Tag Archives: Folklore

…In which the author falls in love with standing stones all over again

Just back from a three-day trip to the archaeological wonderland that is Kilmartin, in Mid-Argyll, on Scotland’s west coast. Megalithic structures abound in the region, and we visited dozens of standing stones, burial cairns, cists and other ancient sites. Highlights included Temple Wood stone circle and the Dunadd hillfort and royal complex, plus a lake crannog and a huge standing stone carved with a Christian cross. Plus I got to lie down in a subterranean prehistoric grave (and found it a tad cramped).

The area has also the best collection of cup-and-ring marks (prehistoric rock art) in the country, and although some of it takes something of an effort to get to – especially in the infamous Argyll rain – it was well worth it. Because prehistoric British rock art is non-representational and abstract, its meaning is lost to us, making it not just beautiful but enigmatic and mysterious. Some cup-and-ring sites are notoriously difficult to find, and many a time the rain-swept glens echoed with the distinctively plaintive cry of the rock art hunter: “It’s meant to be around here somewhere!”

The trip was arranged by the earth mysteries magazine Northern Earth, www.northernearth.co.uk, with organisation by the editor, John Billingsley, and field leadership by archaeologist and rock art expert Paul Bowers, both of whom did a bang-up job. More about the utterly fantastic Kilmartin area can be found on the website of the wonderful Kilmartin House Museum, www.kilmartin.org. The bookshop there has a superb collection of books on Scottish archaeology, history and folklore, and also happens to stock signed copies of “101 Things To Do With A Stone Circle”

In which the author becomes a museum piece…

Badass big cats. I love them, especially when they turn up in areas where they have no right to be, to perplex and bamboozle us with their out-of-place predator-feline activities. From the Surrey Puma and the Beast of Bodmin to more recent sightings of alleged panthers and pumas in Scotland, these cats have been an enduring cryptozoological mystery.

So when Scotland’s newest museum, the King’s Museum in the University of Aberdeen, asked if I would choose an object for their opening exhibition 100 Curiosities, I knew exactly which specimen to pick. The exhibition draws on the massed collections within Aberdeen’s several museums, and I knew that nestling within the glass cases of the city’s stupendously wonderful Zoology Museum was a stuffed and mounted Kellas Cat, which has a tangential if fascinating relationship with the whole question of just what these cats are.

Here’s the description I wrote for the card that accompanies the cat in the King’s Museum:

“Out-of-place animals such as ‘ABCs’ or Alien Big Cats hold a special attraction for researchers of the supernatural and strange. Are pumas, panthers, lynxes and other exotic felids roaming our countryside? In some cases the answer is definitely yes, as physical specimens have turned up in Inverness-shire and the Borders. The Kellas Cat – named after a Morayshire village – isn’t an ABC, as it’s actually a bad-tempered hybrid of the domestic moggie and the Scottish Wildcat. But I suspect this black-furred bruiser is responsible for some of the reported sightings of ‘big cats’ in the North-East of Scotland. Nice kitty…

Geoff Holder, author of The Guide to Mysterious Aberdeen.”

Early museums grew out of the strange and bizarre ‘Cabinets of Curiosities’ assembled by wealthy gentlemen (there is a splendid recreation of one in the British Museum), so it is only appropriate that the King’s Museum is acknowledging the past with this opening exhibition. You should go, as admission is free, and the eclectic collection is definitely worth a visit.

The King’s Museum opened in April 2011 and can be found at

17 High Street,

Old Aberdeen,

Aberdeen AB24 3EE

Tel 01224 272000

Opening hours are 9.30am-4.30pm Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, 9.30am-7.30pm on Tuesday, and 11.00am-4.00pm Saturday.

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/kingsmuseum/

And while you’re in the area, check out the Zoology Museum. In weird creature feature terms, it’s utterly scrumptious.

I would like to thank the King’s Museum for the invitation to choose this specimen. And if any other museum curators out there want to get in touch, I have an idea for an exhibition entitled Dinosaurs, Daleks and Druids…

Cannibals! Vampires! Giant Korean Centipedes!

I’ve just returned from the Annual Conference of the Folklore Society, which took place at the University of Worcester.

With ‘Childlore and the Folklore of Childhood’ as its theme, the event turned up a truly diverse and fascinating set of talks. As a result I now know an awful lot more about Lithuanian horror stories, fairy changelings, the Evil Eye, and, yes, giant Korean centipedes. I love my job.

The organisers put my talk on just before lunch, although happily it appears no-one was put off their food by my tales of the cannibal children of old Dundee town.

