Latest Folklore

The Gouch or Gouk Stone is a large shapeless block of granite, on the north-east of Caskieben, erected (as is said in the last Statistical Account,) to commemorate the death of a general of that name who was slain near it. The tradition in respect to this stone is now forgotten, and it was even with some little difficulty that its site could be ascertained.

The Quaich* Stone, built into a low wall near the same place, has no particular marks by which it might be distinguished, and the origin of its name is entirely unknown.

From p122/123 of the New Statistical Account of Scotland, v12, (Aberdeen), 1845. Online at Google Books.
(*A ‘quaich’ seems to be a two-handled Scottish drinking vessel, fwiw.)

Now, a 1961 visit found the stone at NJ 8375 1307, and the RCAHMS record says: “Standing isolated in a field is a large, almost triangular shaped stone. It is 1.5m tall, 1.5m wide and 0.9m thick, it bears no markings.”

But now the plot thickens. This is all a bit confusing. I feel justified in adding it because it’s mentioned as a standing stone on the current OS map. Yet the RCAHMS record claims it’s not there at all now, and neither is the wall it was near (nor the other stone mentioned, one assumes – but at least this suggests we’re in the right place).

Also, they give their suspicions it was a rubbing stone for cattle, saying is not actually depicted on either the 1st or 2nd edition of the OS 6-inch maps (1869 or 1901) and “was probably erected.. in comparatively modern times.”

But. The original Statistical Account is talking about it in the 1790s, and it’s still there in the 1840s. Ok that’s “comparatively modern times” – but why would it have a name? In fact, why would two stones (one in a wall??) get names. You don’t give names to rubbing stones you put up two minutes ago, surely. RCAHMS usually take the Statistical Accounts into er, account. But they haven’t in this case, which is unusual and this is surely the same location.

I even wonder if it’s still there. After all, it tried to evade capture in 1845 – perhaps it was just off somewhere when someone turned up last time, as some stones are apt to do. Maybe I’m wrong and hopelessly misled. Maybe it was a cattle rubbing stone that is long gone. But it’s still interesting.

11/09
I think this is in the wrong place, because Caskieben = Keith Hall, at Inverurie. Yet it is mentioned in the chapter about Dyce. Oh I am confused.

“At the extreme edge of the Plains on the brow of a cliff overlooking Sale Bottom is another mound composed solely of stones; it is twenty-six yards in diameter, and has originally been about seven or eight feet high. It is known as Hollinstump, a corruption, as some think, of Llewellen’s Tomb. Llewellen was the last of the Welsh Kings, and was beheaded about 1280 in the reign of Edward I., but it is improbable the King would trouble to send his mangled remains for interment to such a distant part. It was opened by some gainseeking hill-breakers, who say they found a large slab of sandstone, under which was a full length skeleton and a small implement – in the words of the finder: – “He seemed t’eve been buried in his cleayse wid a jack-a-legs knife in his waistcwoat pocket.” Of the sandstone slab: – “They brak it up an’ gat three carfull o’t finest sand et iver was carried to Appleby Low Brewery.” Bone dust was not then come into fashion, or else we may be certain his bones would have been sold to the crushing mill. This place is said to be haunted, the apparition being a headless horseman who dashes along at a furious yet noiseless speed. Those who have seen him describe him as having in place of a head something like a blaze of fire, and others like a backboard laid upon his shoulders – perhaps the distinguished spirit of the wronged and headless Welsh King, whose sole revenge is to dash on the midnight wind around his tomb, to the terror and dismay of each benighted wanderer.”

From The Vale of Lyvennet
by J.S. Bland
Published 1910

Tony Walker in his online book, The Ghostly Guide to the Lake District, reports that the Skellaw mound was haunted by a ‘gypsy looking man with a dark complexion who would glide among the rocks’. Apparently he stopped visiting the mound once it had been excavated.

www.ghoststories.org.uk/stories/ghostlyguidelakedistrict.pdf

‘Hitherto Undescribed Cup- and Ring- Marked Stones.’ Fred R Coles. Proc Soc Antiq Scot 37 (1902-03)
On page 228 and 229 is a description of the “Witches’ Stone” at Tormain Hill. I have added a copy of the diagram. The stone has 22 cupmarks in a dog-legged line across 9ft of stone, and a 23rd at a distance just where the kink in the line is. More about it on p143+ of volume 10 (1872-4).

