Latest Folklore

Known locally as the Scurriestone, it is believed to be the site which formerly marked the point where the road diverges to the ford of the Dee and the ford of the Muick – scairth a ford.

The name of this path (Sentiero Delle Anime – The Path of the Souls) comes from a local legend: the walk of the souls of the deads on this way from east to west, expecially in the night.

In Harold T. Wilkins’ book Mysteries Solved & Unsolved he suggests that the stones name is derived from Ambrosie petrie the annointed stone. Meanwhile Doreen Valiente states that another possible origin of the name is from the Latin word ambire meaning to go round and that the stone was danced around. Both authors mention the stone was a focus for witchcraft ceremonies in centuries past.

In 1652 George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement climbed Pendle Hill because he was ‘moved of the Lord‘ to do so. On its summit he saw a vision and had a mystical experience which inspired him in his religious mission.

“The local people call the spot Mother Goring; and at one time there was a custom of coming up to the Ring to see the sun rise on the morning of May Day. The Ring is said to be haunted by the apparition of a man on horseback....”

From:
An ABC of Witchcraft Past & Present.
Doreen Valiente

Author Herbie Brennan has a video on YouTube in which he describes his strange experience at Longstone Rath. I hope he wouldn’t mind me typing out an excerpt here.

It’s presented as the truth.. though of course it’ll be up to you whether you Believe.

uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EclmR01xSds

... I was living on a country estate in County Kildare in Ireland, and on the property was a Bronze Age monument.. an earthen ring, I suppose about 15 feet high, which surrounded a megalith which I suppose was 18 feet high. The whole place was known as Longstone Rath.

Along came Halloween of 1971. An old friend of mine asked if he could see this rath. It was well after 11 o’clock at night but we decided to go anyway. We were looking up at the standing stone and Jim suddenly said “I don’t think this place likes me.” The two of us turned, and we were walking together out of the ring fort, when suddenly, on top of the earthen ring, I saw a herd of tiny white horses. They were about 20, 25 in all, and none of them was any larger than a cocker spaniel. And they galloped along the top of the earthwork, and moved down out of sight down the other side. And the two of us ran out of the earthwork to see what had happened to these horses, and – they were gone.

Years later I was talking to [another] old friend.. who was a writer like myself, and very interested in mythology. I told him the story of the white horses, exactly as I’ve told it to you now, and he said “Oh, dear boy, don’t you know what those were?” And I said, “No, I’ve absolutely no idea, I just know that I saw them.” And he said, “They were fairy horses. They’re associated with the megaliths of Ireland, and you also find reports of them in Japan.”

There are two more Strange stories on his video too.

The beeting of the bounds around the parishes where this stone is the meeting point of used to be an occasion for fighting, and of moving the boundry stones (presumably not this one as it is huge!)

Mildren, James 1984 Dartmoor in the Old Days Cornwall, UK : Bossing Books

Ruth St. Leger-Gordon was told by an old Chagford man in 1960’s, who had heard it as a family story from past generations, the story of the “Faithless wives and fickle maidens”. Any such women where made to wash in Cranmere pool, then walk to Scorehill, run around three times, pass through the Tolman, walk to Grey Wethers, pery in front of the stones for forgiveness – if she is forgiven she walks home, if not the stone falls on her and squashes her, this being an explanation as to why so many have fallen!

St. Leger-Gordon, Ruth E.1994 The Witchcraft and Folklore of Dartmoor Newton Abbot, UK : Peninsular Press

The landowner told me that there was an old tale, not uncommon, of a giant throwing the large prostrate stone up on the hill from the cross near Killmeen creamery, a distance of about 2km. Not bad, across the wind.

In a valley to the east of Philpots Promontory Camp wanders the ghost of a Black Dog. A poacher in the area has said : “There’s one thing I dare not do; I’d be afear’d to walk through that girt valley below Big-On-Little after dark. It’s a terrible ellynge place and a gurt black ghost hound walks there o’nights”. Ellynge is a local Sussex word for eerie and the hound is called “Gytrack” which is very similar to the “Guytrash” found in the north of England. Ian Hannah notes that the valley “seems to have no name (except that it is locally known as the Grattack, after a dog)“.

This is taken from the Sussex Archaeology and Folklore website – Ian Hannah’s article on the camp is in SAC Vol. 73 (156-167) 1932.
sussexarch.org.uk/

We first visited the Manne-er-Hroek, the Montagne de la Fee, or de la
Femme, which bears in the marine charts the name of “Butte de Cesar,” for it was the fashion with antiquaries to attribute to Caesar and the Romans every Celtic monument, although bearing no resemblance whatever to any
work of these conquerors.

