Happy Autumn Equinox! 🖤 We're heading to @rossiterbooks.bsky.social in Cheltenham, then to @toppingsbath.bsky.social before we hang out this afternoon at @mrbsemporium.bsky.social! Come say hi if you can, and we'll be signing copies of Three Ravens Folk Tales too, of course!

We've just released a Q&A episode about "Dog Days: A Kit Marlowe Mystery!" 🖤 A thirty-chapter supernatural detective story, the adventure came out a-part-a-day across August, read by us, starring Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts! #BookWormSat

Thank you everyone for your freshly-harvested #FolkyFriday posts! 🖤 Next week we'll be back with the theme of "Hedge Wisdom, Angels and Devils" in advance of Michaelmas Day on the 28th, after which it's considered very bad luck to eat blackberries... Tag related posts #FolkyFriday for shares then!

Across Europe, the final sheaf of harvest was treated with awe. Some burned it as offering, others dressed it as a figure and kept it until spring. In its ashes and stalks, life slumbered until rebirth. #FolkyFriday

#FolkyFriday Hazel nuts were believed to be a source of wisdom and poetic inspiration. Nuts fell into a sacred pool from nine surrounding hazel trees and were eaten by a Salmon - both Welsh & Irish folklore have references to the ancient Salmon of Knowledge. 🎨Anon & Judith Shaw

GHOST APPLES The uncanny name for when freezing rain settles on the fruit & ices over creating a frozen coating. The apple defrosts before the ice does & the rotting apple falls out of the bottom leaving its gothic icy 'ghost' behind! #FolkyFriday

#FolkyFriday channels Norse & British lore! #Acorns on windowsills were believed to ward off lightning a nod to Thor Norse god of thunder, whose sacred Oak shielded him in storms. Nordic homes honored this, while Fairies are said to live in Oaks & wear acorn hats! 🌰 🌰 #AcornCharms #FairyFriday 🧚‍♀

Apples carried omens on Halloween night. Young people would slice them crosswise to reveal the star-shaped core. If the star was whole, it promised good fortune and love. If broken, sorrow lay ahead. #FolkyFriday

Thesmophoria is the ancient festival of Demeter and Persephone, marking the return of Persephone to the Underworld, and held at the end of the harvest. Celebrated exclusively by women, its rites remain largely unknown. #FolkyFriday 🖼: F.D. Millett

#FolkyFriday weaves Mabon’s magic! 🌽✨ Craft corn husk dolls from golden husks—a cherished tradition where each figure holds a whisper of the harvest spirit. e. Across Appalachia and old Europe, they bless hearth and home with luck as Autumn’s veil grows thin. #HarvestFolklore

Tiger nuts were used to make one of ancient Egypt's most popular sweets, which are still made today with almonds or walnuts. We know this because of a tomb dated to 1600 BCE, detailing the vizier Rekhmire's love of them for all eternity. #FolkyFriday

Apples are tied to love charms. In Victorian England, a girl would peel one in a single strip and toss it over her shoulder. The peel’s shape on the floor was said to reveal her future lover’s initial. #FolkyFriday

The first known example of apple bobbing comes from Celto-Romano fusion, combining the two cultures and spreading accordingly. A maiden who placed a bobbed apple under her pillow would dream of her future lover. #FolkyFriday

3/3 In Greek #mythology, the Hesperides guarded the golden apple tree of immortality and there are several stories featuring them. redbubble.com/people/forgo... #FolkyFriday #art #vintage #illustration #gift #folklore #homedecor #wallart

2/2Stolen looks are nice in chapels Stolen, stolen, be your apples. When to bed the world are bobbing Then's the time for orchard-robbing; Yet the fruit were scarce worth peeling Were it not for stealing, stealing. -Leigh Hunt www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/4269... #illustrationart #FolkyFriday #folklore

