Latest Folklore

“[A]cromlech named ‘Arthur’s Quoit’ is found in Myllteyrn parish, Caernarvonshire (SH22973456). Professor Grooms (1993, pp.118-9) translates the following from Myrddin Fardd (writing in the 19th-century), which is worth repeating for its illustration of the local folkloric traditions surrounding these stones:”

A multitude of tales are told about him [Arthur]. Sometimes, he is portrayed as a king and mighty soldier, other times like a giant huge in size, and they are found the length and bredth of the land of stones, in tons in weight, and the tradition connects them with his name – a few of them have been in his shoes time after time, bothering him, and compelling him also to pull them, and to throw them some unbelievable distance... A cromlech recognized by the name ‘Coetan Arthur’ is on the land of Trefgwm, in the parish of Myllteyrn; it consists of a great stone resting on three other stones. The tradition states that ‘Arthur the Giant’ threw this coetan from Carn Fadrun, a mountain several miles from Trefgwm, and his wife took three other stones in her apron and propped them up under the coetan.

Borrowed from Thomas Green, the writer of “A Gazetteer of Arthurian Topographic Folklore” at arthuriana.co.uk/concepts/folkgazt.htm

Dr William Borlase, writing in 1754 , said:“Round Arthur’s Bed, on a rocky Tor in the parish of North-hill, there are many [rock-basins], which the country people call Arthur’s Troughs, in which he us’d to feed his Dogs.”

lifted from The Arthurian Resources pages at
arthuriana.co.uk/concepts/folkgazt.htm

The bridge is said to be haunted by ‘weary looking phantoms’ – they cross the bridge in the gloaming, looking misty and depressed as though they’ve just staggered from the battle, and then ‘pouf’ melt into the dusk. Or so says Marc Alexander, in his completely unreferenced ‘Companion to the folklore, myths and customs of Britain’ (2002). He also calls the stone ‘Arthur’s Gravestone’.

Apparently there are two stones though?? Which is a bit confusing? One in the stream and one by the stream? The following from the Celtic Inscribed Stones doesn’t exactly clarify things.
ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/cisp/database/

There is some confusion about the exact history of this stone as it appears to have occasionally been mixed-up with a second, probably uninscribed stone which now lies in the stream.

Okasha/1993, records that the stone was first mentioned in 1602. By 1754 it had been used as a footbridge and then as part of a early 18th landscape folly. The stone is unlikely to have moved since at least 1799.

..the first recorded location of the stone was its use as part of a footbridge at Slaughterbridge. We do not know the original location.

..Nearby, in the early 18th century, Lady Dowager Falmouth created a kind of hill with spiral walks to which the stone was removed as decoration.

The same farmer I met that told me about Ard Croine also told me that about 30 years ago before this cairn was bull-dozed this was the main landmark in the area being up to 30ft high and much wider. However most of this was removed as fill for the roads in the locality.
The area around Ardcroney is called Carney and there seems to be many hillocks in the area that could be natural or maybe manmade.

While looking for the whitstone cairn I stopped to talk to a local farmer. As luck would have it we had a friend in common and he also knew a little about the local folklore attached to this site.
He told me that the mound was originally capped “like a pyramid” by the stones that are lying around the field and that a local man bull-dozed the lot for fill. It was also much bigger than its present size.
However it was when he got to the capstone of the burial chamber that he stopped. When it was open 3 skeletons were found, one 7ft tall, the next 6ft 6inchs and the third 6ft. He also reckons that the 7ft tall skeleton was on the Late Late Show! As you can see in my field notes the official report mentions 2 skeletons.
Also he pointed out that the name for the area Ardcroney means Ard being Big, Croine. And locally that is believed who was found in the mound Ard Croine.

Some modern folklore from ‘The Ghostly Guide to the Lake District’ by Tony Walker
ghoststories.org.uk/stories/ghostlyguidelakedistrict.pdf

“In the early 1990s, a local girl called Paula Thompson and her friends decided to do a bit of ghost hunting at Long Meg. Friends had gone there in their cars late at night to sit and talk and do what teenagers do. They reported seeing flashes of light outside the car, coming from the
stones. They told Paula and they all decided to go back another night as a group.
It was late, after midnight and at first Paula wouldn’t get out of her car. Her friends teased her and so, reluctantly she opened the door. By that time the others had spread out round the circle. There was some light from the moon, and so she walked over to Long Meg, the tallest stone. She saw a dark shape in front of her. As she got closer, it started to move towards her very quickly. She thought it was a male friend having a laugh and called out jokingly for him to stop. He didn’t stop and she saw that he was going to run into her. As it got closer she saw the shape wasn’t her friend. To her horror it ran right through her. She says she felt cold and frightened and rushed back to the car.
Another time a group of people went there late, they met a coven of witches. When you visit Long Meg, you will more often than not see offerings of flowers or suchlike around Long Meg herself, or hanging in the tree nearby. My advice would be to stay away from Long Meg after dark. These people probably mean no harm, but they don’t like to be disturbed”.

