Rhiannon

Heytesbury. Independent Sunday School. On Whit-Sunday the anniversary in connection with this school was held. [...] On Whit-Monday the children assembled at the schoolrooms in the morning, and from thence paraded the principal streets headed by the Heytesbury Amateur Fife and Drum Band. Divine service was held, after which they marched through the town again and then dispersed till the afternoon when they came to the schools and had plum cake and tea. Then they went on Cotley Hill, where hearty games was indulged in till dusk, when they sang a few hymns and separated, being highly pleased with the day’s outing.

Wiltshire Times, 22nd May 1880.

Congregational Sunday Schools. On Wednesday the scholars of these Sunday Schools had an outing to Cotley Hill, where various amusements were indulged in and refreshments provided. The Heytesbury Brass Band, under Mr. T. Cross’s leadership, was in attendance, and played a capital selection of music. The outing, it will be remembered, was postponed from Whit Monday, on account of the inclemency of the weather.

Warminster and Westbury Journal, 20th June 1885.

In addition to being a good spot for musical outings, twenty years earlier everyone ended up after the celebrations for the marriage of the Prince of Wales. There was a distribution of money from Lord Heytesbury, a parade with a fife and drum band, and the children were ‘bountifully regaled with tea, cake and oranges in the National School-room’.

There was also a bonfire on Cotley Hill (famed by antiquarians), near the large barrow which the Romans are supposed to have used as an exploring post. From this elevated spot, which commands a most extensive view, as many as twenty-four bonfires were seen lighting up the distant hills on the night of this joyous day.

Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 14th March 1863.

...It is interesting to find that a close connection existed between Colonsay and Oronsay and Dublin, in this way, that Aud or Audna, who was the Queen of Olaf the White, lived at Dun Uragaig on the north-west side of Colonsay, along with her son Thorstein the Red. Aud was known as the richest woman in the world, and later she proceeded out to Iceland, and founded a colony at Hvamm Firth. Aud is a very great personage indeed in the Icelandic Sagas. I would refer your inquirer to Grieve’s “Oronsay and Colonsay,” in 2 volumes...
From Mr W.H. Milligan, Carnlough.

A correspondent in the ‘Northern Whig’, 16th October 1924.

On the top of “Hedgehope,” the round-headed hill that is neighbour to Cheviot, there is a hollow in an incised stone, known as the “Bluidy Trough,” on account of the colour given to the water by the orange-red moss or lichen covering the stone. It is lucky to make a wish here, and drop in a crooked pin – a great number can be seen clearly, lying at the bottom of the hollow, in the water.
- Contributed by Mr T--, Belford, Northumberland, estate agent.

This from the Northumberland ‘County Folk-Lore’, collected by M.C. Balfour (1904). Perhaps the colour might be down to that red coloured algae you get in bird baths sometimes?

From the Aberdeenshire Ordnance Survey Name Books (1865-71).

This name is given to a standing stone 7 chains south west of Roddentree. There seems to have been a stone circle as other stones are beside this one, but are deeply imbedded in the earth. Many years ago the word ‘Cummer’ was applied to the Mistress of the house, latterly the meaning changed to ‘a worthless woman’. There are traces of a house near this stone which was inhabited by an old woman, many years ago. Hence the name.

I had a look in the Oxford English Dictionary and it has various versions of this Scottish word: a godmother, a female companion, a gossip, or a familiarly-applied word for a woman “with various local specific applications, e.g. young woman, lass, girl, witch, wise-woman, midwife, etc.” (Nothing particularly derogatory unless you mean it that way I suppose).

From the Ordnance Survey Name Books, which you can look at courtesy of the Scotlands Places website. This is from the Forfarshire book, recorded 1857-1861.

Hare Cairn. A prominent knoll forming the highest point of the ‘Hill of Stracathro’. There is a large remarkable stone on the top of it, which is said to have been the spot where the standard of either of the leaders was planted in the battle which took place here in 1452 [...]

After the murder of Douglas, by James 2nd, in 1452, the Earl of Crawford summoned his vassals throughout Angus, with the intention of joining the army of Douglas’ brother, who had risen to revenge his death – to march against the King’s forces. The King, desirous to cut off the communication between the armies of Douglas and Crawford, commanded the Earl of Huntly, whom he had appointed Lieutenant General, to march southwards, while he himself led a powerful army to the north, for the purpose of joining him. Crawford, equally anxious to check Huntly’s progress, met him about 10 miles from his (Crawford’s) own castle, at the ‘Hare Cairn’, about two miles northeast of the city of Brechin, on the 1st of May 1452, when a battle took place in which the valour displayed by Crawford’s party was so great that the battle had in all probability been decided in their favour, had not Collace, the laird of Balnamoon – who was offended at Crawford for refusing to comply with some demands made by him on the field – left his side, with three hundred followers, and joined the ranks of Huntly, which before long decided the battle in favour of the royalists.

