Latest Folklore

Stories abound of local people seeing spectral figures and moving lights around the stones at night, as well as hearing phantom singing. As a result, the stones are still treated with a healthy respect. And there is a belief that buildings which have been constructed from former standing stones are subject to a poltergeist-like manifestation known as “The Haunt”.

Stories abound eh – well I’ve not been able to find many about Avebury, so either this is an advertising ploy or some people better get typing.
From ‘Ghosts’ by Sian Evans (a book about National Trust properties), published 2006.

Maybe the 70s tv series ‘Children of the Stones’ is considerably more frightening than reality? I can recommend renting it – megalithic anoraky, 70s fashion and excruciating singing. There is a short clip on You Tube here:
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=e8tui_jUfWw

In the south-east part of the parish is a conical hill, called a law, on which, according to tradition, trials were held of old, and doom pronounced, and at times, perhaps, summarily executed. This little hill, of which the top is now covered with fir trees and furze, has given the name of Lawesk (now Louesk) to the adjoining farms, extending to several hundred acres.

p424 in the New Statistical Account of Scotland v12 (1845).
books.google.co.uk/books?id=MaMCAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA424

About the middle of Gigha is Dun Chifie, or Keefie’s Hill, which appears to have been a strong fortification. Keefie was the son of the King of Lochlin, and occupied this stronghold, where (according to tradition), he was slain by Diarmid, one of Fingal’s heroes, with whose wife he had run away.

p291 in ‘Glencreggan: Or, A Highland Home in Cantire’ by Cuthbert Bede (1861)
books.google.co.uk/books?id=TrQuAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA291

Lwyd, in the additions to ‘Camden’s Britannia’, informs us that in the year 1687 he had copied an inscription from a stone, called Bedh Porws, or Porus’s grave, near Lhech Idris.. the field is still called maes y bedd, or the field of the grave.

It is now chiefly covered with potatoes; and I cannot but think that the poor farmer, who cannot speak a word of English, hath merit with the antiquarian world, as the stone is placed very inconveniently in the centre of his present crop, nor would it be difficult at all to remove it.

Lwyd very truly states that Porius’s monument is to be found near Lhech Idrys. This name signifies Idrys’s stone, which is to be seen about a quarter of a mile to the south of Maes y bedd. It is a single upright stone of about five feet high, situated not far westward from a brook which runs through a valley opening many miles to the southward. At the end of this valley may be seen Cader Idrys in a clear day, which is the highest mountain of Merionethshire, and is supposed to signify Idrys’s chair.

Idrys was a giant formerly in this part of Wales, and the tradition is, that he kicked a stone from the top of Cader Idrys which fell where Lhech Idrys, or Idrys’s stone, is now to be found. Many such kicks by a giant would solve most of the difficulties with regard to Stonehenge.

I am, &c.
Daines Barrington.

A letter from 1770 to Mr Gough, collected in
‘Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century’ by J Nichols.
books.google.co.uk/books?id=TEcJAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA588

GARRACK ZANS – VILLAGE RITUAL STONES

Whilst scouring my lil’ collection of Cornish literature for any interesting references to visits, folklore &c, I found the following in William Bottrell’s “Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall (2nd series)“. referencing a tradition of meeting stones, known as Garrack Zans: it doesn’t have any proveable prehistory but looks damn likely to be a really late survivor of megalithic tradition, and thus very much of interest; brackets are mine.

“Within the memory of many persons now living, there was to be seen, in the town-places of many western villages, an unhewn table like stone called the Garrack Zans. This stone was the usual meeting place of the villagers, and regarded by them as public property. Old residents in Escols (Escalls, near Sennen) have often told me of one which stood near the centre of that hamlet on an open space...(this) they described as nearly round, about three feet high, and nine in diameter, with a level top. A bonfire was made on it and danced around at Mid-summer. When petty offences were committed by unknown persons, those who wished to prove their innocence, and to discover the guilty, were accustomed to light a furse-fire on the Garrick Zans: each person who assisted took a stick of fire from the pile, and those could extinguish the fire in their sticks, by spitting on them, were deemed innocent; if the injured handed a fire-stick to any persons, who failed to do so, they were declared guilty.
Most evening young persons, linked hand in hand, danced around the Garrack Zans, and many old folks passed around it nine times daily from some notion that it was lucky and good against withcraft.
The stone now known as Table-men was called the Garrack Zans by old people of Sennen.
If our traditions may be relied on, there was also in Treen a large one, around which a market was held in days of yore...
There was a Garrack Zans in Sowah (Ardensawah near St.Buryan) only a few years since, and one may still be seen in Roskestal, St. Levan.
Nothing seems to be known respecting their original use; yet the significant name, and a belief – that it is unlucky to remove them, denote that they were once regarded as sacred objects.”

