Little Miss Muffet

The well known nursery rhyme goes like this: 

Little Miss Muffet,

Sat on a tuffet

eating her curds and whey.

Along came a spider

who sat down beside her

and frightened little Miss Muffet away.

There is a dark side to this, and it's so disturbing that I was reluctant to post it for ages. It goes back to the early 17th century, and might be earlier. There was a young girl named Patience Muffet who became very ill. Her father was a doctor, and he put dead spiders in medicines that he gave to the sick. His name was Dr Thomas Muffet and he believed that dead spiders was an important ingredient for cures. He gave Patience the spider medicine too!     

What prompted me to post about it was that a similar thing happened to both me and then to my daughter. I was sat down while using the laptop during lunch when an enormous daddy long legs spider came dangling down in front of me. I had to put it outside. The next day, my teenaged daughter was having her breakfast and then a big spider appeared next to her. The experience was freaky and unnerving. 

Some people would say it was luck! They also say it's lucky to tread on poo by accident and also considered "lucky" to have birds' droppings fall on you outside! Having two different spiders come and sit down basically wasn't so much "lucky" at all but a moment of panic. It was more like an encounter with the minions of that evil Middle Earth tarantula queen Shelob.  

She Wolf Night

Ghost ladies of Dalzell House

 In the picturesque town of Motherwell, UK, there is a very old castle named Dalzell House. It's a home to three ghostly ladies and each of them glows a bright colour. The history of Dalzell House began during the Dark Ages in the year 843 when it had been used for royalty in the hunting season, then became built upon as home of the Dalzell family during the 1400's. In 1645 the earl of Dalzell House passed the estate to his nephew, James Hamilton, and it became the Hamilton residence afterwards. It went through a lot of extensions and restorations over the many years, and the last of the Hamilton's died in 1952 when the castle was made into a boarding school until 1967. It then became property of the local council and a section of it were made into private apartments during the 1980's. It's now a protected historical A listed building. 

The three spirits of Dalzell House are well known and also give the castle it's spooky charm. One is grey, one is green and the other is white. It's worth mentioning that no one knows who these ghosts are, and is anyone's guess. The apparitions appear in different places. The grey lady haunts the north wing of the castle and she wears an old fashioned nurse's uniform. Dalzell House was briefly a military hospital during the First World War and there would've been nurses working there, but the identity of the grey lady spirit is unknown. 

The green lady has been seen in the south wing of the castle. Witnesses have said the green lady ghost appears to have red eyes and smells of spiced flowers. When it was a school, a boy saw the green lady in the Piper's Gallery, and she passed through a wall and floated in front of him. While scared, the boy also claimed the green lady didn't seem malicious or threatening. 

The white lady is seen throughout the castle and in the garden. It's believed she might've been a victim of a tragic love story and was walled up inside the castle or she was so upset that she flung herself from a tower. Some have seen her watching them and she appears looking out of windows or in the grounds during dusk. A certain dog walker was taking photographs and found an eerie spectre in the Peel Tower. The three colourful ghost ladies are a mystery.

She Wolf Night   

Tam Lin

 

We're approaching Midsummer and there are a number of curious stories about fairies. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is a famous play by William Shakespeare and it's set in ancient Greece, with the plot of fairies. There are oral folk stories about fairies, and one of them is a love story. This is a story about Tam Lin/Tamlayne (or Tamlin), as mentioned in the Medieval 39th Child Ballad folk story from England and Scotland.

In the enchanting woods of Carterhaugh, where there is an old well and a figure of Tam Lin, a young handsome knight who was often seen there riding a milk white horse. He waited for maidens to travel through the woods alone, so that he could ask for a gift in exchange to letting them continue walking through the woods. If they couldn't offer him anything of value like that, he would instead have his way with them. It was then he encountered a beautiful young woman named Janet, who went there to pick a rose. On this encounter, Tam Lin appeared to her and asked for a gift so that he would let her pass. She told him that she was the daughter of the Earl, who owned the land itself, so it was her place. It's also believed that she fell in love with him, because she let him close to her. Days after Janet returned home, it was soon discovered that she was pregnant. 

She told her father that the man who caused her pregnancy was an "elf knight". Janet went back to Carterhaugh to locate herbs to cause a miscarriage. Again she plucked a rose and Tam Lin appeared. He knew of her intentions to find a poison so she would miscarry, and asked her why she planned to do this. Janet asked him where he came from and who was he really. Tam Lin said he used to be a mortal man, who once fell off his horse and was soon discovered by the Fairy Queen, who took him into her realm, which is beautiful and magical but every seven years they have to pay a tiend to Hell, so the fairy folk will journey there and pass Miles Cross to get to Hell, and Janet can help Tam Lin during then when the fairy folk visit Hell. 

That night came and Janet saw the milk white horse, where she joined him and had to grab hold of his hand, then he became a number of creatures. Eventually he turned into a naked man, and she covered him with a green mantle to hide him. However the Fairy Queen was aware of this and angrily said that she regretted not removing Tam Lin's eyes. Janet and Tam Lin returned to the mortal realm and lived happily every after.

For more info visit Tam Lin Balladry: https://tam-lin.org/

She Wolf Night