Urban Fantasist
Menu
Picture
Follow @ChristianUncut
Tales of Geek, Music, Media, Urban Myths, Folklore & the Weird by Charles Christian
​includes Weird Tales Radio Show podcast

How to Cook with Children - new poetry on the Grievous Angel zine

31/1/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
So I happened to mention to Colleen Anderson that I was hosting a dinner party and she sent over this recipe How To Cook With Children. Sounds quite tasty but unfortunately our guests are vegetarians! You can read Colleen's poem HERE
0 Comments

New Artwork & Logo for the Weird Tales Radio Show - Yay!

30/1/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
0 Comments

Two New Stories on the Grievous Angel: Graffiti Monsters by Theresa J. Barker

27/1/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
What if street graffiti is not made of paint but of monsters? In these two linked stories – they are in search of a lonelier planet and soul mate, soul meet – Theresa J. Barker explores this idea. You can read both stories HERE
0 Comments

Latest Weird Tales Radio Show now available to listen to as a podcast

25/1/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
0 Comments

New Poetry on the Grievous Angel: Cyborgs, Space Shuttles & Third Eyes

23/1/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
New poetry now on the Grievous Angel from Christopher Hivner, Julie Bloss Kelsey, and Larry Lefkowitz – and all have a strong science fiction vibe... you can read them all HERE
0 Comments

Folklore: All you ever wanted to know about St Agnes' Eve - and St Agnes!

20/1/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
Painting, inspired by the Keats poem The Eve of St Agnes, by Peter Alexander Hay (1905)
It's St Agnes' Eve tonight – 20th January – so here's a transcript from my latest digital radio show which featured a discussion of some of the folklore, traditions and legends associated with both St Agnes' Eve and the lady herself...

CHARLIE:         We also need to talk about the folklore and legends surrounding St Agnes Eve, which is the 20th of January.

JANIE:        Ooh, I remember reading that, how does the poem by Keats go…

St Agnes’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold

Bit like the temperature in this studio tonight!

CHARLIE:        Keats based his poem on an old folklore tradition that St Agnes Eve is one of the traditional times of the year for love divination rituals, when young women would try to discover if they were going to get married over the next 12 months and who their husbands might be.

JANIE:         Because young women in the 19th century didn’t get out much and didn’t have access to FaceBook! Although I recall reading that along with St Agnes Eve, other popular dates for conducting love divination were St Valentine’s Day, May Eve, Midsummer’s Eve, St Anne’s Eve - 26 July in case you were wondering - Halloween and New Year’s Eve. And not forgetting weddings, which had their own rituals including catching the bride’s bouquet and sleeping with a piece of wedding cake beneath your pillow. So what form did these rituals take?

CHARLIE:        There were a couple although it’s worth noting Keats rather sexed up the version in his poem by having his heroine take all her clothes off and lie naked on her bed.

JANIE:        Well Keats was a Romantic poet!

CHARLIE:        To get back to the story. There were two main forms of divination. 

In the first one, the young woman fasts all through St Agnes' Eve “eating only a little stale bread and drinking parsley tea.” Then goes to bed, pausing only to remake the bed with clean sheets and pillow cases, and, when she finally climbs into bed, repeats the following verse:

Agnes sweet, and Agnes fair, 
Hither, hither, now repair; 
Bonny Agnes, let me see 
The lad who is to marry me

If it works, she will then either see her lover in her dreams of see his image appear in her bedroom or dressing table mirror.

Alternative verses include:

St Agnes be a friend to me
In the gift I ask of thee
Let me this night
My future husband see

or even

St Agnes, I pray unto thee
I, a maid, would married be
So thou my husband show to me

JANIE:        While you’ve been saying this, I’ve been looking through the reference books and found another, rather more yucky version from as long ago as 1711. It goes like this… Take a sprig of Rosemary and another of thyme. Sprinkle them with urine thrice. Put one into one shoe and the other into another shoe. Then place the shoes at each side of the bed. Then, when you go to bed, say

St Agnes, that’s to Lovers kind
Come ease the trouble of my mind

and you will dream of your lover. 

