Latest Posts — Folklore

Kit's Grave. A copse on the county border is said by some to be named Kit's Grave after a highwayman, Kit, who was hung and buried there. However, Herb Lucas, the chauffeur at Upwood, said that Kit was an old woman, possibly a Romany, who lived a nomadic life between the parishes of Bowerchalke and Ebbesbourne Wake, and died on the boundary. No one knew her well. Those who found the body approached the authorities of both parishes, but neither would meet the funeral expenses or claim the body. Kit was therefore buried where she was found, and the copse was named after her.

Bottlebush Down. I was told that one evening a man lay down to rest on top of one of the barrows on Bottlebush Down, and was astonished to see a crowd of little people in leather jerkins, who came and danced round him. Since hearing ths tale, I have been told that the man was the late curate of Handley, the Rev. A.R.T. Bruce, but unfortunately he died before I could confirm this.

A forester accounted for the tumuli on Beaulieu Heath in this fashion:-- "We calls ut Saltpetre Bank. All these here mounds was throwd up by Uliver Crummle when he tuk the Farest; he and the Danes beat the English the fust time they ever was beat, and he druv the English into Wales."

Headless Ghost.--On Roundway Down a headless ghost is said to walk. Some years ago a shepherd declared that he met it, that it walked some distance by his side, and then vanished. The gentleman to whom he told the story asked why he did not speak to the ghost. "I was afraid," he replied, "for if I hadn't spoken proper to him he'd a tore 'un to pieces." A barrow is near the place, which was excavated some time ago, when a skeleton (not headless) was found. Since the barrow was opened the ghost has ceased to walk.

We have been reading the story of the man who carried his head under his arm and disappeared by a barrow on Roundway Hill, near Devizes, but has not been seen since the opening of the barrow and the finding therein of a skeleton lying on its left side in a doubled-up position.*

*Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette, May 16, 1895.

Silbury Hill. ---"Silbury Hill is to this day thronged every Palm Sunday afternoon by hundreds from Avebury, Kennet, Overton, and the adjoining villages.*"

*Wilts Archaeological Magazine, December, 1861, p181.

Hill Sliding. ---Martinsell Hill, on the top of which is an ancient encampment, formerly used to be the scene of a great fair on Palm Sunday. Boys used to slide down the hill on the jawbones of horses; men from the neighbouring villages used to settle their disputes on this day by fighting; oranges were thrown down the slope and lads used to rush headlong after them. At the present day only a few children stroll about the hill on Palm Sunday

On Kirkby Moor.. is a low ringwork of loose earth and stones. "It goes by the name of 'The Kirk,' and a 'venerable inhabitant' (Archaeologia, liii.) could recollect that it had once borne a peristalith. The natives assert that the spot was traditionally 'a place where their fathers worshipped', and, as a matter of fact, games used, until recent times, to be held on the spot by the Lord of the Manor at Eastertide" (Allcroft, Earthworks of England, 1908, p139).

The story of a bull's hide filled with gold is connected with many stones. At its simplest it is found at the Binghill stone circle on Deeside, at Lulach's Stone near Kildrummy, at a standing-stone at Glenkindie close by a branch road to Towie, and at the Muckle Stane o' Clochforbie, near the steading of the farm of that name. The last may be a broken recumbent stone, but there is nowadays no standing-stone near it. In this case also an attempt was once made to remove the treasure, but the great efforts made to shift the stone proved fruitless, and a warning voice having been heard from beneath the depths of the stone to command " Let be!" the advice was taken and the stone has remained undisturbed ever since.

The notion that ill-luck attends the destruction of the circles is not yet altogether dead, as is apparent from an incident which occurred in recent times at Corrydoun. Some alterations were being made on the farm buildings, and the mason employed to do the work reckoned that he could make good use in his building operations of the stones in the stone circle. So he set to work to trim one of them, but, finding the stone harder than he had supposed, made little progress. At the dinner-hour he returned to the farm, where it was noticed that he had damaged one of his fingers badly, an injury of which he was not conscious. Someone suggested that it was unlucky to interfere with the stones, and the workman, agreeing, made no further attempt to use them; but his tool-marks still remain.

A .. story is told of the Drumel Stone on the farm of Old Noth, near Gartly. The stone was taken to the farm to make a lintel over a doorway in the steading, but thereafter the steading door was so often found open, and the interned animals wandering about the countryside, that at last it was decided to put the stone back again. When this was done the trouble ceased.

