Telling the Bees and Other Customs: The Folklore of Rural Crafts
English
By (author): Mark Norman
As featured in The New York Times...
Throughout the history of civilisation, traditional crafts have been passed down from hand to skilled hand. Blacksmithing, brewing, beekeeping, baking, milling, spinning, knitting and weaving: these skills held societies together, and so too shaped their folklore and mythology.
Exploring the folklore connected with these rural crafts, Telling the Bees examines the customs, superstitions and stories woven into some of the worlds oldest trades. From the spinning of the Fates to the blacksmiths relationship with the devil, and the symbolism of John Barleycorn to a ritual to create bees from the corpse of a cow these are the traditions upon which our modern world was built.