Latest Folklore

A special type of stone circle known as ‘recumbent’ is to be found in this part of the country (aka Aberdeenshire), distinguished by a massive block lying flat and flanked by two upright stones. A good example is found here, near Banchory-Devenick. It is said that a local man removed one of the stones to serve as a hearthstone, but was afterwards so disturbed by strange noises that he put it back where he found it. Similar stories are told of many stone circles, but a more unusual tale concerning Aquhorthies is given in an 1813 agricultural survey:

Close to the principle druidical circle there are two parks of extraordinary fertility, although much incumbered with large masses of stone interspersed through them. The ground of these parks has been long remarked for its productiveness; that in the time of the Picts, soil had been brought to these parks, all the way from Findon, a distance of two miles; and that this was done by ranging a line of men along the whole distance, who handed the earth from one to another

It was remarked in 1985 that the fields around the Aquhorthie circle still have some of the best soil in the area.

The Lore Of Scotland – A Guide To Scottish Legends

Westwood & Kingshill

The large Iron Age ring fort of Green Castle, otherwise known as Queen’s Castle or Finella’s Castle, is said to have been the site of an early medieval fortress, seat of the maomor or ‘great officer’ of the Mearns. Here, it was said, Kenneth III was assassinated towards the end of the tenth century. The antiquarian Robert Chambers, writing in 1827, gives an account of the murder drawn from the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century chronicles:

Having excited the implacable hatred of a powerful lady, named Fenella, by killing her son in a rebellion, she put on a courteous face, and invited him to her castle, where she had prepared a singular engine, for the purpose of putting him to death. Under pretence of amusing him with the architectural elegance of her mansion, she conducted him to the upper apartment of a tall tower, where, in the midst of splendid drapery and curious sculptures, she had planted a statue of brass, holding a golden apple. This apple, she told him, was designed as a present for his majesty, and she courteously invited him to take it from the hand of the image. No sooner had the king done this, then some machinery was set in motion, which, acting upon an ambuscade of crossbows behind the arras, caused a number of arrows to traverse the apartment, by one of which killed the king.

Fenella left the castle before the murder was discovered by the king’s attendants, who broke down the door and found their master weltering in his blood.

It was said that Fenella made for another castle of hers at a wild place on the coast called, Den-Fenella. Being pursued, she concealed herself amongst the branches of the trees, and as thick forest stretched all the way from one castle to the other, she was able to swing herself along for a distance of about ten miles, and pass over the very heads of her bewildered pursuers. Different accounts can be found of what happened to her after that: some say she was captured and burned, some that she was at last brought to bay near Lauriston Castle, where she chose death over captivity and threw herself from the crags onto the rocks beneath, while a third version holds that she escaped to Ireland.

The Lore Of Scotland – A Guide To Scottish Legends

Westwood & Kingshill

The Stone Of Morphie or Morphy is said to mark the grave of a Danish king, Camus, defeated in battle by Malcolm 2 (1005-1034). During a hurricane in the mid nineteenth century the stone fell down, and while it was being re-erected a skeleton was found beneath it, ‘of large dimensions.‘

J. C. Watt writing in 1914, surmises that the monolith once formed part of a circle, adducing the ‘immense number’ of stone circles and tombs found in the neighbourhood, and adds that ‘some years ago’ he sent a friend to photograph the stone, ‘but it was doing some duty at the core of a corn stack at the farm of Stone o’ Morphy’.

The stone is associated not only with the Danes but with the menacing Kelpie, said to have carried it. Archibald Watt notes in 1985 that ‘you can still see his fingerprint on the stone where he grasped it’, a motif more commonly associated with the Devil or a giant rather than the Kelpie, which usually appeared as a horse, although it could mainfest in human form. This Kelpie haunted the Ponage (or Poundage, or Pontage) Pool in the Esk, and was celebrated in a poem of 1826 by George Beattie

When ye hear the Kelpie howl,
Hie ye to the Pontage-pool;
There you’ll see the Deil himsel‘
Leadin’ on the hounds o’ Hell.

Here the Kelpie is described as a ‘stalwart monster, huge in size’;

Behind, a dragon’s tail he wore,
Twa bullock’s horns stack out before;
His legs were horn, wi joints o’ steel,
His body like a crocodile.