The farm on which the battle was fought is still called ‘Huntlyhill’. If ever (as Mr Jarvise states) the names of Earl Beardie’s or Huntly’s stone were known to the stone on the ‘Hare Cairn’ they are now entirely forgotten.

Sir James Campbell, the proprietor, and his park keeper Alexander Howie, a very old man (who remembers it) informs me that there was a large artificial cairn of stones at this place, and that the present large monolith has been tumbled from the top of the beacon which it surmounted. The stones had become scattered in Sir James’ time and hence were removed.
J.B. Lt. Col.

You’ve got to be pretty pissed off (or just like fighting and not care who you’re fighting for) to switch sides so easily?

There is a cute little sketch of the stone on the first page.

Facing the Bristol Channel, with a glorious expanse of hill and vale stretching out for many miles beyond it, the situation of this burial place is grand in the extreme [...]

The field adjoining the one in which the Cromlech stands, is called Maes Arthur (Arthur’s field) and it was so much the custom in Medieval times to connect ancient megalithic monuments with the name of this valiant prince, that it is probable at some period this Cromlech was looked upon as his grave; a circumstance which we find in many parts of England and Wales.

From Mary Bagnall-Oakeley’s ‘An Account of Some of the Rude Stone Monuments and Ancient Burial Mounds in Monmouthshire’ (1889).

Robert M Heanley was told this version “by a native of Melksham, whose family has been settled thereabouts for at least three centuries, and has handed on the tradition from generation to generation:

When Stonehenge was builded, a goodish bit after Avebury, the devil was in a rare taking. ‘There’s getting a vast deal too much religion in these here parts,’ he says, ‘summat must be done.’ So he picks up his shovel, and cuts a slice out of Salisbury Plain, and sets off for to smother up Avebury. But the priests saw him coming and set to work with their charms and incusstations, and they fixed him while he was yet a nice way off, till at last he flings down his shovelful just where he was stood. And that’s Silbury.

Mr Heanley adds: ‘Only those who have seen Silbury can appreciate the size of that shovelful’.

Usually the Devil’s trying to flatten churches, but it sounds like he hates all religions equally?

This is from some correspondence in ‘Folklore’ volume 24, December 1913.

I don’t think it’s wholly stupid of me to think he was referring to this place?

The belief in fairies was once common all over the country. That interesting race seems to have died out in this part of the country. At least in all my wanderings I have never seen a fairy or spoken to any person who had seen one. Though I have conversed with one very old woman, who died about 40 years ago, upon the subject, and remember having listened with amusement, not unmixed with awe, to the wonderful tales she told us of encounters some of her early acquaintances had had with the green-coated fraternity.

But, if we have no fairies, we have still some of the relics of them. On the occasion of our late visit to Deskford, Mr Cramond pointed out to me a clump of trees, which contained a ‘fairy hillock.’ We did not stop to examine it; but, I suppose, it resembles those green round mounds, which are rather common in this part of the country, and of which I intend to have something to say on some future occasion.

He then goes on to tell a tale of fairies in a hillock in the ‘lonely range of Gromack’: I see Grumack Hill is also in Moray.
From the Banffshire Journal, 17th May 1887.

Interesting Incised Megalith.
We are indebted to Mr T.A. Matthews [for the particulars of] a very interesting incised megalith, which is to be seen at Owslow Farm, Carsington, about half-way between Ashbourne and Wirksworth. This relic (said by some authorities to be 3,000 to 4,000 years old) certainly has the appearance of considerable antiquity, and there are several stories related in connection with it.

One is to the effect that it was an altar used in the Druidical days; another states that it marks a burial place, while there is a local tradition that an erstwhile great man of Brassington kicked the stone from a neighbouring hill to its present position.

But the most interesting feature of the “stoup” is a deeply cut cross on its southern face. This cross is not readily noticeable, owing to the growth of moss. It measures about 6 inches by 2 inches, and the arms are not square to the shaft, the one to the right, or east, being considerably higher than the one to the left, or west.

The stone itself measures about 7 feet in vertical height above the ground, and about 7 feet 6 inches on the centre line. It is a matter for serious consideration whether the “stoup” should be restored to an upright position. It has fallen over to the south and west, and is probably still subsiding.

From the Ashbourne News Telegraph, 24th October 1913.

Wellington, under the Wrekin.
It has been usual for the people in this neighbourhood to assemble on the Wrekin hill, on the Sunday after May-day and the three successive Sundays, to drink a health ‘to all friends round the Wrekin;’ but as, on this annual festival, various scenes of drunkenness and other licentiousness were frequently exhibited, its celebration has, of late, been very properly discouraged by the magistracy, and is going deservedly to decay.
February, 1826. W.P.

Hone’s “Everyday Book and Tablebook,” (1837). I don’t think you’ll ever stop people getting drunk and misbehaving, sorry. And judging by the other (later) examples below, it didn’t stop any time soon.

