There is a tale that behind St Mary’s Church stood a stone circle and some of the stones are still to be found scattered on the field boundary. Another tale suggests the stone circle encircled the old village much like the stones at Avebury.
Incidentally there is a lovely sunken holloway (funeral path?) that runs from the bottom of Ashbury Hill (SU26708498) westwards around the back of St Mary’s Church (and over the old stone circle?).
The “Dragon”, or “Michael” Line passes through the earthen banks and on through Ashbury House. There is a tale that the house was deliberately built on the energy line for the “good masculine energies”.
... I am told that the Scar Races were held here in early summer. There is a stretch of ground more than a mile long and several yards wide which has at some period been cleared and roughly levelled like a terrace, and this is known as “the race-course.”
From an article by Miss Noble: “The Stone Circle on Knipe Scar”, in the Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society (v 7, 1907).
Behind the mist
That shifts and stirs, to lap itself again
Round the enduring patience of the crag
A sheep, somewhere amid old drifts of snow
Wails out its wet and solitary grief
And gets no answer but the moss’s drip....
(E H Young – Ysgolion Duon)
If those stones could speak – ‘Do not wish too loud.
They can, they do, they will. No voice is lost.
(Edwin Morgan, Ring of Brodgar – Sonnets from Scotland 1984)
Gone, gone are thy gates, Dinas Bran on the height!
Thy warders are blood-crows and ravens, I trow:
Now no one will wend from the field of the fight
To the fortress on high, save the raven and crow
Roger Cyffyn (17th Century, arr Borrow)
OTTERFORD 1 – 9a.
Robin Hood’s Butts. Nearly all the recorded folklore seems to relate to the South Group (6-9a).
“On the top of each barrow was a small excavation like a bowl....This hollow was sagaciously alleged by a neighbouring farmer as a proof that the popular tradition whence these monuments have derived their name was well founded. “Robin Hood and Little John undoubtedly used to throw their quoits from one to the other......for there is the mark made by pitching the quoits!” (English Traditional Lore (Gent’s Mag. Library, 1885) quoting from Vol.88(1818), ii, 306-7).
Llan Fernach, in the Cwmwd of Uwch Nefer, Cantref of Cemaes, Co. of Pembroke, South Wales. ... It is 13m. N.N.E. from Narberth. ...
Tradition says, that a very bloody battle was fought on the Common above the Church, when two Princes or Generals were slain, and buried near four large stones now standing, and which are visible at a great distance.
From ‘A topographical dictionary of the Dominion of Wales’ by Nicholas Carlisle (1811).
A large swamp called Leachfield, situate about a mile from Baslow, on the road from that village which leads to Sheffield, is said to be the site of a buried village. Some people say that this buried village once belonged to one man who saw it all go down into the swamp one day as he stood on a hill. I am told that near this fen or swamp are two stone circles and two rows of unmistakeable stone-built barrows.
In Glover’s Derbyshire (vol. ii. p. 86.) the following lines occur about this place:
When Leach-field was a market town,
Chesterfield was gorse and broom;
Now Chesterfield’s a market town,
Leach-field a marsh is grown.I have heard the last two lines repeated thus:
Now Leach-field it is sunken down
And Chesterfield’s a market town.
From ‘Household tales with other traditional remains’ by S O Addy (1895).
Just beyond West Kennet we enter the precincts of the great temple of Avebury – if temple it be; for on the left hand stand the remains of what was once a grand avenue of huge stones that led to the Great Circle. The land surrounding these stones being now under cultivation, it is not always possible to follow the line of the avenue to its goal, but at certain times it can be done, and then the visitor, before reaching the outer stone circle, passes through the vallum which encircles it.
Many of the Avebury villagers hold to the not uncommon belief that stones grow. To prove that this is so they point out some in this avenue which they say are eighteen inches higher now than when as boys they first observed them.
‘A history of the borough and town of Calne’ by A E W Marsh (1904).
This could be nearby?? Although as no-one has mentioned it, perhaps it isn’t any more.
