In Lincolnshire, 'on the eve of St. Valentine's Day it is an old custom to pin bay leaves to your pillow one at each corner and one in the middle. You will then dream of your future lover, or the man you are to marry' (Rudkin, 1933) #FolkloreThursday #ValentinesDay #folklore #divination

Do folklore and digital tech seem like odd bedfellows? 'Father of the supercomputer' Seymour Cray attributed some of his success to advice he received from elves while digging a tunnel (if you don't stumble across an entrance to a subterranean otherworld, home-made is fine). 1/3

Readers, again, it didn't work

My thoughts are with all those households subject to the cheeky elf antics from tomorrow onwards. A long 24 days await. I'm taking a folkloric approach and protecting the hearth from their entry

I love getting @folkloresociety.bsky.social newsletter in the post - it's wonderful to see in print all the fascinating folklore people are encountering. I'm especially proud of this issue because one of my MA Folklore students reviewed an exhibition for it: Dark Secrets in London

Project StoryMachine aims to preserve, explore and provide greater access to folklore traditions in Germany and the UK, through the development of a digital infrastructure called StoryMachine storymachine.iisys.de

Finally, Marie Veihelmann wrote about her experience of the Mensch und Computer Conference in Chemnitz storymachine.iisys.de/2025/11/02/m...

Ceri Houlbrook @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social blogged about the curse of the folklorist - spotting folklore motifs in every movie (in this case The Fantastic Four: First Steps) storymachine.iisys.de/2025/11/02/f...

In July, we had our first in-person team meeting at Hof University of Applied Sciences storymachine.iisys.de/2025/11/02/o...

Hello Everyone! Project StoryMachine has been up and running for a few months and we have some info to share about what we've been doing.