Rhiannon

Foel Fenlli is a high conical hill topped by a hill fort – it’s the highest in a chain of hillforts that run along the Clwydian range. The summit has a cairn, and nearby is “a never failing crystal spring”. The fort is named after Benlli Gawr. Nennius describes him as the ‘wicked and tyrannical king’ of Powys. Perhaps he was, perhaps he wasn’t. Whichever, Saint Germanus was in the neighbourhood, and he and his friends turned up at the front door of the fort demanding to see the man. They just wanted to convert him to Christianity. For his own good, you know. It wasn’t an evangelical competition to convert the naughtiest pagan they could find or anything. A message was sent to Benlli. He sent back his response: Not Today Thankyou – they could stand on his doorstep for a whole year if they liked, but they weren’t coming in.

Well. That night, ‘fire fell from heaven and consumed the citadel and all the men that were with the tyrant; they were never seen more’. Sounds very like arson to me. And to add to the suspicious circumstances, Germanus then took it upon himself to make Benlli’s swineherd the new king of Powys. Just because he’d been nice to Germanus, made him a cup of tea and agreed to become a Christian. What a set-up.

(Nennius’s tale described in vol 2 of ‘Lives of the British Saints’ by Baring-Gould (1913), p255.)

So much folklore attached to one small stone. This version of events comes from Baring-Gould’s source and is in ‘Lives of the British Saints’ v4 p 293 (1913).

About a mile from the church, in the corner of a field near the Holy Wells of SS Cybi and Seiriol, on Clorach farm, is a celebrated maen hir, a little over four feet high, called Lleidr Tyfrydog, Tyfrydog’s Thief, which has the appearance of a humpbacked man.

The local tradition is that a man who sacrilegiously stole the church books, whilst carrying them away, was suddenly converted by the saint [Saint Tyrnog that is, the patron saint of the church] into this red sandstone pillar. The lump to be seen on one side of the stone represents the sack which contains his theft, lying over his shoulder.

His soul, at stated intervals, is compelled to go three times madly round the field and back to the stone, in the dead of night, being pursued by demons with red hot pitchforks.

Baring-Gould also relates this tale: In 1098, Hugh, Earl of Shrewsbury (for some reason) put some dogs into the church overnight. When they were let out the next day they’d gone mad. And it didn’t do Hugh much good either – he was killed by a Norse pirate within the month. Giraldus Cambrensis ascribed it to ‘the vindictive nature’ of the Welsh saints. Well maybe they just don’t want dog hair (and worse) all over their churches, eh? And they don’t want their books nicked. Is that so unreasonable?

To be quite frank I do not know anything about this earthwork (and there are no details yet on Magic). It comes with its own megalithic folklore though, which is well brought to life in the following extract:

As [Saint] Samson and his party were about to descend from Laneast Down, they observed a bald hill on the left, now Tregeare.. The hilltop was thronged with people engaged in an idolatrous revel. Samson recalled what Winiau [his cousin] had said to him, that the natives were still immersed in devil worship, and he at once descended from his wagon, and taking with him two of his monks.. made for Tregeare, and in his zeal, ran up the hill.

He found the people dancing round an upright stone, and the chieftain of the district was looking on with approval. Samson remonstrated. The people good-humouredly explained that no harm was meant; they were merry-making as was their immemorial custon; but some advised Samson to mind his own business. Certain of the company were angry at his interference.

Samson persisted.. at this moment a boy of noble birth who was mounted on an unbroken colt, and was careering about the hill, was thrown, fell on his head, and lay stunned on the sod. This drew off the attention of the revellers. Samson went to the lad, made people stand back, and prayed for the child’s recovery. Happily, the boy opened his eyes and stood up.

The people, supposing that the Saint had raised him to life [like heck they did] became more willing to listen to him. Instead of destroying the menhir, Samson cut a cross upon it. The revellers gave up their dancing for that year, to resume it on the next anniversary [my italics].