‘It is a well-authenticated fact’ note Beattie, ‘that, upon one occasion, when the Kelpie had appeared in the shape of a horse, he was laid hold of, and had a bridle, or halter, of a particular description, fastened on to his head. He was kept in thraldom for a considerable time, and drove the greater part of the stones for the building of the house of Morphie. Some sage person, acquainted with the particular disposition of the animal, or fiend, or whatever he maybe called, gave orders that at no time should the halter be removed, otherwise he would never more be seen.’ A maid-servant, however, happened to go into the stable and took pity on the beast, taking off the bridle and giving it some food. The Kelpie then laughed and immediately went through the back of the stable, but leaving no mark whatever on the wall. As he went he proclaimed:

O sairs my back, and sair my banes,
Leadin’ the Laird o’ Morphie’s stanes;
The Laird o’ Morphie canna thrive
As lang’s the Kelpie is alive.

The curse had its effect: no trace of Morphie Castle now survives.

The Lore Of Scotland – A Guide To Scottish Legends

Westwood & Kingshill

High Baltersan Cairn sits close to a piece of ground known as Foul Hole, described as ‘a portion of waste land or common at the intersection of two roads viz. [namely] Whithorn to Glasgow and Glenluce to Carty Port’. Overlooked by Shakeabodie Rock, which is said to have derived its name from ‘a legend connected with a place called the ‘Foul Hole’. It appears that the Foul Hole has been notorious among the ignorant and superstitious as a place much frequented by spectres, witches, warlocks etc, which caused passers by to shake or tremble from the proximity of the rock’.

Wigtownshire OS Name Books, 1845-1849

When the site was excavated it looked like a small green hill, but stone slabs breaking through the surface betrayed the cairn beneath, and also that at some time it had been disturbed. Local knowledge of the man-made constructions inside such seemingly natural mounds probably inspired the tradition that fairies lived in the ‘hollow hills’ and might still be encountered by those who entered. Similar to Bruan.

Reverend George Sutherland (1937)

In the parish of Latheron are the remains of a broch known as the fairy mound of Bruan. In 1937, the Reverend George Sutherland related that two men once passed the broch carrying a small keg of whisky for New Year celebrations. A door in the broch was open, and inside fairies were dancing to bagpipe music. One of the men wanted to join the dance and went in, but the other was more cautious and waited outside. A long time passed and the waiting man called to the other, who replied,

‘I have not got a dance yet.‘

After another while the man outside took his whisky and went on his way, expecting that his friend would be home by morning, but the next day he had still not returned, and the broch was closed, with no sign of a door, and no trace of the fairies. The man did not give up hope of his friend, however:

It was an old belief that in such a case the same scene would be enacted in the same place a year after, accordingly on the anniversary of that day he went to the Bruan Broch. It was open, the music and dancing were going on as before, and his friend was there. He put some iron article in the door to prevent the fairies from closing it, as they are powerless in the presence of iron or steel. He went to the open door and said to his friend, ‘Are you not coming home now?’ His friend replied, ‘I have not got a dance yet.‘

The man outside told his friend that he had been a year in the broch, and that it was surely time for him to come home now, but his friend did not believe that he had been more than an hour inside.

The man then made a rush at his friend, seized him, and dragged him out by sheer force, and they set out for home together. It was difficult for him to realise that his sojourn with the fairies was such a prolonged one, but the fact that his own child did not recognise him, together with other changes that had taken place, convinced him.

The man who wanted to dance was lucky to have a loyal friend – some who enter a fairy mound never come out again. This is one of many similar told throughout Britain of the supernatural lapse of time in fairyland.

Caithness has numerous antiquities traditionally said to be fairy dwellings, among them a horned cairn known as the Fairies’ Mound, or Cnoc Na H-uiseig

The Lore Of Scotland – A Guide To Scottish Legends

Westwood & Kingshill

Sir Donald MacKay (1591- 1649) led an eventful life. He was imprisoned for adultery and suspected of bigamy, led a regiment in the Thirty Years war (1618-48), and, having accused his lieutenant David Ramsey of treason, was challenged by him to single combat, though the duel was prevented by the intervention of Charles 1. In 1628 he was created first Lord Reay, and a contemporary said of him that in his own estates ‘he tyrannizes as if there were no law or king to putt order to his insolencies.‘

After his death he became remembered in folk legend as a magician, Donald Duibheal or Dubhuail MacKay, and many tales are told of his occult exploits, several of which are included by George Sutherland in his Folk-Lore Gleaning (1937). It was said that while serving as a soldier under Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (1594 – 1632) he had met the Devil and had been invited by him to attend the famous Black School Of Padua. In return for his teaching, the Devil required that the last student to leave at the end of the session should be forfeit to him as payment. As they filed out, it happened to be MacKay who was the last one out of the door and the Devil tried to grab him, but the canny MacKay turned around and pointed to his shadow, saying,

