Latest Folklore

We find from Egil’s Saga, ch43, that about AD900 ‘Bjorn Hairld of Aurland in Sogn, who had fled from the fiords with Thora Hladhond, sister of Thorer Herse, was wrecked near Moseyjarborg’ (Mousa) and took shelter there until his ship was repaired, and he could continue his voyage to Iceland. Again in 1154, Erlend Junge, a chief from Hjaltland, fled with Earl Harald’s mother, Margaret, widow of Madadh of Atholl, and shut himself up in Mousa, where he stood a siege (p342 in the Orkneyinga Saga). Neither of these notices, however, necessarily implies that the broch was at these dates owned or occupied by any one, but rather the reverse.

Cribbed from
IV.—The Brocks or “Pictish Towers” of Cinn-Trolla, Carn-Liath,and
Craig-Carril, in Sutherland, with Notes on other Northern Brochs,

By the Rev. J. Maxwell Joass (c1871)

online here

Coflein suggests this is an Iron Age defended enclosure. The bank and ditch is only semicircular, because the other side used to butt up to the lake (it is now slightly further back).

Marie Trevelyan relates this story to the location:

A curious story is attached to Llyn Gwyn. St. Patrick passed it on his way to visit St. David. He was accompanied by another saint, and when they reached this lake one of them suggested resting awhile. This was done, and during the halt the saints discussed religion. Coming to a controversial point, the men grew irritable, and St. Patrick was very angry. Several Welsh people overheard the religious quarrel, and expressed surprise and annoyance. St. Patrick in spite turned them into fishes. One of the party was a woman, who was transformed into a white lady. She was often seen accompanied by flashes of light. On account of this insult to St. Patrick, the sun never shines upon the lake but during one week of the year. [William Howell, “Cambrian Superstitions.“]

And to think we say someone has the ‘patience of a saint’. They clearly never met St Patrick.

From “Folk-lore and folk-stories of Wales” 1909, online at
red4.co.uk/Folklore/trevelyan/welshfolklore/chapt1.htm

There’s the common vague feeling that this is a ‘Roman’ fort (it is true that a Roman site is nearby). Maybe the excavations will highlight that the occasional thing did happen before the Romans turned up in this country.

I called the folklore arising in the 1860 or 70s about the Popping Stone “synthetic” because I believe it to have been deliberately and cynically created to aid promotion of the stone as part of the Gilsland Spa tourist package. You are quite right to point out that folklore is being created all the time, but it is important (and difficult) to separate to two varieties.

The Spa at Gilsland didn’t “obviously” get popular in Victorian times. Walter Scott went there in Georgian times, because it was already very popular then.

The Woodland Trust “information” board in the woods at the Spa also invites us to watch out for red deer. Roe deer are almost synonymous with Northumbrian/Cumbrian woodlands but red deer are not found anywhere near Gilsland. This is woodland ecology – something you might expect the Woodland Trust to know something about – I reckon their pronouncements on obscure aspects of local history are likely to be just as slapdash.

When St. Paddy visited the hill a well sprang up where the horses’ hooves touched the hillside as he jumped.

St. Brigid was seemingly born nearby and graveyard/abbey is where St. Brigid became a nun.
Underneath the hill was the Sli of Brí Ele.

From Mythic Ireland
“In early literature, Ele is represented as a maiden and goddess of awe-inspiring beauty. Every year one of Finn’s young men went out from the Hill of Allen to meet her and was lost for ever, in her síd beneath Croaghan Hill.
The Dindshenchas stated that the source of the River Shannon was under Brí Ele at a well called Linn Mna Feile ‘the Pool of the Modest Woman’.”
It is also associated with the underworld and being sucked into the hill. The cairn on top is meant to have been the entrance to a volcano.
Brigits sister (part of the triple goddess), Begoibne had her smithy workshop beneath the hill and built beautiful cauldrons.
He also states that winter solstice sunrise is visible over Cloghan hill from the Hill of Uisneach.

There is a lot of myth and legend attached to the Hill of Allen, it is called the birthplace of Fionn MacCumhail and it is said to have been the mythical Fiannas main fort. It is also associated with the god Nuada and he built a white walled palace on it.
It was called the Island of Allen because it is surrounded by the bog of allen.
It is also know as Almu. Almu is associated with a goddess/beautiful woman.
Fionn MacCumhail is meant to have throw Punchestown Standing Stone from here.
It is associated with Cloghan Hill and every year Fionn is meant to have sent a young warrior to Bri Ele where he was taken into the underworld to meet Brigdit.
I seem to remember reading somewhere as well that the tower folly built on top of it used a wedge tomb for its foundations but I havent been able to find I reference for this again.