The stone is no longer on Tregeare height, but a very rude granite cross stands by the wayside from Laneast Down to Tregeare.

From p 156 of Baring-Gould’s ‘Lives of the British Saints’ (1913). The text is a translation of an older document. Samson was supposed to have lived c500AD.

St Neot was a keen evangelist and was trying to convert the unenthusiastic masses of Hamstoke (now, one imagines, the village retitled as ‘St Neot’).

Local tradition, fondly clung to still, tells how they one and all made excuse, alleging that the crows came down in such flights on their fields as to destroy the prospect of crops, and that accordingly they could not spare the time from watching their fields to attendance on his discourses.
Then Neot summoned the crows to him and empounded them in the old Roman camp on Goonzion Down, and bade them remain there during the time of Divine worship and instruction. And they obeyed.

footnote: The entrenchment is now called ‘Crow Pound’. The woman at S. Neot who told the story to the writer said: ‘Some people doubt that this was so. But S. Neot was a very holy man. There is Crow Pound, and there on the opposite side of the valley is the Rookery.‘

From p7 in ‘The Lives of the British Saints’ volume 4, by S Baring-Gould and John Fisher (1913).

This is very wordily reported in Impounding Wild Birds
Wm. Pengelly
The Folk-Lore Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1. (Jan., 1884), pp. 19-20.
in which he quotes the Parochial History of Saint Neots in Cornwall, by James Michell, 1833, p137-8. The name of the village is given as Guerryer Stoke (now St. Neots).

Baring Gould (in the 1913 v4 of ‘the lives of the British Saints’) quotes from Pugh’s 1816 ‘Cambria Depicta’:

According to another version Twrog was a giant, who dwelt in the mountain. The villagers had incurred his wrath, and he flung the huge stone down with the intention of killing some of them, which , though it hit the church, did no damage. The imprint of his five fingers are still visible on it!

---

A stained glass window in Maentwrog church shows St Twrog holding a book in one hand and leaning on the stone with the other. (the book is Buchedd Beuno, the book of St Beuno, which Twrog wrote. It’s also known as Tiboeth, from di-boeth, ‘unburnt’, because it escaped Clynnog church burning down three times – it was handily encased in iron).

I was intrigued by this, having seen it apparently mentioned in the Mabinogion: “And by force of strength, and fierceness, and by the magic and charms of Gwydion, Pryderi was slain. And at Maen Tyriawc, above Melenryd, was he buried, and there is his grave.“* Felenrhyd is just downstream, and the stone that marks his grave stands in the churchyard of Maentwrog.

‘Maen Twrog’ however implies ‘Twrog’s stone’ – Twrog being the celtic St Twrog. The stone stands beside the church in Maentwrog. A website about the church suggests the stone marks St Twrog’s grave.

It would be interesting to know how old the church is (the current one seems Victorian?). The wikipedia doesn’t say where it gets its version of the legend from, but suggests Twrog was trying to destroy a pagan alter with reckless stone throwing from a mountain, and that explains why Maen Twrog and the church are where they are.

It also mentions the belief that “if one rubs this boulder one is fated to return to the village in the future.”

Moss’s kind researches from ‘Welsh Saints’ by Breverton turned up the information that:

At Maentwrog, a huge stone different to local rocks (possibly a glacial boulder) is attached to the angle of the church, and is known as Maen Twrog. It was supposed to have been thrown by Twrog from the top of the mountain of Moelwyn.

*(from Math, son of Mathonwy, online at the sacred texts archive
sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/mab/mab26.htm#page_413

users.netmatters.co.uk/davidbryant/C/mainsite/ChHist.htm

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maentwrog

Links to lots of folklore at the Clare County Library website (much of which relates to the ancient sites of Clare).
clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/folklore/index.htm

Lady Guest suggests in her notes to the Mabinogion story ‘Math the son of Mathonwy’ (online at the Sacred Texts Archive,
sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/mab/mab27.htm
that Pen-y-Gaer is the location of Caer Dathyl, where Math is supposed to have held his court. The story does include lots of geographical spots / placenames, so this could be more than just a wild guess.

