Images (2)
Fieldnotes (2)
Folklore (2)

Images

Image of Cold Pixie’s Cave (Round Barrow(s)) by formicaant

The north east side of the barrow.

Image credit: Mike Rowland 04/05/2008.

formicaant May 7, 2008

The water logged southern ditch of the barrow.

Image credit: Mike Rowland 04/05/2008.

formicaant May 7, 2008

Articles

Cold Pixie’s Cave

Round Barrow(s)

CARL Mar 28, 2016

Visited 26.3.16

Easily spotted south of the B3055 – a short distance west of the Hatchet Pond Barrow. The previous excavation of this barrow has left it well mangled.

E.H. state:
This monument includes a round barrow situated on lowland heath. The barrow mound, which was partially excavated during the winter of l941/2, measures 29m in diameter and 1.7m high. It was constructed of turves and gravel and is surrounded by a 2.3m wide ditch from which the mound material was quarried during construction. This ditch now survives as a 3m wide and 0.25m deep earthwork. No burial was found, the only find of note being an amber necklace.

Cold Pixie’s Cave

Round Barrow(s)

formicaant May 7, 2008

This is a low bowl barrow on the western half of the heath. It is next to the road which passes north of the heath. The barrow is not in very good condition, it was excavated in the early 1940’s. Its survival is lucky as some barrows were lost during the construction of a second world war airfield.

Cold Pixie’s Cave

Round Barrow(s)

Rhiannon Apr 2, 2016

Here in the Forest still lives Shakspeare’s Puck, a veritable being, who causes the Forest colts to stray, carrying out word for word Shakspeare’s description, –
“I am that merry wanderer of the night,
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal.”
(Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act ii., Sc. 1.)
This tricksy fairy, so the Forest peasant to this hour firmly believes, inhabits the bogs, and draws people into them, making merry, and laughing at their misfortunes, fulfilling his own roundelay -
“Up and down, up and down,
I will lead them up and down;
I am feared in field and town,
Goblin, lead them up and down.”
(Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act iv., Sc. 2.)
Only those who are eldest born are exempt from his spell. The proverb of “as ragged as a colt Pixey” is everywhere to be heard, and at which Drayton seems to hint in his Court of Faerie:-
“This Puck seems but a dreaming dolt,
Still walking like a ragged colt.”

From ‘The New Forest: its History and its Scenery‘ by John R. Wise (1863).

Cold Pixie’s Cave

Round Barrow(s)

formicaant May 7, 2008

The name of the barrow is thought to be a corruption of “colt-pixie”. These creatures were supposed to lure young ponies to their deaths in the water logged marshy parts of the heath. Another explanation is that the creatures were part horse and called other horses into the barrow.