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.

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

SEALORE

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.

TREELORE

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.

BODY PRESERVATION

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.

†hê þïl¢hårЧ mµ§† rê†åïñ †hêïr hêåЧ. 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,

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.

Trail trees are trees that have been shaped by human intention rather than environment or disease, and they have been used for centuries to mark the way through the woods across the Americas. A network of pre-Columbian roads and trails denoted by these trees, most often oak and maple, have been well documented across First Nation territories. Their uses varied between nation and specificity of the region but may have included pointing out a fresh water source

The mesmerising driftwood sculptures of Japanese artist Nagato Iwasaki. All of the figures are part of an interconnected work that Iwasaki calls simply ‘Torso’ and each have undergone a painstaking process of construction over the past 25 years.

I've never quite been the same since I learned about trovants. These are rocks, actual rocks, that not only 'grow' but MULTIPLY. The most famous example can be found in the tiny village of Costeşti in Valcea County, Romania. Known locally as the 'living stones' they have been the backdrop to folktales for millennia.

During Ireland’s ferocious winter storms of 2015 a 215-year-old beech tree was uprooted by the powerful winds that ripped through the town of Collooney, County Sligo. Had it not we would have never known of the tragedy upon which the tree had grown. Enmeshed in the tangled roots of a tree was a medieval skeleton. The upper part of the body was entangled in the roots, severed from the legs which remained in the ground.

Baba Yaga is a supernatural being who appears as a ferocious-looking old crone and is found across Slavic folklore traditions. Particularly in Russian lore Baba Yaga flies around in a mortar, wields a pestle and dwells deep in the forest in a shack that stands on chicken legs Despite equivalence in the witches of European folklore Baba Yaga may help those who seek her help, often playing a maternal role and nurturing close relationships with forest birds and animals. The endurance of the Baba Yaga myth is perhaps down to the figure’s ambiguity.