Castle hill is a a univallate Iron Age fort with wide views across the Thames valley. Alfred Williams spoke to two haymakers from Lus Hill, who believed the camp was built by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell’s men were also supposed to have had a shot at the Highworth church from here, with the cannonball that made the hole in the tower hanging in the church yet. * Highworth is a Long Way Away though!

*This from ‘Round About the Upper Thames’ by Williams (1922), quoted by Katy Jordan in her ‘Haunted Wiltshire’ (2000).

Arthur Shuttlewood records (in his imaginative ‘UFOs Over Warminster’ 1979) that “tradition has it that an early Saxon chieftain and his family were interred in the bald patch of earth on the top of the mound in the midst of tree growth” – neatly combining two common story themes – to ascribe prehistoric barrows to Saxons, and the idea that vegetation will not grow on certain graves.

the Doctor [Dr Bird, who’d been present at the opening of the Nympsfield Park barrow] stated that an old friend of his had told him many a time he and other boys had gone to [Uley] tumulus and had a fight with the “giants’ bones” in the chambers.

The clergyman of the parish, some time afterwards, had all the human bones collected and buried in the corner of the churchyard.

From v2 of the Bath Field Club proceedings, 1870-2.

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.

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.

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).

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.

According to Coflein this cairn, on the part of the mountain called the Llorfa, is nine metres in diameter.

A man who lived at Ystradgynlais, in Brecknockshire, going out one day to look after his cattle and sheep on the mountain, disappeared. In about three weeks, after search had been made in vain for him and his wife had given him up for dead, he came home. His wife asked him where he had been for the past three weeks. “Three weeks! Is it three weeks you call three hours?” said he. Pressed to say where he had been, he told her he had been playing on his flute (which he usually took with him on the mountain) at the Llorfa, a spot near the Van Pool, when he was surrounded at a distance by little beings like men, who closed nearer and nearer to him until they became a very small circle. They sang and danced, and so affected him that he quite lost himself. They offered him some small cakes to eat, of which he partook; and he had never enjoyed himself so well in his life.

This is from ‘The Science of Fairy Tales’ by Edwin Sidney Hartland
(1891), now online at the Sacred Texts Archive. sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/sft/sft08.htm
I can’t spot ‘the Van Pool’ using the map (and the possibly similar sounding Fan Foel is a long way off).

There are numerous remains on Carn Fadryn – the large Iron Age fort was overlain by a castle in the 12th century.

The fort is associated with Queen / Saint Madrun (supposedly the granddaughter of Vortigern). Maybe the name is also linked with the Roman mother goddess of Matrona..

“Ceidio, in the promontory of Lleyn, is under the remarkable isolated hill of Carn Madryn, which takes its name from Madrun. The local tradition is that on the burning of the palace of Gwrtheyrn, under Tre’r Ceiri, Madrun fled with Ceidio, then a child in arms, to the fortress on Carn Madryn, and that later in life Ceidio founded the church that bears his name beneath the mountain...” (from Baring-Gould’s section on S. Ceidio in ‘Lives of the British Saints‘).

Such a vantage point is also ideal for throwing stones from – Penllech Coetan Arthur originated up here.

‘Naboth’s Vineyard’ is an episode from the bible (which you can read online at the Electronic Text Centre , courtesy of the University of Virginia)

It’s a rather gruesome tale in which King Ahab hankers after the lowly Naboth’s nice vineyard, and because Naboth won’t sell it to him, he conspires to have him done away with.

Does this tale relate to some kind of similar legendary incident in Llanharry? Could the barrows even have been incorporated into a local story? And if not, why would the field be called this strange name?

When you sit at this lovely spot you can imagine the Irish king’s ships turning up – he was invited over to marry the British king’s beautiful sister Branwen. It looks like the ideal outdoor spot for camping and a feast.

