Rhiannon

This, believe it or not, contains a golden wheelbarrow.

[edit] – I’ve now found where this story probably comes from, and I expect I originally saw it in Grinsell’s 1976 folklore book:

Littleton Drew, Barrow Lane: anyone digging in vicinity is asked, ‘are you digging for the golden wheel-barrow?’ (Rev. R. B. Lamplugh, vicar, to L.v.G., about 1950.) The Lugbury long barrow (in Nettleton parish) is near.

Barrow Treasure, in Fact, Tradition, and Legislation
L. V. Grinsell
Folklore, Vol. 78, No. 1. (Spring, 1967), pp. 1-38.

It’s no good – farmers with all their horses chained up to the stones just can’t shift them. Besides this would deprive a demon of his breakfast – if you pour some water into the depressions on the top slab you can guarantee that some fiend will have drunk it by the morning.

At midnight the Devil yokes up 4 white oxen to try and mve it – and even he can’t. (Why he wants to do this when it’s his own den I don’t know). A great white dog watches them from under the capstone, with eyes like burning coals. Or perhaps it’s a giant white rabbit with similar eyes (or a hare? – that seems a bit less soppy?). White animals (with red ears) generally come from the underworld in Celtic mythologies.

(these stories in ‘Folklore of Ancient Wiltshire’ by Katy Jordan)

Fort / ancient flint mines reputedly the last stronghold of the fairies in England. Apparently they left in 1925 when the flint mines reopened. Too much noise I expect.

How’s this for a weird bit of (modern) folklore? (found in Grinsell’s ‘Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain’)

The Manton round barrow was excavated in 1906, and they found an old woman’s skeleton amongst a number of grave goods. For some reason (unspecified) the skeleton was kept in a shed for a number of years. The owner of the shed apparently decided to send one of the skeleton’s fingers away to a friend overseas. He himself had circulatory problems and soon it turned out that he had to have a finger amputated. For some reason he then took it upon himself to replace the skeleton’s finger with his own, and he reburied the whole skeleton back in the barrow*. A ghost was then repeatedly seen looking in at his cottage window for the next few weeks.

(v odd and even sounds quite muddled, as you’d have expected the replacement of the finger to have happened after the ghost appeared. And you’d have thought being stored in a shed would annoy you more than having your finger removed. Dunno. For those interested, Grinsell notes the original sources and you could always look these over.)

*As MJB mentions below – the reburial in the barrow is at least actually true.

May 2025. I have discovered that this story – skeleton uncovered, wailing outside the window, vowing to rebury the skeleton, keeping the little finger, the wailing continuing, the excavator’s finger gets infected and needs to be amputated, they bury the finger in the grave and everything’s great again – it’s a story by Ethel Hampton in the Tatler of 18th February 1931 (“The Bath Road, an eerie story of the Wiltshire Downs”). I don’t think it’s even pretending to be anything other than fiction?

Grinsell said (in his 1975 folklore collection) “In dry summer weather I occasionally see children sliding down the shaggy grass-covered steeps... They sit on the discarded paper bags that held chemical fertiliser.” Much comfier than a jawbone.

A G Bradley’s 1907 ‘Round about Wiltshire’ says:

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, great sports were held up here on Martinsell. The custome still, I believe, survives in picnics for children. But at the original function a part of the programme consisted in sliding down the almost perpendicular face of the hill seated on the jawbones of horses, a practice which an antiquarian friend in the neighbourhood believes to show some trace of pagan origin. I can myself remember as a child the well-worn mark of a slide traced down this three or four hundred feet of precipitous turf, and the legend that a certain grave episcopal and academic dignitary, then living, had been persuaded to launch himself down it, without the assistance even of the horse’s jawbone, and that having once started had to continue his career unchecked till he landed safe but sore in the vale of Pewsey. All trace, however, of the historic slide has long vanished. But within the memory of men only elderly, the pugilists of the neighbouring villages used to take advantage fo what was left of the ancient festival, and fight out their battles on the top of Martinsell. These encounters were sometimes so ferocious that unsuccessful efforts were made to stamp out the festival, which, however, died a natural death.

At Cissbury Ring there is a treasure concealed in an underground tunnel guarded by serpents. Perhaps this is linked to the extensive Neolithic flint mines on the western side of the hill? 250 blocked shafts have been found – up to 12m deep with side galleries.

The Ring itself is actually a lump of earth thrown off the Devil’s spade as he was digging his Devil’s Dyke.

from Janet and Colin Bord (in ‘Prehistoric Britain from the air)

Apparently the Devil threw the Goldstone here after it fell on his foot as he was excavating the Devil’s Dyke (he was trying to let the sea through into the Weald to drown all the people there).

