Eps. 81: The Folklore of Fireflies

In this episode of The Moon in Carolina, host Shelby Bundy explores what people across thousands of years and dozens of cultures have believed about fireflies — and finds the same belief arriving, independently, again and again: that small lights moving through the dark are the souls of the dead, keeping close. From the Japanese hotaru poems of the 8th-century Man'yoshu to the Cherokee tradition connecting fireflies to sacred fire and intentional guidance, and into the hollow coves of Appalac...