Taken from Sacred Ireland – Cary Meehan
“The Boyne is closely linked with the goddess Boand or Bó Fhinn, the White Cow Goddess who is part of the earliest Irish mythology. She is said to inhabit a sí or mound here where Newberry house now stands, at the source of the river Boyne. The well is described as having nine hazel trees overhanging it. When the nuts fell into the well, their magical properties went into the water. It was said that anyone drinking its water in June would become a poet. Boand was, among other things, the goddess of poetry.
Carbury used to be known as ‘Sidh Neachtain’ which means ‘the Fairy Mound of Neachtain’. Neachtain is mentioned in the Annals of the Four Masters as a Tuatha Dé Danann leader and king of Ireland for one year in 45AD. He is variously known as Neachtain or Nuadha and also as the magical figure Neachtain, the water god, whose task was to care for the well and make sure its power was not unleashed in a destructive way. There are a number of versions of the following story.
Neachtain and Boand were married but she was never allowed to visit the sacred well with her husband. He and his brothers were the keepers of the well and even its location was kept a secret. They made regular visits there and on one occasion, overcome by curiosity, Boand followed them. Later she went back herl
self and tasted the forbidden water which then rose up and overwhelmed her, flowing out to sea and forming the sacred waters of the river Boyne, a watery embodiment of her spirit as the goddess Boand.”

According to local bods, this is a dwelling enclosure, not a stone circle.

Taken from ucd.ie/envinst/envstud/mushroomstones/about02.html

In the townland of Clonkeen (in a field close to the road from Clonbullogue to Clonad House, in County Offaly) is a stone known as Finn Mac Cool’s stone. According to legend this is a stone which the mythical Irish giant tried to throw from the top of Croghan Hill at another giant standing on the Hill of Allen in the Kildare hills. The stone however fell short of its target in Clonkeen, where it was spotted by a dog as it rolled along the ground; the dog is said to have stopped it with its paw. A credulous eye can still make out the mark of a dog’s paw on one side of the stone and the giant’s hand on the other.

The Four Stones are famously reputed to make the half mile journey to Hindwell Pool to quench their thirst at midnight (sometimes midnight on the full moon) returning home before dawn.

One of the many other legends about the Four Stones is that they are four princes turned to stone by a witch. The witch herself is said to be entombed in stone at Hindwell Pool.

It was from Gilman Point that there was a famous sighting of a mermaid in 1603. A pamplet describing it can be found on the ‘Gathering the Jewels’ website:
gtj.org.uk/en/item1/26001
(the caption says ‘Gybnanes Poynt’ but this is a blatant misreading of ‘Gylmanes Poynt’, as you can see when you enlarge the image at gtj.org.uk/en/blowup6/26004)

Thomas Raynold, ‘a very honest and substantial yeoman’, watched the mermaid for two hours as it swam about between Gilman’s Point and Dolman Point. He was worried that he wouldn’t be believed so he grabbed some villagers and they watched it for a bit longer. It apparently had the usual hands, lovely hair and face that you’d expect from a mermaid. However, it was ‘browne’ or ‘gray’ in colour. Surely coastal people know a mermaid when they see one.

The Capstone of St. Lythans Cromlech will spin round three times on Midsummer’s Eve. Wishes made at the site on Hallowe’en are guaranteed to come true, apparently. Guess where I’ll be in late October...asking for a million pounds.

There is more to the story of the White Cow associated with the Callanish Stone Circle. It is said that a woman was on the point of throwing herself into the see and drowning at a time of famine in the area when a beautiful white cow appeared from the sea. It ordered her to take her milking pail to Callanish, where she and her neighbours were able to milk it each night.

Everyone was able to milk a single pail until a witch came and milked the cow into a sieve until she was dry. The cow vanished from Lewis and never returned. (Source; Secret Britain, Guild Publishing, London).

In ‘Secret Britain’, (published by Guild Publishing, London), it was said ‘that in lean times, a beautiful white cow appeared at Mitchell’s fold. No matter how many came to milk her, so long as each person filled just one pail, she would never run dry. But when an old witch called Mitchell milked her dry by milking her into a sieve she vanished, never to return.‘

In some versions the cow is said to have transformed into the rampaging Dun Cow of Dunchurch, Warks, which was eventually killed by Guy of Warwick.

The story of the Witch and the White Cow is said to have been attached to the circle in the 18th Century. At around the same time, another story told of ‘Medgel’s Fold’, a place where a giant kept his cows. The name is a suggestion that the circle was a ‘pound’ or ‘fold’ of a giant.

The story of the magic white cow is also associated with the stone circle at Callanish, Lewis.

In 1514 John and Agnes Panter of Doulting were accused of resorting annually on the Eve of St John the Baptist’s Day to Mendip to consult with demons. The part of Mendip in Doulting parish is Beacon Hill, crowned with a notable group of barrows, extending westward into the adjoining parish of Ashwick. It seems reasonable to suspect that the Panters were ‘communing’ with spirits supposedly residing in these barrows.

L V Grinsell, in ‘Somerset Barrows – revisions 1971-87’, v131 (1987) of Som Arch Nat Hist.

Murtry Hill was visited in 1808 by Sir Richard Colt Hoare. He said “There were formerly seven [stones] attributed by vulgar report as memorials to seven Saxon Kings who fell in battle.”

Gleaned by L V Grinsell: see ‘Somerset Barrows – revisions 1971-1987’ in v131 (1987) of Som Arch Nat Hist.