I had to include this stone – firstly for its excellent name, but also for the piece of folklore attached to it, which seems strangely upside down.
This stone (3ftx3ftx2ft) is apparently a boundary stone, and lies between Southwick and Thunders Barrow (at TQ229083). It is said that it used to be part of the parish church. ?!

The Wimblestone / Wimble Stone stands in a field at Pylle Well, to the NW of the Star Inn. It’s 5’6” high, 6’2” broad and 18” thick.
Legend has it that it can move (wimble means giddy or lively – though it’s also the name of a stonecutter’s tool for boring holes, and the stone does have a hole). On nights when there’s a full moon or on Midsummer’s eve (especially both) it goes dancing round its field. Underneath it is said to be a pot full of gold.
One day a farmer decided to move the stone, so he chained it to two of his horses. They struggled all day but had to give up, exhausted. That evening the stone leapt up and roamed across the Mendips to the nearby Water Stone near Wrington to tell it all about how stupid the farmer was. The Water Stone always contains water in the hollow of the capstone, and the Wimble Stone had a good drink before returning to its own field.

[I imagine I read this in Grinsell’s collected ‘Folklore of Prehistoric sites’]

The remains of this burial chamber are just south of Bristol Airport. The mound is almost gone. The cover slab remains – with a hollow in it that collects the rain water, hence the name. The slab is said to always have water in it, and this was taken advantage of by the Wimblestone, who once came to drink here. It’s also said (R Tongue – ‘Somerset Folklore’ 1965) that offerings of primroses and milk were once made here.

A mile or so to the west is Goblin Combe – definite proof of the area’s general otherworldly credentials, don’t you think. Goblin Combe has a folktale involving primroses too.

There was a parcel of children and they was a-picking primroses, see, and one poor little dear her wandered away on her lone self right down into Goblin Combe. She were only a little trot, see, and didn’t know no better. Well, when she do find she’s a lost she cries, and the tears do run down her dear little face, and dap on her pinafore like summer rain, and she do throw her self against a rock. Then the rock opens and there’s the fairises all come to comfort her tears. They do give her a gold ball and they lead the dear little soul safe home – on account she was carrying primroses, see.

Well, twas the wonder of the village and the conjuror he gets the notion he’d aget his fistes on more than one gold ball when next the fairises opened the hill. So he do pick a bunch of primroses and he go on up Goblin Combe, and he was glad enough to get in to the rock after all he see and hear on the way up. Well, twasn’t the right day, nor the right number of primroses, and he wasn’t no dear little soul – so they took him!

From ‘Folktales of England’ by Briggs and Tongue (1965). It was collected by Ruth Tongue who heard it told in chorus by two old ladies from Clevedon in 1945.

This long barrow lies near Rode church, and is apparently a popular spot for local people to scatter the ashes of their departed loved-ones*. Also it is a spot on the Mary or Michael ley (I forget which), which some people believe crosses from Cornwall to East Anglia, and is explored by the dowsing writers of ‘The Sun and the Serpent’*.

In the Bath Nat. Hist. and Antiq. Field Club journal for 1872, there is an account of an excursion to the area. They spoke to a local man who said that the Bed and Bolster was once twice as large as it is now, adding that when people had tried to take the stones away, bad weather had always prevented them. At the time about 22 sarsens were visible, with 5 upright – 3 or 4 (strange they couldn’t remember) at the east end, and one large flat one at the west. The writer also noted that the site was in full view of the Wiltshire Downs and the White Horse (at Westbury).

(on my visit in 09/07 you could certainly not see the horse, and only part of the downs if you walked further along the path).

You can see two bell barrows here, one on either side of the road. The common is the original landing place of the Martians in Wells’ War of the Worlds! and is a rare piece of heathland.

The stone at Pyrford is said to move about at midnight (surely this was not noticed en route home from the pub?). It used to lie in the centre of the road but was moved to the side (1976?). It’s on the corner of Upshott Lane – I hope the OS ref is accurate.

St Nicholas’s church up the road has a circular churchyard, which has been suggested as proof of the site’s pre-christian origins.

Another story says the stone turns round when the clock on St Nicholas’s strikes midnight. But in true local humour style, the church has never had a clock.

(I think these snippets may come from one of the Bord’s collections).