..She was one of the three chief ladies of this island, and she was the fairest damsel in the world.

And they fixed upon Aberffraw as the place where she should become his bride. And they went thence, and towards Aberffraw the hosts proceeded; Matholwch and his host in their ships; Bendigeid Vran and his host by land, until they came to Aberffraw. And at Aberffraw they began the feast and sat down. And thus sat they. The King of the Island of the Mighty and Manawyddan the son of Llyr on one side, and Matholwch on the other side, and Branwen the daughter of Llyr beside him. And they were not within a house, but under tents. No house could ever contain Bendigeid Vran. And they began the banquet and caroused and discoursed. And when it was more pleasing to them to sleep than to carouse, they went to rest, and that night Branwen became Matholwch’s bride.

Quote from Lady Guest’s translation of the Mabinogion, online at the Sacred Texts archive:
sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/mab/mab22.htm
Of course it all ended badly, as you can find out at Bedd Branwen.

Just at the foot of the fort is the village of Llanaelhaearn, and its holy well of St Aelhaiarn. Aelhaiarn is one of those Celtic saints with a bizarre life story. He started off as a servant of St Beuno (see Clynnog Fawr). St B liked to commune with God outdoors. Actually he often liked to pray in the middle of rivers. I can appreciate the trance-like state this might induce – perhaps that’s why he liked it. Or perhaps he just thought he could get a bit of peace and quiet in the middle of a river. However, one day his servant followed him. St B was so incensed at being disturbed that he didn’t recognise his friend and rashly muttered that God should teach the man a lesson. Upon that, a pack of wild animals rushed up and tore the poor man to pieces. Beuno must have relented at this point and pulling himself out of the river, ran round collecting up all the bits he could find. Rather cleverly he reassembled them, but just couldn’t find a missing eyebrow. He may have considered a caterpillar, but eventually plumped for the iron tip of his staff. I wonder if the iron nature of the item has any bearing? He then brought the man back to life, and he was known as Aelhaiarn, or ‘iron eyebrow’. Aelhaiarn became a priest and tended the well at the foot of Tre’r Ceiri. The water consequently became renowned for its powers of bodily restoration.

I have based this on the story given by Nigel Pennick in his ‘Celtic Saints’ (1997) but it would be better to find the original ‘Life’.

You can also read a much better (and slightly more complex) version on p228-30 of ‘Select Remains of the Learned John Ray, with his Life’ by William Derham. Published 1760.
which I have found online at google books, and which is from a journey made in 1661.

In Nigel Pennick’s ‘Celtic Saints’ (1997) he says that “megaliths are plentiful around the church, in its foundations, and the adjoining chapel of St Bueno” (including one in the floor of the nave, apparently).

Near Clynog, in Carnarvonshire, there is a place called Llwyn y Nef, (the Bush of Heaven,) which thus received its name: In Clynog lived a monk of most devout life, who longed to be taken to heaven. One evening, whilst walking without the monastery by the riverside, he sat down under a green tree and fell into a deep reverie, which ended in sleep and he slept for thousands of years. At last he heard a voice calling unto him, ‘Sleeper, awake and be up.’ He awoke. All was strange to him except the old monastery, which still looked down upon the river. He went to the monastery, and was made much of. He asked for a bed to rest himself on and got it. Next morning when the brethren sought him, they found nothing in the bed but a handful of ashes.

sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/wfl/wfl06.htm
‘British Goblins’ by Wirt Sikes (1880), online at the Sacred Texts Archive. It’s a story usually connected with fairy goings-on, but this time has been polished up with the inclusion of a monk.

An earlier source of purejoy’s folklore is ‘Wiltshire: The topographical collections of John Aubrey’, corrected and enlarged by J E Jackson (1862). He writes: “At the top of the wood at Colerne Park there is said to be a large hillock called ‘The Dane’s Tump’ where tradition buries a Danish King.”

