Latest Folklore

“The Auld Kirk o Tough circle is now almost destroyed: only one stone remains on its original site, the others having been removed many years ago by a tenant on the farm. He is said to have formed one of the stones into a field-roller, which broke just after having been put to use—a just judgment upon his interference, said his neighbours”.

Source
Folklore of the Aberdeen Stone Circles and Standing Stones by James Ritchie
Proceedings of The Society of Antiquities of Scotland. Vol LX.20
May 10 1926

Love them bees!

“The Candle Stone is a large pillar-stone which stands at Candle Ridge, Drumwhindle,
near Arnage, and there are three Candle Sills, one at Oyne, one in the parish of Rayne, and the other near Insch, within a few miles of each other. On each of these Candle Hills there are remains of a stone circle, so that al these candle-names appear to be associated with either stone circles or a standing-stone. The association has given rise to the idea that candles were employed in the ceremonies performed by the “Druids” at such places; but Professor Watson tells me that the Gaelic word signifies not a diminutive candle, but even a huge torch, so that the word might well be applied figuratively to a tall stone suggesting the shape of a torch.
Another explanation of the name, however, is possible. In former days wax candles were much used in Church services, and since the wax was derived from bees, whose honey was used for sweetening, it was not overplentiful, and was accordingly highly valued. Thus gifts of wax frequently find mention in old deeds arid charters : two stones of wax were dedicated in 1233 by the Earl of Buchan to the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin at Rattray, and another grant of 5pounds is referred to in the
confirmation of a charter of John Lord of the Isles in 1460. Grants of wax for Church use came to be associated with land suitable for beekeeping : thus the Candlelands at Ellon were dedicated to the use of the church there, and had to provide twenty-four wax candles three times a year to burn before the high altar of the Church of Ellon. These Candlelands are only some 5 miles distant from the Candlestone and Candle Ridge of Drumwhindle. It may be no more than a coincidence that the Candle Ridge near Ellon and the three Candle Hills in the Insch district have each a standing-stone or a stone circle. Naturally hill-top monuments would escape much of the destruction which visited similar monuments on arable land, so that out of the large numbers of these monuments which must have existed at one time, the hill-top examples stood every chance of survival; further, the very conditions which would account for the preservation of the stones, rough, rather high ground with abundance of heather and the characteristic vegetation of such places, would be just those best suited for the keeping of the bee-stocks which were to produce the sacred candle wax. The suggestion, therefore, is that the ancient stones have only a casual connection with candlelands from which beeswax was obtained or levied”.

Source
Folklore of the Aberdeen Stone Circles and Standing Stones by James Ritchie
Proceedings of The Society of Antquities of Scotland. Vol LX.20
May 10 1926

“In the large and almost complete circle at Cothiemuir, in the parish of Keig, the recumbent stone is of peculiar rounded shape, and has numerous hollows upon its surface, caused by weathering. Two of these on the outside, rather larger than their fellows, are known as the ” Devil’s Hoofmarks,” their shape resembling the mark of a cloven hoof.
A short distance, some 200 yards, from the Chapel o’ Sink lies the Ark Stone, very likely the recumbent stone of the circle, which would help to account for its unusual name”.

Source
Folklore of the Aberdeen Stone Circles and Standing Stones by James Ritchie
Proceedings of The Society of Antquities of Scotland. Vol LX.20
May 10 1926

A different telling of Rhiannon’s tale

“Many years ago some of the stones of Mains of Hatton Circle, Auchterless, were removed to form gateposts, but the spirits, it is said, resented human interference with the circle, and it was only with great trouble that horses could ever be induced to pass through the gate. So little was the farmer prepared to encounter the spiritual enmity thus clearly indicated, that he decided to replace, on their original site, the stones which had been taken away; but it was remarked that while two horses with difficulty dragged each stone
downhill to the gate, one only found it easy work to pull a stone uphill from the gate to the circle”.