Legend has it that Addlebrough was once the home of a giant who had a feirce row with the devil. Perched on the top of the crag, the rough ridge to the west, the giant hurled boulders down at the devil, but they fell short and landed at the side of Semerwater. The devil’s response landed high on the flank of Addlebrough.
The giant granite boulders thrown by the giant can be seen on the edge of Semerwater and are known as The Carlow and Mermaid stones.

This legend seems to have numerous different versions. The local legend being that they were buried on the hills because it looks east to leinster. However the stones are actually on the western side. These stones have been confirmed as being Bronze Age so this is a much a more recent story.

I’ve also thought this legend may have something to do with the movement of the sun, it rises in the east (this being the king of leinster) and dies looking to the west over the Slieve Beragh in Co. Clare.

This is the legend i took from the website www.athomefirst.com:

Sometime during the years when Brian was King of Munster, a royal wedding was to be held near Limerick. The King of Leinster, allied with the Limerick Vikings, was invited to attend, and, with a small contingent of his army set out to cross northern County Tipperary about 30 miles of Munster—enemy territory—to reach Limerick and the wedding. The route selected would avoid towns as much as possible, to avoid detection and confrontation with Brian’s Munstermen. It was to cross the highest of the Arra Mountains, Tountinna, 1,500 feet high, where there were some old slate mines and a few farms, but no villages until reaching the River Shannon at Ballina, not far from the Limerick border.
Brian Boru’s castle was atop the hilly town of Killaloe just across the Shannon from Ballina. The view from the castle looked across the river toward Ballina and the Arra Mountains. Gormlaith, bride of Brian, was at home in Killaloe when she received word of the wedding guests underway from Leinster. It so happened that Gormlaith was none other than mother of Sitric Silkenbeard, Viking King of Dublin, mortal enemy of Brian Boru and the Irish of Munster. Although Brian was at that moment away from Killaloe, Gormlaith knew an opportunity when she saw one, and proved to be no shrinking violet. Calling on her loyal friends in Dublin, Gormlaith ferreted the travel plans of the King of Leinster and his militia and planned a surprise welcome for them when they neared the end of their journey.
As the tired wedding guests traversed the heights of Tountinna and came into sight of Lough Derg, the great lake of the Shannon, and the Slieve Bernagh mountains to the west, they were set upon by the murderous attack of a superior force led by a fierce woman. No mercy was shown. The entire wedding party—including the King of Leinster—was slain on the slopes of Tountinna. They were buried on the spot, and the graves marked with several medium sized blocks of native stone.

This story doesn’t make complete sense to me and seems to contradict itself, but I will find out more about it.

The stones of Hound’s Tor are meant to be the Bowerman’s hunting hounds.

This barrow (now marking a boundary) is said to contain a pot of gold. But don’t be getting any ideas. It is guarded by a ‘big hag-worm or adder’, and if that isn’t enough to see you off, then the inevitable thunderstorm that will roll up when you start meddling will soon scare you away.

(recorded by Grinsell in ‘Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain’ 1976 – will have original source noted but I forgot).

Russell’s Cairn at Windy Gyle is supposed to mark the site of the mysterious death of Lord Francis Russell in 1585. He was in a truce meeting with the Scottish Warden Thomas Ker at the time. It’s thought that he could have been bumped off as part of an English plot to remove Ker and other Catholic supporters of Queen Mary from their positions of power by implying they murdered him. The cairn’s thought to be Bronze Age though, and there are others along the ridge.

See:
archive.org/stream/uppercoquetdalen00dixo#page/51/mode/1up

A round barrow near Ashmore was once haunted by little ‘gabbygammies’ or ‘gappergennies’ who made strange noises. Funnily enough, the strange noises ceased after the barrow was opened and the bones allegedly found inside reburied in the village churchyard. Poor gabbygammies. There probably aren’t any in the longbarrow near Ashmore but if you hear any strange noises while you’re there..

(mentioned by Grinsell in ‘Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain, 1976, not sure of original source he quotes)

There seem to be various traditions relating to skipping in Easter week, from various places around the country. In Cambridgeshire, Good Friday seems to have been the day singled out. “An eighty year old woman of Linton recalled in the 1930s that in her youth the villagers of Linton and Hadstock used to skip on Good Friday to Bartlow Hills to join in the fun of the fair held there.”

p107 in ‘Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore’ by Enid Porter (1969).