1/2 Song of Fairies Robbing an Orchard We, the Fairies, blithe & antic Of dimensions not gigantic Though the moonshine mostly keep us Oft in orchards frisk & peep us. Stolen sweets are always sweeter Stolen kisses much completer redbubble.com/shop/ap/3464... #FolkyFriday #art #poetry #illustration

#FolkyFriday dives into Samhain’s #applebobbing! 🍎 Rooted in Roman-Celtic fusion, players with arms tied snag apples with their teeth from a tub—or bite a dangling one to predict weddings. Called "dooking" in Scotland, apple ducking in England, or Snap Apple Night in Ireland! 🎨 vintage postcard

RT @weird-wiltshire.bsky.social #FolkyFriday

#FolkyFriday 🧚‍♀️🍏 🍂✨ For #FolkyFriday, poetic magic from Christina Rossetti’s Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872) “Delicate and dainty thing! For the fairies you were fashioned; Than a flavour so impassioned Pine and grape no richer being.” #FairyFriday #AppleLore #FolkPoetry #AutumnMagic

Last week we went to #AbbotsBromley, #Staffordshire, to witness the extraordinary & ancient #HornDance, a #FolkDance that has taken place for perhaps 800+ years. I've wanted to see this for years! #FolkCustoms #TraditionalDance #MorrisDancing #folkyfriday #FolkloreSunday #FolkTradition #oldways

Divinatory #Halloween games include nut burning & apple bobbing. Two people put nuts in the fire; if they burn softly together the link will last. If they pop & burst apart, it won't. Float apples in a basin of water & attempt to take first bite to divine who'll be next to wed #FolkyFriday

Fancy listening to a wonderful interview about the processes involved in writing our book? 🖤 We had a lovely time chatting with Miranda from the @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social about Three Ravens Folk Tales as published by The History Press in July! Stream it here: newbooksnetwork.com/the-three-ra...

The Roti Pani restaurant in Willenhall, W. Midlands, is said to be haunted by a ghostly knocking at 9pm every evening, on the door on an upstairs landing. #PhantomsFriday #FolkyFriday #ghosts #hauntings

In Irish legend the Hazel trees that grow around Connla's Well at the source of the Shannon fall into the water and feed the Salmon of Knowledge. image: otherwisetrading.co.uk #folkyfriday #folkloresunday

"There is many an elenge spot in #Sussex where the Demon used to appear in all the horror of horn and tail...perhaps even still, an item of boyish creed that if you go a-nutting on Sundays, Satan will come to your assistance..." M.A. Lower, Sussex Archaeological Collections XIII, 1861. #FolkyFriday

Walnuts were called Jupiter’s nuts in Rome, sacred to the god of sky and thunder. Brides tossed them aside as symbols of leaving childhood, cracking open fertility and fortune. #FolkyFriday Art: Juan Luna

Bears are revered creatures in Finnish lore, deeply feared and respected by ancient tribes. The Otso, or Kings of the Forests, are divine bear spirits. Some legends claim they're created when a human flees civilization and becomes transformed by the forest. #FolkyFriday

After the Devil went out collecting nuts on Devil’s Nutting Day (21 Sept), the Virgin Mary suddenly appeared. Startled, Satan dropped the sack of nuts which turned into the Devils’ Bag of Nuts (aka Alcock’s Arbour), a hill near Haselor, Warwickshire. #FolkyFriday

Oh three men went to market To sell three loads of rye They shouted up and they shouted down The barley grain should die The Barley Grain for Me, an old ballad of death and resurrection #folkyfriday

The last sheaf folklore.Farmers believed that as the reapers worked their way through the fields, the harvest spirit would hide in the ever-shrinking crop. This spirit, often embodied as a hare, would make its last stand in the final sheaf. Art my own. #FolkyFriday #Folklore #Art #MHHSBD #ArtYear

Fairy tales often turn apples into symbols of temptation. In Snow White, a single poisoned fruit carries betrayal, sleep, and death. The orchard becomes a stage for sorcery. #FolkyFriday Art: Giordano Aita