Tiompan tells me this stone is sadly no longer with us, having been willfully destroyed by some philistine (see forums). It’s said to have been used in ‘fertility rituals’ with young ladies* sliding down it.
*i.e. the Witches! and their shocking behaviour.

Having used the word ‘dog-legged’ I synchronicitously found Charles Fort reporting that the holes are said to be ‘the tracks of dogs’ feet’ (maybe that’s why – they don’t really look like tracks of a four-footed animal). His ‘Book of the Damned’ cites the Proc Soc Antiq Scot “2-4-79” but I have not read the original.

My Grandfather (a Bredon man) always told the tale of soldiers corpses from the civil war being buried under ‘Whittington Tump’ (Crookbarrow Hill). It has never been excavated to my knowledge, but there are many flint finds.

*************

There is some dispute whether or not the hill is natural or man-made, and if man-made, to what degree.

It is worthy of notice, that the Gipsies were known so early as the reign of king Stephen, when they presented the same phenomena as they do now, and even passed by the same name. William of Newburgh, in recording the events of that monarch’s reign, makes mention of the Gipsies; which he describes as rising at intervals of some years, and forming, when they did rise, a considerable torrent. And he observes, that it was a good omen when they were dry, for their flowing was deemed a sure prognostication of an approaching famine.

p32 of ‘A Geological Survey of the Yorkshire Coast’ by George Young (1828). There’s lots of information about the course of the Gipseys here, and you can read it online at Google Books.

Well Winter Hill is the ‘source’ of this folklore.

Perhaps we could not do better than take as our guide that eminent local antiquarian Dorning Rasbotham.

“Sept. 12th, 1787, I went this day to visit a remarkable stone, and took with me the landlord of the alehouse at Moorgate (Horwich) as my guide. In this excursion, after having the Winter Lads some time on our left, we proceeded over Winter Hill in which situation was about sout-west or north by south. The stone lies upon the declivity of a hill in the township of Turton. It goes by the name of the Hanging, or Giant’s Stone.

The tradition of the common people is, that it was thrown by a certain giant upon a certain occasion (the nature of which they do not specify) from Winter Hill on the opposite range to this point, and they whimsically fancy that certain little hollows in the stone are the impressions made by the giant’s hands at the time he threw it; but I own I could not find out the resemblance which was noticed to me. It appears, however, to have long excited attention, for that it is a heavy, gray, moor stone; a rude mark of a cross, that about 7 inches by 6 inches, appears at a very distant time to have been cut upon it. It is elevated upon another piece of rock, and its greatest length is 14 feet, its depth in the thickest part 5 feet, and its greatest breadth upon the top, which is nearly flat, is about 9 feet. The height of the highest part of it from the ground is about 5 feet 8 inches. A thorough going antiquary would call this a Druidical remain.

Quoted in ‘Horwich: its history, legends and church’ by Thomas Hampson (1883).

‘Certain little hollows’ might sound like cup-marks. But rock art with folklore? Let’s not get overexcited.

Here’s the story of the stone:

There are many traditional ballads and stories relating to Benachie and Noth. There is a ballad called “John O’Benachie;” and another, “John O’Rhynie, or Jock O’Noth;” and they do not appear in any collection of ancient ballads I have seen.

It is said that long “before King Robert rang,” two giants inhabited these mountains, and are supposed to be the respective heroes of the two ballads. These sons of Anak appear to have lived on pretty friendly terms, and to have enjoyed a social crack together, each at his own residence, although distant some ten or twelve miles.

These worthies had another amusement, that of throwing stones at each other; not small pebbles you may believe, but large boulders. On one occasion, however, there appears to have been a coolness between them; for one morning, as he of Noth was returning from a foraging excursion in the district of Buchan, his friend of Benachie, not relishing what he considered an intrusion on his legitimate beat, took up a large stone and threw it at him as he was passing.

