Rabbits, The Taboo Word

The Dorsetarian

Fossil Folklore
Sea Dragons, Fairy Loaves& Serpents of StoneFables & Fossils of Lyme Regis by Dr. Karl P.N. Shuker Dr. Karl Shuker and life-size megalodon jaws,Lyme Fossil Shop, Lyme Regis In July 2010, I visited Lyme Regis on Dorset’s south coast, a relatively small town but one that is to fossil enthusiasts what Hay-on-Wye on the Welsh-English border is to book love...

Skulls in Folklore
Skulls by Sabine Baring-Gould. In medieval churches, castles, and mansions where there is a parapet rising from the wall and obscuring a portion of the roof, this parapet is supported at intervals by corbels, that usually represent heads of either men or beasts, very frequently grotesque. These corbels are not of any great structural importance, though they add to architectural decoration. T...

Ghosts and Hauntings
Ghosts and Things that go Bump in the Night by David Kingston. The word Ghost is described in the Oxford dictionary as, "a person's spirit appearing after his or her death." But then what about the reports of horses galloping down the lanes on a dark night and other such apparitions? Why do certain countries, houses and places appear to have more than there fair share of Ghosts?Great Britai...

Maids, Moors, and Monsters
Maids, Moors, and Monsters The Folklore of Morris by Richard Freeman. Few people who have seen Morris men dancing on a village green or in a pub garden realise the complexity and antiquity of the dance they are witnessing. The pleasant spectacle has a history that stretches back thousands of years and is peopled by grotesque and sometimes disturbing characters. Morris is a dance o...

Eric Frank Russell
Eric Frank Russell by Mark North. English Science Fiction writer and Forteanist Eric Frank Russell was born on 6th January 1905, Sandhurst, Surrey into a military family. He served with the RAF during World War II and worked briefly as an engineer before taking up writing full-time. Russell wrote numerous science fiction novels and over a hundred short stories from the late 1930's to the mid-1...

Daisy Wheels
Daisy Wheels and a Ritual Landscape in Dorset. by Ric Kemp In the summer of 2009 I went for a walk across a 10 kilometres long prehistoric landscape feature called the Dorset Cursus, probably a ritual processional walk-way constructed earlier than Stonehenge, containing a solar alignment, or a noted position on the horizon where the sun sets or rises at a point in the seasonal cycle of the...

John Symonds Udal
John Symonds Udal - A Dorset Folklorist by Mark North. To Dorset people of old, customs, superstitions and traditions were inextricably interwoven with nature, countryside and social history. This formula produced a wealth of folklore in this county and the first person to make an intense study of the subject was John Symonds Udal. A sportsman, antiquarian, collector, essayist and a miscel...

Christmas in Dorsetshire
Christmas in Dorsetshire by John Symonds Udal Imbued with the utilitarian spirit of our time, one is apt to overlook those strong feelings of genuine pleasure and innocent merriment with which our ancestors were wont to greet Christmas as it came upon them in its annual round. For many years now the ancient glories that used to attend the celebration of the great season of Christma...

Halloween
The Feast of the Dying Sun The Customs and Traditions of Halloween By Robert Newland. Hallowe'en, otherwise known as All Hallows Eve, a time for fun and games, dressing up and ghost stories. Traditionally it was believed that malevolent spirits, witches and fairies were abroad on this night. (see also Walpurgisnacht - The Springtime Halloween)Yet contrary to popular belief Hallowe...

Black Dogs - Part 1
Spectre Dogs by Robert Chambers. Neither Brand in his Popular Antiquities, nor Sir Walter Scott in his Witchcraft and Demonology, mentions spectre-dogs as a peculiar class of apparitions, yet they seem to occupy a distinct branch of English mythology. They are supposed to exist in one form or another in almost every county, and few kinds of superstition have more strongly influenced the c...

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Rabbits, The Portland Taboo Word

Location: Portland

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Rabbit! Rabbit!

Portland Rabbit Many people on Portland believe the rabbit is bad luck! Even to say the word could send Portlanders into a stupor, fearing of what might happen. The fear of rabbits is based on the fact that quarry men would often see rabbits emerging from their burrows immediately before a rock fall. Such rock falls often injured and even killed quarry workers; therefore, it is understandable why rabbits became associated with bad luck.