Bone And Sickle

An Irish ghost story seems a good way to add a bit of Halloween spice to your St. Patrick’s Day. Our selection, which will be read by Mrs. Karswell, comes from the 1825 publication Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland.  It’s the first of three volumes of stories told by the Irish antiquarian … Read More Read More The post An Irish Ghost Story appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

Epitaphs can sum up the life of the individual buried beneath or can comment on the human condition generally. From the melancholy to the absurd to the catastrophically caustic, we survey in this episode a spectrum of final thoughts and grim punchlines culled from a favorite 19th-century volume.   The post Epitaphs appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

A potpourri of peculiar tales culled from a favorite 19th-century volume. This episode features some outstanding  British eccentrics, an extraordinary case of delusional morbidity, lethal religious fanaticism, graveyard shenanigans, and more. Plus, more black-humored poetry from Harry Graham in “Karswell’s Corner” The post A Remarkable Circumstance appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

Enjoy with us a collection of short curious tales culled from a favorite Victorian volume —  the Stone Eater of London, a mariner’s report of fire from the sky, the rise and fall of a French giant, 18th century blasphemies involving a donkey, and more.  Plus, more sardonic verse from Harry Graham in “Karswell’s Corner” The post The Stone Eater and other Curious Cases appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

The fire that destroyed P.T. Barnum’s American Museum on July 13, 1865 was a luxuriantly surreal and tragic event, one described beautifully in a contemporary New York Times piece, which we share in this episode verbatim. Doomed whales in enormous tanks, fleeing snakes, sideshow celebrities, and melting wax mannequins are all part of this fantastic … Read More Read More The post P.T. Barnum’s Magnificent Museum Fire appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

The Christmas Eve ghost story is a fine old tradition associated with Victorian and Edwardian England, one now making a comeback on both sides of the Atlantic. Since 2018, Bone and Sickle has enthusiastically embraced the custom. Our offering for 2022, is “Smee” written by A.M. Burrage in 1931 and read for us by Mrs. … Read More Read More The post A Christmas Ghost Story appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

From St. Nicholas Day through Christmas, the Devil figured prominently in medieval plays, embodying a subversive seasonal element also celebrated in the Feast of Fools. We enter the topic of medieval Christmas plays sideways through German composer Carl Orff’s 1935 composition “O Fortuna,” a piece much beloved in Hollywood soundtracks.  The lyric Orff set to … Read More Read More The post Christmas Devils and the Feast of Fools appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

This short off-format episode is intended as a sort of fireside reading to be enjoyed by our overfull American listeners as they struggle to digest their Thanksgiving dinners.  It’s from the late 1st-century novel, Satyricon by Petronius and describes what is quite likely Western literature’s most decadent description of a feast. The post An After-Dinner Reading: Decadent Dining in the Satyricon appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

Our survey of villainous Victorian women examines six individuals associated with some of the most ghastly crimes of the era, many directed against children (and for this reason possibly a bit of a rough listen for some.) Five of these criminals inspired murder ballads, or more specifically “execution ballads,”  single-sheet broadsheets sold at the time of … Read More Read More The post Villainous Victorian Women appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

During the Satanic Panic, the notion of Halloween as a Satanic High Holy Day came to prominence, but the elements necessary to this mythology were set in place much earlier. This episode focuses particularly on the early years of Wicca, some missteps in disassociating  the movement from Satanism, and early evangelical personalities spinning “ex-Satanist” yarns … Read More Read More The post Who Put the Hell in Helloween? appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

A short and somewhat extra episode for the Halloween season, a presentation of the 1910 horror story by Ambrose Bierce, “A Vine on a House.” Also, some show updates. We’ll have a full episode, “Who Put the Hell in Helloween?” closer to the end of the month. The post A Vine on a House appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

Spirits of the corn (grain) fields from the United Kingdom to Russia have been imagined as embodiments of the harvest and guardians of the fields, sometimes evolving into fantastically cruel fear-figures in the process. We begin with a look at the Scottish and English ballad “John Barleycorn,” first appearing as a broadside in 1568. The … Read More Read More The post Spirits of the Corn appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

The Master of the Wolves is a supernatural figure central to Transylvania’s (modern Romania’s) voluminous body of wolf lore, a mythology that extends more broadly into Balkan regions once occupied, like Romania, by the ancient Dacians. We begin with a snippet from a contemporary recording of the 1857 poem “St. Andrew’s Night,” by the Romanian poet … Read More Read More The post Master of the Wolves: Transylvanian and Balkan Wolf Lore appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

As a “summer intermezzo” Bone and Sickle is offering three episodes this August in our “Marvelous and Rare: Antiquarian Circle” format.  These are shorter episodes normally enjoyed once a month by our $4+ supporters on Patreon (www.patreon.com/boneandsickle). There’s a reference in this particular episode to “world events” and the contemplation of heavenly phenomena as a … Read More Read More The post Episode 93: Marvelous and Rare appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

As a “summer intermezzo” Bone and Sickle is offering three episodes this August in our “Marvelous and Rare: Antiquarian Circle” format.  These are shorter episodes normally enjoyed once a month by our $4+ supporters on  Patreon (www.patreon.com/boneandsickle).  We look forward to returning in September with our regular shows. The post Episode 92: Marvelous and Rare appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

As a “summer intermezzo” Bone and Sickle is offering three episodes this August in our “Marvelous and Rare: Antiquarian Circle” format.  These are shorter episodes normally enjoyed once a month by our $4+ supporters on Patreon (www.patreon.com/boneandsickle).  We look forward to returning in September with our regular shows. The post Episode 91: Marvelous and Rare appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

Dark fairy tale elements including floating heads and bags of bones are featured in a family of tales classified under the Aarne-Thompson system as Type 480, “Kind and Unkind Girls.”  Imaginative punishments and rewards for the kind and unkind characters in question are a further interesting element.  The girls in these tales are always sisters or stepsisters, and … Read More Read More The post Dark Fairy Tales II: Heads in a Fountain, Bones in a Bag appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

“The Girl with No Hands” is the name of a a folk-tale motif shared by a number of gruesome fairy stories in which the the amputation of the heroine’s hands allows her to escape death, the Devil, or a repugnant suitor. (NOTE: For details on the 2022 Bone and Sickle shirts mentioned in the show, please visit … Read More Read More The post Dark Fairy Tales I: The Girl with No Hands appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

The folklore of fairy rings and “star jelly” is strangely connected to celestial phenomena, including lightning and shooting stars. We begin with a description of a folkloric fairy ring and its dancing population from John Aubrey’s 1690 book Natural History of Wiltshire, following this with a few other folkloric takes on the topic. The botanical phenomena of … Read More Read More The post Electric Fairy Rings and the Slime from Space appeared first on Bone and Sickle.

In pagan Germanic cultures, the seeress played an extremely important role, not only as a clairvoyant, but also often fulfilling the role of a priestess, wisewoman or witch. We begin with a short clip from Robert Eggers’ The Northman, in which Björk plays a seeress.  Old Norse words used to describe this role include spákona, or … Read More Read More The post The Seeress: Germanic Tribes, Vikings, and Witches appeared first on Bone and Sickle.