Noth, on hearing it rebounding, coolly turned round; and putting himself in a posture of defence, received the ponderous mass on the sole of his foot: and I believe that the stone, with a deeply indented foot-mark on it, is, like the bricks in Jack Cade’s chimney, “alive at this day to testify.“*

From p286 of Notes and Queries (no204, Sept 24th, 1853).

*this is a quote from Henry the Sixth pt II, act IV, scene II. Jack Cade was an actual rebel against the king in 1450 (regrettably this ended with his head on a pike). A curiously megalithic connection is that he struck the London Stone with his sword to proclaim himself mayor of London.

No messing about here with your fate, unlike in Charles Dickens’ story.

The common people about Stone-henge entertain a notion, that no one could ever count the number of the stones, as they now stand; and that, should any one succeed in this attempt, instant death would be the consequence of his temerity.

From p35 of ‘A Tour Through the South of England, Wales, and Part of Ireland, Made During the Summer of 1791’ by Edward Daniel Clarke (now online at Google Books).

Aptly, Edward’s servant saw that Stonehenge would have entailed a lot of work for someone: “For my part, I am a little of our valet Jeremy’s opinion, who exclaimed upon the first view of this place, that “It must have been a tedious great waggon, to bring such stones over Salisbury Plains!” Every idea one forms of Stone-henge, is faint, except those we receive upon the spot, in the contemplation of its awful charms and stupendous features.”

According to Coflein, this fort perches 60m above the sea, with double banks and ditches protecting the land side. Traces of 21 possible roundhouses have been found inside. It was landscaped as part of the grounds of the mansion mentioned below.

.. occupying a romantic situation on a rocky promontory called Twryn y Witch (or the Witch’s Nose).. [was] the Castle of Dundrivan (Castle of the Three Halls) where, according to tradition, Caradoc formerly kept his summer court.

If we may give credit to another story, a more recent possessor of Dunraven Castle [a 1700s mansion destroyed in the 1960s], Vaughan by name, was in the habit of alluring vessels to the coast by putting out false lights, that he might profit by the wrecks driven ashore, to which he was entitled as lord of the manor. In the very midst of his crimes, however, he lost his own three sons in one day, and, looking on this event as a judgement from heaven on his iniquities, he sold the estate to the family of Wyndham.

Some curious caverns are worn by the sea in the rock beneath the castle. Through one of them, called the Wind Hole, the sea is forced at times in lofty jets.

From p36 of
A Handbook for Travellers in South Wales and Its Borders, Including the River Wye, by John Murray (1860), online at Google Books.

The OS map shows (a platform of?) rocks on the beach called the ‘Dancing Stones’ but I can’t find any mention of this interesting name.

We went from this place over very disagreeable heaths to Morva. About the middle of the downs we came to the foot of a hill, where I observed a small oblong enclosure about 15ft by 10ft, made by granite stones set up an end. From this I observed stones set up an end in a winding form, and if I mistake not, extending from the four corners, which I thought might relate to an ancient serpent worship. About 100 yards to the west, and nearer the foot ot the hill, I observed a circle made of stones laid flat and filled with stones.

We ascended the hill and came to a circle called the Nine Maidens, it is about 23 yards in diameter and consists of 20 stones from 2 to 3 ft broard and 4 to 7 ft high, and 3 yards apart, except that there is an opening to the west 8 yards wide.

About 100 near north there is another stone....it may be supposed these were called the Nine Maidens from so many of them being higher than the rest.

‘Travels Through England’ Dr Richard Pocock 1750

...in half an hour we were hopelessly lost in an impenetrable jungle. Vainly we scanned the hillside for those beehive huts.

In the end I rebelled, and declaimed, with some warmth that, if we wished to see eight prehistoric things before nightfall we must be humble and seek a guide.

At a farmhouse half a mile away on the hill we explained our needs to the farmer. Turning to his wife, whose face was sunburnt the colour of a nut, he said ‘You take them to the huts‘

As we tramped over the moor I solicited her opinion of Cornish antiquities.

