📃🏹📃The last blank pages... I'm nearing completion of my sequel to Deeper Older Darker. There'll be new cover art by me (for both books), more little chapter-headers, and a new publisher! 💚The Otherworld is calling... #FolkloreThursday #FolkyFriday #FolkloreSunday #BookSky📚 #MythicFantasy

#FolkloreSunday #Celtic: `Aside from its practical uses however, the gorse had deep spiritual meaning in Ireland – it was one of the nine sacred trees, and its oily wood burned as hot as charcoal, and so was used to light the Bealtaine fires. As with the other quicken trees, although to a lesser extent, the Aiteann was thought to hide entrances to the fairy #Otherworld.`
Source: https://emeraldisle.ie/aiteann-the-sharp-gold

#FolkloreSunday #Celtic: `The flowers of the gorse bush were used to make medicines and were scattered about the floor to keep out fleas, and walking sticks were cut from its longer boughs. It was also used for roofing, cleaning chimneys, hedge lining, as a clothesline, making tool handles, hurleys and a myriad of other purposes.`
Source: https://emeraldisle.ie/aiteann-the-sharp-gold

#FolkloreSunday #Celtic: `An extract of gorse was mixed into the mead, wine and later whiskey of the chieftains for flavour, and some of the flowers can be eaten, especially when the sunlight brings out their full scent. Farmers would enrich the land by burning it, and when cut back, the new shoots made wonderful feed for the livestock. Mind you, if any hares fled the burning gorse, they were killed by the farmers, in case they were witches in disguise!`
Source: https://emeraldisle.ie/aiteann-the-sharp-gold

#FolkloreSunday #Celtic: `Gorse has a strong association with the sun, the month of May, and Bealtaine, and the people of Ireland found many uses for it in times past. Women used to make a rich yellow dye from its flowers in a colour very similar to the prized saffron, but its making was a secret forbidden to men.
This warm golden colour was the preferred hue of the robes worn by the kerns, or Irish warriors!`
Source: https://emeraldisle.ie/aiteann-the-sharp-gold

It is imperative to protect cows from the fairies in Irish folklore in early summer: tie golden flowers like marigolds to their horns, collect the clay they have tread upon, and do not share dairy products near Beltane to avoid the gaze of aos si. #FolkloreSunday

It is imperative to protect cows from the fairies in Irish folklore in early summer: tie golden flowers like marigolds to their horns, collect the clay they have tread upon, and do not share dairy products near Beltane to avoid the gaze of aos si. #FolkloreSunday

#FolkloreSunday #Celtic: `When the spring turns to summertime in Ireland, a carpet of golden yellow rolls out under drumlin skies across the wild places to greet the changing seasons, the exuberant growth of the gorse, which some call whinn, broom or furze, although in the old language it's known as Aiteann, which means “sharp”. And well named it is, for the beautiful yellow flowers are ringed with long and sharp thorns!`
Source: https://emeraldisle.ie/aiteann-the-sharp-gold

💧🦄💧A Unicorn's spiral horn (alicorn) was said to be an antidote to every poison - and that Unicorns would kneel down and dip their horns into fouled streams to purify them, so that wild animals could safely drink. #FolkloreThursday #FolkyFriday #FolkWitchFriday #FolkloreSunday

#FolkloreSunday #Celtic: `The Moddey Dhoo, a phantom black hound, was reportedly spotted at "Milntown corner" close to Ramsey, reported Gill: “In 1927, a friend saw it turning towards Glen Auldyn, and it was "black, with long shaggy hair, with eyes like coals of fire," and a doctor while driving the road beyond the corner 1931 encountered "a big black dog-like creature nearly the size of a calf, with bright staring eyes."
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moddey_Dhoo