Earliest man established the sea to be in mysterious commune with the heavens and beyond our power to influence. Leonardo da Vinci thought that the tides to be the breathing motions of a large beast and tried to calculate the size of such a creature’s lungs.
Human imagination populated the world’s oceans with monstrum marinum.
Some, like the mermaid, are familiar and knowable, while others remain inscrutable and of impossible scale, like the legendary Scylla and Charybdis, the six-headed serpent and the great undersea colossus whose maw formed a whirlpool that could devour a ship whole.
Japan has a deep tradition of sea lore. Urashima Tarō is a hardened fisherman but one day he comes across a group of children tormenting a turtle and his compassion for the poor thing has him intervene and return the creature back to the sea.
The next day he meets a messenger who tells the fisherman that it was the imperial daughter, disguised as a turtle, he had saved. In gratitude the Emperor of the Sea extends Urashima an invitation to Ryūgū-jō, the underwater Dragon Palace.
There Urashima meets the princess, now human, and enjoys all the luxuries of the kingdom.
But after three days his thoughts turn to his elderly parents and how they could not manage without him, so he decides to return. The princess tries to dissuade him but eventually relents, sending him off with a jewelled box which she presses him not to open.
Back on land it becomes clear to Urashima that many more days than three had passed; the fisherman had in fact been at the bottom of the ocean for 300 years. Now the name Urashima Tarō is known only as a legend of a young fisherman who was swallowed by the sea
and whose parents died of heartbreak. Struck by grief he drops the magic box. A plume of white smoke shoots forth and when it settles Urashima has gained a wrinkled face, a long white beard and a stooped back. In the box had been his old age.
This sad tale is one of a noble rescue but also what time at sea can do to a man; its power to grant riches and take away just as easily.
Easter, Passover and the vernal equinox; these spring festivals are not far away and I’ve been reading about The Three Hares Project, which since 2000 has been documenting a distinctive emblem seen across cultures and down the ages.
Its origins, meaning and sheer breadth of reach are as fascinating as they are mysterious.
The project was set up by three researchers: art historian Sue Andrew, cultural environmentalist Dr Tom Greeves, and film-maker and photographer Chris Chapman, as a non-profit aiming to record and research all known occurrences of the three hares motif.
Lighten the dry Jan blues by visiting the Jarramplas Festival, which takes place in Piornal, in the Spanish region of Extremadura every year on 19-20th January. As well as being a sight to behold it is also BYOT (bring your own turnip).
The focus of events is the costumed ‘cattle rustler’ named el Jarrampla, who wears a cloak of multicoloured rags and is adorned with a great horned mask. This villain, played by a lucky volunteer, runs around the 1,200-strong town banging a little drum while local people
throw turnips at him in an attempt to expel his general bad vibes for another year. Two tonnes of turnips if you want the specifics. Next day’s bruises must be about as colourful as the costume.
Whether they heal, harbour ghosts or commune with the gods, The Bleeding Tree looks at the trees in our world and in the folklore we create to describe it. I became fascinated with trees that ‘bleed’ whether physical, like the red sap of the El Drago Milenario...
or ‘dragon tree,’ to the more figurative, those that bleed in sorrow, sacrifice or accusation.
Indeed trees can bleed in evidence of crime, as recorded in one of the great New England folk legends collected by the renowned folklorist Charles M. Skinner. Skinner reports on the origin of the Micah Rood apple variety, or ‘Bloody Heart Apple’,
The matter of matter; body disposal is not the only option when there are so many preservation methods for those inclined to live fast and leave a pretty corpse.
One Catholic tradition sought to preserve the physical state for as long as possible. These are the ‘incorruptibles,’ like Bernadette Soubirous, a miller’s daughter from Lourdes whose body has lain unravaged by time in a grotto since her death in 1879.
Catholicism has a strong tradition of reliquary; many pilgrimage traditions were created around body parts and bone fragments of dead saints.
Would you eat this - the Christmas eve-eve traditional Cornish stargazy pie? There are many recipes, usually involving potato, and sometimes sand eels, mackerel, herring or dogfish, but to be a true stargazy pie the intact pilchard heads must be placed looking up at the sky,
before going in the oven.
The dish is most associated with the village of Mousehole and its annual celebration on 23rd December, known locally as Tom Bawcock’s eve.
A few years ago All Saints Church in Hereford got funding for the erection of a cafe on a new mezzanine level. A new seating gallery had excellent lighting, all the better to illuminate detail of the magnificent intricate carvings cloaked in shadow since the 14th century! …Ah.
The man in the carving has appropriately been nicknamed Seamus O’Toole, and it is thought that his spirited salutation was created by a disgruntled medieval artisan.
Stone gargoyles and decorative misericords have all sorts of symbolic meanings but there is some anecdotal evidence that the more ribald version was a final flourish of carpenters and masons scammed of their pay.