On the last day of the 19th century, two of the uprights of the outer Circle fell. There is an old saying that the fall of one of these stones foretells the death of a Sovereign. In January 1901, however, just before the seeming fulfilment of the omen in the death of Queen Victoria, the two newly fallen stones were raised and set up again. At the same time a worse thing was done amid the protests of all the old lovers of Stonehenge. The great Leaning Stone which for nearly three centuries had reclined on the top of a short bluestone in front of it, and in this posture was the central figure, so to speak, of the Stonehenge known to all who had ever visited Salisbury Plain and to the whole world beside through the drawings of Turner and Constable – this hoary monster, bowed under the weight of innumerable years, was dragged up from its recumbency, bolted, concreted, and stiffened into an unnatural uprightness and now stands rigid and awkward as an aged man stayed up into an affectation of youth.

From ‘Salisbury Plain’ by Ella Noyes (1913).

There are various traditions connected with it. I was told some years since, by an old man hoeing turnips near, that if anybody mounted to the top of it, he might shake it in one particular part. I do not know whether this is the case or not, though it is not unusual where the capstone is upheld by only three supporters. But another labourer whom I once interrogated informed me that nobody could ever pull off the capstone; that many had tried to do so without success; and that on one occasion twelve white oxen were provided with new harness, and set to pull it off, but the harness all fell to pieces immediately! As my informant evidently thought very seriously of this, and considered it the work of enchantment, I found it was not a matter for trifling to his honest but superstitious mind; and he remained perfectly unconvinced by all the arguments with which I tried to shake his credulity.

An atheist might find the latter section quite ironic, coming from the Rev. A C Smith as it does. It is part of his (excellent) ‘Guide to the British and Roman Antiquities of the North Wiltshire Downs’ (1884).

From ‘Wiltshire: the topographical collections of John Aubrey. Corrected and enlarged by J. E. Jackson (1862)’.

John Aubrey wrote:

Hubba’s Lowe: In the reign of King Ethelred, Hinguor and Hubba, two brothers, Danes, Leaders who had gott footing among the East Angles. These Pagans, Asserius saith, came from Danubius. Bruern, a nobleman, whose wife King Osbert had ravished, called in Hinguor and Hubba to revenge him.

Jackson, out to correct him, leaves the footnote:

There seems to be no authority for this tumulus having been ever called ‘Hubba’s Low’ (ie the burial tumulus of Hubba, the Dane). It is merely the name that Aubrey gave it, because his neighbour at Kington St Michael, Sir Charles Snell ‘told him so’. Hubba was most likely buried where the Chronicles say he was slain, in Devonshire. See Hoare’s Anc Wilts ii 99, and a minute account of this barrow by Dr Thurnam, in Wilts Arch Mag III 67. The common name is Lan Hill (Long Hill) barrow. It is three miles NW of Chippenham in a meadow on the left of the high road leading to Marshfield. It is a heap of stones about 60 paces in length, covered in turf. For the convenience of obtaining road materials it has been much injured.

One feels he was rather missing the point, shirtily pointing out that Hubba would have been buried in Devon. But you can see his disregard for barrows in his description of it as ‘a heap of stones’. Oh well.

The young son of the landowners, Charles Goring, planted the beech trees of Chanctonbury Ring in 1760. There are various romantic tales about their birth – that as a child he ran around the hill scattering their seeds, or that he often went up the hill with a little flask of water to tend to his little seedlings. A less sympathetic story tells of him sending his poor servants up the hill with buckets of water! A more pro-proletariat version has the lowly girls and boys of the village sowing the beechnuts.

(collected together in Westwood and Simpson’s ‘Lore of the Land’ (2005).)

Westwood and Simpson (’Lore of the Land’ 2005) mention an early version from 1774 about the tunnel which runs from the south side of the hill to the centre of town. Variations continue to thrive: “A man who wanted to test its truth put a duck into the hole, and a few days later ‘the duck emerged, looking slightly confused, in the centre of Dorchester’.” (Don’t go shoving any more ducks down holes or I’ll have to call the RSPB.)