‘Bless you, my dear’ she said ‘people talk a lot about em, but they aint nothing at all, just old stones and things‘

from C Lewis Hind ‘Days in Cornwall’ 1907

“We saw that an effort had been made to open this barrow at one of the ends; but an old woman, whom we found at a cottage not far off, assured us ‘that they that tried it were soon forced to give up thier digging and flee for the thunders came to em and the lightenings also’ We endevoured to sound out the local mind of our imformant as to the history of the place and the origin of the grave, but all we could drag out of her, after questions again and again, was ’ great warriors, supposing, in old times’ Such was the dirge of the mighty dead, and their requiem, at Warbstow Barrow.

Rev Hawker, as quoted in ‘Days in Cornwall’ by C Lewis Hind 1907

In Castleton there is an ancient lead-mine which in county histories and other books is described as “Odin Mine.” But old lead-miners in Castleton and Bradwell speak of it as Owdane Mine, accenting the second syllable. A Castleton man said to me that this mine “formerly belonged to the Danes,” and an old Bradwell lead-miner said that “the Danes hid themselves in it,” afterwards remarking, “We’ve mixed with the Danes.” I think there can be no doubt that the true name of this mine, in which many ancient tools have been found, is Owd Dane (Old Dane) Mine, for prehistoric and Roman work is often in this country attributed to the Danes... The usual name for ancient lead-workings in the Peak is “owd mon workings*.”

*Might this not suggest the devil? Which takes us back to Odin really. It’s all muddled up, as Mr McG suggests below.

From p404 in
Garland Day at Castleton
S. O. Addy; Frank Kidson
Folklore, Vol. 12, No. 4. (Dec., 1901), pp. 394-430.

Mr Donal O’Fotharta, who printed some West Connacht traditions about the Cailleach, says,-

“There is no place or height you may get to in Ireland, where you will not hear talk of the Cailleach Bheara. It is an old proverb amongst the Connacht people that there are three long ages;- “The age of the yew, the age of the eagle, and the age of the Cailleach Bheara”; and as to the Cailleach’s ways, they say thus:-

“She never brought mud from this puddle to the other puddle.
She never ate food but when she became hungry.
She never went to sleep till she grew sleepy.
She never threw out the dirty water till she brought in clean water.”

All good advice there recorded in Siamsa an Gheimhridh, D. O’Fotharta (1892), p116-118. (and quoted in the Folklore article mentioned below).

The Lament of the Hag (or Nun) of Beare.

I am the Hag of Beare,
An ever-new smock I used to wear;
Today – such is my mean estate –
I wear not even a cast-off smock.

The maidens rejoice
When May-day comes to them;
For me sorrow is meeter*,
I am wretched, I am an old hag.

Amen! woe is me!
Every acorn has to drop.
After feasting by shining candles
To be in the gloom of a prayer-house!

I had my day with kings,
Drinking mead and wine;
Today I drink whey-water
Among shrivelled old hags.

The flood-wave
And the second ebbtide-
They have all reached me,
So that I know them well.

There is scarce a little place today
That I can recognise;
What was on flood
Is all on ebb.

This is just the first part of a tenth century Irish poem, translated in 1913 by Dr Kuno Meyer. Perhaps we should get Simon Armitage (after his Gawain and the Green Knight) on the case for a modern version?

I found it quoted on p227 of
Legends and Traditions of the Cailleach Bheara or Old Woman (Hag) of Beare
Eleanor Hull
Folklore, Vol. 38, No. 3. (Sep. 30, 1927), pp. 225-254.

(*sic. can’t find what this means? meat as in what sustains her (or not)? or it meets her? hmm.)

[..] I was brought up to believe that the famous Cley Hill on the confines of Wiltshire was made by the inhabitants of that county who were induced to wipe their shoes before venturing upon our more favoured soil [i.e. Somerset.]

From a letter from Katharine Asquith at the Manor House in Mells, in The Times, Tuesday, Feb 09, 1960; pg. 11.

(At the risk of infuriating Kentigern of course, with its blatant fibbery).

GILSLAND.

“In Cumberland there is a spring,
And strange it is to tell,
That many a fortune it will make,
If never a drop they sell.”