In Korean myth, a tiger and a bear ask the divine King Hwanung to turn them human. He instructs them to live in a cave for 100 days, eating only garlic and mugwort. The tiger gives up midway, but the bear persists, transforms into a woman, and marries Hwanung. #FolkyFriday

Just when you thought #JapaneseFolklore couldn't get any weirder, I present you with ringo no kai. This #yokai is the spirit of apple trees whose fruit has been left too long without being picked. They appear in the evening near apple orchards, taking... #FolkyFriday 🎨Matthew Meyer @yokai.com 1/3

One day St Brigid was given a gift of #apples & sloes. She gave them to some lepers. The nun who'd given them angry; Brigid cursed her apple tree! 2nd woman gave Brigid same gift & Brigid gave them to lepers! But this woman asked that she & her garden be blessed; done x2! #medievalsky #FolkyFriday 🍏

🍃🍎🍃The last apple left on my tree - folklore says you should leave it for the Faeries, so that's where it will remain. #FolkyFriday #FolkloreSunday #AutumnMagick

In Texas, the Wampus Cat has leapt from forest creature to Friday night lights. Once feared in folklore as a half-woman, half-cat, it’s now a high school football mascot. Proof that the stories we whisper become the symbols we wear. 🐾🏈 #WampusCat #FolkyFriday #HighSchoolFootball

Folklore says a forest is alive with more than roots. Every tree is a listener, every rustle a whisper. Bears guard its strength. Foxes reveal its secrets. The forest is a library written in leaves. #FolkyFriday Art: Pete Kornowski

Ninhursag, Sumerian mother goddess and Lady of the Sacred Mountains, has foxes as her messengers. In one myth, she curses her husband Enki for eating sacred plants. Enki becomes deathly ill, and a fox is the only one who can find Ninhursag and convince her to heal him. #FolkyFriday

Something creepy in the woods for #PhantomsFriday and #FolkyFriday by Artur Grottger. #gothic #artsky

Nymphs and fauns, it's time to 'crack on' with another #FolkyFriday! 🖤 Ahead of Devil's Nutting Day on Sunday, our theme today is: "The Lore of Apples, Nuts, and Harvest!" Tag related posts, art, legends and customs #FolkyFriday for shares from 10am-6pm. Let our cornucopias overflow!

Our new Three Ravens Bestiary Bonus Episode is OUT NOW all about Djinns and Genies! 🖤

After a bit of a blip, we're now back with a bonus episode all about the mythology of Djinns and Genies from prehistory through to today! 🖤 Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts - or through the link in our bio! #FolkloreThursday

With today's #FairyTaleTuesday theme being 'The Sun, Moon, and Stars' we warmly suggest having a listen to Episode #14 of our Bonus Series 'Magic and Medicines' all about The Zodiac! 🖤 Available wherever you get your podcasts - or just search on the Internet. It'll come up!

Proof of life, everyone: Eleanor is home from the hospital, and here, introducing today's episode! 🖤 It's another Patreon Exclusive from the back catalogue - our Romney Marsh Ghost Tour, released last September. Let's get spooky! Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts!

Look who's back from the hospital! 🖤

Gang, thank you so much for all of your suitably wild and foresty #FolkyFriday posts! We will return next week when, on 19/9, our theme will be, "The Lore of Apples, Nuts, and Harvest!" Tag related posts, art, legends and customs #FolkyFriday for shares then from 10am-6pm!

Japanese kitsune were not always tricksters. Some were zenko, benevolent fox spirits serving the rice god Inari. White-furred, luminous, they were guardians of fertility and harvest. #FolkyFriday

Windsor Great Forest is famously haunted by Herne The Hunter, a ranger during the reign of Henry VIII who, #legend has it, practised strange (pagan?) rituals under an oak tree, from which he was later found hanged. The tree sometimes appeared as a ghost, too. #PhantomsFriday #FolkyFriday #folklore

Skogsrå, also known as Huldra in Norwegian folklore, is a captivating forest creature known for her beauty and seductive nature. #FolkyFriday