They also mention Jeremy Harte’s researches into Maiden Castle(s) in which he mentions ‘ghostly Roman soldiers’ and ‘a strange force capable of rocking a parked car’. Sounds intriguing. Such a big hillfort has plenty of room for plenty of weirdness. You’d better see their bibliography in ‘Lore of the Land’ (2005).

Following on from the information about “Molly the Dreamer” at Gatcombe Lodge:

“Molly is also supposed to have dug at the Longstone, where she did find gold, but lightning flashed just as she was about to lift it out; ‘after that she was never the same again’.”

From an article in ‘Folklore’ (1912), mentioned by Westwood and Simpson in their 2005 ‘Lore of the Land’.

Watch out for the big cats, if this tale of schoolboys on ‘Farshores’ is to be believed.
100megsfree4.com/farshores/c_dart.htm

woodland-trust.org.uk/broadleaf/leaffirst.asp?aid=533&issue=60

This page at the Woodland Trust suggests that people chipped bits off the stone to pop them under their pillows – that way they’d dream of their future lovers. Or spouses, as the page so primly puts it.

The Spa at Gilsland obviously got popular in Victorian times, but could chalybeate and sulphurous springs have gone unnoticed before this (you doubt it). This extract from ‘Northumbria’ (1920) tries to suggest the fad was a survival of the past.. though who knows. Gilsland Spa was obviously used as such before the Victorians (Kentigern’s website says it was on a map from the 1770s).

Gilsland Spa has long been a noted resort, and an account is given even within recent times of the yearly pilgrimage to the chalybeate and sulphur waters as a modern survival of well-worship. On the Sunday after old Midsummer Day, called the Head Sunday, and the Sunday after it, hundreds if not thousands used to assemble from all directions by rail when that was available, and by vehicles and on foot otherwise. From North Tynedale and the neighbourhood for many miles round these unconscious adherents of heathen rites visited the wells.

oldandsold.com/articles32n/northumbria-21.shtml

[With regard to the ‘synthetic folklore’ derided in the post above, I would say that folklore is being created all the time (think urban myths) and even if it is made up on the spot it is clearly to fill a certain gap that is perceived to require some, and generally draws on ideas of what folklore should be about (midsummer meetings etc). I don’t think I should only be recording ‘genuine folklore’, whatever that’s supposed to be – if ideas get told, believed and retold, then that IS folklore, surely.]

Stukeley was told by local people that there had been seven churches here originally, but that six had vanished entirely.

(mentioned by Westwood and Simpson in ‘Lore of the Land’ 2005 p215)

Castle Hill is an Iron Age fort, later reused in medieval times. You can see the remains of a tower on top, and this has a legend attached which is more often associated with the siting of churches (but without the fake boar – it’s usually the devil or some other supernatural interferer. Could this be a ‘rationalised’ version of a previous tale?):

A lord of Callaley in the days of yore commenced erecting a castle on this hill; his lady preferred a low sheltered situation in the vale. She remonstrated; but her lord was wilful, and the building continued to progress. What she could not attain by persuasion she sought to achieve by stratagem, and availed herself of the superstitious opinions and feelings of the age. One of her servants who was devoted to her interests entered into her scheme; he was dressed up like a boar, and nightly he ascended the hill and pulled down all that had been built during the day. It was soon whispered that the spiritual powers were opposed to the erection of a castle on the hill; the lord himself became alarmed, and he sent some of his retainers to watch the building during the night, and discover the cause of the destruction. Under the influence of the superstitions of the times, these retainers magnified appearances, and when the boar issued from the wood and commenced overthrowing the work of the day, they beheld a monstrous animal of enormous power. Their terror was complete when the boar, standing among the overturned stones, cried out in a loud voice--
“Callaly Castle built on the height,
Up in the day and down in the night;
Builded down in the Shepherd’s Shaw,
It shall stand for aye and never fa’.