A little further info from Witches, Fairies and Things That Go Bump

It’s origins lie in pagan times when the recently deceased would be carried around it three times.

Early Christians carved some steps, a cross and a circle to demonstrate that the way to Heaven was through the Christian Church.

Mind out for the ferns on Garth Hill.

A very amusing story about fern-seed came from the neighbourhood of the Garth Mountain, Glamorgan. An aged Welshman said that when he was a small boy he heard his grandfather gravely relating the experience of a neighbour who chanced to be coming homeward through the mountain fern on Midsummer Night between twelve and one o’clock. At that hour fern-seed is supposed to ripen, to fail off directly, and be lost. Some of the fern-seed fell upon his coat and into his shoes. He thought nothing of this, but went home.

At this point he totally freaks out his family, because they can’t see him, but they can hear him talking – he remains invisible until he inadvertently shakes the seeds from his clothing.

The man who told this story said that when he was a boy not a person would wear a fern of any kind – first, because it caused men to lose their paths; and secondly, because adders were likely to follow you so long as it was worn.

From Marie Trevelyan’s ‘Folk lore and folk stories of Wales’ (1909).
Of course, really boring botanists would tell you that ferns don’t have seeds.

A number of round barrows known as ‘The Beacons’ sit on Mynydd Garthmaelwg. Marie Trevelyan recounts a peculiar story about this mountain:

The following story about a black snake was told in the first half of the nineteenth century. It must have been a very old story because the narrator always located it on the nearest mountain to his home and this particularly black reptile appeared to have no fixed abode. In Carmarthenshire it was located among the Van Mountains; in Pembrokeshire it was found in the Preceley Range; while in Glamorgan its home was the Great Garth, the Llantrisant, or Aberdare Ranges. The story ran thus: A great black snake was seen coiled in the sunshine. Its head and tail did not exactly meet, but left a small opening. In the middle of the coil there was a large heap of gold and silver and copper coins. A working man once saw all this treasure, and he resolved to have some for himself. There was nothing to be done but to just pass through the opening between the black snake’s head and tail, and step in. At first the man was afraid, but, mustering up courage, he stepped in. He saw that the snake was asleep, and there would be no harm in having some of the coins for himself; so he began to fill his pockets with gold, silver, and copper. When his pockets were full, he took off his coat, laid it down, and began filling it with more treasure. Greediness made him forget the snake, but a fearful roaring frightened him. He immediately left his coat where it was, and fled. Looking back, he saw the black snake and the treasure sinking into the mountain, and the noise ceased.

From ‘Folk-lore and folk-stories of Wales’ (1909)

The Rhondda Cynon Taf Libraries Heritage Trail website at
fhttps://webapps.rhondda-cynon-taf.gov.uk/libraries/heritagetrail/taff/llanharran/Llanharan.htm
has some additional information:

Until a few generations ago, the Brenin Llwyd or Grey Monarch of the Mists was believed to inhabit this mountain and woe betide anyone caught in his grasp! A walk from Llanharan towards Llantrisant over the mountains will still take you to the site of “The Beacons”, where before the 1700s the Militia met to muster and show arms. In later times this beacon would be lit to celebrate coronations. A short distance to the east is the location of the popular Egg Wells, whose sulphurous waters attracted hundreds of summer visitors to sample their curative properties and enjoy the fairground atmosphere.

Just to the north of these two ruined burial chambers is Llyn Llwydiarth and the mountain Mynydd Llwydiarth. Evans-Wentz described the story told by two local sisters, Miss Mary Owen and Mrs Betsy Thomas (who were 103 and 100 years old respectively, when he spoke to them in 1911).

There were many of the Tylwyth Teg on the Llwydiarth Mountain above here, and round the Llwydiarth Lake where they used to dance; and whenever the prices at the Llangefri market were to be high they would chatter very much at night. They appeared only after dark; and all the good they ever did was singing and dancing.

From ‘The fairy faith in Celtic countries’.

There are so many strange names for the rocks here: tortoises, frogs, cannons – and they’re no doubt constantly changing according to fashion, as the quote below suggests:

On the verge of the precipice which girdles the mass of rocks on this side, stand the Baboon’s Head, the Pulpit Rock, the Serpent’s Head, and the Yoke of Oxen; (These names are frequently changed by the innovating, garrulous guide, who has changed the Baboon’s Head to the Gorilla’s, and the Yoke of Oxen to the Bulls of Babylon, which unsettling of nomenclature he calls keeping pace with the times. Unique as the rocks are amongst the freaks of nature, there is nearly as much originality about the guide but infinitely less grandeur.) Near this last is the Idol Rock, one of the most singular masses, and one of the greatest wonders of the place.

