Cloven Country: The Devil and the English Landscape

Now in paperback, an exploration of the myths of England’s deceptively bucolic rolling hills and country lanes believed to be created and shaped by the Dark Lord himself.\nAccording to legend, the English landscape—so calm on the surface—is really the Devil’s work. Cloven Country tells of rocks hurled into place and valleys carved out by infernal labor. The Devil’s hideous strength laid down great roads in one night and left scars everywhere as the hard stone melted like wax under those burning feet. With roots in medieval folklore of giants and spirits, this is not the Satan of prayer, but a clumsy ogre, easily fooled by humankind. When a smart cobbler or cunning young wife outwitted him, they struck a blow for the underdog. Only the wicked squire and grasping merchant were beyond redemption, carried off by a black huntsman in the storm. Cloven Country offers a fascinating panorama of these decidedly sinister English tales.

History

Harte, Jeremy

Europe

Reaktion Books

An accessible history of the Roma people in England told from the inside. &nbsp; The Romany people have been variously portrayed as exotic strangers or as crude, violent, delinquent "gypsies." For the first time, this book describes the real history of the Romany in England from the inside. Drawing on new archival and first-hand research, Jeremy Harte vividly describes the itinerant life of the Romany as well as their artistic traditions, unique language, and flamboyant ceremonies. Travelers through Time tells the dramatic story of Romany life on the British margins from Tudor times through today, filled with vivid insights into the world of England's large Romany population. &nbsp;

Travellers through Time: A Gypsy History

World

What is it like to meet a being from another world? This book collects testimony from eight hundred years of witnesses baffled by the supernatural breaking into their lives. Close reading of miracle collections, chronicles, saints lives and sermons shows how they depended on first-hand vernacular voices, never quite suppressed in the Latin of the clergymen who transcribed them. When people saw spirits, surface identity mattered less than common nature. Whether manifesting as fairies, revenants, local saints or fiends, they came in stock types: goblins, lovers, hunters, pygmies, dogs, indescribable shape-shifting objects. Just as they had preferred forms, so they appeared in particular places. The tradition of English supernatural place-names, never before gathered into a corpus, matches the medieval texts to show what places were haunted and why. The dark pools into which otherworldly things were exorcised, the paths on which they led travellers astray, the hills onto which they descended in search of people to command and seduce, and the meadows where they danced- all these can be found on the cognitive map of the peasantry. This book sheds new light on anomalous experience in medieval life and the relations it forged between vernacular life-stories and the gate-keepers of the written word. Fairies could cure as well as harm, prophecy as well as deceive: that made them a disruptive force in history, theology and morals. They challenge our ideas of a church-dominated society and once they are admitted into the picture, the Middle Ages will never look the same.

Fairy Encounters in Medieval England: Landscape, Folklore and the Supernatural (Exeter New Approaches to Legend, Folklore and Popular Belief)

University of Exeter Press

We see the Green Man half-hidden on the walls of many of our old churches, a face surrounded by leaves.

Green Man

Ancient Civilizations

Pitkin Publishing

Explore Fairy Traditions

Religion & Spirituality

Occult & Paranormal

Heart of Albion Press

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Books by Harte, Jeremy