There’s a hill in Shropshire that a giant built by accident. That’s the story, anyway. He was carrying a load of earth — stolen from Wales, as tends to happen in these accounts — with the intention of burying a town he’d taken a dislike to. A shoemaker talked him out of it. He dropped […]
Mythology of Giants Read More »
The chalk is close to the surface here. You notice it when the ground dries out—white showing through like bone. England is like that. Old things near the surface. Mostly ignored. The chalk figures help make the point. Horses. Giants. Men with arms outstretched, cut into hillsides across the country. Some of them thousands of
Every culture that looked into the dark long enough came back with the same story. A place beside this one. Not above it, not below. Beside. The Celts called it the Otherworld. The Portuguese and Galicians knew it as the Mourama. At Disney they call it Fairyland. The map underneath the names is identical. Not a
When the Dark and Light fight, folklore stops being quaint. It becomes schooling. Check out the books on my shelf. You’ll see how it works. One mentions the Hand of Glory. It’s old magick. European. You severed the hand of a hanged murderer while he still swung from the rope, then preserved it. The fingers
