Magic in the Mundane World Quiz | Thematic Fun

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Which Welsh band, fronted by Gruff Rhys, sang 'God! Show Me Magic'?

Answer: Super Furry Animals

The dog in the photo is not only a furry animal, it's also a reference to another SFA song, 'Golden Retriever'. 'God! Show Me Magic' was an early single by the psychedelic Welsh rockers, from their debut album 'Fuzzy Logic', and was their first Top 40 single, charting at Number 33. Actor Rhys Ifans was a former member of the band.

2. According to superstition, what should you do to a boiled egg to stop witches using it as a boat?

Answer: Break the shell

In 'Secret Spells and Curious Charms' by Monika Beisner, there is a poem about this, saying 'You must break the shell to bits, for fear / The witches make it a boat, my dear.' Simply putting a hole in the shell of a boiled egg is enough. The legend goes that if witches sail to sea in eggshells, they will cast spells that cause storms, putting ships in danger.

Some Irish emigrants to America in the 1840s also broke eggshells, the idea being that the fairies accompanying them would not sail home in the shells.

3. In Europe and the US, black cats are often associated with witches and depicted as their pets, or familiars, but a Tanzanian witch's familiar is another beast entirely. Which predator, according to Tanzanian folklore, is their familiar of choice?

Answer: Spotted hyena

According to legends from the culture of the Wambugwe people, hyenas are owned by witches, and are branded with marks that only the witch can see. Witches milk hyenas and ride on them, and hyenas live in their houses and give birth there. If someone kills a witch's hyena, the witch will go after them.

4. In which southern English county, home to Hastings and Brighton, would you find the deep valley known as Devil's Dyke?

Answer: Sussex

Devil's Dyke - not to be confused with the place of the same name in Cambridgeshire - is located in the South Downs, and is a 100m valley created by a combination of the freeze / thaw cycle and river erosion. According to a local legend, the Devil dug it to create a trench for the sea, in order to flood the churches of Sussex, but had to stop his work when a crowing cock interrupted him and made him think it was morning. (It also claims that as he fled, he threw a clod of earth over his shoulder and it turned into the Isle of Wight!) It's also a popular site for picnicking and flying kites - I used to go kite flying there myself as a child.

5. As Harry Potter fans are aware, owls are often associated with witchcraft. Some cultures also see them as symbols of death. However, the owl is also associated with a British football team - whose mascot is pictured here - due to them moving to the suburb of Owlerton (and the city also has quite a large owl population!) Which team is this?

Answer: Sheffield Wednesday

The owl in the picture is Ozzie the Owl, Sheffield Wednesday's mascot. The owl has been Sheffield Wednesday's symbol since 1912, when a fan gave the club an owl mascot as a reference to the club moving to the Owlerton area, where Hillsborough Stadium is based. The first Sheffield Wednesday club badge had a picture of an owl sitting on a branch.

6. Peacock feathers are viewed as unlucky according to a British superstition, because they are thought to contain the Evil Eye. With which ancient Greek goddess were they also associated?

Answer: Hera

Just as Athena had owls, Hera had peacocks. A Greek legend says that after Zeus cheated on Hera with a woman called Io, Hera turned her into a cow and asked her servant Argos, who had a hundred eyes, to guard Io. Zeus felt sorry for her and had Hermes kill Argos by hypnotising him and then beating him to death with a stone, but Hera was one step ahead and had taken out Argos' eyes, and put them in a peacock's tail.

She also had peacocks pull her chariot.

7. The village of Pluckley in Kent is said to be the most haunted village in Britain, with at least twelve recorded hauntings. Two of these ghosts are of women said to be members of the Dering family. One of these ghosts is known as the Red Lady, but who is the other one?

Answer: The White Lady

Legend has it that the White Lady was a beautiful woman who died young, and was interned in several coffins to preserve her beauty. These were sealed in an oak coffin and buried in the family vault in St Nicholas' Church. She wears a white dress with a single red rose and has long dark hair, and is said to haunt the churchyard, or the library at the Dering family home in Surrenden Dering.

Other ghosts said to haunt Pluckley are a man who died screaming as a clay wall fell on him, and a colonel who hanged himself in a nearby wood.

8. In the Shakespeare play 'Macbeth', there's a scene where three witches are sitting around a cauldron adding all sorts of weird ingredients, such as the eye of a newt and the toe of a frog, and chanting. Which of these is NOT an ingredient mentioned in the witches' song?

Answer: Fox's tail

Contrary to popular belief, the chorus of the witches' song is 'double double toil and trouble', not 'hubble bubble toil and trouble'. Other ingredients include a fillet of a fenny snake (a snake which lives in a fen, or marsh), nose of Turk, and the chaudron (guts) of a tiger. 'Macbeth', incidentally, has its own spooky legend - superstitious actors believe calling it by its name is unlucky, and will refer to it as 'the Scottish Play'.

9. Many historic buildings in Britain, including churches, have ugly stone figures called gargoyles sitting on them. Gargoyles are said to scare away evil, but what practical use do they also have?

Answer: Diverting water away from the roof and down the side of a building

Gargoyles tend to be chimera-like fantasy creatures with wide open mouths, which hold the spouts that divert water away from the roof of buildings. A French legend claims that a dragon-like monster known as the Gargouille was captured by St Romanus and burned to death in Rouen, but as its head and neck could not be burned, they were mounted on the wall of a church instead to scare off evil spirits.

A statue that looks like a gargoyle, but which does not have a spout, is known as a boss or a grotesque.

10. Barry Manilow once sang about a legendary triangle, said to make people disappear. Specifically, the triangle in question is an area located in the western part of the Atlantic Ocean, and gained its bad reputation due to several vessels going missing there. What is the name of this fabled area?

Answer: The Bermuda Triangle

'Bermuda Triangle, it makes people disappear / Bermuda Triangle, don't go near' sang Barry Manilow on the song of the same name. The three points of the triangle are situated around Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Florida. Among reported disappearances, there is Flight 19, which disappeared while crossing the Atlantic in 1945 and never returned to base; a yacht, Connemara IV, that was found south of Bermuda in 1955 without its crew; and the schooner Carroll A. Deering, found run aground off Cape Hatteras in 1921 with its crew missing. Such disappearances have been credited to UFOs or technology from the lost city of Atlantis, but more rational explanations include tropical cyclones - frequent in the area - or even mere human error.

Source: Author Kankurette

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor agony before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Magic in the Mundane World Trivia Quiz

Superstition, witchcraft, legends...there's often an overlap between the magical world, and the world of what Harry Potter and his friends would call 'muggles'. (Note: there is a slight British bias.)

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>