This site features in Macpherson’s Ossian poems of the 18th century. Even at the time people thought they were Rather Imaginative. But given that all folklore’s imaginative, perhaps it doesn’t hurt to mention his take on the stones, and who knows, perhaps it was a real local story after all.

So it seems the legendary Fingal brought his dog Bran over to Scotland when he visited the local chief. And the Sutherland chief had his own dog, Phorp. But the dogs had an altercation, quite a bad one really, where Phorp got his heart ripped out. This is supposed to have been at ‘Leck na Con’ (the stone of the dogs) between Clyne and Wildonan. And Bran didn’t come off so well either and had to be buried in Glen Loth – which is why this place is called Carn Bran.

(Summarised from the summary in ‘The illustrated book of the dog’ by VK Shaw, 1881).

[Tammy Norries, the cattle herd on Balmain] not only suffered instantaneous death, but by a supernatural influence his body was prevented receiving ordinary burial! For it is stated that, being found at his post and standing upright, it was found impossible (in accordance with announcement of the ghostly warder) to remove the body from the spot to which it appeared to be rooted!

With the inventive genius for which the natives of Scotland, and more particuarly the inhabitants of the district, are remarkable, an uncommon mode of burial to suit the uncommon obstinacy and unbending disposition of the subject was adopted, and a cairn of stones was erected round the body, which (namely a cairn of stones) undoubtedly remains until this day, and is known by the name of Norries’ Law.

The above ridiculous legend has laid claim to no small degree of credibility on the strength of an occurrence no farther back than sixty years ago! The farmer of the land on which Norries’ Law is situated having occasion for a quantity of stones to repair some fences, and actuated by the utilitarian principles which even then were spreading their poisonous scepticism through our land, took upon him to lay his sacrilegious hands upon the aforesaid mysterious cairn, and to make it available for his vile purpose. But, lo! a superior power steps in to put a stop to the impious act! Mr Durham’s steward appears, with anger on his countenance and a message from the laird on his lips, requesting the said farmer to desist from removing, and to restore the stones already removed to their places.

It was at this important epoch of this memorable history that the cairn was discovered to be not a solid mass of stones, but to have enclosed something, and what more likely than the body of a human being? The fact of a few bones and other substances being found there and thereabouts was looked upon by the simple natives as giving confirmation strong to the aforegoing romantic tale; and were this not an age of scoffers and sceptics, we would not have taken the trouble to refresh the minds of the public with a story which, although some may consider it stale, is as good as most others of the same sort.

Fife Herald, 21st December 1843.

This is a large cairn of stones at the top of Ballyheady Mountain which is about 3 miles to the west of Ballyconnell.
The following is a local legend connected and accounting for the cairn.
Once in Meath a chieftain committed some crime and drew the wrath of the people upon him. A crowd of women gathered to kill him. They filled their aprons with stones to stone him to death and they started for the place of his abode. But he heard of their coming and fled northwards. They pursued him, still taking stones with them in their Aprons. With his pursuers close at his heels the criminal was fording the River near Ballyconnell; now known as The Woodford River, and he got drowned. The women foiled of their prey, went to the nearby mountain and emptied out the stones from their Aprons at its top.
Such was the origin of the cairn.

From the 1930s Schools Collection of folklore at Duchas.ie.

I also found the following:

It is now, of course, quite impossible to discover the identities of the personages whose remains have rested in the Ballyheady cairn for three thousand years. History is silent on the matter, but there is a local tradition that this cairn marks the burialplace of Conall Cernach, the hero of the Tain Cycle. [...] Conall Cernach, who was the foster-brother of Cuchullain, was murdered by the desperadoes of Queen Medb at Ath na Mianna – the Ford of the Miners – in Breiffne. [...] It is generally accepted that Ath na Mianna was on the River Graine, now the Woodford River, and in the neighbourhood of the present town of Ballyconnell.

From the Breiffne Antiquarian Historical Society Journal for 1931-1933.

Less than 100 yards north of the fort was (is?) a spring. (I can see it on an 1867 map at SZ314970).

Buckland Spring.
Near Buckland, north of Lymington, there was a small spring to the north of the great earthwork which was for generations held in great estimation for its reputative curative properites in ophthalmic disorders.

In RC Hope’s ‘Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England’ (1893) – he’s quoting from the Hampshire Field Club v2, pt i., p.47.

A steep path leads down from Windsbatch to some springs (and a church) at the foot of the hill. I expect the “person with glasses” charged for their use, but that is not to take away from the ambience of the spot, I am sure.

Holy Wells.
I see in the April Antiquary that Mr Hope does not mention a spring or well at Upwey, a few miles from Weymouth – it is a wishing well. There is always a person near with glasses from which to drink the waters, wish, and throw the remainder over the shoulder. It is really the source of the Wey, a fine spring of clear water coming out of the ground, and flows on until it becomes the river at Weymouth. There is a church a few yards higher up.
George Bailey, Derby.

From ‘The Antiquary’ v21 (1890).