Bottrell’s work first appeared in 1873, from tales collected by him in the quarter century preceding; thus the Garrack Zans was a central feature up until at least about 1800.
Questions arising;
1 – the etymology of the name? (Obviously Careg, Carrick in the first instance – but Zans?)
2 – Is the Table-men still extant in Sennen? I would imagine it to be in Churchtown rather than Cove...and indeed that in Roskestal, a small farmstead?

“I should not choose to walk the moor at night; but a neurotic modern would have had nothing to fear on that sunny September morning. Nevertheless, it was with a sensation, not entirely pleasant, of passing from the land of humans to the land of shades that I left the last farm behind and crossed the moor, near the barrow where the famous Tregeseal urn was found, now in the British Museum, in search of the Tregeseal stone circles – two circles seventy-five feet apart. In one, sixty-nine feet in diameter, eight stones are erect and five prostrate; in the other only two are standing, but three more may be found upright in the hedge.

The outlying landmarks or sighting-lines from the eastern Tregeseal circle, probably used by the astronomer priests, are, Sir Norman Lockyer suggests, the Longstone, a monolith ten feet high, on a hillside one and a half miles to the north-east, the apex of Carn Kenidzhek, barrows and holed stones.

He gives the following table as “the meanings of the various alignments”:-
Decl. N. Star
Apex of Carn...42d.33’0” Arcturus 2330B.C.
Barrow 800’ dist..40d.29’0” Arcturus 1970B.C.
Two Barrows 900’ dist. 25d. 20’21” Solstitial?
Holed Stones..23d. 2’20” Solstitial?
Longstone......16d.2’0” May Sun
Stone.............9d. 15’0” Pleiades 1270B.C.”

C. Lewis Hind – “Days in Cornwall” (1907)

“As far as I know there is only one other stone beside the Men-an-Tol through which one squeezes as a specific, this being the Tolven stone at the back of a farm in the Helford River area, sited on a ridgeway which is crossed by an ancient track to Helston. Here the result being insured being fertility, I feel certain that the prerequisite of nudity also applies. It is a rock pierced by a round hole through which one can just wriggle, the whole performance being plainly a birth symbol.”
Ithell Colquhoun – :The Living Stones of Cornwall” (1952)

The late Archdeacon Wilberforce, who was at that time Rector of Burton Agnes, had come over to make an archdiaconal inspection of the Church, when he met an old parishioner in the Church yard. The Archdeacon said to him,
” Well ! my good man, can you tell me anything about this wonderful stone ?
” Na, I can’t say as how I can,” was the answer.
“Why ! you’ve lived here a great many years, and surely you must know something about it,” said the Archdeacon.
” Na, I doint,” was the laconic reply.
“Well then if you don’t know anything about it and can’t tell me anything about it,” said the Archdeacon, ” you can tell me what they say about it.”
” Whoy ! yaas, I can tell you what they say about it,” was the information derived this time.
” Come then, my friend, let me hear what they do say about it,” said the Archdeacon.
” Well ! ” replied our Rudstonian friend,
” they says it was put up here to com-memorate a great vict’ry ‘tween Danes and Roman Cath-licks.”

Rudston A Sketch of its History and Antiquities
by
the Rev. P. Royston.
1873.

