For the unwary visitor to their lair, redcaps can be deeply dangerous creatures. These malevolent little folk are classified ‘goblins’ and that’s a word that’s rarely attached to anything positive. While they do appear in northern European folklore, they’re most often found in Border folklore. In many ways, it’s hardly surprising. The Border region is…

I have an announcement to make… I have a folklore book coming out! Rebel Folklore: Empowering Tales of Spirits, Witches and Other Misfits from Anansi to Baba Yaga, illustrated by the fantastic Melissa Jarram, is due out in September. In this episode, find out more about the book and hear one of the chapters (spoiler:…

Church bells appear in a range of ways within folklore. Sometimes they continue to ring far beneath the waves in a church under the sea. Or perhaps their peeling in the darkness guided a lost traveller back to the path and away from danger. In some tales, they’re stolen by the Devil, or by mermaids….

You might not expect to see northern vampires among the tales of Northumberland, the Borders and Cumbria. But they’re there! William de Newburgh included three stories of revenants at Berwick, Melrose and Alnwick in his Historia rerum Anglicarum, a collection of five volumes that told a history of England from 1066 to 1198. And then…

Tales of fairies exist all over the world, and there are hundreds to choose from right here in the British Isles. Yet they often have a particular ‘flavour’ or motif that lets you group them together. One of the common motifs of folk tales in the northeast of England is that of dancing fairies. It…