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Fairy Stone (Cottingley)

Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art

Folklore

You may have heard of the fairies of Cottingley already - the photographs of surprisingly fashionable fairies that convinced Arthur Conan Doyle? (His book can be read here.) They were from Cottingley Beck (and the girls who saw them insisted they were real until they died, although they admitted the photographs were fake).

These (five?) cupmarked stones however are in the (privately owned) Cottingley Woods, which is a little to the NW. A tale is told by A. Roberts (in 'Ghosts and Legends of Yorkshire' 1992) of a 19 year old called Anne Freeman, who stopped to rest at the stones on a walk. She heard a loud chattering and allegedly saw two tiny figures about 25cm tall wearing red outfits and green hats looking like 'medieval peasant dress' (an earlier mention is apparently in our own Paul Bennett's 'Tales of Yorkshire faeries I' (Earth' 9: 3-4) which gives the date of the encounter as 1976).
Rhiannon Posted by Rhiannon
25th February 2005ce
Edited 22nd October 2012ce

Comments (1)

Several cup and ring stones in the area all situated on ridges overlooking river valleys, (the Aire and the Wharfe), would seem to indicate reference points and location/directional aids. . . . ancient "Tom-Tom's" perhaps?
Posted by Siegfried
2nd February 2011ce
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