De’il tak’ the hindmost.‘

The Devil accordingly seized hold of the shadow and before he realised he had been tricked, MacKay himself had got safe away. The story is a local version of an international tale known as

Escape From The Black School

in which a student of the Black Arts deceives his satanic master, a ploy also attributed to Michael Scot, the Wizard of Balwearie and Sir Robert Gordon of The Round Square (Aberdeenshire)

When MacKay returned to the Reay country, people soon noticed that he cast no shadow and therefore must be uncanny. The Devil meanwhile had pursued his prey all the way from Italy, and they had a fisticuff fight which ended with MacKay giving the Devil a beating and getting from him a swarm of little demons or fairies who did all his work, ploughing his land, harvesting and threshing his corn and so forth. This was all very well, but when he had run out of jobs for them they still clamoured for employment, and MacKay found himself trying to occupy his troublesome assistants.

One idea that occurred to him was to get his imps to drain the loch on the east side of Clash Breac, Broubister, where a pot of gold was said to be hidden. They set with a will, but when the Cailleach of Clach Breac saw what was happening she shouted to the workers

‘In the name of God, what are you doing here?‘

At once the imps vanished, unable to hear mention of the sacred name. In fury, MacKay picked up a spade and split the Cailleach’s head with it.

The unfinished work is still to be seen in the form of a deep ravine extending for about two hundred feet in the direction of the loch, but not reaching it. On the north side of this ravine there is a standing stone with the top part of it cleft in twain. This is said to be the Cailleach with her cloven head now turned into stone.

Spoil from the canal dug by the imps was hung up to make the conspicuous steep sided hills of Creag Mhor and Creag Bheag (’big crag’ and ‘little crag’) south-east of Reay. As to the ‘loch on the east side of Clash Breac’, this probably refers to an area east of Cnoc Na Claise Brice, not a loch but a bog, a fact that could have been cited as ‘proof’ that the imps had partly succeeded in their drainage works. The petrified Cailleach is Clach Clais An Tuirc, a standing stone south-east of Loanscorribest.

The Cailleach, as a guardian of deer and other wild animals, may have resented the imps’ interference with the landscape. It is not explained, why she, a supernatural being, is able to speak the name of God when the imps cannot bear to hear it.

The Lore Of Scotland – A Guide To Scottish Legends

Westwood & Kingshill

Unique in Britain to Caithness and Sutherland are multiple rows of small standing stones set out in parallel lines or fan shapes, thought to date from the early Bronze Age. They are found sometimes in the neighbourhood of cairns, that is, burial sites, and may have had a religious function, though in the 1970s Professor Alexander Thom argued that they were used to calculate the movements of the moon.

Whatever their original purpose, such rows are still a fantastic sight. The best preserved run down the slopes of a low hill at Mid Clyth known as the Hill O’ Many Stanes. They are small flat stones wedged upright with their broad faces aligned in more than twenty rows, fanning out slightly towards the southern end. Today about 200 stones remain, but it is thought the pattern could have involved 600 or more.

A popular belief that gold was hidden beneath the stones may have led to the removal of stone, and others have been destroyed by agriculture or removed for building, but as in the case of stone circles, it was said to be dangerous to interfere with them. A farmer at Bruan is said to have removed one of the Mid Clyth stones to use as a lintel above the fireplace of a kiln. When the fire was lit, the stone burst into flames but remained mysteriously unconsumed. This made him so fearful that he hastily returned the stone to the place in the row that he had taken it from.

The Lore Of Scotland – A Guide To Scottish Legends

Westwood & Kingshill

Like other parts of the British Isles, but perhaps more especially the Highlands, Sutherland has its tales of the disparity between mortal and fairy time. Despite its title, Henry Bett’s English Myths and Traditions (1952) includes a characteristic story set near the south-east end of Loch Shin, He writes that a man returning from Lairg sat down to rest on the Hill of Durcha, near an opening in the ground:

He heard sounds of merriment from below, and went in. He was not seen again, and another man who was in his company was accused of making away with him. He asked for a year and a day’s grace, and solemnly promised he would vindicate himself by then. He watched the opening in the hillside, and finally saw his companion come out with a troop of fairies. All of them were dancing. The man who had been accused seized his friend and held him. The rescued man said peevishly, ‘Why could you not let me finish the reel, Sandy?’ He could not believe that he had been with the fairies for a twelvemonth until he had reached home, and seen his wife with a child in her arms a year old.

