Category: Almanac of the Past

A perpetual almanac of the Year. Folklore, Customs, Myths, Legends, Religions, Ceremonies. Calendars, How the year, months, days, hours, minutes work. Who started them. How different societies have different arrangements. Zodiacs, Seasons, Folklore, Gods and Goddesses. Its all here day by day.

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Cures for the Bewitched – November 7th

A Witch bottle and Contents on display at Greenwich Tourist information Centre
A Witch bottle and Contents on display at Greenwich Tourist information Centre

This post failed to publish on the 7th November, so here it is:

As we are between Halloween, and Halloween Old Style the chances of bewitchment are high what with all those spirits being out and about on this – the most uncanny of all times. So, you might want to look at ‘Doctor Lilly’s Last Legacy’ of 1683 which gives a cure for those who have been bewitched at Halloween.

Take two horseshoes, beat them red-hot and nail one on the threshold of the door, but Quench the other in the Urine of the party bewitched: then set the urine over the fire in a pot or Pipkin and put the horseshoe into it. Make the urine boil with a little salt put onto it, and three horseshoe nails until it is almost all consumed: what is not boiled away cast into the fire. Keep then your horseshoes and nails in a clean paper or cloth and use the same manner three times. It will be the more effectual if is done at the change or full of the Moon.

Doctor Lilly’s Last Legacy, Online at the Wellcome Collection, although you will need a login to view it. I found it first in my favourite source, Perpetual Almanac of the Year by Charles Kightly.

Doctor Lilly’s Last legacy ‘Being the poor man’s physician, the sick man’s friend, and the country-man’s doctor’.

Items like this make me wonder about the gullibility of the human being, but I guess we are surrounded by examples of the lack of sense of a large proportion of our species. Perhaps I should rephrase this, I think most people make sensible decisions about their day-to-day life, but many do not have the critical thinking skills to evaluate the bigger issues.

For more on keeping witches away, witches’ marks etc. have a look at this post of mine.

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Martinmas Eve Halloween Old Style November 10th

Skating on thin ice

St Martin was one of the most important in the Medieval Calendar of Saints. We will have a look at him tomorrow on his Saint’s Day.

But it is also Halloween or it would be if the Calendar had not been change in 1752. So for traditionalists this is the actual Halloween. It gives another chance to look into the future and to celebrate Halloween traditions.

If Martinmas ice will bear a duck
Then look for a winter of slush and muck.

i.e. it will be a mild winter. From my experience, this will only have any validity if used in the North.

Today is also for Kali, Indian destroyer of Evil, and also for the Fate, the Norns, the Furies, the Morrigan and Persephone.

first Published 10th November 2021. revised 2024

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Big Day of Walks tomorrow, 9th November

Tomorrow, I am doing three walks, one Virtual, the rest in the City of London, on the Lord Mayor’s Show day. My walks are:

Roman London – Literary & Archaeology Walk Sat 11.30 am,9th November 2024 To book
London: 1066 and All That Walk Sat 2.30pm 9th Nov 24 To book
London Before London – Prehistoric London Virtual Walk Sat 7.30pm 9th Nov 24To book

Would be great to see you there?: – here are further details:

Events, Walks, & Tours Coming up!

November 8th is the 401 Anniversary of Shakespeare’s first folio. This is what I wrote last year.

William Shakespeare’s First Folio 400 Years Old Today 8th November
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Bhai Dooj 3rd Day of Diwali November 3rd

Goddess Lakshmi (Wikipedia)

Bhai Dooj is the day sisters and brothers celebrate a meal together to eat their favourite disches. often including their favourite dishes/sweets. Last year it was on November 15th. This year 2024 3rd November. October 23rd 2025

It is part of Diwali which is a 5 day festival of lights, honouring the New Year. It honours Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and consists of lamps, fireworks and gatherings to exchange gifts and enjoy food together, and honouring community.

