The Hawthorn Archive
The Green Man looks out from some of Britain's oldest churches. His face may be framed by leaves, almost hidden inside them or crossed by stems growing from an open mouth. You can pass beneath such a carving without noticing it, then…
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The Robin Hood legend is so familiar that its hero can seem less like a figure from folklore than someone everyone has somehow met. The green clothes, the bow, Sherwood Forest, Little John, Maid Marian and the Sheriff of Nottingham have become…
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Tintagel Castle stands in a place where it is unusually difficult to separate a landscape from the stories told about it. The headland on Cornwall's north coast rises abruptly above the Atlantic, split from the mainland by a narrow gap and battered…
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King Arthur is one of those figures who seems to stand in two places at once. He belongs to medieval manuscripts, ruined castles and old stories, yet he also turns up in novels, films, schoolbooks and the names of real hills, caves…
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British folklore is easiest to misunderstand when it is treated as a single book of old beliefs. It is not. There is no authorised list of British legends, no national handbook of fairies, no agreed catalogue of lucky objects and unlucky days…
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