The Hawthorn Archive
The Hawthorn Archive is the journal of Hawthorn & Key: a quiet collection of essays on British folklore, local legends, seasonal customs, old symbols, curious places and the small domestic traditions that continue to give ordinary life a little more character.
Here, folklore is approached with respect, curiosity and a sensible amount of scepticism. Old beliefs do not need to be treated as proven facts in order to remain interesting. They tell us how people remembered places, explained uncertainty, marked the seasons and made their homes feel a little less ordinary.
Read slowly. A rainy afternoon is not required, although it rarely does any harm.
A tarot deck can look more mysterious than it really is. To answer the question what are tarot cards, it helps to begin simply: they are a structured deck of cards with a history in European play, later occult interpretation and modern…
Read the reflection
The Moon changes without changing. To understand moon phases and their meanings, it helps to separate two things that are often mixed together: what the Moon is physically doing in the sky, and what human beings have chosen to make of that…
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Few British trees are as ordinary in the landscape and as complicated in folklore as hawthorn. To understand hawthorn in British folklore, it helps to begin with the hedge itself: practical, thorned, seasonal and impossible to separate from the places where people…
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Britain has no monopoly on ghosts. Every part of the world has traditions of the returning dead, uncanny places and stories told after dark. Yet British ghost stories have acquired a particularly recognisable atmosphere: an old house with a corridor too long…
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Say the word fairy today and a familiar figure tends to appear: tiny, winged, bright, fond of flowers and generally safe to invite into a nursery illustration. British folklore contains that image, but it did not begin there.
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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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