Carved walking stick on OS Map

Pray tell, gentle reader, does your heart beat a little faster when you idly contemplate the mysticism of the past? Mine does.

This land of ours has been occupied since the last Ice Age and once rang to the sounds of gifted Celtic metal workers, the Iceni, peacefully plying their enchanting trade (or at least ’twas so until Good Queen Boudica got seriously hacked off with the Roman interlopers). In those days of yore, long before knights were bold and women even more so, this Land of the East Angles was already steeped in the stuff of myth, legend and wild, wild, magic.

’Tis said that this was no more so than with the northerly tribes in the region. Their gods were pagan and vengeful and the people believed themselves beset by trolls, elves, giants, ravens, wyrms** (dragons to you and I) and shape changing black dogs*** – to name but a few. Fantastic or what!

As the seventh son of seven generations of flatlanders I feel in tune with these fables that ripple down the ages and even fear I may be a touch *Fae myself. In fact quite a few people have commented upon it – leastways I think that’s what they said? A few centuries later in strolled the Anglo-Saxons’ country cousins, to whit the Vikings complete with their scary but beautiful Dragonships. The two nations had innumerable shared beliefs regarding gods and fantastic creatures but these peace-loving Scandiwegian wannabe settlers got short shrift from the ruling powers. The ensuing bad press came from the fact that the Angle-lands had now fallen prey to Christianity and were prepared to fight to the death to suppress paganism (although they didn’t seem to mind appropriating most of the festivals) Admittedly the Vikings did loot and burn a handful of churches and put a few priests to the sword. However, the rest of it, destroying villages, rustling livestock and carrying off men, women andchildren to a life of vile servitude was just par for the period. Things did settle down, the Danelaw waned and England came into being, but fantastical creatures had to flee to the dark periphery of the human mind due to the inexorable march of the Christian faith.

William the Bastard’s hostile takeover in 1066 brought plenty of hardship for the English but nothing new in the way of folklore (hardly surprising considering he was merely a displaced Scandinavian with a short hair cut and a big ego!). That ancient pantheon of gods, goddesses, ghastly ghouls and cataclysmic historical events that even now skulk in the darker recesses of our imaginations serve to provide me with a plethora of ideas that are currently being expressed as carved walking sticks. ……not sure where they may take me next!

* A Fae is a humanoid mystical creature that wields great power in magic and elementals

** the Lambton Worm, that is still famed in Northumberland, surely stems from ancient legends

*** the Black Shuck of East Anglia could merely be a re-invention of those shape-changing black dogs of Nordic origin