The above prophetic rhymes are popularly understood to allude to Gilsland Spa, respecting which there is a very curious tradition, viz.., that on the medicinal virtues being first discovered, the person who owned the land, not resting satisfied, as would appear, with his profits which the influx of strangers to the place had caused, built a house over the spring, with the intention of selling the waters. But his avarice was punished in a very singular manner, for no sooner had he completed his house than the spring dried up, and continued so till the house was pulled down when lo! another miracle, it flowed again as before. Whether true or false, this story of antiquity enforces a most beautiful moral and religious precept. – Clarke’s Survey of the Lakes.

Similar to the anti-interference stories about some standing stones?

From p43 of Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England Including Rivers, Lakes, Fountains and Springs (1893) By Robert Charles Hope. Online at antipope.org/feorag/wells/.

(I have just looked at ‘Survey of the Lakes’ – but I haven’t found the quote yet. It was published in 1789).

Judging by an old map, there were a few wells in the vicinity of Skirsgill (the house) which would be a mere step away from the stone. Though which one might be referred to here I don’t know. The site is right next to the river, just like Mayburgh (but now on the other side of the motorway).

PENRITH WELLS.

..Penrith was once noted, and has some fame still, for the number of its wells. The whole month of May was set apart for special observance of customs and ceremonies to be performed on each Sunday. There were four wells with a Sunday allocated for honouring each well. The Fontinalia opened at Skirsgill on the first Sunday; then in order Clifton, afterwards the well at the Giant’s Caves, supposed to be St. Ninian’s; and, lastly, at Dicky Bank, on the fellside, where the festivities were concluded.

From p42 of ‘Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England Including Rivers, Lakes, Fountains and Springs’, by Robert Charles Hope (1893). online at antipope.org/feorag/wells/

.. the Banbury Stone [is] also known as the elephant stone because of its shape when viewed from one side.. [it] has been described as a sacrificial stone for Druids or as a Roman altar, but in reality is a natural outcrop. Locals believed that to kiss the stone on Good Friday would bring bad luck.. [The Stone is] situated inside the hillfort, the outstanding feature of the hilltop.

p135 in A Year of Walks in the Cotswolds By Roy Woodcock (1998).

Not about Yeavering Bell, but a cairn / crag on its southern side*. It’s a story that seems to be found all over Britain.

South of the Bell half a mile is a cairn called Tam Tallon’s Grave. A packman was hanged here, by his pack falling on one side of the stone, over his neck, while his body remained on the other.

p247 in ‘Annals and Antiquities of Dryburgh and Other Places on the Tweed’, by Sir David Erskine (2nd ed. 1836). Online at Google Books.

*see Hob’s comment.

In the village of Churchdown, about four miles from Gloucester, the church dedicated to St. Bartholomew is built on the summit of Churchdown Hill, – the ascent to it being steep and tortuous. The legend runs, that “the church was begun to be built on a more convenient and accessible spot of ground, but that the materials used in the day were constantly taken away in the night and carried to the top of the hill, which was considered a supernatural intimation that the church whould be built there.“*

*Rudder’s “History of Gloucestershire” (1779), 339.

From Church-lore Gleanings By Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer (what a name), 1891, p3. (partially online at Google Books).

Arthur Cleveland was there and he “descried a hamlet, and a Church, which my friend pointed out to me as Chozen, at the same time informing me that it was spelt Churchdown.” (Impressions of England, 2nd ed, 1856, p160) He calls it one of those quaint English things where you speak and spell a word differently. But is it just referring to the legend about the church? Or is it all tied up together. The local school is called ‘Chosen Hill School’ so people must still refer to it as that.

So it must also be the site of this snippet from
archive.worcesternews.co.uk/2001/10/26/300903.html
from ‘Folklore of Gloucestershire’ by Roy Palmer (1994):
“For the ghoulish or fey minded, the key chapter is the aptly named, Out of this World. We hear of a Churchdown man who, early in the last century, saw headless fairies on Chosen Hill.”

Aren’t fairies on their own hard enough to believe? Why not tell your friends you saw headless fairies instead.

‘One great occasion in the Vale was the pastime accompanying the scouring of Uffington’s White Horse. It usually took place in Uffington Castle but occasionally moved to Kingston Lisle or Seven Barrows Farm...‘

From ‘Rural Life in the Vale of the White Horse’ by Nigel Hammond.