....

The guide who furnished the light and showed us the grotto is the widow of a Polish officer. She had a Scotch terrier, which she wanted us to accept. The legend of the mound is this:--A widow had the misfortune of losing her only solace, her son, compelled by law to embark for foreign lands. Years rolled by; he did not return. All said he was lost; but the heart of a mother hopes for ever, and the sad Armorican went every day to the point of Kerpenhir, whence she
surveyed the ocean, and searched the depths of the horizon with tearful eyes for the purple sail which was to bring joy and peace to her dwelling.

One day, when she was returning sad as usual to her desolate home, she was accosted by an old woman, who enquired the cause of her
troubles; and, on hearing them, advised her to heap a pile of stones, so that, mounting on the summit, she might see to a greater distance, and perhaps discern the long looked-for vessel. During the whole night the two women worked, and carried in their aprons the stones they gathered on the heath. In the morning their task was finished, and the Bretonne was scared to see the enormous heap that had been piled together; but the other quieted her fears, and helped her to climb to the top, whence soon the happy mother beheld the vessel of her son. The fairy, her assistant, had disappeared.

This story evidently bears a vague tradition of this tumulus having been raised by a woman, and of some maritime expedition made by him for whom it was probably destined. The name of fairy is attached in Brittany to everything--mountains, springs, grottoes, rocks; every accident in nature is explained by a fairy origin.

From ‘Brittany & Its Byways’ by Fanny Bury Palliser (1869), which you can read on Project Gutenberg.

“Dorsetshire Folk-Lore” by John Symonds Udal gives the quote Rhiannon has found, and then goes on:

“To this another correspondent in Notes and Queries (p.187) ‘C.W.’ – under which initials it is not difficult, I think, to recognize the well-known Dorset antiquary, the late Charles Warne, F.S.A – replies:
“Your correspondent ‘C.W.B.’ has not aluded to a mythological tradition connected with the ‘Giant’s Grave’ and the stones adjoining it, which is popular in the neigbourhood. It is to the following efect. Two giants standing on Norden (an adjacent hill) were once contending for the mastery as to which of them would hurl the farther, the direction being across the valley to Hanging Hill. He whose stone fell short was so mortified at the failure, that he died of vexation and was buried beneath the mound which has since been known as the ‘Giant’s Grave’. Myths of a similar kind are often found attached to blocks of erratic stone.“”

Every parish in Dorset (and many other parts of the country too) seems to have acquired its own version of this stone-hurling. Sometimes it is the Devil that does the chucking. It’s tempting to view this as medieval ignorance but perhaps each succesive trend in superstition going back to ye Stone Age has had its own version. But here it’s nice to see the two sites being woven together in one narrative.

A rough transation of the info board at the site ...

Legend has it that fairies were carrying rocks to nearby Mont St Michel and grew tired on the way, leaving these here instead.

In the pasture on the eastern bank of the Louther, In the way to Clifton, are several cairns, or carracks, as the Scotch call them, made of dry stones heaped together; also many other monuments of stones, three, four, five set upright together. They are generally by the country people said to be done by Michael Scot, a noted conjuror in their opinion, who was a monk of Holm abbey in Cumberland: they have a notion too that one Turquin, a giant, lived at Brougham castle; and there is a tower there, called Pagan tower; and Sir Lancelo de Lake lived at Mayborough, and flew him. Near Clifton is a famous spring, where the people go annually on May-day to drink, by custom beyond all remembrance: they hold it an earnest of good luck the ensuing year, to be there and drink of the water before sun-rise. This no doubt has been continued from British times, and is a remain of the great quarterly festival of the vernal equinox.

William Stukeley, Iter Boreale (northern tour of 1725) p45

Local tradition has it that the menhir was one of three that blocked the entry to Hell. A curious custom involved young girls who wished to marry within the year having to climb to the top and slide down ‘in their christening knickers’ ....

From the info board at the site.

The following folklore is taken from, Dolmens & menhirs de Provence by Daniel Riba (pub. Equilibres 1984). Riba credits the tale to J. P. Clebert.
The tale was written in french all I have done is is typed it into the babel fish translator. I could have paraphrased the tale but I have decided to paste the translation it its entirety as I believe that the babel fish adds its own poetry to the tale.