The man’s holding on to his friend when he came out of the hill is not a throwaway detail it may seem: this was the traditional way to redeem someone from the fairies, used for instance by Sandy Harg of New Abbey (Dumfries & Galloway) to rescue his wife. Other stories of the supernatural lapse in time are set at Bruan Broch, Maiden Castle (Central & Perthshire), and at Tomnahurich (Southern Highlands).

The ‘hill of Durcha’ was clearly a fairy mound in which the fairies had their dwelling. Often these were ancient cairns, but which of the many prehistoric sites around Lairg this one may have been is open to question. As well as brochs, stone circles, hut circles, and odd mounds, the parish contains numerous cairns and chambered cairns, any one of which might qualify as a fairy dwelling.

The Lore Of Scotland – A Guide To Scottish Legends

Westwood & Kingshill

Even after he had escaped from the Black School at Padua, as told at CREAG MHOR and CREAG BHEAG, Donald Duibheal MacKay was still pursued by his old master. One day MacKay went to explore the great Smoo Cave, a huge limestone cavern near the north coast, south-east of Durness – but the Devil got news of his intentions and was waiting for him there. Some say MacKay fled, leaving his horse’s footmarks by the cave’s entrance. In Otta Swire’s 1963 account, however, MacKay had reached the second cavern when his dog, who had raced ahead of him into the third and innermost chamber, came back

‘howling and hairless‘

warning MacKay who he could expect to see if he went further. Just at this moment, dawn broke and the sound of cockcrow was heard. The Devil and the three witches who were there with him realised their time on earth was up, blew holes inn the roof, and escaped: this is said to be the origin of the holes through which the Smoo Burn runs into the caverns.

The unfortunate dog’s expereience that of the piper’s hound at CLACH-THOLL (Argyllshire & Islands), whose master set out to explore a subterranean passage and was never seen again. in many such stories the dogs alone escape but with all their hair singed off, a sure sign of a fiery diabolical encounter. It is interesting here the Devil, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father is dismissed from the world by:

the bird of dawning,

the cock announcing the end of the night. Nor is this the only Shakespearean echo sounded: the ‘three witches’ accompanying the Devil are probably an addition with literary inspiration.

The Lore Of Scotland – A Guide To Scottish Legends

Westwood & Kingshill

Rock-cut chamber tombs are reasonably common in the Mediterranean, but the only one to be found in Scotland is to be found on Hoy. The massive sandstone block was carved out about 4,000 years ago, forming a space that has been said to look like a bedroom with a hole on top. The legend in the late sixteenth century was that a giant was imprisoned here by another and gnawed his way out through the roof, though when Martin Martin visited the site around a 100 years later he heard the tradition that a giant couple had found shelter there. His description was most domestic:

....at one of the ends within this Stone there is a cut out Bed and Pillow, capable of two Persons to lie in: At the other opposite end, there is a void space cut out resembling a Bed, and above both of these there is a large Hole, which is suppos’d was a vent for Smoak.

Considered as a worked stone it is immense, and the obvious labour involved in cutting it must have suggested giant strength. As accommodation however, the Dwarfie Stane would hardly be comfortable for any but a very small giant and his wife, especially if she was pregnant as suggested by the hollowing of her side of the bed. John Brand, writing in 1703, doubts the tale that a giant couple ‘had this stone for their Castle’:

I would rather think, seeing it could not accomodate any of a Gigantick stature, that it might be for the use of some Dwarf, as the Name seems to import, or it being remote from any House might be the retired Cell of some Melancholick Hermite.

A number of travellers from at least the eighteenth century onward have added graffiti to the tomb, inside and out. One name is that of the well-known antiquary Hugh Miller, and another of ‘a Persian gentleman’, Guilemus Mounsey, who apparently slept a couple of nights in the stone in 1850, and have the Hoy locals a fright when he appeared from inside in his flowing eastern robes.

Sir Walter Scott probably visited in August 1814 and refers to the site in The Pirate (1821):

The lonely shepherd avoids the place, for at sunrise, high noon, or sunset, the mis-shapen form of the necromantic owner may sometimes still be sitting by the Dwarfie Stone.

