Latest Folklore

From Wirt Sikes’s ‘British Goblins’ (1880):

There is a remarkable cromlech near the hamlet of St Nicholas, Glamorganshire, on the estate of the family whose house has the honour of being haunted by the ghost of an admiral. This cromlech is called, by children in that neighbourhood, ‘Castle Correg’. A Cardiff gentleman who asked some children who were playing round the cromlech, what they termed it, was struck by the name, which recalled to him the Breton fairies thus designated. The korreds and korregs of Brittany closely resemble the Welsh fairies in numberless details. The korreds are supposed to live in the cromlechs, of which they are believed to have been the builders. They dance around them at night, and woe betide the unhappy peasant who joins them in their roundels.

This is where Hautville’s Quoit was thrown from, by Sir John Haut(e)ville (you can read more about this on the Hautville’s Quoit page). He was just rehearsing for a throwing match with the Devil, which he ended up winning by throwing a rock from Shute Shelve to Compton Bishop (about a mile and a half) – the Devil threw 3 furlongs shorter. (from Grinsell’s folklore book I think).

Sir John is apparently bured in Chew Magna church, where there’s an oak effigy of him.

This gentleman was remarkable for prodigious strength, as the Irish oak is probably intended to denote. Vulgar tradition informs us, that Edward the First having requested Sir John to shew him a specimen of his abilities, the knight undertook to convey three of the stoutest men in England to the top of Norton Tower [Norton Malreward is at the foot of Maes Knoll], situated in a neighbouring parish. Accordingly, taking one under each arm, and a third in his teeth, he proceeded on his task. The two in his arms, making some resistance, were squeezed to death, but the other was carried up without sustaining the smallest injury.

From ‘The Beauties of England’ by John Britton. Vol 13 pt 2, p628.

A follow up on Rhiannon story of Jesus in Priddy. I  heard a story many years ago that the local people of Priddy would use the phrase, ” As sure as the Lord walked in Priddy”. This would be used in the same way as someone today might use the phrase ” Is the pope Catholic?“.

As Rhiannon added this site, I shall tell a ghost story. Whilst out walking I met a couple on the path near here, falling into conversation as you do, I said that there was a particular spot on the path that felt eerie, and he said that he’d seen the ghost of a gaitered man walking down this path away from the battle. Believe that as you may, but a friend had a similar experience near Dyrham ( 577ad battle site), a gaitered man appeared in a dark lane, but when this person turned his motorbike round to go back and check, the man had mysteriously disappeared. The lane was bordered by high estate walls so where he went was a mystery....

see also this thread:

“one day a year local people used to walk in procession along an old road, round the church, to the old stone, drape coloured pieces of cloth around it, and give oblations”

From The Outer Hebrides and their Legends by Otta F. Swire, 1966:

“It is said that there was a standing stone carved with a cross and known as Crois nan Cnoca Breaca on a small hill on the north boundary of Ormaclett and that it marked the spot where ‘Our Saviour of Victory’ stood and so long as Howmore Church was in we all those who came to it from the south always knelt there to pray. Martin says that the people bowed to the church from this stone which they set up at the first point from which St. Columba’s church at Howmore could be seen and so it was called ‘the bowing stone’. One wonders if both the stone and the sacredness of this part of South Uist are not much older than Christianity.”

A folktale in ‘Welsh Fairy Stories’ by W. Jenkyn Thomas (1907) relates to the stones on top of Garn Bentyrch (or Pentyrch, as he calls it) – online at V Wales
https://www.red4.co.uk/Folklore/fairytales/gutobach.htm
It’s about a boy who goes to play with the fairies on the hills above Llangybi. His parents warn him against it but he will keep going back, and one day doesn’t return for two years (though he looks the same age on his return). There are rumours about a hoard of gold hidden under a big rock on the mountain but even the strongest men in the village shoving together can’t shift it. His parents are down to their last can of beans due to an ill-advised investment, but Guto knows the fairies will help them out. He goes to ask nicely if they can have the gold, and when he tries to move the rock (sword-in-the-stone style) it bounces off down the hill with no effort at all. Pays to be civil to the fairies, see.

They are mentioned elsewhere in Rhys’s ‘Celtic Folklore Welsh and Manx‘
https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/cfwm/cf107.htm
which is online at the Sacred Texts archive.

When I was staying at Pwlltheli the same summer, I went out to the neighbouring village of Four Crosses, and found a native of the place, who had heard a great many curious things from his mother. His name was Lewis Jones: he was at the time over eighty, and he had formerly been a saddler. Among other things, his mother often told him that her grandmother had frequently been with the fairies, when the latter was a child. She lived at Plas Du, and once she happened to be up near Carn Bentyrch when she saw them. She found them resembling little children, and playing in a brook that she had to cross. She was so delighted with them, and stayed so long with them, that a search was made for her, when she was found in the company of the fairies.