The barrows in the group [on Snail Down] (there are at least thirty) are locally explained as the burial places of "the people killed in the battle of Sidbury Hill." The latter is crowned by an Iron Age hill fort which looms over the downs...
This hill, like many other natural eminences, owes its position traditionally to Satanic action. "It happened this way," Mr. M--- told the writer. "The Devil was carrying it from Bristol to London, and he got tired and dropped it on the way." The same story is told of Silbury Hill, a vast artificial mound.. which actually does stand on the Bristol-London road.. the writer is inclined to regard this tale as having been transferred in comparatively recent times from the former to the latter, doubtless through confusion of the somewhat similar place-names.

A much more fascinating story connects Sidbury Hill with the village, a distance of some two miles. According to Mr. M---, "There is a well in Everleigh village, opposite the two cottages up by the racing stables. I was born in one of those cottages, and they were burnt down in 1884. Down the well, there is an opening in the side, and a tunnel leads from there to Sidbury Hill. They say there is a golden chair in the tunnel."

.. "Place-Names of Wiltshire", records the following forms of the name; Shidbury, Chydebur' (1325), Shudburie, Shudburrowe Hill (1591) and Chidbury (1812).

.. a story of certain caves in the chalk, behind a farm near Ludgershall (five miles east of Everleigh). These were believed to run for miles underground, to go beneath Sidbury Hill, and to come out near Pewsey.

.. "There is an old castle at the foot of Sidbury Hill", Mr. M--- told the writer, "with a wall around it. The castle has gone now, but the wall is still there, and the Forestry Commission raise young trees inside it. This castle belonged to King Ina.".. Mr. M---'s story confirms a version of the same tradition recorded in 1812. Sir Richard Colt Hoare published in that year the first volume of his Ancient History of Wiltshire; at p181 he states of the linear earthwork running from Sidbury Hill,
"It terminates in a valley, and immediately at a spot where there are several irregularities and excavations in the soil. With all the ardour and fancy of a zealous antiquary, I once fondly thought that here I might discover the traces of King Ina's palace, who according to tradition, had a country seat at Everley."

The writer was.. fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of a Mr. M---, who was born in Everleigh about 1880. Mr. M---, a gardener, knew a number of legends and traditions which, he said, "were handed down to me from my grandfather." Many of his points were corroborated by other villagers of his generation.

Very little information could be obtained about local reaction to the [1950s] excavation, but the general feeling seemed to be that it was regarded as faintly improper - an act of disturbing the dead.. The local aetiology of the place-name Snail Down .. was given thus; "Snail Down is called that because of the number of snails you find on it." In actual fact the area is unusually poor in mollusc life.. Mr L. V. Grinsell.. suggests that a double bell-barrow amongst the Snail Down group, when viewed from a certain angle, has the appearance of a giant snail in motion, and this may well be the true explanation.

The barrows in the group (there are at least thirty) are locally explained as the burial places of "the people killed in the battle of Sidbury Hill." The latter is crowned by an Iron Age hill fort which looms over the downs..

...A remarkable and genuine example of folk-memory occurred during the [Snail Down] excavation. It was known that Sir Richard Colt Hoare and William Cunnington of Devizes had already dug the two barrows which were being examined.. It was the practice of this cautious and enlightened antiquary [WC] to place a small bronze disc, bearing his name and the date, in the sites which he dug and filled in, and one such, with the inscription "William Cunnington - 1805", was discovered, together with the actual mark in the chalk made by the workman's spade at the time.
An old shepherd who frequented the downs, and who gave his age as 77, volunteered the information that he, as a boy, had spoken to an old man (who died at the age of 93), and that this old man could remember people digging up the barrows on Snail Down, an act for which, it was alleged, they had been put in prison! If the old man had died about 1880-1885, he would have been between 13 and 18 when Cunnington excavated: since the shepherd was born in 1876, he could have been a boy of nine or ten when the old man quitted this life. Links of two generations spanning 150 years are, according to The Sunday Times, not uncommon, but it is still satisfactory to find such an interesting and unusual one. The gloss of the "imprisonment", it is suggested, may reflect local opinion of Cunnington's desecration of the dead.

About a mile east of Berriew, on the green by the side of a lane, is a stone about five feet high, called, on the Ordnance Map, Maen Beuno, but by the people in the neighbourhood "the Bynion Stone." A man who told me (in 1891) that he was fifty years of age, said he had been told by old men when he was a boy that it was intended to have built a church on the spot where the Bynion Stone stands, but that every night the stones which had been placed in position were carried away and put down on the spot where Berriew Church now stands. (1891.)

I was enquiring for the Sarsen Stones or Grey Wethers, when only about a furlong from them, but an old man and his neice did not know either name; at last they suggested that what I was seeking was what they called the Thousand Stones. The man told me (what I had heard before) that the stones certainly grew; he had seen this, for, when he was a boy, there were not nearly so many, nor were they so large, as now. (June 1901.)