Source
Folklore of the Aberdeen Stone Circles and Standing Stones by James Ritchie
Proceedings of The Society of Antquities of Scotland. Vol LX.20
May 10 1926

Another tale recorded by Ruth E St Leger-Gordon:
Once there was a young man who’d just arrived in Devon. (Probably one of those rich people from London who have just sold their house for a squillion quid and want to Move to the Country – like you see on tv every half hour). He decided he wanted some sheep to put on his land, so he went along to the local market. He saw loads of sheep but felt quite disorientated by the mysterious goings-on of the auctions. Retiring to the pub he got chatting to a friendly local. It turned out he had some sheep to sell – two flocks in fact. And they seemed very reasonably priced. The young farmer decided to buy them and began to discuss how he would come and collect them. Ah, don’t worry – they could be delivered. If he went up to Sittaford Tor next Thursday they’d be there waiting for him. The young man handed over his cash and went home happy. In due course he set out across the moor to the Tor. He could spot the sheep grazingly happily there in the distance...

This story comes from Ruth E St Leger-Gordon’s “Witchcraft and Folklore of Dartmoor” (1973); she heard it from an elderly man from Chagford.

“Long ago faithless wives and fickle maidens were forced to expiate their misdeeds” in the following way. First they had to go and wash at Cranmere Pool. This was, and still is, a very remote spot – so it would have been some penance to get there in the first place. (Cranmere Pool has other legends connected with it – for example, that a no-good ex mayor of Okehampton, ‘Binjy’, had to empty it with a sieve.. having craftily done this he now sits on the bottom to spin the sand into ropes.. but that’s another story).

They then had to cross the moor to Scorhill stone circle, and run round it three times (supposing they had any energy left).
Next they were driven down to the banks of the River Teign, where they dropped through the hole in a water-worn rock known as the Tolmen. Rumour has it this is a good cure for arthritis – but probably only if you’ve been good.

Next they went soggily up to the Grey Wethers stone circle. Each woman would fall to her knees in front of one of the stones. They would pray for forgiveness (to whom or what the story doesn’t mention).

If nothing happened they could then assume they had been forgiven and purged of their transgressions could get up and stagger home. However, if a particular woman’s sins were just Too Bad, the stone in front of her would topple forward crushing her to death.

“And that,” added R.E.St L-G’s informant, with a twinkle in his eye, “is why so many of the stones was lying flat before they was set up again.”

No mention is made of what fickle and unfaithful husbands had to do. One suspects nothing probably.

Mentioned in the CPRE report of 1930 as the “Eddystone” at Musick-water.

The coat of arms of the Tremenhere family show three standing stones. The meaning of the name in Cornish being Tre= farm or home and Menhir= stone.
Why they should put three standing stones I am not sure.

Of “a field between Lilburn and Middleton, near Morpeth” a tale is told of a stone of “religious significance”, which was not to be moved, on pain of awakening it’s guardian demons.

Two local farm workers decided this was an indicator of buried treasure, and set about the stone with shovels. After a while, they began to think they were wasting their time, and tales of demons guarding the stone must be as false as those of treasure. Whereupon they were spooked by a slight movement beneath their newly dug pit. Despite this ominous sign, their greed encouraged them to keep digging.

Now the earth shuddered, and a monstrous creature, resembling a swan, flapped its wings and flew out of the pit, with a strange and hideous cry. The peasants fled to escape the evil creature, and the stone remains inviolate to this day.

This from ‘Myth and Magic of Northumbria’ (Coquet Editions, SandhillPress Ltd, 1992, ISBN 0 94098 27 1), but there’s a whopping discrepancy. Lilburn is at the other end of Northumberland, near Wooler. Up there there is another Middleton, Middleton Hall, and more or less ‘twixt the two, is the standing stone at Newton Mill themodernantiquarian.com/site/3329.
So maybe this tale relates to the stone near Wooler.

There is a legend of a great battle being fought on Broomhead Moor. The nearby Canyard Hills is said by some to mean “The Hills Of The Soldiers” There is also a valley near here called Dwarriden. Taken to mean “The Valley Of The Dwarves”. With the legend of the battle in mind, it could make sense of the Bar Dyke.