No tradition exists regarding the history of this fragment [a sculptured stone that was in the church], nor of a boulder which is built into a cottage to the west of the parish kirk. The latter is covered with a number of cup-markings, which are locally called “the Devil’s Tackets.”
The OED says tackets are the hob-nails on the soles of boots. I don’t know where the kirk is / was though, still less the cottage.
(Quote from the Proceedings article linked to via Rockartuk’s link below).
The standing stone at Yevering in Glendale is a large column of prophyry planted upright in a field at the northern base of the hill called Yevering Bell. It is usually spoken of as indicating a battle, but is in reality prehistoric, there being another, now prostrate, among the old forts and tumuli on the eastern end of the lower slope of that hill. By the common people it is called the “Druid’s Lapfu’.” A female Druid’s apron string broke there, and the stone dropped out and remained in its present position. Another account is that one of the Druids, who are represented like the Pechs or Picts to have had very long arms, pitched it from the top of the Bell, and it sunk into the soil where it fell.
From the second volume of Denham Tracts printed by the Folklore Society in 1895.
Perhaps this doesn’t exist any more, or maybe there were never any cup marks in the first place. But it would be nice if a holy well with a waterfall had some rock art complete with folklore. Mm just imagine it.
{The elder Celtic race responsible for the carvings at Pitland Hills} perhaps worshipped around the “Devil’s Stone,” by the Birtley Holy Well, on which great isolated rock appear several “cups,” three of them being in a straight line, which can scarcely all have been formed by natural sub-aerial forces as geological ‘pot-holes’.
A very curious legend associates the worn cups and hollows upon the weathered and channelled summit of this great detached rock with the footprints of a Satanic personage, who is said to have leapt towards the further bank of the North Tyne river, about a mile distant, above Lee Hall. Miscalculating the distance, it is averred that in his descent he touched the projecting rocks in the river-bed, which bear much larger hollows upon them in the form of indubitable water-worn ‘pot-holes’, about 2 feet in depth by 1 foot in diameter, and then fell into the deepest abyss, according to popular belief, in the whole course of the North Tyne, where he was drowned! Hence the name by which it is still called – “The Leap-Crag Pool.”
From Archaeologia Aeliana v12 (1887).
archive.org/stream/archaeologiaaeli12sociuoft#page/n349
Here’s some folklorey information scattered through an article called ‘On the Duns of the Outer Hebrides’ by, curiously, ‘the late Captain F W L Thomas’, in Archaeologica Scotica volume 5 (1890).
Dun Charlobhaidh (pronounced Doon Karlovay), Uig, Lewis.”
... In Lewis they have a tradition that when these towers were being built a row of men reached from the dun to the shore, from whence the stones were passed from hand to hand; and that the towers being conical, they were built to such a height that only a single stone or flag was required to close the top.
... Donald Cam Macaulay and a famous blacksmith called the Gow Ban (Gobha Ban = Fair Smith) went to the Flannan Isles in summer; when the Morrisons of Ness, hearing they were away, came and seized all their cows that were on the Uig moor. None dare offer resistance to the Morrisons, but on the return of the Macaulays their wives met them on the beach to tell them of the foray. The Macaulays at once crossed Loch Roag in pursuit, and on nearing Dun Carloway they saw their cattle grazing there, and guessed from that the Morrisons were in the castle. The Macaulays rested that night on a hill close by, and early next morning Donald Cam and the Smith went out to reconnoitre.
Not far from the dun was a fire, over which rested a large kettle, wherein was a whole carcase of one of the cows plundered by the Morrisons; and the cook was asleep near it. Donald Cam told the Smith to hold the man till he took the meat out of the kettle, which he did. As soon as the beef was out of the kettle the Smith threw the cook into it. The beef was put into the Smith’s plaid, and carried to the Macaulays for their breakfast.