Let’s just hope you lover is not a cobbler as he’ll be grossed out by your shoes! Anyway, you said there were two main forms of St Agnes' Eve rituals, what’s the other one?

CHARLIE:         The other one involves cake. Yay! It’s called Dumb Cake and apparently it was still being practiced in rural Lincolnshire and East Anglia until the Second World War when, presumably, the influx of unattached, young American airman and regular dances in the airfield hangers removed the need to resort to magic to find a husband.

OK, Dumb Cake - and the earliest recorded recipes for this go back to 1685. You make a cake - actually it sounds more like a savoury pancake or what the Scottish would call a bannock - made of flour, salt, water and egg - and cooked on a griddle, which you place beneath of your pillow - and then you’ll dream of your future beloved.

Unlike the other St Agnes rituals, Dumb Cakes will supposedly work for men and women. And, you can do it collectively with, say, four people all taking part in the preparation process - you’d divide the ingredients into four equal parts - and then each one takes a quarter of the cooked cake to place under their pillow.

However there is a catch - which is why it is called Dumb Cake - in that the whole preparation and cooking process must be carried out in absolute silence. No talking, no smiles, no laughing and no sniggering otherwise the magical spell will be broken. Oh, and you’ll like this, according to some versions of the ritual, once you’ve placed your slice of Dumb Cake beneath your pillow, you should walk backwards into your bed.

JANIE:        Perhaps if all these young maidens didn’t have shoes that smelled of wee and hair full of crumbs from the cakes they’d been sleeping on, they might have had more success with the boys? Just a thought. Anyway, just to neatly round off this piece, who was Saint Agnes? I’m guessing she was some poor Sheila from the Roman Empire era who was horribly martyred for her beliefs? Am I right?

CHARLIE:        Spot on Janie - as ever. She was apparently a beautiful young girl, about 12 or 13 years old, from a noble family who had many suitors from other wealthy patrician families. However when she turned them down, because of her, in quotes, “resolute devotion to religious purity” one of the young men reported her to the authorities for being a Christian. This was at a time in the Roman Empire when Christians were still being persecuted.

According to legend, she was sentenced to be dragged naked through the streets to a brothel, however she prayed to Heaven, whereupon her hair grew to cover her entire body and any men who tried to molest her were immediately struck blind. The Roman authorities then reverted to a Plan B of having her burned alive at a stake - but the bundles of wood and kindling would not catch fire - so finally a Roman soldier hacked off her head. Incidentally you can still see her head - well at least her skull - in a shrine at the church of Sant’ Agnese in the Piazza Navona in Rome.

Today St Agnes is the patron saint of chastity, girls, engaged couples, rape survivors, virgins, Girl Guides and gardeners.

JANIE:        Gardeners?

0 Comments

Guest Blog: In which the Albino Pineapples sell some poetry (and that really is my home)

19/1/2018

0 Comments

 

In Which The ALBINO PINEAPPLES sell some poems -

My father, who was a writer started a writer's group that counted, among others, Ray Bradbury in its members. So, having gotten a taste for that sort of gathering, I thought I would try to start my own. It is not quite what I desire because I wanted to have it in my house, as...

0 Comments

It's Haiga-time (just Google it) on the Grievous Angel

16/1/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
0 Comments

Catch-up this weekend with the Urban Fantasist Weird Tales podcasts

13/1/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
0 Comments

Yesterday a story about animation by Adam Millard - today an actual animation

12/1/2018

0 Comments

 
Yesterday we featured a flash fiction story by Adam Millard about the perils of being a stop-motion animator. Today we have a stop-motion movie by Adam. Called We're Gonna Play a Game, it is a SAW parody featuring a guy who looks a lot like Adam!
0 Comments
<<Previous

    This is Urban Fantasist

    Barrister and Reuters correspondent turned writer, award-winning tech journalist, radio presenter, podcaster, blogger, storyteller, and sometime werewolf-hunter Charles Christian is here to inform and entertain you with tales of writing, radio, geek, tech, media, music, urban myths, folklore, the weird​ and anything else that intrigues him. The site also has links to all Charles Christian's books including fiction, nonfiction, and the latest reviews. Plus links to his weekly Weird Tales and Smart Radio shows.

