In Ireland, Easter Monday is a date when people go on pilgrimage to holy wells in the countryside and some of those spots are ancient sites of worship.
Read our 37th #darkspringtide tale below and find out what happens when the worshipping is, in some way, ancient as well.
Wash you face with dew and eat eggs stained red with onion skins, but if you find you find yourself travelling through Picardie on Easter Sunday, do not turn around when a fourth bell rings from the steeple
... and read more about it in our 36th #darkspringtide tale below!
🎨J.M.W. Turner (detail)
Harrowing of Hell and Silent Saturday... the day before Easter Sunday and Resurrection was a quiet one and only the church bells rang for Easter Vigil.
But in the Far North, someone went underground to dance, in our 35th #darkspringtide tale - read it below!
🎨 Jan Pienkowski
Once, there was no dancing on Good Friday, any place they spoke German. But, as the story goes, there was a girl in the woods of Anhalt who did...
Read our 34th #darkspringtide tale below.
🎨 Anne Anderson
On the eve of Maundy Tuesday, all of Denmark's magpies fly with the witches to Tromsø for the annual sabbath. Sankt Skadeaften they call it, St Magpie's Eve.
Our 33rd #darkspringtide tale deals with a girl who was left behind, though - or was she?
Read her story below!
🎨 Tuesday Riddell
Hihi... well, all the #darkspringtide tales are more or less made up - actual folkloric or historic background and I usually take it from there and run with it :-)
The Wednesday before Easter is known as Spy Wednesday and there is a tree on the northern Bank of Llyn Cynwch in Gwynedd that lays an egg on every Spy Wednesday that makes you... spy.
Our 32nd #darkspringtide story is an egg-shaped #WyrdWednesday tale - read it below!
On Holy Tuesday, they laid down the Wheat Child in the first furrow they ploughed, but one year it suddenly spoke - and had nothing good to say.
Our 31st #darkspringtide tale brings us to the wheat fields of Burgenland in the east of Austria in the year of 1529 - read it below!
🎨 Rosalie Lettau
"... and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away." (MT 21:18)
A canonical Holy Monday story - but our 30th #darkspringtide tale from ancient Bactria is different, with a fig tree bearing Dionysian fruit.
Read it below!
Today we have a tale for you, of west wind and daffodils, a salty one, on the Feast Day of St Woolos the Bearded, patron saint of Newport smugglers and pirates, like infamous Henry Morgan.
Come aboard the “Blodeuwedd“ and read our 29th #darkspringtide tale below
🎨 François Bourgeon
Nobody likes being woken up too early, ancient death goddesses are no exception - and what might happen if one of those pesky calendar reforms play havoc with your seasonal rituals... well, read it all in our 28th #darkspringtide tale below.
🎨 missupacey
Every year, on #worldtheatreday, they perform the same play in Český Krumlov's other Baroque theatre... with the same cast... well... almost. Some do join every now and then.
And who doesn't love a haunted theatre?
Visit one, in our 27th #darkspringtide tale and follow the link below.
🎨 F. Hamel
Good Friday and Old Lady Day rarely coincide and 25 March was the day they executed Margaret Clitherow, for harbouring Catholic priests in 1586.
When the three dates align something strange happens in York's Shambles. Death and the scent of Daisies.
Read more in today's #DarkSpringtide tale below
What do you do when it’s #TolkienReadingDay, #WaffleDay and the Feast Day of St Dimas the Good Thief at the same time?
Right… you tell a story about waffle-eating thieves in Middle Earth.
Meet Sifrið of the Dales in Tharbad, in our 25th #darkspringtide tale below.
🎨 Angus McBride
Does old architecture really carry memories of past events?
We find out, in our 24th #darkspringtide story which takes us to Ostia, on the anniversary of the Sanguinaria, the days of blood and the resurrection of Attis - along with bull sacrifices.
Read it below.
Nothing retains its form; new shapes from old / Nature, the great renewer, fashions all”
(Ovid)
Our 22nd #darkspringtide tale brings us the early days of Přemyslid Bohemia, a thousand years ago, and we meet a girl that chose to become a birch rather than a queen.