They immediately fled and informed the lord of the supernatural visitation; and regarding the rhymes as an expression of the will of heaven, he abandoned the work, and in accordance with the wish of his lady built his castle low down in the vale, where the modern mansion now stands. --George Tate, F.G.S., in Alnwick Mercury, August 1, 1862.

From the Denham Tracts, which also has a bit on weather forecasting using the site:

When the “Callaly pot is boiling” it indicates bad weather. A mist in a ferment rises straight up from the ravine between the Castle Hill and Lorbottle Moor, and clings to the top of the hill. This is a sure sign of rain, both as seen from Biddleston on the west and Shawdon on the east. The “Callaly pot” was boiled by the Clavering owners, who were a Catholic family, to provide a dinner for the poor people who on Sunday and holidays attended the services at the chapel attached to the mansion.

In the late 19th century (according to the Magic record) several Bronze Age stone coffins were discovered during quarrying on the north side of the hill. On the south side there are quite a few round cairns. One is near Macartney’s Cave (’In one of the huge fantastic rocks among the heather is Macartney’s Cave, a little oratory hewn out of the sandstone by a former chaplain of Callaly Castle’*), and at least five are near ‘Hob’s Nick’ – a deep fissure in the rock.
*taken from ‘Northumbria’ (1920 – no author mentioned?) online at
oldandsold.com/articles32n/northumbria-32.shtml

The Denham Tracts say of the waterfalls in Callaly Crags close by:

The pot-holes... are Robin Goodfellow’s or Hob-Thrush’s Mills, wherein he grinds his visionary grain. The mills are set going by spates, which bring down stones that rattle in the pot holes, like the grinding gear of a mill set in motion.

Visionary grain eh?

Local folklore had it that Nympsfield was originally built as a shelter for lepers, and locals avoided it. Someone clearly overcame their fears in the end, judging by the ruinous state in which the barrow now lies.

Mark Richards also suggests (in ‘The Cotswold Way’ 1984) that the name Nympsfield could be derived from ‘open country belonging to a place called Nymed’.. and nymed possibly coming from the Welsh ‘nyfed’ – a shrine or holy place (a grove?). Nympsfield the village is not really next to the barrow – it’s more equidistant from this long barrow and Hetty Peglar’s Tump. It’d be nice to think such a romantic explanation were true though.

According to ‘Dorsetshire Folklore’ by John Symonds Udal (1922), this hill features in a couple of connected local sayings:

“As much akin as Leuson Hill to Pilsen-Pen” implies people who are near neighbours ‘but neither relations nor aquaintance’.

“As far off as Lewedon Hill from Pillesdon Pen” denotes ‘a distinct severance of friendly relations between near neighbours.”

Lewesdon and Pilsdon Pen are indeed very close; and according to the info on Magic there are four hillforts overlooking this end of the Marshwood Vale “representing an unusual concentration.”

According to George Witts in c1882, “There is a local tradition that ‘in the time of the wars’ blood ran down Abbey Lane like water, and many people are still afraid to go down the lane at night! ”

“The views from this position are very extensive, including the river Severn for many miles, Stinchcomb Hill, Haresfield Beacon, Bredon Hill, the Malvern Hills, May Hill, Dean Forest, Lydney, Chepstow, &c. The ancient Ridge way runs through the centre of the camp. ”

As for its name:

[It] is in a piece of ground called the Abby, as Sir Robert Atkyns thinks from an old house near it which formerly belonged to an Abby. It is about a mile from Alveston, and near the eleven mile stone in the road from Bristol to Gloucester. Its dimensions are about two hundred and forty yards from east to west, and about three hundred and forty from north to south. It is much mutilated by the plough and other things. It may be seen from Oldbury, Old Sodbury, and Westridge. Most probably also from Dyrham, Horton and Drakestone.