The ‘necromantic owner’ is named as Trolld, ‘a dwarf famous in the northern sagas’. By this Scott means a troll, an ogre-like being that figures prominently in Scandinavian legend, but which has mutated in Orkney and Shetland lore as a trow or trowie, much closer to a fairy.

The Lore Of Scotland – A Guide To Scottish Legends

Westwood & Kingshill

Maes Howe or Maeshowe is among the finest chambered tombs in Europe, dating from around 2700 BCE. It was said to be inhabited by a creature known as a Hogboy, but human beings too left their mark on the site. When it was excavated in 1861, the archaeologists found they were not the first on the scene: Vikings had broken, about 700 years earlier, and left graffiti on the walls. The presence of the twelfth-century vandals is recorded in twenty-four runic inscriptions, two of which refer to ‘Jorsalafara‘ – literally, ‘Jerusalem-farers‘, or crusaders.

The sort of things prople write on walls hasn’t changed all that much over the centuries.

Thorny bedded; Helgi writes it‘

-perhaps the tomb, macabre though it might seem, was where the locals did their courting, or perhaps the men were thinking of happier times:

Ingigerd is the most beautiful of women‘,

says one inscription.

Also carved here is a picture of an animal usually interpreted as a dragon, and some of the writings relate to buried treasure.. the poem Beowulf tells of a hoard guarded by a dragon in a barrow containing a secret passage, and it has been suggested that on entering Maes Howe the Vikings drew the dragon and wrote the runes because they were vividly reminded of the episode. There may, however, have been some factual element: one of the inscriptions states that the treasure was concealed north-west of the barrow, and in 1858 a cache of Viking silver ornaments was found at Sandwick, some way north from Maes Howe.

Particularly interesting is an inscription in large, even runes, informing us that these were cut,

‘with the axe which belonged to Gaukr Trandilsson in the South of Iceland’.

The carver does not add his name, but, Hermann Palsson of Edinburgh University has used centuries old Icelandic poetry to establish his identity:

he was Thorhallr Asgrimsson, named in the Orkneyinga Saga as captain of the ship that brought Earl Rognvaldr Kali back from the crusade to Orkney late in 1153, and great-great-great-grandson of Asgrimr Ellitha-Grimsson, named in Njals Saga as the slayer of Gaukt Trandilsson. The axe of the victim was kept as an heirloom by the killer’s family for six generations, around 200 years, and was brought to Orkney by a direct descendant of Asgrimr.

The tracing of its history is an astounding example of archaeological and scholarly detective work.

The Lore Of Scotland – A Guide To Scottish Legends

Westwood & Kingshill

Several eighteenth- and nineteenth- century sources describe ceremonies performed at the Ring Of Brodgar and the Stones Of Stenness. On the first day of the New Year, young people of the neighbourhood used to meet at the Kirk of Stenness, taking enough food with them to last four or five days. Pairs of lovers would then leave the rest of the party and go to the Stones Of Stenness, known as the Temple Of The Moon, where women would pray to Odin that he would enable them to perform the promises they made to the men; after that the couples would go to the Temple Of the Sun (the Ring Of Brodgar) where the men made similar prayers. They would then go the Stone of Odin, a standing stone with a round hole in it through which the couples would clasp hands and plight their troth,

‘a pledge of love which to them was as sacred as a marriage vow’.

The Archaeologia Scotica (1792) records the case of a young man who had got a girl pregnant then deserted her:

The young man was then called before the session; the elders were particularly severe. Being asked by the minister the cause of so much rigour, they answered, you do not know what a bad man this is; he has broke the promise of Odin, they put him in mind of the Stone at Stenhouse with the round hole in it; and added, that it was customary, when promises were made, for the contracting parties to join hands through this hole, and the promises made were called the promises of Odin.

It was further said that a child passed through the hole when young would never shake with palsy in old age. When visiting the stone it was customary to leave an offering of bread, cheese, a piece of cloth, or a pebble.

The Ring Of Brodgar and Stones Of Stenness can still be seen, although many of the stones have fallen and are embedded in the ground. The Stone Of Odin, however, was removed in around 1814 by a farmer, not a native of Orkney, who was annoyed by the number of visitors coming to see it. He is said to have used the stone to build a cow-house, and although no supernatural punishment is reported to have followed, two unsuccessful attempts were made by aggrieved neighbours to set fire to his property.

The Lore Of Scotland – A Guide To The Legends Of Scotland

Westwood & Kingshill

The Cave Of Raitts, a little way off the main road near Lynchat, is a horseshoe-shaped and roofed with large slabs of stone, and is sometimes claimed to be an Old Pechts (Picts) House. The semi-subterranean low-roofed souterrains or earth-houses, probably once used for storage, are often popularly identified as having belonged to the Pechts or Picts, sometimes equated with fairies.

