Are you ready for a Norwegian Christmas tale featuring trolls, beheadings and two flowers? Tatterhood is another tale collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, although it never saw its way into Andrew Lang’s collections, and it’s weird, creepy and unsettling, but I also find it extraordinarily charming and has a really nice ending, […]
Between the moonlight and the fire In winter twilights long ago, What ghosts we raised for your desire, To make your merry blood run slow! How old, how grave, how wise we grow! No Christmas ghost can make us chill, Save those that troop in mournful row, The ghosts we all can raise at will! […]
Also known as Why the Sea is Salt or Why is the Sea salty? because of its most famous translation in Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book, “Kvernen som maler på havsens bunn” is a Norwegian folk tale collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in their famous Norske Folkeeventyr. I talked about some of […]
When we talked about the boar’s head as a traditional Christmas dish, we mentioned “Boar’s Head Carol”, one of the oldest Christmas carols to date. Today we take a look at another Christmas Carol from the XVI Century, and perhaps the one with the most enthralling history of them all: the Coventry Carol. It’s usually […]
There is snow on the ground, And the valleys are cold, And a midnight profound Blackly squats o’er the wold; But a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of feastings unhallow’d and old. There is death in the clouds, There is fear in the night, For the dead in their shrouds Hail the sun’s turning […]
Well, yesterday some of you people protested when I wrote that the brawn is probably something no one would cook, and I’m glad because I kind of like the stuff, but you have forced me to double down with another traditional Tudor Christmas dish: the boar head. Wynkyn de Worde, most likely a pseudonym, was […]
A traditional Chinese restaurant that has recently opened here in Milan has a section of the menu that lists “dishes we know you won’t order, but we put them on anyway”. I guess that would be a good subtitle for this post because, continuing my research on the traditional Tudor dishes for a historically accurate […]
O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors: The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car. He hears me not, but o’er the yawning deep Rides heavy; his storms are unchain’d, sheathed In ribbed steel; I dare not lift mine eyes; […]
Today’s story on my Patreon is another tale translated from the 1911 collection “The Dance of the Gnomes and other stories”, put together by Guido Gozzano. It features shapeshifting battles, a curse princess, danger and derring-do. And it’s free to read.
Today’s tale on my Patreon is another story from Lafcadio Hearn’s selection of ghost tales, and it’s free to read. It features a love bloomed in a snowstorm, enchantment and a curse, heartbreak and a weeping willow.