Rhiannon

Bear with me. It’s for your own good so you know how not to behave.

One day the Devil spied a man playing jumps or leapfrog in his own field upon the Sabbath. By this monstrous crime the Devil recognised him as one of his own. With one jump from the (church) tower he seized him and by another jump bore him to Hell. On the spot where he met his fate there is a stone known as the Devil’s toe-nail. It is a round stump about three feet high.

Miss D.B. Ward writing on Country Legends in the Bedfordshire Times and Independent, 16th July 1965.

At Marston Mortaine, Bedfordshire, one Sunday morning several boys played truant from church and wandered about the fields. A man dressed in black joined them, and proposed a game of hop-skip-and-jump. The boys acceded to the proposal, and commenced the sport, and when his turn came, the man in black took such an extraordinary hop-skip-and-jump, and cleared so much ground that the boys became excessively frightened, and concluded he was the devil. They ran home, and took care never to absent themselves from the services at church ever after; and the inhabitants of the village had stones placed on the spots where the devil’s feet came down to commemorate the event. And these stones remain to this day a testimony against Sabbath-breaking, and a witness of the devil’s prowess at hop-skip-and-jump.

Bedfordshire Times and Independent, 8th March 1873,

If you ask Marston people about the “Jumps” you are fairly certain to get widely-varying accounts of some legendary happenings. At least, when I passed through Marston the other day the stories I had heard came to my mind and I inquired about the legends. Older folk told some hair-raising yarns – in fact, the more the versions recounted, the more hair-raising they became and the more they differed in detail.

Of course this is nothing to complain about. It is a necessary stage in the building of a legend. Various accounts which come to us through the ages are gradually combined into one story, but the process is never completed, for by their very nature the stories acquire new details; generations of people see them in differing lights and read new meanings into them. And so it goes on.

The meanings of such inn signs as “Chequers”, “Rose and Crown”, “Three Horseshoes”, and “Bell” are fairly easy to trace, but the “Jumps” is local to Marston, though the legend of the devil’s leaps appears in various forms and in various districts. My authority tells me that at Marston the devil once appeared to a number of lads who were playing in the fields instead of going to church. After offering them money for jumping the devil is alleged to have exhibited his own agility by making two long jumps of about forty yards each. He then bounded over the church tower and vanished in a blue flame. Presumably there was also a smell of sulphur, but we are not told about that.

The incident caused so much dismay that the venerable Abbot of Woburn had to visit Marston and, with solemn ceremony, “disinfect” the place. Three stone crosses were placed where the devil jumped: the part of an octagonal shaft in the field opposite the inn years ago was said to be one of them. Local imagination long saw the impressions of the devil’s foot on the stone. Has this stone survived Marston’s mechanical navvies?

Marston Church tower stands about fifty feet from the church, the reason for this being wrapped in obscurity. Fanciful minds insist that the devil attempted to carry it away from the church, found it too heavy, and dropped it where it now stands. Apparently Satan is not so accomplished as a strong man as he is in other athletic directions.

Ernest Milton writing in the Bedfordshire Times and Independent, 10th December 1937.

The Principal Meeting of the Bedfordshire Licensing Committee {...} was held at the Shire Hall on Wednesday. Mr Eales represented the Justices, and applications for the renewal of the license of the “Jumps” Inn, Marston Morteyne, was made, on behalf of the owners, Messrs. Charles Wells, Ltd., and the tenant, Alfred Jackson, by Mr C.E. Dyer, instructed by Messrs. H. Tebbs and Son.

Against the renewal it was submitted that the house was isolated, with only a farmhouse and two cottages in its vicinity, and that the trade was small. When Mr Henry Swaffield was giving professional evicence, the Chairman (Mr Harter) said he believed the house obtained its name because the Devil was supposed to have jumped from a certain stone to the house, or from the house to the stone – which was it? – Witness: From the stone to the house. Mr Warren: And has not been seen since, I think? – Mr Swaffield: Not in that locality (laughter).

Mr Dyer pointed out that the trade of the house during the war was no criterion, and to take away this license would leave his client’s competitors in a majority of 2 to 1 in that parish. The house had been lately restored and was in excellent condition. During the last 20 years there had been only 3 transfers. The Bench declined to renew the licence.