From an 1863 pamphlet on line at
nidderdale.org/Antiquarian/Brimham%20Grainge/Brimham%20Grainge%20Home.htm

Some of the stones are Rocking Stones. It’s said they can only be moved by an honest person. Peter Walker (’Folk Stories from the Yorkshire Dales’ 1991) says it is a local joke that no Yorkshireman has ever managed to rock them!

He also reports that somewhere among the rocks is a cave where a witch lived: “The Abode of the Great Sybil, who was said to be even more remarkable at fortune telling than the famous Mother Shipton of Knaresborough.”

One of the more famous stories is of Edwin and Julia. They were madly in love with each other but Julia’s father wasn’t having any of it. Especially when Edwin asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage. He forbade them to see each other any more. But of course, they couldn’t stand to live without each other. They decided to leap off Brimham Rocks and spend eternity together that way. Julia’s father got wind of the plan and dashed up there to dissuade them – but they jumped before he could reach them. However, by some miracle, instead of plummeting to their dooms, they floated gently to the ground. “Some said that a fairy who lived among the rocks had witnessed their misery and knew they could be happy if only they were allowed to marry.” Perhaps it was the influence of the Druids – or maybe even the magic in the rocks themselves. More boring people put it down to Julia’s skirts being so voluminous. But whatever, her Father at last consented to their marriage and naturally they lived happily ever after. And the rock was forever known as ‘Lovers’ Leap’ or ‘Lovers’ Rock’.

Leslie Grinsell claims that ‘Hunter’s Barrow’ was named by Colt Hoare, as he had found it contained a number of arrow heads and deer antlers, appropriate to the burial of a hunter.*

The ancient burial mounds of England, 1936.

(*Not that I’m doubting the legendary LVG, but did Colt Hoare really make a habit of naming barrows? So many must have had arrow heads in..)

John Wilmet, 78 years old, began by telling me the following tale about an allee couvert: “William Murphy, who married my sister, once went to the pisky-house at Bosahan with a surveyor and the two of them heard such unearthly noises in it that they came running home in great excitement, saying they had heard the piskies.”

This is surely the place to which this anecdote (from Evans Wentz’s ‘Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries’ 1911) refers, as if you look on the map it is between Bosahan farm and Bosahan quarry.

At the Men-an-Tol there is supposed to be a guardian fairy or pixy who can make miraculous cures. And my mother knew of an actual case in which a changeling was put through the stone in order to get the real child back. It seems that evil pixies changed children, and that the pixy at the Men-an-Tol being good, could, in opposition, undo their work.

‘The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries’ p179, W Y Evans Wentz, 1911.

According to the Somerset Historic Environment record this is a small Iron Age enclosure which was refortified in the late first or second century. Leslie Grinsell mentions it in his ‘Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain’ – it is said to be the site of a fierce battle between two kings, at which both of them died. A large barrow (partially destroyed some time pre 1791) was said to be where the many slain in the battle were interred.

Unusually it seems that when the Normans built their fancy 2-motte and bailey castle here, they didn’t utilise the earthworks that already existed: the defenses of the Iron Age Burley Camp.

Leslie Grinsell’s source hinted that a crock of gold is buried here, but that anyone who attempts to dig for it is scared off by the eldritch thunder and lightning that ensue.

(’Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain, 1976)

Harewood- the nearest village and stately home – may actually be named after this stone.

According to John Gilleghan’s “Highways and Byways from Leeds”:

“flints and an axe from 1500/2000 BC have been found in this area”.

“It has been suggested that the word Harewood has been derived from Grey Stones Wood as Harawuda – Hara Stanes Wudu – means a wood by the stones. The area was known as Hareuuode in the Domesday Book – in Old English “haer” meant stony ground and “har” meant grey.”

Weirdness local to Marden – a settlement (now a house) lay to the east of the henge, called ‘Puckshipton’. John Chandler (see link below) says this means ‘The Goblin’s Cattle Shed’. What must have happened here for the place to acquire this name? Or is it actually related to the henge itself (probably an ideal place for a goblin to corral his cattle). It is very close to the place where the Ridgeway crossed the River Avon (I take it at SU099577), a spot which was known as Wifelesford (’weevils’-ford’).

Wiltshire Community History website
wiltshire.gov.uk/community/getconcise.php?id=14