Interested in reading a copy of Plot’s Natural History of Staffordshire (1686)? In 2012 there doesn’t appear to be an online PDF of this public domain work, but there’s a digital CD facsimile available for a reasonable £12, from Midlands Historical Data. It’s not just about birds and beasts and plants, it also has good deal on folklore and customs. Original copies of the book seem to fetch over £1,500 at auction.

Update, November 2017: now available online, The natural history of Stafford-shire by Robert Plot albeit without pictures.

Update, June 2023: now available online, at Archive.org in hand-keyed HTML.

“Star Stones [seen above] were much discussed by the Oxford academic Robert Plot. Plot dutifully, and rather disdainfully, related how the commonfolk thought Star Stones came to be on Earth: “…the Stones [are] some way related to the Celestial Bodies, [and] descend next to such as (by the vulgar at least) are thought to be sent to us from the inferior Heaven, to be generated in the Clouds, and discharged thence in the times of Thunder and violent Showers…”.

Those who have read The Spyders of Burslem, and remember the “aetherstorm” and its curious hail may recognise a similarity. Also a link with one of the themes in the novel.

Also, note the book was “printed at the Theatre” in Oxford, which was founded by a man from North Staffordshire.

I’m pleased to say that an illustrated version of my family-tree book is now online. It might interest those working on family histories or novels set in the far reaches of South Staffordshire (specifically glass making in Kinver, Wordsley, Kingswinford, Oldswinford areas) during the 19th century, and also in north Birmingham (bicycle and motorcycle manufacturing in Hockley, Aston, Boldmere) during the late 19th and early 20th century. The online ebook omits about 20,000 words of microscopically detailed narrative family tree, and evidence footnotes. The basic tree is…

William Haydon? b. 1754?
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Richard Haden (b. 1797 – d. 1843)
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William Hamlet Haden (b. 1821 – d. 1866)
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George Joseph Haden (b. 1851 – d. 1903)
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Alfred Hamlet Haden (b. 1875 – d. 1940)
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Sidney Francis Haden (b. 1901 – d. early 1970s)

A few of the lighthearted jibes that Staffordshire folk used to make of their neighbors living over in Shropshire…

“The idea of going to live in Shropshire! Why, the Shropshire man threw down corn to [en]tice the weather-cock off the [church] steeple!” (Wednesfield, about 1890.)

“The Shropshire people put a frog in a cage, and thought it was a canary.” (F.T., gunner R.H.A., Whitsuntide, 1896.)

“That’s a Shropshire present, giving away what you don’t want yourself.” (M.N., Norbury, 1888.)

From Folklore: a quarterly review (The Transactions of the Folk-Lore Society), Vol. XX, 1909.

The latter perhaps relevant to Tolkien’s practice of giving “mathoms” in the Shire.

Majid Esmaeili’s virtual 3D sculpt of a faun, that gets close to how I imagined the character of Maddock in my new novel The Spyders of Burslem. Although with smaller horns.

It’s a pity that Stoke-on-Trent could not have transitioned a tranche of the city’s talented ceramics model makers into virtual computer-based 3D sculpting and model-making, when we had the chance in the 2000s. We could have turned our city into a world-centre for virtual character and model creation/painting, building on centuries of tradition in the ceramics industry. Which, with new developments in 3D printing and bespoke vinyl toys, would by now have come full circle back to the creation of physical products. Sadly the public-sector farce that was ‘Worldgate’ seemed to make the city’s officials averse to production schemes that are ‘digital’ and ‘creative’ and that required significant public money. And the highly insular nature of the city seemed to create a blind-spot, about the potential of global sales of virtual goods over the Internet.

Public domain photos, animated by Kevin Weir…

You’ll remember that one of the elements in The Spyders of Burslem is the expansion of photography into the realm of psychography, and that the psychograph of Rousseau changes when looked at.

“Underground in Legend and Tradition” is The Seventh Folklore Society Legendary Weekend, it will take place 1st-2nd September 2012 at Matlock Bath Pavilion, in Derbyshire Peak District. Flyer.

Dr. Plot’s Natural History of Staffordshire, written in 1686, makes mention of a machine then in use in this county for gauging the size of fighting-cocks. The writer designates this ingenious contrivance as —

“the nicest piece of art that ever I saw relating to the feathered kingdom, and, indeed, the ‘most curious was an instrument shown me by the Right Worshipful Sir Richard Astley, of Patshull, baronet, of his own invention to match game-cocks, discovering their size, both as to length and girth, to so great an accuracy that there cannot be easily the least mistake.”

[…] as a rule the lightest pair of cocks were fought first, then the next in weight, and so on till the heaviest pair were the last to be pitted.

— from Old English Sports.

Illustration: Bill Mayer.

Another interesting addition about my theory on the links between North Staffordshire and certain beliefs about wildfowl, as explored in the central section of my book A History of Burslem and the Fowlea Valley…

“A dying person should not be allowed to lie on a bed or pillow stuffed with feathers from pigeons or wild fowl.”

The source is unspecified, but is either The Folklore of Staffordshire, or Staffordshire Customs, Superstitions and Folklore.

Wikipedia page for the North Staffordshire Field Club, now with an outline of their many publications. Is there a full index of their published articles and books, to consult online? Sadly, it seems not. There’s a nice little retirement project, for someone. The easiest software to use to create an online catalogue would be Omeka.

“Many folk beliefs went beyond merely avoiding the rainbow’s spiritual power [a rainbow was believed to harm anyone who pointed to it] — they try to manipulate it. […] Children in Staffordshire, England, attempted to [break the power of rainbows to harm a pointing person] by crossing a pair of sticks or straws on the ground and placing a stone or two atop them, the goal being literally to cross out [the power of] any rainbow they saw.”

   — from: Raymond L. Lee, Jr. and Alistair B. Fraser. The Rainbow Bridge: rainbows in art, myth, and science. Penn State University Press and SPIE Optical Engineering Press, 2001.

My answer to a question Blood and Bone China asked on Facebook…

Q: Where does the myth about not being able to see a vampire’s reflection in a mirror come from?

A: The vampire is deemed not to have a soul, and hence no mirror will reflect him or her. The idea probably came originally from the prehistoric association of pools with sacred deities that were deemed to inhabit them, a widespread belief testified to by abundant votive offerings found by archaeologists at the bottom of ancient pools and ponds in the UK and Europe. Reflections seen in such places were thought to be reflections of the soul, not of the actual body, and hence to pose a danger of seduction. This could be either a danger of self-love (seen in the myth of Narcissus, etc), or a danger of the person’s soul being “taken under” by the watery deity. Possibly this had a root in a belief that one had to shed one’s selfishness when approaching such places, or risk calamity. Then, when mirrors came along in the Bronze Age, these would have been seen as having the similar capability to ‘steal’ or “embody” one’s soul, in much the same way as the similarly reflective dark watery pool. Modern tribal peoples often have similar beliefs, even today, about mirrors and camera lenses and their potential to “steal” one’s soul. As David Jones says, there are also several mirror folk beliefs around funerals and souls (i.e.: cover mirrors while laying out the dead body in a home) that have persisted to the modern day in certain places. The folk association of “bad luck” with breaking household mirrors probably also dates back to such antiquated beliefs. All these can be traced to the idea that the reflection in a mirror is that of the soul, not of the body.

The mid 19th century “Buxton Mermaid” doll is being investigated by scientists…