Latest Folklore

Another for the list of Radnorshire-disputed-antiquity-stones I fear. From “The Ancient Stones of Wales” by Chris Barber and John Godfrey Williams:

“A standing stone in the centre of a field called Maes y Garreg on Pontycaragh farm (SO200791). It resembles a battered human face and is 5 feet high. It is marked as Standing Stone on Ordnance Survey map of 1947. R.C.A.M. No. 80 of Radnor. One local story is that the Devil threw the stone from his chair at Craig y Don near Knighton, Radnor, aiming it at Beguildy Church, but it fell short by half-a-mile and the stone is still supposed to bear Satan’s fingerprints.”

Coflein supposes the stone to be natural:

coflein.gov.uk/en/site/306395/details/OLD+STONE%3BPANT-Y-CAREGL%2C+STONE/

... the stupendous cleft in the rock between Swithamley and Warnford commonly call’d Lud-Church, which I found by measure 208 yards long, and at different places 30, 40, or 50. foot deep; the sides steeped and so hanging over, that it sometimes preserves Snow all the Summer, whereof they had signal proof at the Town of Leek on the 17 of July their Fair day, at which time of year a Wharnford Man brought a Sack of Snow thence, and poured it down at the Mercat Cross, telling the people that if any body wanted of that commodity, he could quickly help them to a 100 load on’t.

From chapter four of Robert Plot’s ‘Natural History of Staffordshire’ of 1686.

To come then forthwith to the subject in hand, the Natural History of the County of Stafford; the first thing I met with relating to the Heavens, and one of the first too that I heard of after I set to work in earnest, was a pretty rural observation, of late years made by some of the Inhabitants of the Town of Leek in the Moorelands, of the setting of the Sun in the Summer Solstice, near a Hill called the Cloud, about six miles distant, in the confines of Stafford-shire and Cheshire which appearing almost perpendicular on the Northern side, to such persons as are standing in Leek Church-yard, the Sun seems so nicely at that time of year to cut the Edg of it at setting, as in Tab. 1. Fig. 1. that notwithstanding what is taught by Astronomers, that the Sun whilst it occupies that Cardinal point, appears Stationary for some time without giving any sensible increase or decrease to the length of the days; they can plainly perceive by the help of this Hill, that no two days are equal, but that there is a sensible difference every day [...]

For when the Sun comes near the Solstice, the whole disk of it at first sets behind the Hill, after a while the Northern Limb first appears, and so every night gradually more, till at length the whole Diameter comes to set Northward of it, for about three nights; but the middle night of the three, very sensibly more remote, than the former or the following, when beginning its recess from the Tropic, it still continues more and more to be hidden every night, till at length it descends quite behind it again.

From Robert Plot’s ‘Natural History of Staffordshire’ of 1686 (hence all the italics.) More details of this peculiar phenomenon in the link below.

This also has the name of “Tuam-an-fhamaire”. Translated as the “Grave of the Giant”.

The Place Names Of West Aberdeenshire

Boece also states that legend holds that Queen Margaret, wife of Malcolm III built a chapel near the spring, but that it was dedicated to St. Catherine of Sienna, not Alexandria.

James IV made an offering in said chapel in 1504, and when James VI visited Scotland in 1617 he also visited it, commanding ornamental steps be built for better access to the waters, which Cromwell later destroyed.

ND 1567 3035
Near Ballachly Farm, about 5 miles distant, is the Ballachly Burial Grounds, where part of the adjoining land is known as Croit Trolla, or the Croft of Trolla. Trolla is another version of the name Trollhaena, the norse name for Triduana.

Some authors think the Orkneyinga Saga is talking of Croit Trolla as the resting place of Triduana’s bones in the story of King Harold’s blindness being cured (instead of the more well known, but far flung resting place at Restalrig).

In medieval times it was common for a single bone to have a home as a holy relic with healing powers away from the main grave site. Or for the story of such to spring up, in the case of made up saints, who were used over and over to obsfucate similar pagan customs in a variety of areas.

Triduana was one of the saints removed from the saints lists in the sixties because of the lack of evidence she actually existed as the christian nun of the stories.

scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/search_item/index.php?service=RCAHMS&id=8134 has more on Croit Trolla, as found in RCAHMS

Fair enough, this might not refer to this particular rock. In fact it’s true to say that it probably refers to some random rock on the steep slope of the Creigiau Eglwyseg (Eglwyseg Rocks) below. But it shows you what the rocks are like round here.

