine: Words from the Creator
The more I walked, the more I started noticing things: the way the mist clung to the fields at dusk, the strange hollows and ridges that hinted at something older beneath the soil, the names of places that sounded like they belonged in half-forgotten myths. I wanted to know more. I wanted to know everything…
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Happy 1 Year Anniversary, LFT!
Rory and Anna talk shop about the project, reflect on the year gone by and tease future events (featuring the ghost of a tragically deceased Horncastle duck).
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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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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…
Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project 