From ‘An Account of a Chain of ancient Fortresses’ by Thomas Baker – In Archaeologia 19 (Jan 1821).

Local landowner, Sir Philip Brocklehurst, wrote in 1874:

The peasants of the neighbourhood have a curious legend respecting the origin of ‘The Bridestones’. “When the Danes invaded England,” they say, “a Danish youth became enamoured of a Saxon lady, and in the end the two were married at Biddulph church (about a mile and a half distant) but on returning from the wedding, they were here met and murdered, and after their interment had taken place on the spot where they fell, these stones were laid around their grave, and the name Bridestones given to it from that circumstance.” So much for public opinion.

You can see him rolling his eyes.

Quoted in Westwood and Simpson’s 2005 ‘Lore of the Land’.

A village grew up inside this hillfort, including the church of St John the Baptist. In 1402 the Devil appeared in the church during a terrible thunderstorm, taking on the form of a grey friar and ‘behaving himself verie outrageouslie’ according to Holinshed’s Chronicles (written in the 16th century). The nave and a part of the chancel were destroyed. Cynics will put this down to the relative height of church, the fort being the highest point in Essex, and thus vulnerable to lightning and eldritch storms, rather than to any devilish qualities of the fort itself.

Mentioned in Westwood and Simpson’s ‘Lore of the Land’ (2005) p255.

It seems to be originally in Thomas Walsingham’s ‘Historia Anglicana’, written at about the time the event is supposed to have happened? You can see it here, and if you put the latin into google translate (I’m afraid my latin talents won’t run to it otherwise), you will hear about Unspeakable Terror of the parishioners and flashing globes of lightning.

Westwood and Simpson suggest in ‘Lore of the Land’ (2005) that an alternative name for these stones is ‘Lady Williams and her little dog Fido’. What can this mean? They give no explanation. Surely no-one can miscount stones that badly. Does anyone know what this is about?

Perhaps this is the tale Purejoy hints at below. It was described by Edward Waring in his 1977 ‘Ghosts and Legends of the Dorset Countryside’.

A farmer was out on the hill late one night, when he heard in the distance the sound of a huntsman’s horn, and the baying of a pack of hounds. Looking across he saw ‘the form of a man running for dear life’ through a hedge and ditch. The hounds appeared next, ‘urged on by a tall black figure striding at an unearthly pace, with sparks of fire flashing from his boots’. They seized their quarry before he got down into the valley and the farmer realized that what he had seen ‘must be the Devil tormenting a lost soul’.

Nice turns of phrase. Quoted by Westwood and Simpson in their 2005 ‘Lore of the Land’.

Sir Walter Scott apparently stole the story and transferred it to Scotland in ‘The Black Dwarf’. Scroll down to chapter two of ‘Tales of My Landlord’:
arthurwendover.com/arthurs/scott/bdwrf10.html
Sir Walter. I’m disappointed in you.

“In the annotated edition of his novels, Sir Walter fails to tell that he took up this idea from a communication to the Gentleman’s Magazine of April 1808. In this paper it is stated that, on the top of an eminence in the parish of Addlestrop, in Gloucestershire, there was a number of blocks of stone, which had stood there from time immemorial, under the name of the Grey Geese of Addlestrop Hill, until they had lately been taken by Mr Warren Hastings, and formed into a rock-work for the decoration of his grounds at Daylesford. There was added a ballad which had been composed evidently for the amusement of the circle at Daylesford..” It’s on p246 here, in the Book of Days by Robert Chambers (1832).
google.co.uk/books/pdf/The_Book_of_Days.pdf?vid=0tSGEQNuyrkTdE0eELtBZ_4&id=K0UJAAAAIAAJ&output=pdf&sig=OpY85EZW24QzN-ZCK_vXk_KAr44

Hastings was the former governor general of the East India Company. If he’d just retired I expect he was looking for something to interfere with around the house??

I wonder how the stones looked before he moved them. And have they been moved about since?