Donald Cam then stalks the sentry at the door of the dun and kills him. The Smith is directed to prevent escape by the door, while Donal Cam climbs up the walls by means of two dirks or daggers, using them as steps, changing them by turns until he got to the top of the uncouth edifice. This dun, upon a superstructure at the top, is closed by a large flag(?). When Donald Cam got to the top he told his men to pull heather and make it into large bundles; these he threw into the area of the dun, and, calling for fire, he sets light to the heather, and smothers and burns all the inmates.
Donald Cam then demolished Dun Carloway; – that old fabric, built in the fourth century by a giant, called Dearg Mac Nuaran. There are two similar duns in the parish of Uig, built and inhabited by two brothers of Dearg, named Kuoch Mac Nuaran and Tidd Mac Nuaran.
Before dinner we walked up to a place called the Kettles, a curious glen among the mountains at the back of Wooler, the scene of a battle in lang-lang syne. There are traces of an encampment still to be seen.
There is a big stone, too, called the King’s Chair, and here once upon a time a certain king – but who he was, or when it was, or where he lived, the deponent sayeth not – did sit and did watch his army fight another army in the valley below, but whose army the other army was, or why they fought, or who got the best of it, your depondent won’t undertake to say.
There, too, is a large stone, much worn on all sides, like a huge grindstone, for hereon the soldiers of either side came to sharpen their swords when they were blunted and notched with hacking and hewing – at least so somebody says, but deponent voucheth not for the truth of the same, further than that there are well-worn stones on the spot indicated.
On our return we stopped in an adjacent-glen, at the Fairy’s Well, commonly called the Pin Well, a small rough basin rudely fashioned from some half-dozen large granite stones, which contains bright clear water. The bottom is almost covered with crooked pins, in every state of preservation, from the new bright one of yesterday to the old rusted worn one of him or her now sleeping peacefully in the auld kirk-yard not far awa, and whose sons and daughters, or even grandchildren may be, have dropped in those later ones in their turn, to propitiate the good fairy of the spot: the belief, or kindly superstition of the place, being that if you utter a wish and drop into the well a crooked pin as an offering, the wish, by the aid of the fairy, will come to pass; and many a maid forlorn, and many a stout herd pining with hopeless love, have thrown a pin to the fairy and breathed the dearest wish of their hearts over that simple basin of crystal water in the dim twilight – half doubting, half hoping, the fulfilment of their wishes, in fear and trembling as the mist of the hills wreathed itself into fantastic and shadowy forms, and every stone, turf, or twig, assumed a fairy figure or shape to their superstitious and excited imaginations.
The practice is kept up, though the superstition, however, like all others, is dying out before the march of civilisation. Alas for the country that has no superstitions! And what superstition could stand before the apparition of a pork-pie hat or the march of crinoline?
I rather like Francis Francis’s style. He must have needed a sense of humour with that name. From his ‘By lake and river’ of 1874. I haven’t seen mention of the ‘grindstone’ before.
Resort to the Fairy Well is still a favourite pastime in holiday times with young people at Wooler. They express a secret wish and drop in a crooked pin. Hence it is also called the Pin and Wishing Well. The well is situated in a narrow hollow among the lower Cheviots which rise above the town, and is formed out of a natural spring of pure and very cool water originating among rocks at the base of a high platform, which has been occupied in the olden time by a British camp, now known as the Maiden Camp (the Maiden Castle of Wallis). From its connection with the camp, or in compliment to the spirit of the spring, its genuine name is said to be the “Maiden Well.” It is drained into an open ditch and is at present too shallow to admit of children being dipped into it. Nor do I know that this has ever been practised here, but the old inhabitant who communicated some of this information was familiar with the formula incidental to such applications for healing purposes at sacred springs. The applicant having cried “Hey, how!” dipped in the weakly child, and before departure left a piece of bread and cheese as an offering.
[...] Mr. George Tate, in a notice of the Wooler Pin Well, mentions having heard that a procession was formed to visit the well on the morning of Mayday. This may have been so, but on inquiry I could not find any tradition of such a circumstance.