First published Nov 6 2021, revised Nov 15th 2023, 2024

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Tree of the Year Competition Results October 29th

Here is a cautionary tale about AI. On the 29th of October I posted to announce the winner of the ‘The Woodland Trust’s 2024 Tree of the Year. This is what I wrote:

‘I looked at the website at 4.30pm today and no result listed that I can find on the Woodland Trust Site, But google AI says:

The winner ‘is the Capon Oak in Jedburgh, Scottish Borders. The Capon Oak is a remnant of the ancient Jedforest and one of the last surviving trees from the area. Its unusual shape may have saved it from being felled because its wood would have been of little use for shipbuilding.’

Being cautious, I wrote that I assume ‘google AI has information from a press release?’ because I could not find any notice of a winner on the Woodlands Trust website.

I checked a couple of days later and found that AI had indeed got the result wrong!  How it did this, I do not know. Did it think there was no announcement so it then, by some means, worked out what it thought was the best guess? But in a question like this there are only two valid answers: 1. we don’t know 2. the correct answer. Anything else is wrong.

Here is the text of the BBC announcement, as seen on my phone:

To look at the woodland trust website, click here.

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Halloween Tour link broken

Sorry to post yet again BUT my second attempt to provide readers with a viable link to my Halloween Virtual Tour on October 31st at 8pm failed.

So if you would like to book a ticket please click this link:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/myths-legends-halloween-virtual-walk-tickets-1034655541577

Hope it works because, for technical reasons, I can’t test it.

And sorry for sending too many posts today.

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Myths, Legends & Halloween Virtual Tour October 31st 2024

Bran's head taken to Tower Hill
King Bran’s head buried at Tower Hill

Virtual Walk: Thurs 31st October 2024 8.00pm

On Thursday, I am doing my first London Walk Virtual Tour of the winter season.

The walk tells the story of London’s myths and legends and the Celtic origins of Halloween.

The walk will tell the story of London’s Myths and Legends, beginning with the tale of London’s legendary origins in the Bronze Age by an exiled Trojan called Brutus. Stories of Bladud, Belinus, Bran and Arthur will be interspersed with how they fit in with archaeological discoveries.

As we around the City, we also look at the origins of Halloween celebrations and how they may have been celebrated in early London


The virtual route starts at Tower Hill, then down to the River Thames at Billingsgate, to London Bridge and Southwark Cathedral, to the Roman Forum at the top of Cornhill, into the valley of the River Walbrook, passed the Temple of Mithras, along Cheapside to the Roman Amphitheatre, and finishing up in the shadow of St Pauls.

To book:

Register on Eventbrite

REVIEWS (from London Walks website)
“Kevin, I just wanted to drop you a quick email to thank you ever so much for your archaeological tours of London! I am so thrilled to have stumbled upon your tours! I have wanted to be an archaeologist since 1978 at the ripe old age of 8 years,… I was told for years that I could not be an archaeologist [for any number of reasons, which I now realise are completely ridiculous!], so I ended up on a different course of study. And now at the age of 50, it is my one great regret in life. So, I am thoroughly enjoying living vicariously through you, the digs you’ve been on, and the history you bring to life for us! British archaeology would have been my specific area of study had I pursued it. ?? Thank you SO MUCH for these! I look forward to them more than you can imagine, and honestly, I’ll be sad if you get them down to 1.5 hours! They’re the best 2 hours of my week! 🙂 Best, Sue

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St Simon and St Jude’s Day October 28th

Image by Christian Wöhrl from Pixabay

A day when it is ‘certain to rain heavily’. Well, that wasn’t true last year.  On this day you, supposing you want to find who your true lover is, must:

Carefully peel an apple in one piece.
Turn round three times with the peel in your right hand
Drop the peel over your left shoulder
See what shape letter the peel forms on the ground, and this will be the first letter of your true love’s name.
And if it breaks into pieces, you are doomed, probably, to never finding your true love.
To make this work, you also have to recite:

St Simon and St Jude, on you I intrude
By this paring I hold to discover
Without any delay, to tell me this day
The first letter of my own true love.

Jude is the Saint of:

Lost Causes
Desperate causes
Hopeless causes
And if that is not enough also the Hopeless and the Despairing.

So maybe the apple peel isn’t going to work for you (although Jude is also the Patron Saint of the Impossible!)

Jude aka Thaddeus was martyred with an axe. Simon the Zealous was martyred by being sawn in half, and is, of course, therefore, the patron saint of woodcutters and lumberjacks. They are linked by the same Saint’s day because they went to Syria together to preach where they were met their fates, and they are also associated with woodworking.

