HKA-001699Legend
The Glastonbury Thorn at Christmas
The Glastonbury Thorn's Christmas flowering tradition and its relationship to local legend.
Open archive record →Record type
Legend
Browse Hawthorn Archive records filed under this catalogue heading.
HKA-001645Legend
Merlin’s Cave at Tintagel
The sea cave beneath Tintagel Castle is widely known as Merlin’s Cave. The name feels ancient, but its strong Arthurian association belongs to later literary and tourist development rather than secure early medieval tradition.…
Open archive record →HKA-001635Legend
Fairy Music and the Danger of Following
A recurring fairy-lore motif describes people hearing music or dancing from a mound, field or distant place and being drawn towards it. In some versions they join the gathering, struggle to leave or discover…
Open archive record →HKA-001631Legend
Arthur’s Departure to Avalon
Later Arthurian tradition does not always end with an ordinary royal death. After the catastrophe at Camlann, Arthur passes towards Avalon, leaving open the possibility that his departure is not final and that the…
Open archive record →HKA-001626Legend
William Terriss and the Ghost of the Adelphi Theatre
Actor William Terriss was murdered outside London’s Adelphi Theatre in December 1897 by Richard Prince. A later theatre tradition holds that Terriss’s ghost continued to haunt the Adelphi. The murder is documented history; the…
Open archive record →HKA-001625Legend
Sybil Penn, the Grey Lady of Hampton Court
A Hampton Court ghost tradition identifies a Grey Lady with Sybil Penn, a Tudor nurse associated with Edward VI and Elizabeth I. After her tomb at nearby Hampton church was disturbed during nineteenth-century rebuilding,…
Open archive record →HKA-001624Legend
Catherine Howard and Hampton Court’s Haunted Gallery
Hampton Court tradition says that Catherine Howard escaped her guards after learning of the accusations against her and ran towards the chapel to plead with Henry VIII, only to be seized and dragged back.…
Open archive record →HKA-001623Legend
The Phantom Bear of the Tower of London
One of the Tower of London’s stranger ghost traditions concerns a spectral bear said to have terrified a Jewel House keeper. The story draws unusual plausibility from the character of the place: the Tower…
Open archive record →HKA-001622Legend
Anne Boleyn’s Ghost at the Tower of London
Later ghost tradition repeatedly returns Anne Boleyn to the Tower of London, where she was imprisoned and executed in 1536. Versions place her apparition near Tower Green, the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad…
Open archive record →HKA-001611Legend
Robin Hood and Barnsdale
Robin Hood’s legendary geography is not confined to Sherwood. A Gest of Robyn Hode places important action around Barnsdale, traditionally associated with South Yorkshire, giving the region a substantial claim within the early literary…
Open archive record →HKA-001610Legend
Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest
Sherwood Forest became one of the most durable landscapes of the Robin Hood legend. Nottingham and its Sheriff have old connections with the tradition, and later retellings increasingly concentrated Robin’s geography in Nottinghamshire. The…
Open archive record →HKA-001609Legend
Robin Hood Rhymes Known in the Fourteenth Century
William Langland’s Piers Plowman, composed in versions during the later fourteenth century, contains a brief reference to “rhymes of Robin Hood”. The remark is important because Robin needs no elaborate introduction: stories or songs…
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