New Year
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♫♫ “Oh, the holly blooms in summer, as white as any snow….”♫♫
Celtic myths, Christmas carols, crafts, crown of thorns, dioecious, duke of argyll, fairies, foretelling, Halloween, holly, James II holly, Midsummer Day, New Year, Norse gods, plants, preston candover, robins, Roman culture, Saturnalia, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Holly and the Ivy, thor, thunderToday, 24 July, is my granddaughter’s birthday, and her name is Holly. Why was she given that particular name? Because her existence was first anticipated at Christmas. So my Holly is linked to both Christmas and Summer. She, like the holly in the above photograph, first actually bloomed at the height of summer. And her…
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My first acquaintance with the term the Ides of March was a school visit at the age of nine, when I was one of hundreds of schoolchildren watching it in an RAF hangar in West Germany. “Beware the Ides of March!” Well, I simply accepted the soundtrack and at that age certainly didn’t stop to…
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I was browsing, and came upon the following interesting details about how Henry VII celebrated Christmas and Twelfth Night. It is from Christmas: Its Origin and Associations by William Francis Dawson, which I found in Google Books. The following extract has been tweaked a little by me, to create more paragraphs and thus make it…
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As we said five years ago, it is unclear whether John, Marquess of Somerset and Dorset, really was the son of John of Gaunt or of Sir Hugh Swynford. Furthermore, the common law answer to that question may be different to the genetic answer, as we revealed that Swynford could well have died after the…
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A day late, I know, but a Happy New Year to everyone. May 2016 be a vast improvement on its predecessor. Here’s my first offering in a long time, an article about Richard from the Hinkley Times. Can’t say all the facts are right, but it’s generally OK. I decided not to use any of…
The New Murrey and Blue blog 