It was time a fairy which liked has to be disguised as a shepherdess. Thus disguised, it from went away, under the thickets of oragers and pomegranates, and played of the mandoline. The false shepherdess, thanks to her beauty and, fear-to be, has some magic melody, arrived has to inspire a great passion has a young genius of the vicinity which finishes by him requiring its hand. The fairy authorized to grant it to him, if it accepted, of its dimension, that the marriage was famous on a table formed of three stones of which she made him a meticulous portrait. The young man recognized in the description of his beloved the stones which, for ten centuries, had had descends the mountain of Frejus to pile up with the bottom of the close throat. Joining together all its supernaturelles forces, physics and, he arrived has to draw up the two first stones, but was unable of deplasser third. Overpower, it believed to have lost the hand of the shepherdess.
But the fairy, has which it was not indifferent, took it in pity. The following night, it approached the recalcitrant stone and traced around it a magic circle. At once, an immense flame rose and the heavy flagstone was transported on the two others. At dawn, the shepherdess magician supervised her lover to share her joy at the time or he would discover the wonder. But the young man understood only that it was a quite modest genius and that it was condemns has to die because it liked a fairy more skilful than him. He thus died, followed soon by the fairy, insane of despair.

Another legend makes following the preceding one and the end disputes some, since it holds for ensures that the fairy survived has his/her unhappy companion it disappears only in smoke, without to join the kingdom of the shades. During the clear nights of winter, it returns to contemplate its jewels, masks under the dolmen. A pure young girl who would see it then would be likely to receive in gift a handle of pearls or diamonds. For reaches the treasure, the fairy seizes the horizontal flagstone, then of only one gesture, it makes half-open the ground: it is which pile up of the trunks loads of gold and precious stones. But of all the young girls who came there to spend a sleepless night, none has borer never yet the secrecy of the dolmen. From where the legend concludes that the purity is a difficult way

A slightly different version:

Between Honiton and Sidmouth is an inn called The Hunter’s Lodge (more recently The Hare and Hounds), and opposite the house is a block of stone, over which hovers a gruesome mystery. It is said that in the dead of night the stone used to stir in its place, and roll heavily down into the valley, to drink at the source of the Sid, and, some say, to try to wash away its stain. Human blood has given it this power--the blood that gushed upon it when the witches slew their victims, for it was once a witches’ stone of sacrifice.

From ‘Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts’ by Rosalind Northcote (1898).

gutenberg.org/files/22485/22485-8.txt

Robin Hood was believed to possess supernatural powers. In the parish of Halifax is an immense stone or rock, supposed to be a Druidical monument, there called Robin Hood’s penny-stone, which he is said to have used to pitch with at a mark, for his amusement. There was likewise another of these stones of several tons weight, which the country people would say he threw off an adjoining hill with a spade, as he was digging.

From an 1832 Reader’s Digest-esque miscellany called ‘The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction’ by Reuben Percy and others – p205 (it’s on Google Books).

The river flowing from the Upper Lake divides St. Kevin’s Kitchen from the Rhefeart church: near the bank of the rivulet, a stone is shown, called the deer-stone. The origin of this denomination is derived from the following circumstance:
-- The wife of a peasant having expired in the pains of child-birth, the surviving infant was left destitute of its natural mode of nurture, nor could any equivalent substitute be procured. The disconsolate father applied to the revered spirit of St Kevin for relief, and was directed to attend at a certain hour every morning, near the Rhefeart church, at a stone having a little circular indenture in the top, into which a deer would regularly shed her milk, and leave it for the infant’s use: the little destitute is said to have been nourished by the milk procured at this stone, which is hence called the deer stone.

And there’s a little more stoney folklore nearby:

On the way to the Rhefeart church, another of the miracles wrought by the sainted Kevin is exhibited: – A number of large stones, extremely like loaves of bread, and possessing marks analogous to those made by the adhesion of loaves to each other in the oven, are scattered on the ground.

It is related that St. Kevin, having met a female bearing five loaves in a sack, and inquiring the contents of the sack, she answered that they were stones; for it being a time of scarcity, she feared to tell the truth; upon which the saint replied, “If they be not so already, I pray that for your perfidy they may become so;” when instantly five stones rolled out of the sack. These clumsy relics were preserved for many years in the Rhefeart church, but now lie at some distance from it down the valley.

From p127 of ‘A guide to the county of Wicklow’, by George Newenham Wright (1827) – you can read it at Google Books.

Numbers of Druidical stones (or, as some people say, in honour of Danish heroes) are scattered about Shap; they are different from the mother stone* (*Granite) of the neighbourhood, yet they seem too large to have been brought by art, and too careless on the surface to have formed there.

