Yuletide Rides and Fresh Exhumations

Despite the trials and tribulations of the pandemic, folk horror-and-spooky-folklore periodical Hellebore continues to put out issues following up the first three issues with a Yuletide special and an Unearthing-themed issue. Let’s see what treats are in store.

Yuletide first. Katy Soar offers The Lord of Misrule, a roving musing on offbeat traditions which bounces from the titular late medieval tradition to Saturnalia (and some odd ideas that James Frazer of The Golden Bough ended up persuading himself of on a shaky reading of rather spurious evidence) to whether Father Christmas is a sacrificial king. Similarly tenuous is John Reppion’s discussion of the pre-Christian celebration of Modranicht and the three mother goddesses apparently venerated during it – an article which boils down to “eh, we can’t know very much about them because not many sources have survived”.

Somewhat more structured is John Callow’s From Ghoul To Godhead, which develops the development of Herne the Hunter from a legend mentioned in passing in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor to a deity venerated by some neopagans, an ethos reflected in the character’s depiction in Robin of Sherwood. Clearly, it’s possible – though Callow doesn’t consider this possibility – that Shakespeare actually invented Herne, devising him as a broad parody of the sort of folk legend played in the context of the play rather than basing him on an existing ghost story – but it’s still interesting to see how a cultural figure can gone from being all but overlooked outside of that sort of passing reference into being a legend that people believe has much greater antiquity than it actually has (especially in its present form).

Verity Holloway’s The Hauntings of Cold Christmas recount not just the ghostly folklore around Cold Christmas Church (so called because of a probably spurious legend about a harsh winter slaying most of the parish’s children in some nebulous bygone year), but also the more tangible hauntings: the dark tourists, folk horror enthusiasts, rowdy youths, and YouTubers making their very own zero-budget ghost-hunting videos who are attracted to the site by its reputation and whose disrespect for it have left it in a horrible state. Here Holloway is able to examine not just the dark side of British rural legends, but the dark side of the folk horror fad itself.