Sabine Baring-Gould mentions that On the hill above [the spring] is Cadair Gybi, his [Saint Cybi’s] chair, a naturally-formed boulder bearing a striking resemblance to an arm-chair.

Phil Quinn (Third Stone 26) mentions that fairies used to live here at Cadbury. But they couldn’t stand the noise from the new church bells – they buried their gold and left (perhaps too heavy to take with them?).

The folklore mentioned by Purejoy below is included by Ruth Tongue in her 1965 ‘Somerset Folklore’ – she also says that the local people (unsurprisingly) called the camp ‘Camelot’.

Ruth Tongue was told in 1944 by a Person from Porlock that people used to climb to the top of Dunkery Beacon to see the sun rise on Easter Sunday, ‘for good luck’.

(Somerset Folklore, 1965)

Various mounds, cairns and barrows lie here, between Dunkery Beacon and Exmoor’s remote highest church at Stoke Pero. It’s got a bit of a spooky reputation. On St John’s Eve (that is, the night before Midsummer Day) in 1942 an old carter asked Ruth Tongue to accompany him up Ley Hill (just to the north). From there they watched little marsh lights moving aroud by Stoke Pero and Dunkery. These were said to be spunkies (Somerset willo the wisps) gathering to Stoke Pero church, where they would guide the ghosts of all those people who would die the following year. Spooky.

(R Tongue – ‘Somerset Folklore’ 1965)

This barrow is probably looking a bit sorry for itself, being crossed by a field boundary at one end, and only being about 60cm high. However, it (and no doubt the plethora of other sites around – Redhill barrow cemetery, the Water Stone ) seems a good reason why this bit of folklore is attached to the area. Redhill longbarrow is very close to the farm mentioned below.

There is a farm near Wrington called Hailstones Farm but some folk say it should really be Hurlerstone Farm on account of the Devil picking up a great rock lying there and throwing it right over the Mendips to hit Cranmore Church. Of course he missed, but it was a tidy throw even for the Old Boy. Some say it was a giant dropped it or made a bad shot of it. Any how the rock lies on the edge of a cliff in the woods and they call them Hurdlestone Woods. And there is a Giant’s Grave there too.

From Ruth Tongue’s ‘Someset Folklore’ (1965) gathered locally in 1945.

These three dented bronze age barrows hide some treasure, which is guarded by a big black dog. Ruth Tongue describes the fearsome beast in ‘Somerset Folklore’ (1965) :

On Winsford Hill on autumn nights a traveller may be stopped by a black hound with glowing saucer eyes. If he tries to advance he will die, either at once or very soon, but if he stands still the dog will slowly vanish until only its eyes still glow. As soon as they disappear the traveller is free to move on, but some lesser ill-luck will follow. There was once a farmer whose frightened pony danced near to the spectre before he could stop it. The farmer did not die, it was the pony who collapsed half a mile from home.

The barrows are probably also the home of pixies, lately moved from the Brightworthy Barrows.

This univallate hill fort dates from the late Bronze Age / Early Iron Age. Can it really be a fort? It looks so precarious on the map, crossing a thicket of contour lines. Naturally well defended at least. (see details on MAGIC at
magic.gov.uk/rsm/24008.pdf

‘Trendle’ (like the Trundle, one assumes) comes from the Middle English for ‘wheel’, which in turn comes from the Old English for ‘circle’ – indeed, the shape of the fort.

It’s said that here on Bicknoller hill ‘the woman of the mist’ can be seen (apparently, according to Ruth Tongue in ‘Somerset Folklore’ 1965, ‘in recent years’). She sounds rather like the Scottish Cailleach (see Schiehallion) as “she herds the red deer. Sometimes she appears as an old frail crone, sometimes as a great misty figure.”

Ruth Tongue’s sources (for her 1965 ‘Somerset Folklore) knew this as the Danish Camp, or perhaps even ‘a Roman look-out or summer camp’ (ah, a Roman summer camp, how sweet) and traditionally ‘a band of Danish sea-robbers made it their fort while they preyed on the villages.’ However, the women they kidnapped thought up a devious plan to get them all incapacitated, so one night while they were all feasting and drinking, the locals suddenly attacked and massacred the lot of them. ‘On wild autumn nights at midnight they say you can still hear the revelry, followed by the clash of arms.’ Only one of the Danes survived. A girl had fallen in love with the young musician boy who had fled before the battle, his harp slung over his shoulder. She sheltered him for several days until he was discovered – and killed. Afterwards his ghost was said to roam the slopes of Dowsborough – or ‘Danesborough’- and heard singing faintly and plucking at his harp. To put it even more romantically (as Lawrence does in ‘Somerset Legends’): “At times a startled pony pricks his ears at soft movements in the bracken and the notes of a muted song.”