The structure may look low from the outside, but as its other name An Uaimh Mhor (The Great Cave) implies, it is actually quite ample, and another tradition more suitable to its size is that it was built by giants. According to Alexander MacBain, writing in 1922:

The women carried the excavated stuff in their aprons and threw it in the Spey, while the men brought the stones, large and small, on their shoulders from neighbouring hills. All was finished by morning, and the inhabitants knew not what had taken place.

The Lore Of Scotland – A Guide To Scottish Legends

Westwood & Kingshill

A little way east of Inverness are three circular chambered cairns of an unusual type, each surrounded by a stone kerb and a ring of standing stones. While the passages of most chambered tombs in Scotland face approximately east or south-east, those at Clava face south-west towards the mid-winter sunset, an alignment which may have had symbolic significance.

Although archaeological evidence dates them back to the third millennium BCE, tradition connects the tombs with a later period. They have been said to mark the burial place of the family of the sixth-century Pictish king Brude, and Otta Swire suggests in The Highlands And Their Legends (1963) that this theory may have been inspired by the digging up of a gold rod during drainage operations near the site. She does not mention when this discovery was made, but in any case the area had pre-existing associations with King Brude, whose castle is said to have been at nearby Craig Phadrig. Brude himself was one of St. Columbas‘ most important converts to Christianity, and was reburied on Iona, sacred to the saint.

The Lore Of Scotland – a Guide To Scottish Legends

Westwood & Kingshill

A short way south-west of Dundreggan, before the A997 bends and crosses the River Moriston, there is a cairn said to have been built by visiting pilgrims who added to it stone by stone. They came to honour the memory of the itinerant Presbyterian preacher Findlay Munro, who was preaching here in 1827. His text was Amos 4:12, which catalogues the punishments visited on Israel for oppression and idolatry and threatens worse to come: ‘Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will do this prepare to meet they God, O Israel.’ In Munro’s sermon, ‘Israel’ could easily be understood to stand for the Episcopalians in Scotland, and behind them the English government.

Some local boys, possibly Catholics, challenged his words and called him a liar, to which he answered, ‘As proof that I am telling the truth, my footprints will forever bear witness on this very ground on which I stand on.’ Just as he said, on the spot where he had stood his footprints were left indelibly in the ground. It became custom for visitors to stand in the marks, and people claimed that the hair stood up on the back of your neck when you did so. Janet Ford, in Footprints in Stone (2004), reports that the prints were vandalised in the 1990s, but her latest information was that they were becoming visible again.

The Lore Of Scotland – A Guide To Scottish Legends

Westwood & Kingshill

Below Craid Phadrie is the detached hill called Tomnahurich, or the Watchman’s Hill, some of the fields adjoining being called Balliefearie, or the Watchman’s Town, and which, besides being thus a “ward hill,” was also celebrated in the olden time, according to local belief, as the favourite and chief resort in the north of the tiny race of fairies, and was further used by grosser mortals as a great moat, or gathering hill, on various occasions of public importance. The magistrates of Inverness used also in ancient times to patronise horse-races run round its base.

Page 13 in volume 14 of the Statistical Accounts of Scotland (1845).

With Easter, the Feast of the Resurrection, the period of abstinence and self-denial is brought to an end. The interrupted pleasures of life are taken up once more, this time in the pleasant setting of spring. On Easter Day itself, the celebrations of the ordinary people began at (or before) sunrise, when in many districts crowds climbed to the summit of a nearby mountain to see the sun ‘dancing’ in honour of the Resurrection of Christ.

The Rev. John Williams, Glanmor (1811-91) remembered the inhabitants of Llangollen, Denbighshire, ascending Dinas Bran on Easter Day to greet the rising sun with three somersaults, a peculiar variation on this custom {From Bye-gones, 11th December 1895}. In other districts it was usual to take a basin of water in order to see the reflection of the sun dancing on the horizon. It is almost certain that behind this observance was the widespread belief that Christ rose from the dead at dawn on Easter Day; while, further removed from medieval practice, there lurks the hint of an earlier, pagan rite. The custom is also recorded in many English counties and in the Isle of Man and Ireland.

p84 in ‘Welsh Folk Customs’ by T.M. Owen (1959).