From v2 of the Folklore Society’s publishing of the Denham Tracts (1895).
Maiden Camp must surely be The Kettles?
The RCAHMS record describes this site as a Bronze Age cairn about 1m high. Although the Denham Tracts mentions the following folklore in relation to ‘Pyper Knowes’ (as here ) I think the mention of Greenlaw parish must put it here as all the other stories are local, and any Pipers Knowes are a long way off, and knowing of other dodgy spelling examples...
“[The fairies] used to come out from an opening in the side of the knowe, all beautifully clad in green, and a piper plaing to them in the most enchanting strains.” They once attempted, but failed, to abstract the shepher’s wife of little Billy when in childbed; and they were detected loosening Langton House from its foundations in order to set it down in an extensive morass called Dogden Moss, in the parish of Greenlaw, but were scared by the utterance of the holy name.*
*Henderston’s Popular Rhymes of Berwickshire.
From volume 2 of the Folklore Society’s publishing of the Denham Tracts (1895).
This peculiar sloping fort is nearly ploughed out. The Fosterland Burn in the dip to its west.
The Berwickshire fairies were either a quiet lot or they lived among a too matter-of-fact population, for their memorial has almost vanished. The banks of Fosterland Burn, a contributory to a morass called Billy Mire in the Merse, “were,” says the late Mr. George Henderson, “a favourite haunt of the fairies in bygone days, and we once knew an old thresher or barnsman, David Donaldson by name, who, although he never saw any of those aerial beings, constantly maintained that he frequently heard their sweet music in the silence of the summer midnight by Fosterland Burn, by the banks of Ale Water, and on the broom-clad Pyper Knowes.”
I could be wrong but I think the latter knowe is likely to be here. It has its own folklore.
From the Folklore Society’s 1895 v2 of the Denham Tracts.
The Folklore Society’s volume 2 of the Denham Tracts (1895) has a lengthy description of a legend connected with this site. The priory and fort were in a tight loop of the river and so protected on three sides by the water and steep slopes.
The story begins: “Under a grassy swell, which a stranger may know by its being surrounded with a wooden railing, on the outside of Brinkburn Priory, tradition affirms there is a subterraneous passage, of which the entrance remains as yet a secret, leading to an apartment to which access is in like manner denied;[...] it is asserted that a hunter who had in some way offended one of the priors was along with his hounds, by the aid of enchantment, condemned to perpetual slumber in that mysterious abode.”
To try and summarise the rest, it seems that only once has anyone seen this underground mysteriousness. It was a shepherd and his dog – he noticed a door in the ground and walked down a dark flight of steps. Pushing through a door at the bottom there was a brightly lit room, and inside a sleeping hunter and another man, and lots of snoozing hounds. On a table were a horn and a sword, but when the shepherd picked these up, everyone started waking up. He ran to the rapidly closing door (a bit like Indiana Jones) and just made it outside, with ‘a terrible voice assailing his ears pouring maledictions on him for his temerity.’ His dog wasn’t quite so lucky and got nipped in half by the door slamming shut. Nasty.
The themes are a bit like the story connected with Sewingshield Crags – and various other places.
Further on in the Tracts Denham mentions that “Mr. Wilson says the fairies lie buried at Brinkburn. This mortality, unheard of elsewhere, must have been attributable to the potency of the bells.” The Bell Pool is a deep part of the river below, and you can read how the bells from the priory were variously accidentally lost or deliberately placed in that pool, and how ‘young swimmers of the neighbourhood’ still dive for them.
[Originally in the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle newspaper?] A. Scorer writes, “There is a cavern on Bewick Moor called the ‘Cateran’s Hole,’ which has not been fully explored, although tradition mentions an adventurer proceeding so far that he heard supernatural visitants dancing round the Hurlstone.”
John Slobbs, London, says, “I suppose this will be a version of a story I heard in the far north many years ago. It was of a cavern, somewhere, and nobody knew where it went to, or where it ended. An adventurous wight made up his mind to solve the difficulty and win renown in his own rustic circle.