Taken from
Publications of the Folk-Lore Society
County Folk-Lore Vol VI
Examples of printed folk-lore concerning the East Riding of Yorkshire
Collected and edited by
Mrs Gutch

Roulston Scar, Hambleton Hills. In some parts the rock is perpendicular, and has the appearance of an irregularly built castle. The foreground of this for fifty or one hundred yards is covered with massive blocks of stone, evidently thrown off by some convulsion of nature. On the side of the rocky wall is a fissure opening into a small, narrow cavern, called the Devil’s parlour, from the common disposition to attribute what is at once gloomy and marvellous to infernal agency, especially when in any way connected with heathen worship, of which there are not wanting traditions in the immediate vicinity.
For instance, the vale below dividing Roulston Crag from Hood Hill is called ’ The Happy Valley’ but the intermediate distance is less auspiciously named ’ The Devil’s Leap! for which this reason is given by the village oracles. The Happy Valley was a famous retreat of the ancient Druids, who without molestation or disturbance had for centuries practised their incantations upon the poor deluded inhabitants.
When the first Christian missionaries visited Yorkshire, they sought out the hidden retreats of Druidism, and one of them had penetrated the Happy Valley to the no small dismay of the Druidical priest The ancient Britons listened patiently to the statements of the Christian missionary, weighed the evidences in their own minds, and were perplexed as to their future procedure. In this dilemma a conference was appointed, in which the advocates of Druidism and Christianity were to meet in public contest in order to decide which of the two systems had the best claim to their worship and submission. The meeting, as usual, was appointed in the open air, at the foot of Roulston Crag. The intellectual assailants met, and the devil, in the garb of a Druidical priest, came with the worshippers of Baal. The Evil One placed his foot on one of those mountain rocks, and being foiled in his arguments by the powerful reasoning of the missionary, flapped his brazen wings and fled across the valley with the stone adhering to his foot, the heat of which (they say) melted a hole in the top, until he came to the ridge of Hood Hill, where he dropped the massive block, leaving the missionary the undisputed master of the field. This account will of course be received as a legend, but it is a matter of fact that a large stone weighing from sixteen to twenty tons of the same rock as Roulston Scar, is deposited on the ridge of Hood Hill, bearing a mark on the top not unlike a large footprint.

Vallis Eboracensis : comprising the History and Antiquities of Easingwold and its Neighbourhood.
By Thomas Gill.
London 1852.

Blagged from
County Folk-Lore.
Publications of the Folk-lore Society
1899.

...I visited also the Maen Pol, a huge egg-shaped mass raised on end by a low platform in the middle of another farmyard. Once it was partnered by a monolith still taller: if you follow the muddy track uphill through the farm and beyond to a disused quarry, you can still see where the place where this phallic giant once stood. It used to be the centre of concourse for miles around; even when expedition had replaced pilgrimage and reverence had departed, wonder still remained and a kind of nostalgic affection. But avarice intervened – also, who knows? perhaps a perverse longing for the symbolic castration – and the quarry-face was scooped from under the monolith, which toppled forward over the precipice to be shattered at its base. I looked down with melancholy at the fragments still lying in the stained water of the quarry-tarn; grey heavens were weeping a drizzle as I retraced my steps down the track.
The two great stones were male and female when this place was a centre for that oldest of religions – the cult politely screened under the term ‘fertility rites’. But it comes from an age before utilitarian motives were required to justify sex, before puritanism had blighted primitive joy....

Ithell Colquhoun – “The Living Stones of Cornwall’ (1952)

(As usual when it comes to Ireland I am being a bit pathetic with pinning the stories to locations. But I hope the locations still exist).

.. Avowedly malignant ceremonies have been performed at two, if not three, places in East Clare. At Carnelly, near Clare Castle, at an unknown period remote even in 1840, “a black cock, without a white feather,” was offered to the Devil on the so-called “Druid’s Altar,” two fallen pillars near an earthen ring beside the avenue, --to avenge the sacrificer on an enemy, but in this case it brought an equivalent misfortune on the sacrificer himself.

The Duchess de Rovigo, an heiress of the last Stamer of Carnelly, used the story, combined with irrelevant family legends and pseudo-archaeology, in a poem dated 1839, but I obtained it, as given above, from a more reliable source, her mother, in 1875 and 1882, as well as from my brothers and sisters, who heard it in “the forties”.