It is unclear why the two cairns were built together, but local folklore provides its own interpretations. One tale is that one of the mounds is the burial place of a great chief who owned the surrounding land. Each summer he went on a raiding mission with his men, bringing back gold, cattle and slaves. One summer he did not return when expected, but in the autumn the ships sailed slowly into the bay. The body of the chief was carried ashore on his men’s shields to be buried in a huge grave, while in the bay below, his galley was ritually set alight.

Another legend holds that the mounds are built on the site of the last battle between the MacDonalds and the MacLeods, two rival clans in Skye. A thick mist descended during the fighting, resulting in carnage so complete that only women and old men were left to bury the dead. All that could be done was to make two piles of bodies, one for each clan, and cover them with stones.

In ‘Prehistoric Scotland’ by Ann MacSween and Mick Sharp (1989).

Some ancient forts, mostly from the Iron Age, had ramparts constructed from a double wall of stone with layers of wood and rubble sandwiched between. If the timber were set on fire as it might during an enemy attack, certain types of stone melted and fused other stones together. The great lumps of of heated, cooled, and solidified rock have patches that glitter like glass, giving rise to the term ‘vitrified’ forts.

Folklorists used to speculate that these were the origin of the glass castles of tradition. David MacRitchie, in 1891, wrote:

when one hears some wild story of a dreaded giant or ogre living in a castle surrounded with glass‘,

one knows, that such a castle could not have existed, but that the real glass castles may have been vitrified forts. He cites the example of a famous glass castle said to stand on Tor Inis or Tory Island off the north coast of Ireland, but as castles of glass often appear in fairy tales in places where no vitrified forts exist, this seems no longer a workable proposition, however tempting such a rationalisation may appear.

Craig Phadrig, a wooded hill west of Inverness, is crowned by a vitrified fort. Radio-carbon dating suggests that its ramparts were originally built in the fifth or fourth century BCE, although they may have been strengthened around 500-600CE. It has been proposed that Bridei or Brude, King Of Picts (c.555-84), lived here, as it is recorded that he had a royal palace near the River Ness. There is a King Brude Road on the way here from Inverness.

Brude was visited by St. Columba, who wanted permission to continue his work of Christian conversion, but the saint and his companions were refused entry. Then says Columba’s biographer Adomnan (627-704), Columba made the sign of the cross on the great doors, knocked and laid his hands on them and immediately the bolts shot back of their own accord. Brude is supposed to have been converted by this miracle, and he and his retinue in the fort were all baptised.

A local tradition said that this baptism took place at the foot of a fir tree growing at the centre of the fort. In 1963, Otta Swire noted:

This tree was still growing, one of the finest and largest Scotch firs that I ever saw, when Craig Phadrig was sold to the Forestry Commission in the 1920’s and much strong feeling was aroused by their decision to fell it as part of a clearance scheme.

The Lore Of Scotland – A Guide To Scottish Legends

Westwood and Kingshill

The Cradle Stone.

Serving as a link with the distant past, and once known to every boy and girl in Crieff, the Cradle Stone lies on the south-east shoulder of the Knock. This massive stone, believed to be of Druidical origin, at one time weighed 30 tons and had a circumference of 80 feet, but it has been suggested that during a thunderstorm it was struck by lightning and split in two.

IN days gone by the Cradle Stone was regarded with suspicion by the natives, and it was even suggested that a treasure of great value lay hidden underneath. The story is told how a simple-minded youth named James McLaren, who lived at Barnkittock, was convinced by a few wags of the immense wealth the Stone concealed. One night they persuaded him to excavate beneath the boulder, and while thus engaged the miscreants, who were secretly assembled nearby, set off a number of fireworks bursting around him. Trembling like a leaf and paralysed with fear, the demented youth jumped from the trench he had dug, dashed down the hill and never stopped running until he reached his home at Barnkittock.

A story once told to the children of Crieff by their parents was that they all originated from the interior of the Cradle Stone. (This, perhaps is the reason it acquired such a fascinating name!) Such an enchanting fairy-tale, however, has long since been refuted and it would be a very talented person indeed who could convince the modern child that he or she came from the inner recesses of the Cradle Stone. In fact, I wonder how many children today know where to find it?