It is said that many of them were broken up to build Shap Abbey in 1158, which is, in its turn, dismantled to build paltry houses. Part of the steeple, with trees upon it that have withered with age, and cells under the once body of the abbey, are the only remains of this ruin: it has been shamefully dismantled. A fine stream runs near it, and the ground produces sweet grass, and hay that is all fragrance!

[..]

In our evening walk we passed a man who was driving his cart towards Bampton, and we asked him what names they called these stones* by, and how they came there? -- He stared, and asked “What dun yaw want t’kno for?” -- I dare say this answer was occasioned by evening fears, especially as he was to go by a barn that has always been the reputed haunt of ghosts, and which I believe is never passed in the day without a thought of them.

*“The Devil’s Stepping Stones” by the country people.

In Joseph Palmer’s “A fortnight’s ramble to the lakes in Westmoreland, Lancashire, and Cumberland” of 1792.

Bob Pyle’s Studdie might well be a ‘natural rock feature’ – it’s a large sandstone boulder – but it’s deemed worthy of Scheduled Monument status. A ‘studdie’ was a local word for an anvil, and Bob Pyle allegedly a blacksmith who lived in Rothbury in the 19th century*. It’s on the western slope of Simonside.

This is all mentioned on the Northumberland National Park website, which also suggests that the boulder could have had significance for those bringing animals up the holloway onto the hilltop. There are a number of Bronze Age cairns around here too.

But an anvil on a hill.. oh how I would like this to belong to someone a bit more legendary and supernatural, with lightning bouncing off it when they thump it. Maybe Mr Pyle was quite a legend. Or maybe he was just the latest person for the anvil to be associated with? (ever hopeful) And might not a duergar have a use for an anvil?

I wonder if it looks convincingly like an anvil?

(*certainly the Pyles were the blacksmithing family at one time, as you can see from this locally memorable mishap here. But it’s not Bob.
books.google.co.uk/books?id=dEEJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA155)

Further to Paulus’s fairy folklore:

Many years ago I took note of another example of these ‘footmarks,’ which was found in the parish of Carmyllie, also in Forfarshire. This was discovered in the course of making agricultural improvements some thirty-five years ago, on which occasion stone coffins or cists were got, and in one of these was a bronze (?) ring, of about three inches in diameter, now said to be lost.
Apart from the cists there was a rude boulder of about two tons weight; and upon the lower side of it, as my informant told me, was scooped the representation of a human foot. This too was associated with the elves; for the hillock upon which these discoveries were made was called the ‘fairies’ knowe;’ and tradition says that, but for a spirit that warned the workmen to suspend operations when they began to prepare for the foundations of the parish church, the church would have been built upon that spot!

books.google.co.uk/books?id=Gx0vAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA451
Mr Andrew Jervise’s observations, from the Journal of the Kilkenny and South East of Ireland Archaeological Society
p451 in ser. 2, v. 5 (1864-66).

Nigel Callaghan has some folklore about the area on his Taliesin website . He says that the Christian and prehistoric remains here are associated largely with Columb Cille (St. Columba), who’s said to have preached here in the 6th century.

“The turas is a pilgrimage performed annually on 9th June. Starting at midnight pilgrims (ideally bare-footed) walk round the fifteen stations of the turas, saying various prayers as they go. Whilst some of the stations are directly associated with Columb Cille (like his chapel), many of them are pre-Christian standing stones and tombs, which were ‘adapted’. This example is a standing stone, which has had beautiful celtic crosses inscribed on it.”

He mentions the well of St Columba which is surrounded by a massive cairn, allegedly “built from stones carried up by the pilgrims on the turas, who take a drink from the well before continuing on their journey.

In the ruined chapel there is the saint’s bed (a stone slab) – the clay beneath it has healing properties. There’s a wishing stone nearby, and also St Columba’s chair.

The church with the souterrain is just north of the earlier chapel.

Miss J M Dunn is another reliable witness who claims, on a clear moonlit night, to have seen a number of small human-like figures abroad; figures that seemed to hurry from one spot to another and then back again as though preparing for some festival or special occasion; figures that were plainly there one moment and gone the next [..] There have also been stories of phantom horsemen being seen in the vicinity of Avebury Circle, riding wildly over the ground on small horses with flowing manes.

p10 in ‘Ghosts of Wiltshire’ by Peter Underwood (1989).