Thomas Morris happened to be returning home from Llangollen very late on one Saturday night in the middle of the summer, and by the time he reached near home the day had dawned, when he saw a number of the Tylwyth Teg with a dog walking about hither and thither on the declivity of the Eglwyseg Rocks, which hung threateningly overhead. When he had looked at them for some minutes, he directed his steps towards them; but as they saw him approaching they hid themselves, as he thought, behind a large stone. On reaching the spot, he found under the stone a hole by which they had made their way into their subterranean home.

Maybe midsummer had something to do with the sighting.
From ‘Celtic Folklore, Welsh and Manx’ by John Rhys (1901).

“The persistent tradition is that witches were executed here; this maybe a memory of the fact that a court did judge a witch at the stone. 1595 had a case from ‘This Court of ye Burgh of Kintore, holden at ye Cloven Stone’. In this instance the court acquitted two men of striking Isobel Cockie, on the self-defence grounds that she was ‘in ane distemper, and they were forced to put her out of doors’. This was at least a year before she was investigated for witchcraft.”

Extracts From The Record Books Of Kintore 1864

“A custom associated with the cairn in Cairnshee Wood (’cairnshee means cairn of the fairies’). Each midsummer’s eve herdsmen set a huge bonfire to exorcise evil spirits and ensure the safety and prosperity of their flocks. In 1787, in remembrance of the ceremony during his childhood, Aleander Hog donated money to ensure the ritual continued. The spectators came from all over and consumed bread, cheese and ale. The custom finally lapsed in the 1930s.”

Archibald Watt

The Highways and Byways Round Kincardine.

“Somewhere near Dinnet was the Kelpie Stone. Childless women passed through its 18 inch (46cm) hole to concieve. A noble lady performed the task to no avail; only when she repeated it in the same direction as the river flow did the charm work.”

MacPherson’s Primitive Beliefs.

“The Standing Stones of Strathbogie are two low stones at the rear of the Duke Of Richmond in The Square, are all that remain of a six-stone circle with a diameter of around 50 feet. The circle was clearly once a well-known landmark, as a court was held here in 1557 and in 1594 it was the rendezvous for the Earls of Argyll, Huntly and Errol before the Battle of Glenlivet. One stone bore a Pictish ‘horseshoe’ but this has now faded away.

The fountain, decorated with owls, is supposedly above a secret tunnel that leads to the castle; this is possibly a memory of the old well that once stood nearby.”

Mysterious Aberdeenshire – Geoff Holder

(BigSweetie of TMA gets mentioned in this book)

“Gallows Hill cairn is a substantial prehistoric mound re-used as a place of execution by the Gordons of Lesmoir. In 1651 Sir William Gordon of Lesmoir admitted that he had heard that a part of his home-farm was dedicated to the Goodman, and so it was not worked; ‘but he had a mind, by the assistance of God, to cause labour the same: Whereupon he was commended for his ingenuitie in declareing it, and exhorted to take paines shortly to have it laboured.”

Presbytery Book Of Strathbogie

“The old road that ran through this area was known as ‘Wormy Howe’ because it was created by a giant worm as it set out to do battle with a rival near Bennachie. Worms or wurms are a type of dragon found folklorically in Scotland, Northern England and Scandinavia; they are hugh serpents lacking legs and wings, but otherwise well equipped with traditional draconic attributes such as jaws filled with razor sharp teeth, poisonous or fiery breath, and avoracious appetite for human flesh. Sadly the legend doesn’t say if the two worms met, or what happened when they did. Presumably the shape of the henge prompted the belief that the worm had coiled up to have a nap here.‘

James Taylor “The Cabrach” (1914)

Holywell Brook and Rorrington Hill are just south of the fort.

Of the ‘Halliwell Wakes’ at Rorrington (a township in the parish of Chirbury) and of others in the same district, I am able, thanks to the kindness of Sir Offley Wakeman, to give a much fuller account, gleaned from the old folk of Rorrington and its neighbourhood, who attended the wake in their youth.