Tongue mentions that ‘Wordsworth remembers him in a poem.” Wordsworth did live for a time on the edge of the Quantocks. So no doubt ‘The Danish Boy‘
bartleby.com/145/ww157.html
is the poem she refers to.

John Garland’s ‘Haunted Somerset’ (2007) mentions Berta Lawrence’s ‘Quantock Country’, in which she says:
Near Danesborough Ring the Quantock woodmen swore they heard ghostly music issuing from underground, the revelling of Viking warriors feasting with wassail-cup and song.

This is quite peculiar. There is a tradition in Priddy that Jesus visited the tin mines in Cornwall with his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea (“Uncle Joe” probably – no, I’m making that bit up) and then came up to the lead mines at Priddy.

Our Lord when a boy came voyaging with a sailor uncle to Britain. Their trading ship put in at Watchet, and from there He walked across the Quantocks to Bridgwater where He boarded a punt and crossed the lakes and marshes to the foot of Mendip, ending his journey high up at Priddy. Here, say the miners, He walked and talked and worked with them a happy while, and then, loaded with Somerset gear, He went back to Nazareth.

This is in Ruth Tongue’s ‘Folklore of Somerset’ (County Folklore v8), and she heard it locally throughout the first half of the twentieth century. I guess it’s a story about trading metals with far away places to the South.. hm – could this really be a folk memory of actual trading?

A similar story – but necessarily about pre-Jesus times (mentioned by S Toulson in her ‘Moors of the Southwest v1’ 1983) says that the lead from the Mendip mines was shipped to Jerusalem to build Solomon’s temple.

Two of the original three Brightworthy Barrows survive here on a prominent spot of Withypool Common, with impressive views of the Barle Valley and beyond, and to the East, Knighton Combe and Withypool Hill.

Below the barrows to the NE is Knighton Farm. Many years ago the farmer here was on very good terms with the pixies. They did all sorts of jobs for him around the farm, threshed the corn and so on. The farmer’s wife was so grateful that one day she made little suits for them and left them out for them to try on. However, you just can’t treat the pixies like that – you can’t offer them gifts of clothing. They had to stop helping out (Pixie Union Rules – more than their job’s worth, etc).

For once they didn’t lose all contact with the farmer. It happened that some bells were being put into the church tower at Withypool. Fairies and their ilk really don’t like church bells (a bit like those people from London who move to the country hoping for a bit of piece and quiet heheh). So the father pixy came to see the farmer.

“Wilt gie us the lend of thy plough and tackle?” he said.
The farmer was cautious – he’d heard how the pixies used horses.
“What vor do ‘ee want’n?” he asked.
“I d’want to take my good wife and littlings out of the noise of they ding-dongs.”
The farmer trusted the pixies and they moved, lock, stock and barrel over to Winsford Hill, and when the pack horses trotted home they looked like beautiful two-year-olds.

Winsford Hill is over to the east, and no doubt they would have found lovely new lodgings in the Wambarrows which crown it. You can’t help thinking that they must have lived in the Brightworthy Barrows initially.

(dialogue from Ruth Tongue in ‘Somerset Folklore’ (1965).
According to Michael Williams’ website here
website.lineone.net/~michael_williams/West%20Som.%20Churches/withypoolchurch.html
the Withypool church bells were cast in 1793, so maybe that’s when the pixies left.

There are three round barrows and two cairns here on the moorland at the top of Weacombe Hill, on the neck of land between Sheppard’s Combe and Bicknoller Combe. Ruth Tongue has a story about this very spot:

[This] story was told me by a very sweet and gentle cottager who had once had occasion to climb the Quantocks late one winter afternoon. When he had climbed Weacombe to the top the sea mist came down, and he felt he might be frozen to death before he got home. But as he was groping along he suddenly touched shaggy fur and thought that old Shep, his sheep-dog, had come out to look for him. ‘Good dog, Shep. Whoame, boy!’ he said. The dog turned and led him right to his cottage door, where he heard his own dog barking inside. Heturned to look at the dog who had guided him, which grew gradually larger and then faded away. ‘It was the Black Dog, God bless it!’ he would always say.