He therefore took seven years’ meat and seven years’ candles, or seven days’ meat and seven days’ candles – I cannot say which exactly, but either will do – and started on his journey. And as happens in all such cases, he travelled and travelled and travelled. And he travelled until he had only one-half of his meat and one half of his candles left. Then he began to consider that if he travelled much further, and did not reach the end of his journey, or an opening to get out of some way, he would neither have meat nor candles to serve him on his road back, and consequently must die there and never more be heard of.
And so it happened that whilst he was studying what to do, and quite at a loss to know whether to return or proceed, he heard a voice saying –
‘Jee woah agyen
Turn back the stannin’ styen.‘
And he took it as a warning, and returned to his home and kindred.” The writer’s impression was that the cavern he had heard of was on Greenside Hill, near Glanton.J. Swinhoe, writing on the same subject, relates: “It was always believed that there was a subterraneous passage clear all the way from Cateran’s Hole, on Bewick Moor, to Hell’s Hole (more frequently called Hen’s Hole), a wild ravine at the foot of Cheviot Hill, and that in the olden, troublous times of Border warfare it was frequently used both for purposes of offence and defence, for concealment of person and property, and as the means of transporting rieving bands of hostile borderers from the one locality to the other.
An adventurer, our wight, made up his mind to test the truth of its existence, and took provisions and candles – whether for seven years or seven days, I cannot exactly tell either – but he travelled on and on until the consumption of half his stock suggested the necessity of returning; and just when he was wondering where he might be, and what he should do, he plainly heard overhead the voice of a ploughman, saying to his horses:
“Hup aboot and gee agyeen,
Roond aboot the Whirlstyen.” ”He states that an acquaintance recently explored the cavern on Bewick Moor, and it ended in something less than forty yards; in no simple obstruction, but solid rock.
There was a different tradition about the termini of this supposed underground passage in Horsley’s time. He says that “at Hebburn,” which is near Chillingham, and by the crags under which lie Hebburn Wood, behind which stretch wastes of peaty moor, connected with the moorlands that stretch to Bewick, “is a hole called Heytherrie Hole, which people imagine to be an entrance into a subterraneous passage, continued as far as Dunsdale on the west (north rather) side of Cheviot Hill, where there is another hole of the same kind called Dunsdale Hole.” *
*Materials for a History of Northumberland.It is told of “Eelin’s Hole,” which lies far up among the rocks on the east side of the Henhole Ravine, that a piper having once entered it to explore it, his music continued to be heard for half-way across the interval betweixt it and Cateran’s Hole, on Bewick Moor. Like other pipers in a similar predicament, his tune terminated in --
“I doubt, I doubt I’ll ne’er win out.”
Inspired by Hob’s photos of this strange place, I found this in the Folklore Society’s reprint of the Denham Tracts (vol. 2), 1895.
It’s possibly not worth getting excited over this barely discernable site, which the RCAHMS record says was only about 40cm high and obscured by all the trees on top of it, in 1989. But it’s part of the local Macbeth-related folklore so seems worth mentioning. Thomas Pennant dismissively says, “Near the great stone [the Seward Stone] is a small tumulus, called Duff’s-know; where some other commander is supposed to have fallen.”
From ‘A Tour In Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides, 1772’.
In a field on the other side of the house is another monument to a hero of that day, to the memory of the brave young Seward, who fell, slain on the spot by Macbeth. A stupendous stone marks the place; twelve feet high above ground, and eighteen feet and a half in girth in the thickest place. The quantity below the surface of the earth only two feet eight inches; the weight, on accurate computation, amounts to twenty tons; yet I have been assured that no stone of this species is to be found within twenty miles.
From ‘A Tour In Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides, 1772’ by Thomas Pennant (1776).
A little more on the spring:
Roche: St. Gundred’s.