The entire event was well organised by Mikel Koven and Caroline Oates, the company was agreeable and joyous, and the collective meals splendid and filled with talk of supernatural guardians, djinns, Japanese subcultures, witchcraft and urban legends. Did I say I love my job?

One of the participants, playwork researcher Marc Armitage, has blogged his thoughts on the conference at www.marc-armitage.eu, while Jeremy Harte’s fulsome conference report is on the Folklore Society’s site www.folklore-society.com.

A Cannibal Child – Just Like Her Dear Old Dad

I’m very pleased to have been invited to give a presentation at the 2011 Conference of the Folklore Society, which is taking place at the University of Worcester on 15-17 April. The Folklore Society is the country’s oldest academic body dedicated to studying all aspects of folklore, folk belief, customs, legend, urban myths and superstition, both historical and contemporary. The theme of this year’s conference is “Childlore, and the Folklore of Childhood”.

I’m appearing on Saturday 16th, bookended by Dr Laimute Anglickiene talking about Lithuanian Children’s Horror Stories and Dr Jurgita Macijauskaité-Bonda discussing Children’s Encounters with the Souls of the Dead in Lithuanian Folklore, both of which I suspect will be amazing. And if that wasn’t enough, my friend (and one of the UK’s foremost folklorists) Jeremy Harte will be waxing entertainingly on Murder in Fairyland: A Social History of Changelings, while there are further talks on witchcraft, the Evil Eye, and the vampire series True Blood. In terms of my sense of anticipation I am, it is fair to say, feeling pretty psyched, as the young people say.

My own contribution is a talk entitled “A Cannibal Child – Just Like Her Dear Old Dad”. Here’s the abstract:

In the fifteenth century a family of cannibals was executed at Dundee. The only member spared the flames was a one-year-old girl. She was fostered by a Dundee family, but as she grew older her inheritance came through, and she started biting her fellow children and licking their blood, eventually progressing onto actual eating morsels she had torn off with her teeth. So when she had reached the age of twelve, she too was executed. She turned to her prosecutors and said, “Why chide ye me as if I had committed a crime. Give me credit, if ye had the experience of eating human flesh you would think it so delicious that you would never forbear it again.”

The paper explores the possible reality (or not) of the tale, examining dubious historical sources, spurious placename evidence, early Christian descriptions of Caledonian cannibalism, anti-Scottish propaganda, Scottish patriotism, and type relationships with two other Scots cannibals, Christie Cleek and Sawney Bean. The tentative conclusion is that the well-known legend of Sawney Bean and his anthropophagic family may have been derived from the Dundee cannibals, who, given the nature of one of the sources, may have actually existed.

But did the infant girl really grow up to be a cannibal just like her dear old dad? This seems more like an agent of storytelling, imported into the tale because that’s the way the story should end. But we’ll never really know.

You can find out more about the conference here!

There’s Been A Murrrder….

Many thanks to all the folks who came along to the ‘Hanged By The Neck Until Ye Be Dead’ event at Perth. We had almost 70 people in the audience, and despite the prolix author almost running out of time towards the end (So many murders! So little time!) things went swimmingly.

There were death warrants, gibbets, pools of blood, shotgun blasts and execution sites. The questions were insightful and penetrating, and in some cases even received a sensible answer in return. A nod of appreciation to the Friends of Perth & Kinross Archives for inviting me, and for facilitating the event, and my thanks to the Local Studies Department of the AK Bell Library for providing many of the images used in the talk.

For the next talk, I’m pitching up at the University of Worcester (16 April) to discuss cannibalism in Dundee. Ah, happy days…

Geoff Holder

Talk: Hanged by the neck until ye be dead!

I’m giving an illustrated talk based on my book Perthshire Murders this coming Thursday (24th March).

It’s called “Hanged By the Neck Until Ye Be Dead – Murders, Murderers and Executions in 19th Century Perthshire” and does what it says on the can, being filled with gruesome crimes from Georgian and Victorian Perthshire and Kinross-shire, plus a brief history of hangings in the area.

I’ll be covering murders from Perth, Dunning, Birnam and Braco, not to mention the Blairingone Bread Cart Murder. One of the crimes is my candidate for the title of ‘The Oldest Unsolved Murder in Scotland’, while another may possibly have ended in a gross miscarriage of justice. Expect massive blunt force trauma to the head, gunshot wounds, and fatal stabbings. The talk is not suitable for young children, honest.

The talk kicks off at 7pm in the Souter Theatre at the AK Bell Library, York Place, Perth PH2 8EP.

See here for details!

Tickets are £5 on the door (unless you’re a Friend of Perth & Kinross Council Archives, in which case admission is free). I’ll be selling and signing copies of Perthshire Murders and all my other books. You should come along!