It was celebrated on Ascension Day at the ‘Halliwell’ or Holy Well on the hill-side at Rorrington Green. ‘Are you going to the Halliwells on Thursday?’ one neighbour would say to another as the time drew near. The well was adorned with a bower of green boughs, rushes, and flowers, and a Maypole was set up. The people ‘used to walk round the hill with fife, drum, and fiddle, dancing and frolicking as they went,’ and then fell to feasting at the well-side, finishing the evening by dancing to the music of fiddles. They threw pins into the well, an offering which one old man, a blacksmith at Hope, says was supposed to bring good luck to those who made it, and to preserve them from being bewitched: and they also drank some of the water. But the pure spring-water was not the only, or the chief, material of the feast! Soon after Chirbury Wakes (St. Michael’s) a barrel of ale was always brewed on Rorrington Green, which on the following Ascension Day was taken to the side of the Holy Well and there tapped. Cakes were of course eaten with the ale. They were round flat buns, from three to four inches across, sweetened, spiced, and marked with a cross. They were supposed to bring good luck if kept. Several famous makers of them are remembered, by whom they were sold to all comers, together with nuts and so forth. The wake is said to have been discontinued about 1832 or 1834, at the death of one Thomas Cleeton who used to ‘brew the drink’.

It sounds like something well worth reinstating. This is from volume 3 of Charlotte Burne’s ‘Shropshire Folk-lore’ of 1886.

The Titterstone Wake [..] was not held till the last Sunday in August – the end of harvest. It was customary there for the young men and young women to ascend the hill in separate parties, going by different routes and meeting at a recognised trysting-place, whence they proceeded to a spot known as Tea-kettle Alley, sheltered by tall blocks of basalt, where the elder women made tea with the water of the adjoining spring. Then the boys climbed the Giant’s Chair, and sat repeating a ditty which, alas! cannot be recovered, but which probably conveyed a challenge or defiance. Fights and similar contests were, as has been said, favourite features of the old-fashioned wakes, and we often meet with some ceremony of challenging all comers for the championship. Moreover, there was reported to have been a battle of the giants (battle = single combat) on the Titterstone.

From Charlotte S Burne’s article in ‘Memorials of Old Shropshire’ by Thomas Auden (1906).

Wrekin Wakes, held on the first Sunday in May, were distinguished by an ever-recurring contest between the colliers and the agricultural population for the possession of the hill. This is said to have gone on all day, reinforcements being called up when either side was worsted.

The rites still practised by visitors to the Wrekin doubtless formed part of the ceremonial of the ancient wakes. On the bare rock at the summit is a natural hollow, known as the Raven’s Bowl or the Cuckoo’s Cup, which is always full of water, supposed to be placed there as it were miraculously, for the use of the birds. Every visitor should taste this water, and, if a young girl ascending the hill for the first time, should then scramble down the steep face of the cliff and squeeze through a natural cleft in the rock called the Needle’s Eye, and believed to have been formed when the rocks were rent at the Crucifixion. Should she look back during the task, whe will never be married. Her lover should await her at the further side of the gap, where he may claim a kiss, or, in default of one, the forfeit of some article of clothing – a coloured article, such as a glove, a kerchief, or a ribbon, carefully explained the lady on whose authority the last detail is given.

I like that, the ‘carefully explained’ bit, it sounds like it’s so people didn’t get The Wrong Idea. That might be just me though.

As I recall the Needle’s Eye is a bit of a squeeze.

From Charlotte S Burne’s article in ‘Memorials of Old Shropshire’ by Thomas Auden (1906).

More on the Wakes here:
wellingtonunderthewrekin.co.uk/#/pleasure-seekers-in/4520042348

Wild Humphrey Kynaston, a younger son of the Kynastons of Myddle Castle, who was outlawed apparently for murder, possibly for debt also, in 1491, [took refuge in the cave in Nesscliff Hill] in the Marches beyond the reach of English law. Once when he had crossed the Severn the Sheriff’s officers followed him, and removed some of the planks from Montford Bridge to cut off his escape; but he put his faithful horse to the leap and landed safely on the further side, where the King’s writ did not run. The wonderful leap was long kept in memory by marks dug in the turf on Knockin Heath, and popular tradition now tells of “Kynaston’s Leap” over the Severn, from Nesscliff Hill to Ellesmere, or even to the top of the Breidden Hill.

From Charlotte S Burne’s article in ‘Memorials of Old Shropshire’ by Thomas Auden, 1906.

Standing in a field, near Ty’n-y-seler, is a large monolith or maenhir 8 feet high, 5 1/2 feet wide, and 3 feet thick. Miss Emily David, Maesgwyn, informed me that it is said in the neighbourhood this huge stone goes each Christmas morning before cockcrow to drink in the sea.