Anyone who has read Alan Garner’s books will be particularly transported by visiting The Edge. His first, ‘The Weirdstone of Brisingamen’ is based on this story about Merlin. King Arthur and his knights sleep on under the Edge waiting...
web.ukonline.co.uk/conker/conkers-and-ghosts/alderley-edge.htm
(part of the KidsArk website)

I doubt there’s much left to see of this Neolithic causewayed camp, seeing as how it’s surrounded by houses and the racecourse. It was excavated in the 30s and the detail that interested me was that two fossilised sea urchins had been buried with some people. Folklore has it that fossil sea urchins are ‘fairy loaves’ or ‘fairy stones’. I guess they are pretty strange – obviously not ordinary rocks, but they look like something living or manmade. Also without their spines they bear little resemblence to anything alive that you’re familiar with, particularly if you’re not living by the sea (like at the Five Knolls in Bedfordshire). I’ve also read that people have kept them in their houses so that their loaflike similarity would ensure the occupants would never go without bread (or food, no doubt). They were also kept in dairies to stop the milk going sour.

Of course, none of this need have any relevance to the reason these prehistoric people took them to their graves. They presumably serve no hands-on practical purpose? so we have to assume that they did hold a symbolic value of some kind (even if it could have been merely that they were weird and interesting?).

The village sign shows Ye Ancient Britons and the nasty Danes in front of the hill fort. Legend has it that their battle was rather vicious, hence the rather disgusting name of the road down the hill – Bloodgate – down which all the blood from the slaughter flowed. Nasty.

Warham camp overlooks the river Stiffkey (Stewkey) with a sweeping view. It’s bound to be Iron age but tradition has it that the Danes built it after they landed at Weyborne Hope (He who would Old England win, must at Weyborne Hoop begin)

Next to the Devil’s Ditch on Garboldisham Heath, a round barrow supposedly the resting place of Queen Boudicca..

This looks like a round barrow because it straddles the county boundary, and the Hertfordshire side has been ploughed, but it’s actually* a long barrow [*er, actually, see below]. I had a childhood friend from Pegsdon and I remember her mentioning the story that you could hear someone inside knocking. I was (pleasantly) scared to believe it but I wanted to believe it. I can’t remember if she said she’d heard it herself but I’m sure we must have pressed her on the point..

In her book ‘Albion’ Jennifer Westwood agrees that there is an old man inside who knocks to be let out. She mentions the Herts Illus. Review for 1894, which says a British Chieftain is buried here with his treasure chest. From time to time he knocks thrice on it to make sure it’s still there (I guess it’s dark in there). The hill is/was also known as ‘Money Knoll’.

Westwood also suggests the name could come from ‘cnycyn’ – the welsh for a bump or small hillock. It’s a long way from Wales, mind.

In her later book, ‘Lore of the Land’ (2005) Westwood mentions the Hertfordshire folklorist W B Gerish, who heard from a Mr Aylott that it was a ‘warrior in armour’ knocking. Purple pasque flower grew (grows?) on the knoll, and this was said to grow only where Danish blood had been spilt.

Magic powers they have
Men that are sick
Fare to that stone;
and they wash that stone
and bathe away their evil.

Layamon reporting in ‘Brut’ in the 12th century.

Manley, V.S. (1924). Folk-lore of the Warminster district: a supplement to the History of Warminster and the Official Guide. Collected by V.S. Manley.
Warminster: Coates & Parker. I’m sure I’ve seen a copy but don’t have one now. In a review of Manley’s book in WANHM v43, it says that

“One of the most curious items is ‘The Spirit of Cley Hill,’ a legend which would apparently have died with its narrator, an old woman of 80. The legend records that the guardian spirit of the Bugley folk lived inside the barrow on the top of the hill, and one day hearing water running beneath him he directed its course underground until it came out at Hogs Well. He told the people not to drink it but to use it only for curing weak eyes, and an old woman who disregarded his order and drank the water died that night, and a cow that polluted the water was drowned in the mud. It is in any case a fact that until recently this water has been in great request for bad eyes, 6d. a bottle being paid for it, provided some Ground Ivy was included to be brewed with it. The appearance of the Well Fiend is recorded of Bicker’s Well, in Prince Croft Lane, at Bugley, and under a large oak tree which formerly stood where North Lane meets the Half, below Blue Ball, Bugley, elves lived and might sometimes be seen gambolling by children.

This is a weird kind of place.

The folk of Devizes had offended the devil, who sore he would serve them out. So he went “down the country” (ie into Somerset), and found a big “hump” and put it on his back, to carry it and fling it at them. On his journey back he met a man and asked the way to Devizes. The man replied,
That’s just what I want to know myself. I started for Devizes when my beard was black, and now it’s grey, and I haven’t got there yet.
The devil replied, “If that’s how it is, I won’t carry this thing no further, so here goes, ” and he flung the “girt (great) hump” off his shoulder, and there it is.

Collected in Warminster, 1893. On p78 of
Folklore Notes from South-West Wilts
John U. Powell
Folklore, Vol. 12, No. 1. (Mar., 1901), pp. 71-83.