Black Dogs are not always so friendly – it’s nice to hear that some of them can be so helpful. Perhaps he uses one of the barrows as his kennel.

from ‘Somerset Folklore’ 1965

Not that I want to put you off visiting Dewerstone, but Hunt* mentions that the Dewerstone valley below is a favourite midnight meeting place for the headless spectral Wish Hounds. He calls them “the wish or wisked hounds of Dartmoor,” also the “yell-hounds,” and the “yeth-hounds.”

Pure Joy mentions that rock climbers have died here – perhaps many people have made fatal errors over the years, because it is said the hounds lure unwary (or inquisitive) travellers over the edge to their deaths.

*Popular Romances of the West of England, 1865.

(Btw, the Magic record considers the enclosures themselves to be Neolithic, with the hut circles later Bronze Age additions.)

There appears to be another standing stone at Gruline, at NM543397, in amongst some trees. According to the Canmore record it’s slightly taller at 2.45m, and tapers in at the top.

It’s not ‘strictly’ to do with the stones (or is it?), but the legend of the Cailleach is connected with the neighbouring loch (she is largely associated with the imposing mountain Schiehallion), as you can see from this excerpt from “A MacLean Souvenir” by J. P. Maclean (1913) – a fiercely copyrighted annotated version of which may be found at
gillean.com/jpmclean/

No district of Scotland was more noted for its witches than Mull. On the shore of Loch Ba lived the famous “Calleach Bheurr” and there closed her career of thousands of years. At intervals of a hundred years, so the legend relates, she immersed herself in the waters of the Loch, which ordeal gave here a further lease on life. But having waited too long for this ordeal, for the cycle had been spun to its limit, and while in the act of seeking this elixir of life, she staggered, reeled and dropped to rise no more.

Grinsell says that Spellow Hills were originally ‘Spellhou’ – incorporating a word for hill, so now it’s a bit of a double name. The barrow (looking as it does like several barrows) was known as the ‘Hills of the Slain’ and it was said ‘bones and armour were found’ inside ‘many years ago’. The barrow was also regarded as a place where plague victims had been buried, or the dead soldiers from a mythical ‘Battle of Partney’ (Partney being a nearby village).

(’Ancient Burial Mounds of England’, 1936)

[The King’s men and the knights] go down the hill “at midnight to drink of a spring in Little Rollright Spinney. According to some accounts they go down every night when the clock strikes twelve; according to others at certain special occasions, “on Saints’ days for instance.” What is more, the gap in the bushes is pointed out through which they go down to the water. In some versions of the tale, the King also goes down to the stream at the same hour with his men; but others say that “the King* goes down to the water to drink when he hears the clock strike twelve,” meaning, as my informant was at pains to explain to me, that as he cannot hear the clock stays where he is. One sceptic assured me that he had passed by the stones many a time at midnight and never seen them move.
*Sometimes too, the king’s men with him. In some accounts the stones descend to drink at a stream by Long Compton.

The Rollright Stones and Their Folk-Lore
Arthur J. Evans
Folklore, Vol. 6, No. 1. (Mar., 1895), pp. 6-53.

Celia Fiennes wrote travel books in the 18th century and her take on the stones was that they were ‘a warning for boggy ground’, an interesting if elaborate idea(?!). I have my suspicions whether she actually visited the site, as she talks about Long Meg as being in the middle of the circle:

A mile from Peroth in a Low bottom and moorish place stands Mag and her sisters; the story is that these soliciting her to an Unlawfull Love by an Enchantment are turned wth her into stone; the stone in the middle wch is Call’d Mag is much bigger and have some fforme Like a statue or ffigure of a body, but the Rest are but soe many Cragg stones.

...they affirme they Cannot be Counted twice alike as is the story of Stonidge [Stonehenge].

quoted by Grinsell in ‘Ancient Burial Mounds of England’ 1936 (but I will look at the original soon).

The nine barrows are said to be the graves of nine kings who fell in a great battle nearby. That must have been some battle for nine kings to be involved.

(mentioned in Grinsell’s ‘Ancient Burial Mounds of England’ 1936).

“The village folk will have it that the mound was reared over the body of an imaginary General Stapleton, ‘killed in the Civil Wars’’; and they account for its unusual height by declaring that the general, an exceptionally tall man, was buried standing upright.”

quoted in Grinsell’s ‘Ancient Burial Mounds of England’ (1936).

A shepherd related to a friend of Leslie Grinsell told how the devil was making a ditch, and cleaned his spade by scraping it against a tree. A large lump of earth fell off, and this became Hangour Hill (’Ancient Burial Mounds of England’ 1936).

The ‘Devil’s Dyke’ is close by, so perhaps that was the ditch he was digging.