When I was at the dolmen near the house at Maryfort in 1869, an old servant, Mrs. Eliza Ega (nee Armstrong), said to me, -- “Don’t play at that bad place where the dhrudes (druids), glory be to God! offered black cocks to the Devil!”

A Folklore Survey of County Clare (Continued)
Thos. J. Westropp
Folklore, Vol. 22, No. 1. (Mar. 31, 1911), pp. 49-60.

Adding on to the post below, I found this note of Burl’s.......

About three-quarters of a mile WSW of the Beekhampton roundabout on the south side of the road where the outline of the Roman road crosses the A4 there is an inconspicuous stone. It marks the place of a former gibbet.

Around 1837 the Royal Mail coach was held up by a gang of highwaymen and the driver. Henry Castles, murdered. The robbers made off towards Beckhampton but meeting a drunken labourer, Walter Leader, they stunned him and dumped him and a pistol alongside the wrecked coach and dead driver. Conclusions were quickly reached and Leader was condemned to death. On a misty December morning he was taken to the gallows where the crime had been committed and hanged. Minutes later a horseman arrived with a reprieve. One of the highwaymen had confessed. Leader was taken down and buried beneath a lonely tree nearby.

Burl, A., Prehistoric Avebury. Second Edition, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1979 Page 58

Maybe the ghost of Walter Leader has a thing about traffic.

An interesting trail of possible etymological corruption was noted by the Lamorna resident and surrealist painter Ithell Colqhuhoun in her “Living Stones of Cornwall” (1952)...

“Searching the Boskednan region for another circle called the ‘Nine Maidens’ as they all are, irrespective of the number of stones composing them, I asked some road-menders where it was.
“Ah, the Ni-Maen, ” answered one, and I wondered if these Cornish words had been corrupted...”

Hunt quotes O Halliwell’s ‘Rambles in Western Cornwall, by the Footsteps of the Giants’ – the giants were always entertaining themselves with ‘bob buttons’ and other ball games using rocks.

“Doubtlessly the Giant’s Chair on Trink Hill was frequently used during the progress of the game, nor is it improbable that the Giant’s Well was also in requisition. Here, then, were at hand opportunities for rest and refreshment--the circumstances of the various traditions agreeing well with, and, in fact, demonstrating the truth of each other.”

- at the Sacred Texts Archive
sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/prwe/prwe009.htm

Antequera or the ancient Antecaria, situated between the heights of the same name and the Guadiaro, contains a greater number of inhabitants than the last town. The Lovers’ Mountain (Pena de los Enamorados) rises in the vicinity; it has been celebrated by an act of heroism not unexampled in the history of Spain during the middle ages, or even in modern times.

A Christian knight had been taken prisoner by a Moorish prince; during his captivity he fell in love with the daughter of the infidel; resolved to celebrate their union in a Christian country, and at the foot of the altar, they had proceeded to the frontiers, when they were overtaken by the prince and his troops; they sought a hiding place int he caves of the mountain, but the enraged father ordered soldiers to seize the fugitives. His daughter remonstrated that she was a Christian, that she had married, and threatened to destroy herself if he approached; but the father was inexorable, adn the two lovers rushed headlong from the summit of a precipice. A cross indicates the place, and serves still to commemorate the event.

(this is in ‘Universal Geography’ by Conrad Malte-Brun (1831) – p115. It’s on Google Books. I’m sure there are other and better descriptions of the legend elsewhere. I think there is a Spanish folksong based on it, and Robert Southey (one time Poet Laureate) also wrote a poem based on it. In fact, if you read Spanish, you can read a Spanish description and the poem here:
google.co.uk/books?id=YSohAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA440

The ditches on Grindstone Law ‘are’ the entrenchments made and used during a battle on Duns Moor – an area on its southwest side. Naturally one of the combatants was called General Dun, “who gained a victory there against great odds”.

On the north east side of Grindstone Law (as far as I can make out),
“there formerly existed an upshot spring of considerable volume, called Hell’s-cothern (caldron). It was supposed to be unfathomable, and the boiling-like motion of its water was attributed to its connections with subterraneous fire.