WikipediaBy Bruce Andersen – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1855844

There are at least four Judes. One of them may have been Jesus’ brother. He or another Jude wrote the Epistle of St. Jude.

More on St Simon and St Jude

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Partial Eclipse August 27th – 28th 2026

Loughcrew Neolithic carvings.

August 27th – 28th sees a partial lunar eclipse.

Could ancient people’s predict eclipses? Well, lunar eclipses are relatively easy to predict, while solar eclipses are difficult. But it is likely that Babylonian and Assyrians astronomers could. Have a look at https://www.queensu.ca/gazette/stories/eclipses-were-once-associated-death-kings-attempting-predict-played-key-role-birth for more details,

There are plenty of people who believe that eclipses can be predicted by Stonehenge. And it certainly can be used that way, but this doesn’t mean it was. A series of stones, and posts in concentric circles with sight lines to innumerable features on the horizon offers many ways of making calculations which combined with observations over a long period COULD predict, predictable celestial phenomena. Doesn’t mean they were. So it is very difficult to say what they were capable of, and only the most obvious alignments can be certainly confirmed.

This Washington Post article below suggests the Loughcrew Cairns near Dublin were built about the time of a total eclipse, and that one of the stones with complicated carvings on may show a lunar eclipse. If you look at the sketch of the stone above, you will see the biggest circle, near the middle, may represent the moon, and it obscures the circle behind it which may represent the sun. Read this for the details: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/08/18/this-5000-year-old-stone-carving-may-be-the-worlds-first-drawing-of-an-eclipse/

What is striking is how can they say it was built around the time of a total eclipse and make that seem significant because there is no way archaeological dating is accurate enough to give any idea whether it was built for a particular day. Also, there are many more circles and objects on the large stone, and to pick two out to prove what you want it to prove, is not proof. We are left with the intriguing possibility, but it is no more than that.

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The Kalendar of Shepherds

French 15th Century ‘Kalendar of Shepherds’

I am finishing my post on September, and using the Kalendar of Shepherds. As you may have noticed, I often use the Kalendar of Shepherds to provide an insight into how the seasons were seen in the past. Mostly, I use it for the posts at the beginning of each month. I have created this page as a placeholder to put information on the Kalendar for anyone who is eager to explore it more or to make use of it. Each month I will link to it, so I do not have to repeat the basic information about the Kalendar. Much of this text was contained in the December post, and I have used this month as my example. Tomorrow, you will get the September version.

About the Kalendar of Shepherds.

The Kalendar was printed in 1493 in Paris and provided ‘Devices for the 12 Months.’ The version I’m using is a modern (1908) reconstruction of it. It uses wood cuts from the original 15th Century version and adds various texts from 16th and 17th Century sources. (Couplets by Tusser ‘Five Hundred Parts of Good Husbandrie 1599. Text descriptions of the month from Nicholas Breton’s ‘Fantasticks of 1626.) This provides an interesting view of what was going on in the countryside every month.

For more on the Kalendar look at my post here.

The original Kalendar can be read here: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/f4824s6t

To see the full Kalendar, go here:

The Kalendar of Shepherds has an illustration for each month (December above) which shows typical activities for the time of year, and has inserts to identify the astrological signs of the month. So, in December they are baking and collecting firewood. The star signs are Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21) and Capricorn (December 22 – January 19).

The text below gives a vivid description of December weather and then elaborates on the last six years of a man’s life, with hair going white, body ‘crooked and feeble’. The conceit here is that there are twelve months of the year, and a man’s lot of ‘Six score years and ten’ is allocated six years to each month. So December is not just about the 12th months of the Year but also the last six years of a person’s allotted span. The piece allows the option of living beyond 72, ‘and if he lives any more, it is by his good guiding and dieting in his youth.’ Good advice, as we now know. But living to 100 is open to but few.

Kalendar of Shepherds

The longer description of December (shown below) is by Breton (1626) and gives a detailed look at the excesses of Christmas, who is on holiday, and who working particularly hard. But it concludes it is a costly month.

Nicholas Breton’s ‘Fantasticks of 1626 – December