Viewed from the Indicator, one of the most magnificent panoramas in the country lies open to the visitor. Extending from the Sidlaw Hills in the east, it includes the full range of the Ochils in the south, and away to the west can be seen Ben Ledi and Ben Voirlich and beyond the twin peaks of Ben More and Stobinian. And to complete this comprehensive picture, the first range of the Grampians outline the northern horizon. On a plateau at the end of the road leading to the “View of Monzie,” once stood the “Wishing Tree.” Very little is known of this legendary tree, which stood in absolute isolation at one of the highest points of the Knock. In days not so very long ago it became the object of veneration by the maidens of Crieff imbued with the spirit of romance, who would secretly reveal their innermost thoughts in the ardent hope that their longed-for “wish” would be speedily granted.

From ‘The Knock of Crieff and its Environs’ by J.B. Paterson, in the Strathearn Herald, 7th August 1965.

Local gardener finds ancient landmark.

Mystified by the appearance of a stone pillar protruding slightly through the earth as he was preparing a new layout for the lawn in front of the premises, Mr C.J. H. Lucy, of Teddington Cross Hands Garage, consulted an old ordnance map and realised he had made a discovery. When the earth around the column was removed to a depth of six feet – as yet it is not known how far the pillar is still further embedded – it was seen that the stone was 56 inches in circumference at the top and 70 inches lower down, and was deeply pitted with holes indicating that it may have borne projecting signs at an earlier date.

According to the map, it is named “Tibble Stone,” and Mr D.W. Herdman, curator of the Cheltenham Museum and Art Gallery, who has made a careful examination, states that local folklore records that a giant at the back of Dixton Hill is said to have thrown this huge stone towards the Severn at Tewkesbury. His foot slipped, says the legend, and the mark remains on the side of Dixton Hill, the stone falling at Teddington Cross Hands.

Mr Herdman told the “Chronicle”: “Mr Lucy is very anxious that the discovery should be dealt with sympathetically and I have suggested to him that the stone should be kept exactly in situ and raised so that it may stand prominently in the centre of what is to become the lawn in front of his garage.”

[...] On reference to Bryant’s Map of Gloucestershire, published in 1824, the theory [of the stone as boundary-stone] is confirmed as the stone is at the boundary of Tibaldstone Hundred.

From the Cheltenham Chronicle, 17th April 1948.

Why does this look much bigger than the existing stone (if it does?)?

About one mile south of the town of Barrhead is Duncarnock Hill which was once the site of an Iron Age fort. The hill, which is nearly 700 feet high and precipitous on three sides, is shrouded in legend. According to local folk-lore, it and the nearby Neilston Pad were formed when two prehistoric giants scooped up huge handfuls of earth and threw them at each other. The Craigie, as the mighty mound is sometimes known, is also reputed to have been the site of human sacrifices offered by the Druid priests of the Iron Age Celts to their nature gods.

In an article about the Glanderston Dam disaster in 1842 in the Paisley Daily Express, 11th December 1989.

How Thetford Got Its Hill.

It requires no inventive novelist to provide Thetford and its neighbourhood with ghostly company. According to legend indeed, this spot early made its acquaintance with beings of the other world, for local folk-lore (a field amazingly neglected by many investigators), has it that the Devil presented us with Castle Hill, cleaning his spade at Thetford after digging Fendyke, near Weeting.

The writer of this article was one day amazed to be accosted in King Street by an old countryman who, without a smile, asked to be directed to “where the Devil scraped his spade!” A blank look of interrogation brought forth the fact that the Castle Hill was the object of the old fellow’s search, and he was sent happily on his way to gaze upon what he firmly believed to be literally a diabolical addition to local scenery.

Another legend attaching to the hill, and associating it with the devil, is that his Most Satanic Majesty at midnight on All Hallow E’en (the eve of All Saints Day), is wont to ride furiously round the hill twelve times on a white horse. Many motorists have thought that one-way gyratory traffic was the invention of the devil!

In the Bury Free Press, 11th June 1932.

A comeback to ward off the gremlins.

(Story: Neil Churchman)

Superstitious managers at Hinkley Point Nuclear power station are hoping a 2 1/2 foot pixie will stamp out gremlins at the plant. Problems have plagued Hinkley Point for some time and last month the station was put out of action by floods. Part of the station was once a Bronze Age burial site and a mysterious mound, known as Pixie Mount has been left there overgrown and untouched.

A model pixie handed over when the plant was opened in 1966 was removed when Prince Charles toured the station 18 months ago. But now officials have decided the pixie should be brought back – just in case he was responsible for the floods on December 13. “Pixies don’t like to be moved,” said station manager Mr John Outram. “I don’t think we will be moving him again.”

From the Western Daily Press, 6th January 1982.