Dr J.P. Williams Freeman was told by a “native” in 1915 that the carvings(?) represented a man’s entrails and the holes were made so the stone could be moved with ropes “but the horses fell down dead”.
During an excavation in 1924 by H. St. George Grey, a shepherd said that the stone was called the “Devil’s Waistcoat”
In 1883 the Rev. Canon J.E. Jackson F.S.A said “It is traditionally called the stone of one Kinward, some ancient magnate who held his Hundred court here in the open air.....“.

Information from the Wilts Arch Mag Vol 43 1925-27.
With thanks to Martyn Henderson of the Wilts and Swindon Record Office.

Many Cornish tourist sites on the internet point out that the quoit was where King Arthur stopped for a bite to eat before his last battle. Perhaps he was in his larger-than-life giant guise and used it as a table.

Local folklore would have us believe that a local man murdered his grandson in a nearby cottage and then set fire to the building in order to hide the evidence. He was later captured in a nearby cave and hung on the downs above. The gibbet was constructed on top of the ancient burial mound where he was left to decompose then buried in the mound. Those amongst you brave enough should visit the mound at midnight, circling it twelve times before calling “Michael Morey” three times, after which his ghost should appear.
The true story is far more gruesome as he lured the boy to a local wood where he cut off his head with a billhook, then hacked off his arms and legs before stuffing the remains jnto some old saddle bags and concealing them in the undergrowth.He was later captured and taken for trial in Winchester where he was found guilty and hung. His body was returned to the island to be hung in chains as a deterrent to others. The gibbet post which was erected on the burial mound can supposedly still be seen in the local pub (the ‘Hare and Hounds’ at Downend) along with a skull, which for many years was said to be Michael Moreys, recent evidence suggests that it is more likely to belong to one of the original prehistoric burials.
Information was taken from"For Rooks and Ravens” by Kenneth S. Phillips

The stone was apparently “built in” to the wall of southwick church, suggesting it’s presence there before the church arrived. The stone was removed when the church was extended and moved to it’s current location. There is a hollow on the top of the stone which has been suggested to have been a flint polishing surface. (Holden, Eric : sarsen Stones, sussex archeological society Working Papers, Holden 12/13)

According to Barber & Williams (1989), legend says the stones were hurled into its present position by Samson from the peak of Carningli. This may be a folk-memory indicating that there was some deliberate orientation on Carningli, or some other ritual connection between the two sites; perhaps even a physical connection if it was the source of the stones.

This fort makes use of a natural triangle-shaped promontory of the east Quantocks. Today it is swathed in trees and doesn’t look very accessible. But it does come with some creative folklore (as recorded by Grinsell, in his ‘Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain’). His source was from 1857 and gave the following fairy-tale like details:
The fort is said to conceal an iron castle, which is guarded by gnomes and spirits (gnomes aren’t very British, surely?). They’re closely guarding their treasure – mounds of silver and gold. Now, they’re tricky and it’ll be impossible to even see them, let alone their treasure – unless you follow this prescription. You must dig for the iron gateway into the castle at noon, and be sure you dig in silence. I’m afraid there’s no guidance about what to do when the angry gnomes and spirits turn up. Still, some people must have had some luck – Grinsell also mentions that a nearby field is called ‘Moneyfield’ because of the coins that have supposedly been found there.
There is also supposed to be one of those mysterious underground passages in the hill – the EH record on MAGIC mentions an 1890 source saying that ‘a subterranean passage, 100 yards long, now
filled in, gave the occupants of the camp access to a spring of water on the side of the hill’.

On New Year’s morn this stone takes a quick nip from the Loch of Boardhouse.

Saint Magnus appears to come into the story sometime between the 16th century and 1690. Down in Caithness a story was told of the saint turning a dragon into the Stone Hone in the Watten parish, now reduced to rubble.
The first mention is that a man was shipwrecked and got home by jumping on the back of a monster, which he then turned into the stone, this “Gallus” promising to dedicate a church to St. Mary. Although the writer wrote of the stone being by a ‘temple’ near the shore I presume this simply means the kirk. Between this time and 1701 it seems to have been reduced from 6’x4’ to the present dimensions – perhaps this was to remove some pagan feature.
By Gallus we might be dealing with another word for a RC priest – perhaps Magnus’ name was attached to protect the stone at a time of religious upheaval. Of course as this saint was an earl of virtually kinglet status it could have been attached even earlier.