Roche, north of St. Austell, famous for the Roche rocks, with St. Michael’s Chapel built amongst them. Once tenanted by a hermit; then by a leper, whose daughter waited on him, and drew water from a well, said to ebb and flow, called after her. To St. Gundred’s, near a group of cottages called Hollywell village, maidens would repair on Holy Thursday, to throw in pins and pebbles, and predict coming events by the sparkling of the bubbles which rise up. Lunatics were also immersed in it.
From ‘The legendary lore of the holy wells of England’ by Robert Hope (1893), scans of which are now available for your free perusal at the Open Library.
I think Robert Hope got confused about things (he copied them from books like I do). So perhaps the spring is actually some way further north – you can read about it here on the ADS website – a report by the Cornwall Environment Service.
More detail about the well right next to the fort, which Mr Hamhead mentions in his fieldnotes. You may notice that the story is similar to that attached to various standing stones.
On the western side of the beautiful valley through which flows the Trelawny River, and near Hobb’s Park, in the parish of Pelynt, Cornwall, is St. Nunn’s or St. Ninnie’s Well. Its position was, until very lately, to be discovered by the oak and bramble which grew upon its roof. It is entered by a doorway with a stone lintel, and overshadowed by an oak. [...] At the farther end of the floor is a round granite basin with a deeply moulded rim, and ornamented with a series of rings, each enclosing a cross or a ball. The water weeps into it from an opening at the back, and escapes again by a hole in the bottom. [...]
An old farmer (so runs the legend) once set his eyes upon the granite basin and coveted it, for it was no wrong in his eyes to convert the holy font to the base uses of a pigsty, and accordingly he drove his oxen and wain to the gateway above for the purpose of removing it. Taking his beasts to the entrance of the well, he essayed to drag the trough from its ancient bed. For a long time it resisted the efforts of the oxen, but at length they succeeded in starting it, and dragged it slowly up the hillside to where the wain was standing. Here, however it burst away from the chains which held it, and, rolling back again to the well, made a sharp turn and regained its old position, where it has remained ever since. Nor will anyone again attempt its removal, seeing that the farmer who was previously well-to-do in the world, never prospered from that day forward. Some people say, indeed, that retribution overtook him on the spot, the oxen falling dead, and the owner being struck lame and speechless.
[...] The people of the neighbourhood knew the well by the names St. Ninnie’s, St. Nun’s, and Piskies’ Well. [...] In the basin of the well may be found a great number of pins, thrown in by those who have visited it out of curiosity, or to avail themselves of the virtues of its waters. A writer, anxious to know what meaning the peasantry attach to this strange custom, on asking a man at work near the spot, was told that it was done “to get the goodwill of the Piskies,” who after the tribute of a pin not only ceased to mislead them, but rendered fortunate the operations of husbandry.
It has yet another name, St. Nonna’s, on the OS map. From ‘The legendary lore of the holy wells of England’ by Robert Hope (1893), now available for your free perusal at the Open Library.
Camden mentions the stones in his ‘Britannia’ of 1637:
Hard by, upon a steepe hill, howbeit betweene two others higher than it, toward the Sea, stood by report, the Castle of Wada a Saxon Duke, who in that confused Anarchy of the Northumbers, and massacre of Princes and Nobles, having combined with those that murdred King Ethered, gave battaile unto King Ardulph at Whalley in Lancashire: but with so disasterous successe, that after his owne power was discomfited and put to flight, himselfe was faine to flie: and afterwards by a languishing sicknesse ended his life; and heere within the hill betweene two entire and solid stones about seven foote high lieth entombed: which stones because they stand eleven foote asunder, the people doubt not to affirme, that hee was a mighty Giant.
F Ross’s 1892 ‘Legendary Yorkshire’ quotes John Leylande’s mention of the stones:
Leland says “Mongrave Castel standeth on a craggy hille, and on eche side of it is a hille far higher than that wheron the castel standeth. The north hille on the topp of it hath certain stones, commonly caul’d Wadda’s grave, whom the people there say to have bene a gigant and owner of Mongrave.”