...

Mr. Evan John, of Ty’n-y-Seler, recently told me of a large stone lying on Margam Moors, and of the tradition in the neighbourhood about it, that Samson threw it from near the “Pound” at Margam, to where it lies, five-sixths of a mile away. I found it to be a maenhir lying on the ground, partly covered with earth and over-grown by a thorn-bush. Having regard to its position it may have had some relation to the maenhir at Ty’n-y-Seler, from which it stands north-west about one and an eighth mile, and half a mile outside of Kenfig Borough boundary to the north, in Margam Parish. The stone measures nine feet in length, six feet in width, and one foot in thickness, but a large flake of stone near had evidently been split off it, so that it was formerly much thicker. It probably weighed nearly four tons originally and must have been an imposing monument when upright. When the ditch was made near the stone, in the time of the monks, it was carried partly round it, and I have no doubt the digging of the ditch caused the fall of the stone.
This maenhir stood in a peculiar position, for at high-water of spring tides, before the first of the sea walls was constructed, it would be surrounded by the tidal waters.

From ‘The Buried City of Kenfig’ (ch. 8) by Thomas Gray (1909).

One would have hoped that the fairies might have protected the latter stone (it having its thorn bush and everything). But I fear that if it were north west of the Ty’n-y-Selar stone, it’s either in the reservoir or trampled by the railway or the steelworks. One can only hope against hope that it’s safe somewhere. They’re seemingly quite good directions. Maybe it’s possible to figure out where it ought to be /have been.

Incidentally I didn’t realise how tall the stone is? It’s quite hard to imagine from Hamish’s loving photographs.

Craig Gwrtheyrn (Vortigern’s Rock).

Craig Gwrtheyrn is in the neighbourhood of Pencader in Carmarthenshire. According to an old legend, the disreputable old British King Vortigern, built a castle here in the fifth century; but he and his castle were destroyed by fire from heaven. There is also a story that Owen Glyndwr sleeps in a cave here.

From ‘Folklore of West and Mid-Wales’ by J C Davies (1911).

Coflein says that there are at least nine caves in the rock. In about 1907 bones of two adults and a child, and a perforated horse tooth were found in the cave’s stalagmite deposits. Three human teeth were found in 1980. The record says “the remains are conventionally dated to the Upper Palaeolithic, the period before the end of the last Ice Age.”

In one part of the [castle] building a passage terminates in a flight of steps leading down to a dark subterranean cave of about 200, or perhaps, 250 feet long, and at the end of this passage or cave, there is a well which is still used as a “wishing well,” more especially by young people.

[The author met three young ladies down there, but they were about to turn back being a bit weedy, but he gallantly accompanied them on to the well:] Before we left the spot, each one of the three young ladies threw a bent pin into the well, wishing, I suppose that she might have her heart’s desire. We found many pins at the bottom of the well, which had been probably left there by young people given to the practice of amorous spells.

From ‘Folklore of West and Mid-Wales‘ by J C Davies (1911).

Merlin’s Hill, Abergwili.

The end or final fate of Merlin is surrounded by mysteries. A few years ago when I was staying n the neighbourhood of Carmarthen, Merlin’s Hill (Bryn Myrddin) was pointed out to me where the great magician still lives (so they say) in a cave in that hill, and held there in imprisonment by an artful woman who contrived his disappearance from among human beings. Moreover, it is added, that if you listen in the twilight, you will hear his groans, and also the clanking of the iron chains which hold him bound. Others say he is heard working in this underground prison.

From ‘Folklore of West and Mid-Wales’ by J C Davies (1911).

Folklore connecting the stones with the Fianna: I’m not sure which particular sites might be referred to but you may know specifically?

Here in S. Uist are places which we call ‘Sorrachd Choire Fhinn.‘ Up yonder on the hillside are four great stones upon which they set their great kettle, and there are plenty of other places of the same kind. (The square is made with four large flat stones on edge, the sides being set N.S.E.W., five feet by three, inside the oblong. Near this monument are several fallen menhir, tall standing stones.)

The standing stones which you may see in these islands we call Ord Mhaoraich or Ord Bharnaich, bait hammers or limpet hammers. People say that they used these to knock off limpets and pound shells, as we use stones now; but that I do not believe. They say that one of them threw one from the shore up to the hillside near the north end of South Uist, but that cannot be true.

