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FRANCIS SULTANA shares his ninth monthly arts and culture column in collaboration with Times of Malta, in which he presents a set of must-see local an

A centuries-old outdoor folklore ceremony featuring singing, dancing, costumes and crop-blessings, the wassail is having a pandemic-era revival – with witchy reinventions

The artist Ben Edge has spent years chronicling some of this sceptred isle’s oldest festivals. How did he get the locals to allow him in?

John McMahon , June 5th, 2021 07:55 John McMahon previews a new exhibition exploring UK calendar customs, from the Museum of British Folklore and the artist Ben Edge Whittlesea Straw Bear, Ben Edge, 2020 © Ben Edge “The present generation has witnessed the extinction of many observances which our fathers practiced and revered, and doubtless the progress of decay will continue. We have entered upon a diminished inheritance” So wrote the Berkshire Reverend, historian and freemason PH Ditchfield, in 1896's Old English Customs. And it is undoubtedly true that Britain's folklore, vernacular ...

David Harrison's Trans Goat: Dance of the Universe (2020) 1 May or Mayday is a big event in the pagan calendar. For the Celts it marked the major festival of Beltranem, when spring turns into summer, sap starts to rise and thoughts turn to fecundity. Hence the erection of maypoles and all other manner of other ribald ritualistic shenanigans. So strongly ingrained is this ancient pre-Christian festival across the western world that Mayday, with all its radical and nonconformist connotations, was adopted by the early socialist movement, with the first international Mayday procla...