"In a field," says Surtees, "on the right-hand side of the road from Eppleton to Hetton, and only one field from Houghton-lane, is a remarkable tumulus, consisting entirely of field-stones gathered together. At the top there is a small oblong hollow, called the Fairies' Cradle: on this little green mound, which has always been sacred from the plough, village-superstition believes the fairies to have led their moonlight circles, and whistled their roundelays to the wind.
The subterraneous palaces of the fairy sovereign are frequently supposed, both in England and Scotland, to exist under these regular green hillocks:

'Up spoke the moody fairy king,
Who wons beneath the hill;
Like wind in the porch of a ruin'd church,
His voice was loud and shrill.'

But the Hetton fairies, of whom, however, there is no living evidence, spoke in a voice remarkably small and exile."