From ‘The Fionn Saga’ by George Henderson, in ‘The Celtic Review’ July 15th 1905.

Weddings, Sex, Theatre, Contraception... 10 Best Uses for a Stone Circle

heritage-key.com/blogs/lyn/weddings-sex-theatre-contraception-10-best-uses-stone-circle
Submitted by Lyn on Wed, 12/09/2009 – 14:24

Geoff Holder is an extensively-published author with books that cover Earth mysteries, archaeology, witchcraft and a lot more. His books are an authoritative mix of extensive historical study combined with diligent field research. They are often geographically-based, with titles such as The Guide to Mysterious Glasgow and The Guide to the Mysterious Lake District.

He describes himself as a Fortean, which means he’s interested in all things strange and weird, even if they’re not true. Archaeology features large in his books, with a particular emphasis on stone circles, henges and other neolithic ritual and funerary sites. His most recent book is 101 Things To Do With A Stone Circle, which covers what people have believed about and done with stone circles and other megaliths over the past few centuries.

Here he selects his top 10 things to do with a stone circle.

1: Commemorate the Dead

Sometimes a society links its own honoured dead with the mythologised dead of the past, to bring together politics and patriotism in a sentimental tour-de-force. The ‘stone ship’ at Blomsholm, Sweden, is a spectacular ship-shaped monument built as an Iron Age cemetery. During the military campaigns of Karl XII (King of Sweden from 1697 to 1718), the nearby farm was used as a field hospital. The officers who died of their wounds were said to have been buried within the ship, thus equating the dead of Karl’s imperial wars (against Denmark-Norway, Russia and Saxony) with the ancient warriors of a glorious golden age.

2: Get Married

The Odin Stone was a tall monolith that once stood north of the famous Stones of Stenness circle on Orkney, and for centuries was the focus of a host of rituals, contracts and cures, all solemnised by the hole that pierced the stone.

If a couple clasped hands through the hole and swore to be faithful to each other, this ‘marriage’ was more potent than a church wedding. When an Orkney pirate was hanged in London his lover travelled to the gallows so she could touch his dead hand, thus releasing herself from the Oath of Odin they had pledged at the stone.

3: Contraception

Fertility stones are appropriately abundant; the Scottish stone called The Bhacain, however, may be the only contraceptive stone in the British Isles. In the 1800s, when local lasses were about to leave the Perthshire mountain valley of Glen Lyon for jobs in the Lowland fleshpots of Glasgow and Edinburgh, they would crawl under the arm of this low P-shaped standing stone; if they could do this successfully, they would be protected against pregnancy (although it is not clear for how long). I strongly suggest this should not be relied upon as a dependable form of birth control.

4: Medical Miracles

Men-An-Tol
Mên-an-Tol in Cornwall. Photo by DA GinjaNinja

A concern with health and the relief of pain is a universal constant within human experience, and one of the most common uses for stone circles in recent times was as places of healing. Children suffering from rickets and scrofula were passed naked through the huge hole in one of the stones at Mên-an-Tol in Cornwall.

The ‘cure’ also required that they be hauled along the grass three times towards the east. Adults suffering rheumatism, back pain or ague had to crawl through a total of nine times. It is not recorded if they had to be naked as well.

5: Make a Wish

Wishing at stones is an exchange process; you offer something, such as a coin, and the supernatural agency resident in the stones – whatever it might be – may grant the wish in return. At the dolmen called Kit’s Coty House in Kent, the ritual involved visiting at night under a full moon, placing a personal object on the capstone, and walking around the monument three times. After which the object would have disappeared, snatched by the invisible power, and the wish granted. This was regularly carried out until 1946, when local newspaper reports prompted the participants to desist for fear of being thought superstitious.

6: Sex and Fertility

There’s no evidence to suggest this visitor to Kerloas is a newlywed. Photo courtesy of Geoff Holder
In the 19th century, France was a hotbed of megalithic amour. Women hoping to conceive straddled the Pierre-de-Chantecoq stone while easy childbirth was assured by sliding down menhirs smeared with butter or honey.

In Brittany, girls danced round the phallic menhir of Plonéour-Lanvern, and newly-wed couples made surreptitious nocturnal visits to Kerloas, the tallest standing stone in Europe, where they rubbed their naked bellies on the stone. In Sweden, an attempt to avert a famine involved a virgin couple having sex and smearing semen and wheat grains into prehistoric cupmarks, all while the mayor, Lutheran minister and villagers looked on.

