A comprehensive account of the rich folk culture preserved in the rural secret societies of the British Isles • Describes the secret rites, ceremonies, and initiation rituals of guilds and rural fraternities such as the Shoemakers, Horsemen, Toadmen, Mummers, and Bonesmen • Explains their use of masks, black face, and other disguises to avoid persecution • Draws not only on scholarly research but also the author’s personal contacts within these still living traditions Centuries ago the remote, marshy plains of eastern England--the Fens--were drained to create agricultural land. The Fens remained isolated up until the nineteenth century, and it was this very isolation that helped preserve the ancient traditions of this area, traditions ruthlessly eradicated elsewhere in the British Isles. These magical folk traditions also owe their survival to secret rural societies, from craft guilds and trade unions to Morris dancers and village bands. Exploring the folk customs and magical traditions of guilds and rural fraternities such as the Shoemakers and Horsemen and the secrets guarded by the Free Gardeners, Witches, Toadmen, and Bonesmen, Nigel Pennick shows how the common working people of the Fens belonged to secret societies based on their specific trade. He details the hidden aspects of rural life that most historians ignore--the magical current that flowed through the lives of working people--and describes the secret rites, ceremonies, oaths, and initiation rituals of the guilds and fraternities to which the folk belonged. Drawing not only on scholarly research but also his personal contacts within these still living traditions, Pennick explains their use of masks, black face, and other disguises to avoid persecution and describes how wise woman healers and witches in rural villages were sought-after for their remedies. He shares the secrets of the toad-bone rite, which gave the Toadman control over animals and members of the opposite sex, and explores the guardian spirits thought to inhabit the Fens, including those of the Wild Hunt. Providing insight into a world that has largely disappeared, one whose magic still echoes in lore and legend, Pennick shows that the rites, customs, and ceremonies of guilds and rural fraternities connect individuals to a wider community and, through collective action, to the power of Nature and the Cosmos.

Into the Secret Heart of Ashdown Forest is a love letter after a forty-year affair. Wry, funny, moving and vivid, this memoir chronicles the life of the author and the ten square miles of country he calls his Kingdom. This book is as good as a brisk walk in the woods on an autumn day. Written with love and passion, it is a hymn to landscape and freedom. It is a close and deep observation of the writer’s adopted country, the fabled Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, England, (the home of Winnie the Pooh), where he has lived and ridden for the past forty years. His gift is the ability to take you deep into the landscapes that make this place resonate in his heart: its streams, woods, heathlands. You meet its literary residents, A.A, Milne, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ezra Pound and W.B. Yeats. You get beneath its skin among the networks of fungi that allow the trees to speak. You taste its foods, meet its locals, both the living and the ghosts, and see its huge importance during the plague year 2020-21 through the pandemic lockdowns. His passion for horses shines through these pages and his writing is, as he himself says, a form of ‘moving meditation’. He takes you under the soil of this place and he leaves a soft glow on the landscape when he is gone.

Writers, game designers, teachers, and students ~this is the book youve been waiting for! Written by storytellers for storytellers, this volume offers an entirely new approach to word finding. Browse the pages within to see what makes this book different:

Why is the North East the most distinctive region of England? Where do the stereotypes about North Easterners come from, and why are they so often misunderstood? In this wideranging new history of the people of North East England, Dan Jackson explores the deep roots of Northumbrian culture--hard work and heavy drinking, sociability and sentimentality, militarism and masculinity--in centuries of border warfare and dangerous and demanding work in industry, at sea and underground. He explains how the landscape and architecture of the North East explains so much about the people who have lived there, and how a 'Northumbrian Enlightenment' emerged from this most literate part of England, leading to a catalogue of inventions that changed the world, from the locomotive to the lightbulb. Jackson's Northumbrian journey reaches right to the present day, as this remarkable region finds itself caught between an indifferent south and a newly assertive Scotland. Covering everything from the Venerable Bede and the prince-bishops of Durham to Viz and Geordie Shore, this vital new history makes sense of a part of England facing an uncertain future, but whose people remain as distinctive as ever.

This book argues that while Anglo-Saxon culture has given rise to virtually no myths at all, myth has played a central role in the historical development of Scottish identity. Hugh Trevor-Roper explores three myths across 400 years of Scottish history: the political myth of the "ancient constitution" of Scotland; the literary myth, including Walter Scott as well as Ossian and ancient poetry; and the sartorial myth of tartan and the kilt, invented--ironically, by Englishmen--in quite modern times. Trevor-Roper reveals myth as an often deliberate cultural construction used to enshrine a people's identity. While his treatment of Scottish myth is highly critical, indeed debunking, he shows how the ritualization and domestication of Scotland's myths as local color diverted the Scottish intelligentsia from the path that led German intellectuals to a dangerous myth of racial supremacy. This compelling manuscript was left unpublished on Trevor-Roper's death in 2003 and is now made available for the first time. Written with characteristic elegance, lucidity, and wit, and containing defiant and challenging opinions, it will absorb and provoke Scottish readers while intriguing many others. "I believe that the whole history of Scotland has been coloured by myth; and that myth, in Scotland, is never driven out by reality, or by reason, but lingers on until another myth has been discovered, or elaborated, to replace it."-Hugh Trevor-Roper