Blogroll , Current Affairs , druids , Food and Drink , Gardening , Mistletoe , Religion , Science , social history , toxicity

Locating Lindow Man

by: Jonathan BriggsPosted on:

Whilst in Cheshire last weekend, on non-mistletoe business in Wilmslow, we took the opportunity to visit Lindow Moss, the peatbog where the bog body known as Lindow Man (and also, sometimes, as plain Pete Marsh) was discovered in 1984. The discovery of some mistletoe material in his gut, and some of the over-fanciful interpretations of that, has been discussed by me in the diary before – see 2009 and 2011 – and I thought it […]

auctions , Blogroll , Current Affairs , druids , Mistletoe , Mistletoe Day , Religion , Science , social history , Tenbury Wells

Tenbury Mistletoe Festival 2022

by: Jonathan BriggsPosted on:

It’s back! The Tenbury Wells Mistletoe Festival returns again this year, having missed a couple of years due to the pandemic. Founded back in 2004 (by the five members – I was one of them – of the original Tenbury English Mistletoe Enterprise) it focuses on the first Saturday in December – the official Mistletoe Day (so 3rd December this year). There are also, of course, the town’s mistletoe auctions, which are on 22nd and […]

Current Affairs , druids , Mistletoe , social history

Hanging the Mistletoe, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

by: Jonathan BriggsPosted on:

By the mid-nineteenth century hanging mistletoe at Christmas was all the rage, featuring regularly in accounts of celebrations, particularly newspapers and magazine, often with pictures.  And of course there were paintings too, some by very famous painters – a favourite of mine is Bringing in the Mistletoe, a druid-themed painting by Edward Atkinson Hornel.  But that’s not the one I’m featuring today! Most were of a much more domestic scenario than Hornel’s picture, and one […]