7: Dine Out On Top Of Stonehenge

In 1723, the pioneering antiquarian William Stukeley and his patron Lord Winchelsea climbed onto one of the Stonehenge trilithons. Despite the lintel being only 4.5m by 1.5m in size, Stukeley considered there was space enough for “a steady head and nimble heels to dance a minuet on”. More incredibly, he claimed his Lordship and he had “dined at the Place, and left their Tobacco Pipes upon it.” Sadly for the story the al fresco lunch is almost certainly a pipe-dream, invented by Stukeley in his old age to entertain his peers: “That Stukeley! Dined out on top of Stonehenge! What a fine fellow!”

8: Doctor Who and the Druids

The King’s Men (Rollright Stones), Oxfordshire
The Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire. Photo by Lucy Martin

In 1978, Doctor Who, in his Tom Baker guise, visited the Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire for the Stones of Blood episodes. After a run-in with some human-sacrificers at the British Institute of Druidic Studies, it transpires that three of the stones are malevolent silicon-based aliens, and the archaeologist’s research assistant is an immortal extraterrestrial criminal masquerading as a bloodthirsty Celtic goddess. The script crackles with subtle jokes – the Doctor mentions that he once met the 17th century antiquarian John Aubrey, who told the Time Lord he had linked stone circles with Druids just for a bit of a laugh.

9: Theatre in the Round

Medieval mystery plays, Civil War defences, Methodist meetings, political rallies, fêtes, the Cornish Gorsedd of Bards, wrestling matches, Home Guard training exercises, devilish illusions – St Piran’s Round in Cornwall has seen them all. This Iron Age/Romano-British fortified farmstead was reworked in the Middle Ages as a plen-an-gwary, an open-air theatre where pious travellers following the pilgrimage route of St Piran watched
When all else fails, build your own.
religious plays. Theatrical pieces are still performed here, often connected with the annual St Piran celebrations in March, held in nearby Perranporth. The large embanked open space is now cared for by the St Piran Trust, who have provided excellent interpretation.

10: Build Your Own Circle

Ever since the days of William Stukeley, it has been fashionable to have a megalith of one’s own. In recent years more stone circles have been built than at any time since the Bronze Age, and the number of modern circles hidden away in gardens and estates is both enormous and uncounted. You even find them in business parks, and there’s one at a service station on the M6. One of the joyful curiosities of modern circles is that, no matter how recent they are, people still treat them as special, even spiritual places. If you build them, they will come.

Who, that has not seen, but has heard of Roseberry Topping? – The pride of northern England – familiar as household words to a wide and wealthy district – a subject of enquiry and wonder unto all who have for the first time looked upon its isolated and lonely magnificence, its gigantic cone, like some eastern pyramid, now lit up, glowing suddenly as a huge furnace, now black and bare, its narrow peak shooting abruptly into the sky, the very image of solitude and desolation. No wonder that its neighbourhood is the deposit of many of those grotesque and fearful legends, arising out of, and connected with, the most ancient of our superstitions; and that the almost universally exploded belief in supernatural agency, witches, fays, and all their subsidiary marvels, should linger in these comparatively untraveled recesses, unquestioned and undenied.

The opening lines of The Witch of Roseberry Topping or the Haunted Ring.
Blackwood’s Magazine.
1835
Available via Google Books.

“The second ghost said to haunt Hermitage castle is that of Lord Soulis – ‘Bad Lord Soulis’ or ‘Terrible William’. Lord Soulis had a ghastly reputation indeed, for it was widely believed that he practised black magic and used the dungeons of the castle to hold young children from the surrounding area captive before incorporating them into his hideous rituals and eventually murdering them. People from the surrounding area gathered in force and stormed the castle taking him captive and binding him in chains. We are told that he was wrapped in lead and then thrown into a boiling cauldron to meet a horribly painful death.

Another version of the story of Terrible William says that he entered into a pact with the devil. He traded his soul in return for a licence to live however he pleased, indulging in whatever debaucheries took his fancy. Then, as he grew older and faced up to the inevitability of his approaching death, he panicked at the thought of the fiery furnaces of hell. It was in order to protect him from this fate that he was wrapped in lead and boiled by loyal subjects. This story seems even less credible than the first one.”

Scottish Ghosts.

by Lily Seafield.

(a reworking of Rhiannon’s post)