---

Interesting that the festival didn’t always take place at Uffington Castle:

The Kingston Lisle site must be because Mr Atkins owned the Estate there (and it’s reasonably close by, and must have had an inn or tavern).

Seven Barrows Farm (near the Lambourn Seven Barrows site) may have been in the area of the barrows, but after you’ve finished scouring, that’s a fair trek across the downs (you’d probably go past Rams Hill and head towards it that way). Did they get the payment in beer on the hill (and therefore wandered drunk over to Seven Barrows Farm) or when they arrived?

“When Stuart Piggott and his team of excavators from the Royal Commissiom on Ancient Monuments began digging a neolithic period oval shaped barrow on Thickthorn down, above Gussage St Michael in the foothills of Cranborne chase, they were constantly asked if they had yet discovered the golden coffin. Not only was there no gold, however, but Piggott’s excavation in 1933 found nothing else either of what should have been the primary interments in the 5,000 year old mound.
The barrow may have been the cenotaph for a warrior who was killed elsewhere. All that was left by the original builders were a couple of chalk-cut phallic objects which were found in the lowest layer of silting in the ditch which surrounded the mound. Hundreds of years later the mound had been dug into and re-used for three other burials. Piggott and the locals were equally puzzled that it had been built to cover nothing whatever; the story of the golden coffin stuck tenaciously until the site had been completely cleared. the mound was reconstructed after the excavation had finished.”

From Mysterious Dorset by Rodney Legg.

This is very similar to the story about Cowleaze barrows near Milborne St Andrew, minus the lightning.

From Rodney Legg’s Mysterious Dorset.
“Dr William Sydenham of Wynford Eagle, near Maiden Newton, is one of Dorset’s earliest recorded barrow diggers but what makes him unique is his remarkable description of supernatural heat emanating from the centre of an ancient burial mound. Whether or not you can believe it, the description is clear enough but it’s location has been misplaced by field archaeologist Leslie Grinsell in his Dorset Barrows. Grinsell places it at Wynford Eagle but Sydenham’s original letter about the discovery, which I transcribed for the first edition of John Aubrey’s Monumenta Britannica, says the barrow was “nigh the sheephouse in the road going to Bridport”.
This suggests the high sheep pastures, where isolated sheephouses were erected, on the upper downs to the south-west of Wynford Eagle. The road from Wynford Eagle to Bridport crosses the great sheep-runs at Eggardon hill, where there are barrows which must have been prominent landmarks on the open uplands (such as that which lies in Powerstock parish at O.S.ref SY546946).
Sydenham writes that he had already dug a barrow near his house – which he thought roman, though we would now describe as bronze age – but found only “black cinders like smith’s coal” so he had promised a cousin from Devon that he would “try twenty more ere I found something to satisfy her curosity”.
The remainder of this description is in Sydenham’s own words, in a letter of 19 November 1675 to his uncle, Dr Thomas Sydenham, who was in London. Only the spellings have been modernised and my amplifications are parenthesised in brackets:
“some of my workmen advised me to dig up the barrow in the ground, if you remember it, called Ferndown nigh the sheephouse in the road going to Bridport and my men offered me that if there was nothing in it they would loose their day’s hire (forgo their wages), which I agreed to; and on they go, and on they go, and when theyhad cast away the earth it was full of great flints. At length we came to a place perfectly like an oven curiously clayed round, and in the middest of it a very fair urn full of bones very firm and the urn not rotten, and black ashes a great quantity under the urn, which is like a butter pot, made of potters’ earth, but I must not omit the chiefest thing that at the first opening of this oven one of my servants thrust in his hand and pulling it quickly back again, I on demanding the reason of him, he told me it was very hot. I did also put in my hand and it was warm enough to have baked bread. Several others did the like, who can all testify to the truth of it. This urn stood in the middle of this oven which I preserve with the bones but it is since fallen asunder, and digging further I found sixteen urns more, but not in ovens, and in the middle, one with ears (lugs) to it falling to pieces, being all full of sound bones and black ashes. I think it would puzzle the Royal Society to give a reason of the heat of the oven being fifteen hundred years old.”

Although the text places this not at Wynford Eagle exactly, but just over the hill I thought it interesting enough, and strange enough to include here.