To support my theory below, I was encouraged to read in the same article that Grinsell felt ‘Miss Tongue tended to make the most of such matters’ with regard to megalithic folklore, and didn’t include her stories from ‘Somerset Folklore’ in his work. What a polite way of putting it.

John Strachey quoted ‘an old Tradition that 2 Kings had a Battle, the one being possessed of ye hill, I presume Tedbury, made a great slaughter of ye Other in Murders bottom* which is under Tedbury from rolling stones upon them and hanged ye Prisoners in Hangmans Lane whence they brought ye Stones and heaped them over ye dead in ye West Feild barrow.‘

The West Field barrow is on Barrow Hill, but as Strachey tended to be confused on his compass points he may have meant the long barrow on Murtry Hill.

From the late great L V Grinsell, in ‘Somerset Barrows- Revisions 1971-87’, volume 131 (1987) of Som Arch Nat Hist journal.

*Now Murder Combe on the OS map.

This news story at This is local London describes a sighting of ‘a large black animal’ -which would be in the vicinity of the barrows. The newspaper puts it down to the modern legend of the big cat ‘beast of Ongar’ but (why not) I’d like to suggest it’s a Black Dog associated with the barrows themselves. Essex (and East Anglia generally) has a number of supernatural black dogs, don’t you know.

Craigengelt [estate].. includes a considerable mass of the Lennox Hills, and contains a circular cairn or mound called the Ghost’s Knowe, which, 300 feet in circumference, is engirt by twelve very large stones. This is one only out of several artificial mounds, clothed with fine grass, and called the Sunny Hills; and Craigengelt is believed to have been, in olden times, the scene of many tragical events.

(From Francis Groome’s Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4), an excerpt here).

I met a lovely sheep-farmer up here called Jim (I was hiding in the bushes, I think he must have thought I was a sheep-worrier). Nice guy he said that they were known locally as the Pipers Stones. The cup-marks he said were the feet of cuchalainns hound that jumped from here to the Bog of Allen to the north. A serious jump by anyones standards. He mentioned hooves so maybe it was cuchalainns steed rather than hound, I think that has a better ring to it.

From ‘Rude Stone Monuments in all Countries – their age and uses’ by James Fergusson, 1872.

I think all antiquarians will agree with Sir Gardner Wilkinson in assuming that this is the stone of Cetti mentioned in the Welsh Triads... the 88th* Triad speaks of the three mightly achievements of the Isle of Britain; the raising of the stone of Cetti, the building of the work of Emmrys, and the heaping of the pile of Cyvragnon.

He suggests the work of Emmrys is Stonehenge and the pile of Cyvragnon, Silbury Hill.

*Not sure if this is true yet – need to find the original? The triads are rather dodgy as if they are the ones collected by Iolo Williams, he did make some of them up.

The Dewerstone is a lofty mass of rock rising above the bed of the Plym, on the southern edge of Dartmoor. During a deep snow, the traces of a naked human foot and of a cloven hoof were found ascending to the highest point. The valley below is haunted by a black headless dog.

From Notes and Queries 61 (December 1850, online at

At Chudleigh Rocks I was told, a few weeks ago, by the old man who acts as guide to the caves, of a recent instance of a man’s being pixy-led. In going home, full of strong drink, across the hill above the cavern called the “Pixies’ Hole,” on a moonlit night, he heard sweet music, and was led into the whirling dance by the “good folk,” who kept on spinning him without mercy, till he fell down “in a swoon.”

On “coming to himself,” he got up and found his way home, where he “took to his bed, and never left it again, but died a little while after,” the victim (I suppose) of delirium tremens, or some such disorder, the incipient symptoms of which his haunted fancy turned into the sweet music in the night wind and the fairy revel on the heath. In the tale I have above given he persisted (said the old man), when the medical attendant who was called in inquired of him the symptoms of his illness. This occurrence happened, I understood, very recently, and was told to me in perfect good faith.

Yeah, yeah, explain it away, say he was really drunk. Not everyone who sees the pixies is drunk, you know. From Notes and Queries 61, December28, 1850 (online here at Project Gutenberg).

If you want the genuine* Wiltshire feel then you may like this version of Cley Hill’s origins from ‘Wiltshire Folk’ by Mrs Ethel Richardson (1934):

Well, zur, it wer like this ye zee; the ‘Vizes volk had offended the devil mainly, an’ a swore ‘ad zar ‘em out. So a went down the country, an’ a vound a gert hump, an’a putt it on’s back an’ a carried along to vling at ‘em. An’ a come along be Warminster, an’ a met a m an, an’ a zays to un: “Can ‘ee tell I the rhoad to the Vizes?” ‘an t’other zaid “Lor ther now, that’s just what I do want to know myself, for I started for un when my beard wer black, an’ now as gray, an’ I hant got there yet”.
“Lor,” says the Devil (t’wer the Devil ye knaw) “if that’s how ‘tis, I beant gwine to car thick no vurder, so here goes”; an’ a vling thuck gurt hump off’s shoulder, an’ thur a be, look zee, an that’s how Cley Hill got there.

*debateable.