Read her story below
🎨A. Scheiner
Fading funeral roses are all that remained of creature of legend in the ancient region of Mysia when times and beliefs changed. And a girl named Alke under Bear Mountain, buried, but sometimes whispering, none the less.
Read more of her in our 21st #darkspringtide tale below.
🎨 Rachel Ruysch
Marafonas, Portuguese faceless cloth dolls, play an important part during the Festas de Santa Cruz in May.
But what if one wakes early, on the eve of the Spring Equinox?
We go to the Portugal's Castelo Branco district and find out, in our 19th #darkspringtide tale.
Read it below
🎨 bloodborne
Mrs St Pats? Seriously? Today is Sheelah's Day, the day that once celebrated the wife of St Patrick.
Does she echo something older? Sheelah-na-gig maybe? Or was the snake-dispelling saint proxy married to an ancient goddess?
Read our 18th #darkspringtide tale below - a true #wyrdwednesday story!
Today is St Urho's Day - celebrating a saint who banished the grasshoppers and saved the vineyards.
The Finnish North American community's tongue-in-cheek reply to a famous Irish festivity, St Urho is remembered in Minnesota, Ontario and our 16th #darkspringtide tale.
Read it below!
All kinds of horse-shaped water spirits frolic in freshwater pools across Northern Europe once they are ice-free.
They all have one thing in common: Being malevolent to their spiritual core.
We meet one In our 14th #darkspringtide story, a Glashtin from the Isle of Man - read their story below.
Progress famously stops for no one and usually it comes at a price, as the Bellera family from Catalonia learned in the 1860s when they angered the aigües, the water woman of the Riu Llobregat.
Read what happened in our 13th #darkspringtide tale below.
🎨 Joan Brull
In autumn, ensorcelled knights dream of death pale kings et al
... but what dreams may come if a faery’s child catches them in spring?
We get to the bottom of it, in our 12th #darkspringtide tale, from the hills of Hesse.
🎨 Frank Cadogan Cowper
Winter was long, winter can be cruel, but summer can, too, and on the slopes of Monte Penna in Liguria, a lone figure plays the flute each year, melancholic over the passing snows of yesteryear.
Meet Apuana, Dama d’Inverno in our 10th #darkspringtide tale and read her story below
🎨 Cambellotti
Slovenia has a short but beautiful coastline, where the Adriatic whispers of Trieste's seafaring glories and maybe of sunken towns.
We stay in Europe's southeast for our 9th #DarkSpringtide tale and meet a rather peculiar and portentous local mermaid - read her story below!
🎨 Marjorie Cameron
The Albanian Alps go by the rather auspicious name of "Accursed Mountains" and, naturally, such a place is populated with all kinds of spirits in local lore.
We meet one in our 8th #darkspringtide tale today, a Vila Planinka, and, oh boy, can she hold a grudge!
Read her story below!
🎨 Nielsen
An old, old being amidst beeches, beasts and barrows in the New Forest...
Our 7th #darkspringtide tale brings us to Hampshire during the Wars of the Roses where we meet our Lady of the Stags, which makes this a proper #bookwormsat story today!
Read it below.
🎨 Warwick Goble
On the 6th of March, a composer returns to his home town. Without melodies, but a memory. Of the kind that haunts you.
Quite literally.
Our 6th #darkspringtide tale is a ghost story for #phantomsfriday.
Read it below.
🎨 Alphonse Inoue
Today is St Piran's Day, feast day of the patron of tin miners and of Cornwall herself.
So, we go out west and hear a story of Jan Tregeagle, Cornwall’s own Faust, who rose from doing penance for his sins in Dozmary Pool, with hellhounds on his trail.
Read our 5th #darkspringtide below
🎨 Minns
On a full moonish #Wyrdwednesday morning in early spring, we walk the misty moors north of Bremen to come across an old local legend... and names writ in uncanny foresight in the family register.
Meet the cursed Heemsen family in our 4th #darkspringtide tale linked below.
🎨 Gustav Carus