    The Latest Podcast

    Picture
    In Episode 52 of the Weird Tales Radio Show podcast... Janie looks at legends of healing lochs and haunted pits + we’ve witchcraft in caves and in Essex + we look at the folklore and origins of the fairy tale Bluebeard + and we talk to Moscow about Bonnie & Clyde! 

    ​Follow this link to access episodes of the Weird Tales Radio Show podcast. The page contains links to all our other podcast platforms. Click the player button below to hear latest show.
    Picture
    Hear Charles Christian on Smart Radio 
    The Midweek Late Lunch
    Wednesdays 2:00pm to 4:00pm (UK)

    The UK Chart Toppers Show
    Sundays 2:00pm to 5:00pm (UK)

    Listen online...
    https://www.smartradiogy.com
    and on mobile...
    Apple iOS App: Smart Radio GY
    Android App: Smart Radio GY
    TuneIn Radio App: Smart Radio GY
    Tweets by ChristianUncut
    Charles Christian Online

    Weird Tales Podcast Links

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Vital Statistics

    The Urban Fantasist website is now averaging over 5000 page views daily and 150,000 page views a month plus over 6000 unique visitors each week. 

    Contact

    Email: urbanfantasist@icloud.com
    ​Tel: 44(0)1986 788666
    Tel/Txt: 44(0)7786738172
    FB: 
    m.me/CharlesChristianOnline
    ​Skype: ChristianUncut
    Twitter: @ChristianUncut
    Picture

      Subscribe to Weird Tales - our occasional newsletter

    SUBSCRIBE NOW!

    Quote, Unquote

    "Listening to your wonderful show now. I love the stories! Wonderful concept. Great work."

    ​"Charles Christian defiantly makes my world a brighter, funnier place."

    "
    Wonderful show tonight full of all the usual delights we've come to expect."
    ​
    "The legendary Charles Christian at his eclectic best... his insight and humour alone make this a must-read blog."

    "Charles Christian is my inner spirit animal, thank you for making me laugh."

    ​"You always make me laugh! Thank you for brightening my day with your dark humour."

    ​"the funny, wonderful and slightly cantankerous Charles Christian"

    "Carlsberg don't make clients, but if they did... they'd be Charles Christian"

    "His tech journalism is always witty. He has a talent for pricking the overblown claims of suppliers."

    "Charles Christian does awesome!"
    Picture

    Charles Christian's Books

    Picture
    ​https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MELTC84
    Picture
    http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07DKCKPT

    Can I copy content from this site?

    Yes... providing you properly credit it. Urban Fantasist content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License which means it may be shared, copied, remixed or used commercially as long as Urban Fantasist or the Weird Tales Radio Show are cited as the source. 

      Contact & Comment Form

    Submit

    RSS Feed

Picture
Copyright © Charles Christian 
& WordsandVision Limited 2019
Tel: 44(0)1986 788666
Tel/Txt: 44(0)7786738172

urbanfantasist@icloud.com
Urban Fantasist - infotainment fuelled by green tea and dark chocolate
Contact Address: Oak Lodge, Darrow Green Road, Denton, Harleston, Norfolk IP20 0AY, United Kingdom

Until the next time you visit Urban Fantasist... Stay well, Stay weird, Stay different

  • Home
  • Weird Tales Radio
  • Charles Christian Bio
  • Charles Christian Books & Reviews
  • * Fiction
  • * Non Fiction
  • * Poetry
  • The Grievous Angel
  • Home
  • Weird Tales Radio
  • Charles Christian Bio
  • Charles Christian Books & Reviews
  • * Fiction
  • * Non Fiction
  • * Poetry
  • The Grievous Angel