Blood, Toili, Tears and Sweat Death Customs and Morbid Folk Beliefs in Wales
In centuries past, where rudimentary medical knowledge and unexpected death were commonplace, it should come as no surprise that mortality featured heavily within the cultural landscape of Wales. With intricate funerary rituals and a propensity for portents of death – where any sign, from the mundane to the fantastical, might be perceived as premonitory – morbid traditions play an integral and often unique role within Welsh belief systems.
From sin-eating to spectral hell hounds, join Dr Delyth Badder as she takes us on a dark tour through Wales’s folkloric relationship with death.
Bio:
Dr Delyth Badder is a folklorist, author, and Honorary Research Fellow with Museum Wales who has channelled a lifetime’s interest in Welsh folklore into academic study, and a library of some of Wales’s rarest antiquarian folkloric texts. She has expertise in Welsh death omens and apparitions, with particular academic interest in the appearance of spirits within the Welsh tradition.
As well as being a regular contributor to discussions on Welsh folklore in the media, Delyth has co-authored The Folklore of Wales: Ghosts with researcher and podcast host Mark Norman – an exciting new study of Welsh ghost-lore through the ages examined through a contemporary lens, using rare, unpublished and never before translated material.
Delyth also works for the NHS as the world’s first Welsh-speaking Consultant Paediatric and Perinatal Pathologist, and as a Medical Examiner for the Welsh Medical Examiner’s Office.
Curated & Hosted by
Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer, curator and critic, ethnographer and folklorist speaking and writing about esoteric history, art, culture, women and Cornwall. She is the author of Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor 2020) and is currently working on several Colquhoun related manuscripts. She is also the editor of Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022). She has contributed gallery texts and essays for a number of institutions including Tate, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, Arusha Galleries, Heavenly Records and she is a curator and host for the Last Tuesday Society lecture series.
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