” A land of promise, a land of memory.
A land of promise flowing with the milk
and honey of delicious memories!”
Alfred Tennyson
The land is the most real thing we have in many respects. Without it, nothing is possible, including us. The land grows the food we eat and provides a root for our societies to grow and flourish. The land serves as the unnoticed, silent Atlas that holds up our homes and it’s a retreat from urban life and it is the bedrock of urban life itself. It carries us about daily, but often without us giving it a second thought.
Land is a continuous thread that we share with those who came before. Some customs and rituals relating to the land have come and gone and some have survived. These strange folktales, relating to the land, look odd to our modern eyes. Cheese rolling, the Green Men, the hay tokens of the commons. These links to the forgotten past live on.
But the land holds greater secrets. Practices, thoughts and beliefs that exist on the edge of our memory. Unloved and nearly forgotten, but real all the same.
It is hoped these posts will grow to archive many of the customs and practices that relate to our connection to the land. Old and new customs. Urban and rural. I hope also it will go beyond the folklore and bring forth genuine folk memory.
To do that, I need your help. If you have interesting stories, inherited from family, of the land (any land), please let me know.
I hope to collect our stories on a land of promise, a land of memory.
The Land and Folk Memory 