“In association with this spot, the following story is extant: --Once upon a time, a team of oxen, yoked to a wain, were engaged on the top of the hill [the Law], when, from some unexplained cause, the beasts became unmanageable, and furiously dashed down the bank towards the Cothern. On passing over the brow of a declivity midway between the top and the bottom some accident brought the stang (pole) into violent collision with the ground, producing a deep laceration, from the bottom of which a well that yet remains first sprang up. Unarrested by this obstacle, onwards the oxen swept down the bank (the abrasion occasioned by their wild descent being still traceable in the course of the well strand) towards the infernal Cothern, in which oxen, wain, and driver sank for ever, the horns of the oxen alone excepted, which were shortly after cast out by the unusual surging of the fountain.

Such is the legend. About fifty years since the two landlords of the estates divided by the burn deepened its channel [..] the water which was wont to boil to its surface found a subterranean outlet to Denises-burn [..] Some there are who have seen the Cothern in its pristine state, and remember the awe which the story imparted to a sight of it..”

I do like this story, even if the language is ridiculously flowery. Bottomless springs, connections with the underworld, bulls..

I found in Mr William Coulson’s article in ‘Archaeologia Aeliana’ p106 (1861 -v5)
archive.org/stream/archaeologiaael01unkngoog#page/n116
- it’s well worth a read. At one point he squeezes into the cist inside the barrow on Grindstone Law (p 107) and fishes out some bones. It’s slightly mad.

The ‘Devil’s Causeway’ – a roman road – is another unearthly feature on this side of the hill.

Lowick. About three miles wast of the village is Renting Lynn. ... A cataract, 18 feet high, the sounds of which can be heard a distance of 200 yards . . . near this spot is a well, in which, according to an improbable tradition, King James of Scotland washed the blood off his hands after the battle of Flodden.

History, Topography, and Directory of Northumberland, Tyneside Division.
J. Bulmer
1887

Addleborough. Tradition tells of a giant who was once travelling with a chest of gold on his back from Skipton Castle to Pendragon ; while crossing Addleborough he felt weary, and his burden slipped, but recovering himself he cried
’ Spite of either God or man,
To Pendragon Castle thou shalt gang ! ‘
when it fell from his shoulders, sank into the earth, and the stones rose over it. There the chest remained, and still remains, only to be recovered by the fortunate mortal to whom the fairy may appear in the form of a hen or an ape. He has then but to stretch forth his arm, seize the chest, and drag it out, in silence if he can, at all events without swearing, or he will fail as did that unfortunate wight, who uttering an oath in the moment of success, lost his hold of the treasure, and saw the fairy no more as long as he lived.

A Month in Yorkshire.
By Walter WHITE.
London
1858.

Taken from
PUBLICATIONS OF THE FOLK-LORE SOCIETY
COUNTY FOLK-LORE
XLV/ 1899.

Roseberry. Towards the weste there stands a highe hill called Roseberry Toppinge, which is a marke to the seamen and an almanacke to the vale, for they have this ould ryme common,
’ When Roseberrye Toppinge weares a cappe
Let Cleveland then beware a clappe.‘
For indeed yt seldome hath a cloude on yt that some yll weather shortly followes yt not, when not farre from thence on a mountayne’s syde there are cloudes almoste contynually smoakinge, and therefore called the Divels Kettles, which notwithstandinge prognostycate neither good norbadde ; . . . yt hath somtymes had an hermitage on yt, and a small smith’s forge cut out of the rock, together with a clefte or cut in the rocke called St. Winifryd’s Needle, whither blynde devotyon led many a syllie soule, not without hazard of a breaknecke tumblinge caste, while they attempted to put themselves to a needlesse payne creepyng through that needle’s eye.

A Description of Cleveland in a letter addressed by H. Tr. to Sir T. Chaloner. [From the MS. Cotton. Julius F. VI., p. 431.] Printed in the Topographer and Genea-
logist, edited by John Gough Nichols. Vol. ii., pp. 405-430. London 1853.

