English Folklore With Icy Sedgwick
Folklore encompasses legends, fairy tales, and myths; physical objects and practices to protect and ward away evil; spirits and supernatural entities associated with particular places, and so much more. You might not even know that you practice folklore — but did you ever leave a tooth out for the tooth fairy? Or wonder at carvings of the Green Man? Or go trick-or-treating at Halloween? If you approach your local customs and stories with an open and curious mind, you might just discover a lot of folklore. In this interview, Icy Sedgwick talks about different aspects of folklore and how it resonates with particular places, as well as how it’s handed down in a community. She also talks about specific English folklore stories and practices. Icy Sedgwick is the author of dark fantasy, Gothic horror, and supernatural mysteries. She’s also a blogger and host of the Fabulous Folklore Podcast. Show notes * What is folklore? How does it relate to places in particular? * Is there a resurgence in folklore in an increasingly digital and secular time? * Northumberland coastal folklore * Remedies used in ancient times to ward off the plague * Urban folklore * Body parts, relics, teeth, and the Hand of Glory * Halloween folklore * Recommended books about folklore You can find Icy Sedgwick at IcySedgwick.com Header image: Tree Photo by Hatham on Unsplash Transcript of the interview Jo: Icy Sedgwick is the author of dark fantasy, Gothic horror, and supernatural mysteries. She’s also a blogger and host of the ‘Fabulous Folklore Podcast.’ Welcome, Icy. Icy: Oh, thank you very much for having us. Jo: I’m very excited to talk to you. We’re both into dark things. Let’s start with a definition. What is folklore? And why does it resonate with a sense of place? Icy: Folklore is a really strange term because there are almost as many definitions for it as there are people who try to define it. I think the way I tend to come at it is it’s essentially like an accumulated body of knowledge that belongs to the people rather than academia. Rather than it being dispensed from on high, it’s maintained by the people who are actually practicing it on a regular basis. And I think in a lot of ways, it covers things like beliefs and sayings and rituals and also elements of play in a lot of senses. A lot of it looks like a way that gives people sort of a sense of control over their environment in quite unpredictable times. So there’s quite a lot of folklore around stuff that you don’t necessarily have a huge amount of control over one way or another. I think in terms of place it’s really interesting because when I started doing the podcast in late 2019, it was fascinating to see how some of the stories are completely context-specific and they’re related to a landscape feature or they explain kind of why something looks the way that it does or where a natural feature may have come from. You get a quite a lot of stories like this in Scotland with the cailleach and the idea of this giant Winter Queen as she is literally hammering mountains out with a hammer. But then you also have a lot of stories where you’re like, ‘Hang on, those stories are really similar,’ but they’re from a really wide range of places and maybe only the names are different.