King Alfred fought on Wolstonbury Hill, and the ten horse-shoes which are on the Bull Hotel at Ditchling are said to have been cast by his ponies. (1905.)

I was told in 1875 that the Long Man at Wilmington (called Wilmington Giant by the people of the neighbourhood) was cut on the hills before the Flood.

There are remains of a castle above Wilmington Priory; pilgrimages were made from the castle to the priory, and, at the time of the pilgrimage the giant (Long Man) was slain by the pilgrims.

I was also told that the giant on Firle Beacon threw his hammer at the Wilmington giant and killed him, and that the figure on the hillside marks the place where his body fell.

I was told this again in 1890, and in 1891 was further informed that the Long Man carries spears, not staves, in his hands, and that an upright line (which I was unable to find) runs from top to bottom of the hill a little to the east, and another a little to the west of the figure.

A man told me that the Wilmington Long Man was a giant who fell over the top of the hill and killed himself; he also said that "a boy cut it out; they can't trace its history, it goes back so far."

Another man told me that the Wilmington giant was killed by a shepherd, who threw his dinner at the monster. The sun cast a shadow on the hill; the monks marked the place, and cut an outline; thus the Wilmington giant was made.

"One of the Romans" was buried in a gold coffin under the Wilmington giant.

Above Aldershot is a hill called Caesar's Hill. On May 2nd, 1889, I was told that Julius Caesar, from that hill, witnessed a review of his army.

On Titterstone Clee Hill "a wall thrown down" was put up at the time of the Revolution, when cannon would fire balls from there to Ludlow Castle. "Old women in their red cloaks" would go up into the enclosure. The hill was an island in the time of St. Paul.

- On the edge of the Ridge Way, near West Ilsley, is Scutchamfly Barrow. The hill here is called Scotchman's Nob, also Scratch my Nob. I was told (June, 1901) that a battle was fought there with the Scotch, and that the barrow was the grave of those slain in the battle. An elderly woman told me that her father used to say that the battle was called the Battle of Anna.

..old John of Gaunt is said to have been the last of [the giants in Cornwall] and to have lived in a castle on the top of Carn Brea (a high hill near Redruth). He could stride from thence to another neighbouring town, a distance of four miles. I do not know if he is supposed to be the one that lies buried under this mighty carn, and whose large protruding hand and bony fingers time has turned to stone. Here, too, in the dark ages, a terrific combat took place between Lucifer and a heavenly host, which ended in the former's overthrow.

The legends of Donald-Duival McKay, the Wizard of the Reay country.
Donald-Duival learned the black art in Italy. The devil sat in the professor's chair of that school, and at the end of each term he claimed as his own the last scholar. One day as they broke up there was a regular scramble, for none wished to be the last. Donald-Duival really was so; but, just as Satan snatched at him, Donald-Duival, pointing to his own shadow, which fell behind him, cried, "Take then the hindmost!" and his shadow being seized, he himself escaped. When he returned to Scotland he was never seen to have a shadow.

Donald went one day to meet his old master in the great Cave of Smoo. They had a violent quarrel, and Donald fled: the print of his horse's hoofs may be seen there to this day. But Donald was himself very cruel, and a ring may also be seen to which at low water he fastened his victims, who of course were drowned by the rising tide. [..]

Donald once explored the Cave of Smoo. Having penetrated further than any man had ever gone, he heard a voice cry, "Donald, Donald-Duival! return!" Undaunted, however, he pushed on till he came to a large cask. In this he bored a hole, and out of it, to his surprise, there jumped a little man about an inch and a half long. Surprise grew to terror when this creature gradually assumed colossal proportions, and addressed him as follows: "Donald, did you ever see so great a wonder?" "Never, by my troth," replied the wizard; "but wert thou to shrink again, that would be a bigger wonder still." The giant grinned assent, and, after diminishing to a span, was simple enough to jump into the cask, which Donald closed immediately, and then left the cave much quicker than he had entered it.

Looking across the western valley that bounds Minchinhampton Common, we see Selsley Hill, which is partly Common, and has earthworks, including a tumulus called "The Toots." On Selsley Hill is a small enclosed piece known as "Kill Devil Acre." An old farmer accounted to me for the name by the story of a man who was promised that he should have as much land as he could fence round in a day. He fenced in this piece (no doubt with a dry wall, as is usual here), and then fell down dead of overwork. Another version of the story was given me in these words by Miss Fennemore, of Randwick:- "Some man, having taken a fancy to this piece, determined to enclose it for his own use. To ensure safety and success, he determined to do this by night, so that he might not be disturbed, as his success depended on being able to build a row of stones round it, make a rough chimney, and light a fire therein, after which no one dared molest him. He worked all through the night, but died as he finished the task.