Lifted from
PUBLICATIONS OF THE FOLK-LORE SOCIETY
COUNTY FOLK-LORE
XLV/ 1899.

I don’t know where this can refer to. Perhaps someone reading will know. The folklore is just what you’d expect for a prehistoric site.

Gentlemen – Some few years ago I was travelling on a coach between Chepstow and Abergavenny, when my attention was drawn to some large stones lying prostrate on the right hand side of the road, but on which side of the town of Usk I cannot now remember.

.. I found that in the eyes of the coachman, and also of the whole neighbourhood, they were considered rather as a lion, not on account of being Celtic remains, but because it had required the united force of the farm-horses of the neighbourhood to pull them down, and that they could not even then remove the disunited masses from the spot.

Thanks, Mr Richard GP Minty for your vagueness. Perhaps the stones have gone now anyway? But you never know, especially if they were that stubborn.

from ‘Archaeologia Cambrensis’ v II (1847), p 275.

The OS map shows a road called ‘Rhydyn Hill’ skirting Caer Estyn, so I can only assume that the springs are very close by, perhaps coming out from beneath the hillfort and down to the river below.

On Rhyddyn demesne, belonging to Sir Stephen Glynne, adjoining to the Alyn, are two springs, strongly impregnated with salt; which, in dry weather, used to be the great resort of pigeons to pick up the hardened particles. These were formerly used as remedy in scorbutic cases. The patients drank a quart or two in a day; and some boiled the water till half was wasted, before they took it. The effect was, purging, griping, and sickness at the stomach, which went off in a few days, and then produced a good appetite. Dr. Short gives an instance of a woman in a deplorable situation from a scurvy, who was perfectly restored by the use of these springs.

Tours in Wales, by Thomas Pennant (1810, v2 – p54): digitised at Google Books.

According to Tipp Libraries the “water that bubbles from it, allegedly, cannot be boiled. St. Berrihert’s Day is celebrated locally on the 18th February”

A very slightly different version is given by Archibald Geikie in his ‘The story of a boulder: or, gleanings from the note-book of a field geologist’ (1858 p149):

The top of Beinn na Cailleaich is flat and smooth, surmounted in the centre by a cairn. Tradition tells that beneath these stones there rest the bones of the nurse of a Norwegian princess. She had accompanied her mistress to “the misty hills of Skye,” and eventually died there. But the love of home continued strong with her to the end, for it was her last request that she might be buried on the top of Beinn na Cailleaich, that the clear northern breezes, coming fresh from the land of her childhood, might blow over her grave.

And in ‘the Gentleman’s Magazine’ for the first half of 1841, King Haco of Norway’s wife, or his nurse, is named specifically. As the article says, “this is a point, however, which, I suspect, we must leave the old ladies to settle between them.” I guess suffice to say that the hill hides an auld wife, and an important one – or at least one with Connexions.

The word is not pronounced the same as gipsy, a fortuneteller; the g, in this case, being sounded hard, as in gimblet.

The Gypseys are streams of water which burst through the unbroken ground in various parts of the Wolds, during the latter part of winter and the early part of spring, and at other periods after heavy rains, sometimes so copious as to fill a drain called the Gypsey-race, 12 feet wide, and 3 feet deep. The Gypseys sometimes flow during two or three months and then totally cease, leaving scarcely a mark to distinguish the place from which the water issued.

Hone, in his Table Book, tells us that the young people of North Burton had a custom in former times (in accordance, probably, with some traditionary custom of the Druids) of “going out to meet the Gypsey,” on her rise from the Wolds.

p492 of ‘History and topography of the city of York.. and the East Riding..’ by J J Sheahan and T Whellan. (v2, 1856).

A granite menhir at Holne, on the spurs of Dartmoor, was associated with a May festival known as “the Ram Feast”. Before daybreak the young men of the village would assemble at the pillar, and having run down a young ram from the moor, they fastened it to the stone, killed it and roasted it whole and undressed. At midday struggles took place for slices of the animal, and these collops were esteemed as mascots for the ensuing year. Dancing, wrestling and drinking prolonged the festival, which did not cease till midnight.

The Minor Traditions of British Mythology
Lewis Spence
1925