Canmore lists this as a ‘possible’ standing stone. It’s a very curious looking thing – its general size and shape suggest a prehistoric standing stone, but in 1821 someone saw fit to attach a round sandstone ball to the top of it with an iron bar. It’s 1.6m tall and is supposed to have been moved from wherever its original position was when someone wanted to widen the road.

In 1982 local folklore held that prior to the 19th century messings-about, newly wed couples strolled around it for good luck (in a sun-wise direction, I’d like to bet).

‘Dagon’ is actually the name of a Philistine god, who was half-man half-fish. But with a Scottish accent it no doubt derives from something much closer to home (assuming it’s not just the romantic invention of an antiquary).

When the tenants of Cotetown were asked about the stone in 1866 they said they remembered a cairn being around it (and admitted they’d actually nicked the stones to build Cotetown itself). There’s said to be no sign of the cairn now.

The stone is 6 1/2ft high, 2 1/2ft broad and a foot thick. It has a single cupmark on its eastern face and four on its west.

(info from the Aberdeenshire scheduled monument record).

If you strike the stone it is said you can hear it seven miles away in Portsoy. It’s said to ‘ring through the rocks’ according to the link, but that’s still pretty loud. What can it mean?

Also the stone is said to be haunted.

Geoffrey Russell suggested that the terracing around the Tor may once have been part of a sacred maze design, a design which may also have given rise to the Cretan Labyrinth legend. This belief was also held by Professor Philip Ratz, who excavated the Tor summit in the 1960s.

If this was the case, then the maze is supposed to end with a tunnel into an underground chamber. Several other legends suggest that the Tor is hollow, including Rhiannon’s post below.

For more information about the maze theory, see the link at the bottom of the page.

Hecateus of Abdera, a Greek writer writing in the 4th century BCE, wrote of a large island to the north of Gaul populated by a race called the Hyperboreans. Their chief god was Apollo, and they had a city dedicated to him, with a “remarkable round temple”.

The large island is thought to be Britain, and the round temple has previously been identified as Stonehenge. However, the Greek word translated as “round” is “sphairoeides” which actually means “spherical” and not round. Geoffrey Ashe in his “Mythology of the British Isles” suggests that the word in question has been misspelled at some point in the past, and originally may have been “speiroeides”, meaning “spiral”.

Ashe discusses the possibility of a “spiral temple” being a labirynth of some kind, or even rock art, but surely there’s a chance that Hecateus’ “remarkable round temple” – when “spiral” is substituted for “round” – could actually be Silbury Hill, with it’s spiral path?

The English Heritage record claims that the name Waulud is a corruption of Wayland; that is, the same chap who would shoe your horse at Wayland’s Smithy. I am tempted to say that Waulud’s Bank is where he kept all those silver coins, but that would be silly.

The record also mentions that ‘some early writers’ believed Waulud’s Bank to be a place called Lygeanburgh (the similarly sounding Limbury is nearby). This was a settlement supposedly captured by Cuthwulf, (Prince of Wessex?) in 571AD. Though it probably was unrelated in reality.

I assume the name is pronounced rather like ‘Warlord’? If any tales exist among local kids, this must surely influence the type of story told?

The Eildons are one of the supposed resting places of King Arthur and his Knights- a hidden cave or vault deep in the hills are where they sleep. Another tale relates to the hills as a gateway to the realm of the Faerie. Thomas the Rhymer, a 13th Century poet, is supposed to have been resting at the foot of these hills and met the Faerie Queen who took him into the heart of them;
‘He has gotten a coat of the even cloth,
And a pair of shoes of velvet green,
And till seven years were gane and past
True Thomas on earth was never seen.‘

One legend – quoted by Theo Brown in “Trojans in the West Country” – suggests that the London Stone was an altar set up by Brutus in honour of Diana. “So long as the stone of Brutus is safe, so London shall flourish.”