History of Handfasting or hand-festa

Their are two theories as to the origins of this term;-
a) Originally a loan from Old Norse hand-festa “to strike a bargain by joining hands”.
b) “Handfasting” was the word used by the ancient Celts to describe their traditional trial-marriage ceremony, during which couples were literally bound together. The handfasting was a temporary agreement, that expired after a year and a day. However, it could be made permanent after that time, or continued for another year and a day, if both spouses agreed.

Either way, handfasting was suppressed following the Synod of Whitby in 664, when Celtic Christianity was abandoned for the Catholic Church. At The Council of Trent, 1545-1563, Roman Catholic marriage laws were changed in order for any marriage to require the presence of a priest.
This change did not extend to the regions affected by the Protestant Reformation, and in Scotland, marriage by consent remained in effect.
By the 18th century, the Kirk of Scotland no longer recognized marriages formed by mutual consent and subsequent sexual intercourse, even though the Scottish civil authorities did. This situation persisted until 1940, when Scottish marriage laws were reformed.

In the 18th century, well after the term handfasting had passed out of usage, there arose a popular myth that it referred to a sort of “trial marriage”. A.E. Anton, in Handfasting’ in Scotland (1958) finds that the first reference to such a “trial marriage” is by Thomas Pennant in his 1790 Tour in Scotland. This report had been taken at face value throughout the 19th century, and was perpetuated.
In 1820, Sir Walter Scott used the term to refer to a fictional sacred ritual that bound the couple in a form of temporary marriage for a year and a day. He wrote of it in his book “The Monastery:”
“When we are handfasted, as we term it, we are man and wife for a year and a day; that space gone by, each may choose another mate, or, at their pleasure, may call the priest to marry them for life; and this we call handfasting.”

During the 1995 movie, Braveheart, Mel Gibson, in the role of William Wallace, was handfasted with his girlfriend Murron. Handfasting has since grown in popularity among Cowans (non-Pagans), particularly those whose distant ancestors lived in ancient Celtic lands.

Modern usage, A Neopagan handfasting

In the present day, some Neopagans practice this ritual. The marriage vows taken may be for “a year and a day”, a lifetime, “for all of eternity” or “for as long as love shall last”, sometimes called “till the end of love”. Whether the ceremony is legal, or a private spiritual commitment, is up to the couple. Depending on the state where the handfasting is performed, and whether or not the officiate is a legally recognized minister, the ceremony itself may be legally binding, or couples may choose to make it legal by also having a civil ceremony.

Modern handfastings are performed for heterosexual or homosexual couples, as well as for larger groups in the case of polyamorous relationships. Currently, handfasting is a legal Pagan wedding ceremony in Scotland, but not in England, Wales or Ireland.
In 2000, William Mackie, a bishop of Celtic Church in Scotland, a small faith group that has attempted to recreate Celtic Christianity and promote the legalization of handfasting ceremonies said: “I plan to lobby MSPs to get it reinstated in its entirety: a lot of people make a mistake and, as long as there are no children involved, the one year opt-out would save a lot of hassle.”

As with many Neopagan rituals, some groups may use historically attested forms of the ceremony, striving to be as traditional as possible, while others may use only the basic idea of handfasting and largely create a new ceremony.

As many different traditions of Neopaganism use some variation on the handfasting ceremony, there is no universal ritual form that is followed, and the elements included are generally up to the couple being handfasted. In cases where the couple belong to a specific religious or cultural tradition, there may be a specific form of the ritual used by all or most members of that particular tradition. The couple may conduct the ceremony themselves or may have an officiant perform the ceremony. In some traditions, the couple may jump over a broom at the end of the ceremony. Some may instead leap over a small fire together. Today, some couples opt for a handfasting ceremony in place of, or incorporated into, their public wedding. As summer is the traditional time for handfastings, they are often held outdoors.

A corresponding divorce ceremony called a handparting is sometimes practiced, though this is also a modern innovation. In a wiccan handparting, the couple may jump backwards over the broom before parting hands.

As with more conventional marriage ceremonies, couples often exchange rings during a handfasting, symbolizing their commitment to each other. Many couples choose rings that reflect their spiritual and cultural traditions, while others choose plainer, more conventional wedding rings. These are sometimes referred to as a Claddagh ring. In Oliver Stone’s movie, The Doors, Jim Morrison and one of his girl friends, Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, are seen exchanging marriage vows and rings at a Celtic Pagan handfasting ceremony in June 1970.

I feel this covers the basics of Handfasting, with the principles, beliefs and symbolism.

If approved by the TMA eds, I shall post up some pictures of an actual Handfasting, as carried out on the Ring-Stone.

Chance