Wesley’s invisible world: witchcraft and the temperature of preternatural belief

Owen Davies,'Wesley’s invisible world: witchcraft and the temperature of preternatural belief', in Robert Webster, ed., Perfecting Perfection: Essays in honor of Henry D. Rack (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2015), ISBN: 978-1-61097-849-1.Non peer reviewe

Numerical analysis of the effects of climate change on slope stability

PhD ThesisEmbankments and cuttings form an integral part of the infrastructure of the UK. These earthwork structures are susceptible to a number of external influences which can ultimately affect their stability. Climate is one of these influences. There have been many observational correlations drawn between climate and slope deformation and eventual failure. A change in climate is therefore likely to impact on slope stability. It is widely agreed within the scientific community that the climate is changing. Future climates are likely to consist of higher average temperatures, wetter winters and drier summers. It is therefore important that we assess the impacts of future climate on slope stability in order to maintain vital infrastructure. This thesis describes the development of a novel numerical modelling procedure which allows the assessment of the effects of climate on slope deformation and rate of failure. The procedure employs the use of established hydrological and geotechnical numerical models to firstly calculate the pore pressure response to climate and secondly calculate the mechanical response to pore pressure. The hourly climate data required by the modelling procedure can be obtained from MET office weather stations for back analysis simulations or can be generated for present and future climates using a weather generator. The numerical modelling procedure has been used with present and future climatic data to assess the impacts of climate change on a diagnostic embankment and a cutting in the Newbury area. The procedure has also been used with historical weather data to back analyse an instrumented natural slope in Belfast, in order to determine the failure mechanism. The development and implementation of the modelling procedure lead to the following key findings. Firstly, laboratory and field permeability measurement techniques are wholly inadequate in measuring macroscopic permeability characteristics of clay slopes. Secondly, slope deformation magnitude is closely linked to annual maximum pore pressures. Wet years and increased wet year frequency will therefore considerably increase deformation and failure rate. Thirdly, the permeability of a slope will determine whether it will be more or less susceptible to increased failure rates when subjected to a future climate scenario. The strength of the study presented here is the amalgamation of the three separate disciplines of climatology, hydrology and geotechnical engineering in order to quantify the significance of each on the stability of slopes

A Supernatural War : Magic, Divination and Faith during the First World War

A comprehensive study of the major revival of supernatural beliefs, superstition, and spiritualism during the First World War and its aftermath. A look at what the beliefs, practices, and contemporary opinions on magic can tell us about broader issues in early twentieth-century society, the experience of war, and the psychology of belief. Relates how the prophecies of Nostradamus were used as propaganda by both sides, a diverse range of talismans and charms were carried by soldiers, and the myriad tales of battlefield ghosts came to be. Includes previously unpublished accounts from soldiers and fortune-tellers on their faith and practices, for a remarkable insight into the nature of popular belief

Witchcraft Accusations in Nineteenth - and Twentieth - Century Europe

© 2019 Informa UK Limited.On a popular level, Satan’s identity has always been fragmented into local variations. At times, the Satan of European folklore was a beast quite different from the Satan of the Church. The sharpest break in the traditional teachings about Satan came about with the Enlightenment, rather than the Reformation. Conceptions about Satanists have been present in Western culture practically since the dawn of Christianity. Actual Satanists, in any reasonable sense of the word, have not been around for quite as long. Poets like Charles Baudelaire and visual artists like Felicien Rops emphasized Satan’s connection to sensuality and carnal pleasures, making the figure an important image in some forms of resistance to Christian moralism and asceticism. Heretical Christian sects like the Cathars and Bogomils were unjustly persecuted in the Middle Ages as Satanists, and in the early modern era supposed witches were identified as adherents of Satan and punished accordingly.Peer reviewe

Finding the Folklore in the Annals of Psychiatry

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial No Derivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)The rise of the folklore movement in the nineteenth century coincided with the development of psychiatry as a discipline and as a profession. There is no evidence of folklorists visiting asylums for source material, and most psychiatrists showed little interest in the beliefs of their patients, but they both recorded folklore. While early folklorists were attracted to the new scholarly discipline of psychology, and later to psychoanalysis, it was actually the psychiatrists who left behind the most valuable archive of popular mentalities for contemporary folklorists to explore.Peer reviewe

A Folklorist Looks at Ice Cream Vans

© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an open access article under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives CC BY-NC-ND licence, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Of all the commercial road vehicles that have toured the streets and tourist spots of Britain, Ireland, America, and Australia over nearly a century, none elicit more popular reminiscence and sentiment than ice cream vans. This is not only due to their distinctive appearance, but also to the brief blasts of music they played, the ice cream cones they dispensed, and the people who sold them. Yet, despite its status as a twentieth-century cultural icon, the ice cream van has not seriously attracted the gaze of the folklorist. Drawing upon newspapers and social media as primary sources, an inspection of the ice cream van reveals a wealth of legends, memorates, and rumours with deep roots in broader cultural developmentsPeer reviewe

Taxonomy, phylogeny and biogeography of cisticolas (Cisticola spp.)

A review of the genus Cisticola was published in 1930 by Rear-admiral Lynes. While subsequent authors have modified Lynes' original groupings, his work remains the basis for modern syntheses of cisticolas. This study tests Lynes' hypotheses by analysing data that he presented in his review and with measurement and plumage data collected from museum specimens. Lynes' groupings were well recovered (98%) when data captured from his review were analysed phenetically, suggesting that he grouped species mostly by similarity. In contrast, when morpho-behavioural data were analysed using cladistic methods, many of his groupings were not monophyletic and the resultant cladogram had very little nodal support due to their highly conservative morphology. To resolve the structure of the genus and the relationships within it, two mitochondrial and four nuclear regions were sequenced from toe-pad samples taken from museum specimens. The molecular analyses included 44 of the 49 currently recognised species and represents the most taxon-dense molecular phylogeny of the genus. The resultant phylogeny separates species into five main clades, but many of Lynes' groupings were not monophyletic and there was also very little support for more recent groupings. Vocalisation analyses indicated that frequency components of songs were correlated with habitat type and body size. These correlations, though, disappeared when phylogeny was controlled for indicating that phylogenetic history rather than habitat preference influenced song character distribution. Some song types are mismatched to their environment, and some sympatric sister species appear to give similar calls. Cisticolas may overcome these attenuation and identification difficulties with behavioural adaptations and aerial displays. The biogeographic distribution of closely related species does not agree with many of the previously proposed hypotheses and a dated phylogeny estimates that most of the diversification in the genus has occurred within the last five million years. Most of the mean divergence date estimates correlated with periods of climate variability and episodes during which there is evidence for high lake levels in Africa, rather than correlating with Plio-Pleistocene glaciation, offering evidence that open habitats may have become fragmented during extremes of both arid and humid climates