Bedfordshire Times and Independent, 31st May 1918.

To the Editor of the Walsall Observer.
Sir, – I have been rather interested in your notes and the correspondence about Henry VIII and Sutton Coldfield. I shall be much obliged if you, or any of your correspondents, can clear up a certain puzzle about the origin of the name, or place, called King’s Standing. By the way, is this the place where King Henry was supposed to be standing when he was said to be attacked by a wild boar?

I have been told two quite different versions about the origin of the name King’s Standing. First, I was informed that this was the place where the Tudor Monarch used to stand to watch the hunting, or that he started the hunt from this spot, and this was one reason why Sutton was allowed to use the Tudor Rose on its coat of arms, etc.

Later on, I was informed that this was the place where Charles I stood to watch one of the battles between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians.

It is quite obvious that both these accounts of the origin of the name of King’s Standing cannot be true. Can anyone say which is the correct version of this interesting bit of local history. – Yours, etc., G.M Wood.

The newspaper (dully?) replies that Duignan says in ‘Staffordshire Place Names’ that it’s about Charles I, and that he didn’t have any evidence that the area was known as King’s Standing before 1642.

From the Walsall Observer, 9th August 1941.

There is a fine menhir at Lizerea Farm, Burhos, Wendron, which had fallen down, and was re-erected some fifty years ago by the then tenants of the farm – the three Pearce brothers. They were enormously strong men – one of them being the redoubtable champion wrestler, John “the Samson of Wendron.” It is said that these young men performed this tremendous task in order to leave a lasting memorial of their herculean strength.

Folklore in action by the sound of it. From an article on ‘Antiquities of the Helston District’ by A.S. Oates, in the West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser on the 20th May 1948.

In a field, not far from Booker’s Cottages, there exists, or did so until a year or two ago, direct evidence of local archery in the shape of a large sandstone, almost five feet in height and eight feet in circumference, grooved and worn in an extraordinary manner, some of the grooves being eight inches deep and extending the entire length of the stone.

These dents or grooves were caused by the sharpening of arrows, the stone being fixed in the ground for that purpose. This was probably the site of the local butts, and the very worn condition of the stone indicates its use over a very long period or by a very large number of men.

In Henry the Eighth’s reign it was enacted that all male subjects, except judges and the clergy, were to practice archery, and butts were to be set up in every township. Similar to modern rifle butts, these old time butts were merely mounds of sod and earth, with targets affixed, the arrows being sharpened upon a fixed stone near at hand.

It may thus be safe to conjecture that the Allerton stone was used by Sir Richard Molyneux’s retainers before proceeding to Agincourt, where their skill and prowess gained the King’s favour for their master and the chief forestership of the Royal parks.

The stone is known as “Robin Hood’s Stone,” local tradition maintaining that the famous outlaw once sharpened his arrows here, but perhaps this is stretching credulity too far.

Hmm yes maybe. And how do you explain that the whole country isn’t full of these stones. Never mind. It’s a good story. Taken from the Liverpool Evening Express of 10th December 1930, in an article about the ‘Romance of Allerton and Calderstones’ by ‘Gradivus.‘

This features the stones as a place of ill reputation, the type of place you’d find a bad-tempered witch throwing about curses to do with big subjects like sex and death. You’d imagine the stones’ towering presence helped the curse on a bit too – it certainly required very elaborate countermeasures.

An old dame gave me the following as having occurred years ago at Kirby Hill, near Boroughbridge. A young couple, recently married, met the witch (Sally Carey) near the Devil’s Arrows. What they had done to gain Sally’s displeasure, legend does not say, but as they passed the old lady she shook her stick, and almost screamed, “Ya want a lad, bud Ah’ll mak it a lass”; and sure enough, when the baby arrived, it was a girl. They had hoped it would be a boy, for much future fortune depended upon their having a son and heir. Still they hoped, should they be blest with a further addition, that the next arrival would be a boy. Three or four months after the birth of their daughter, the husband was thrown off his horse and killed.

Some time after the sad event, and late in the evening, Sally knocked at the widow’s door, on its being opened, the old hag screamed, brandishing her stick in the widow’s face, “It shan’t be a lad this tahm, nowther.” So terrified was her victim that she fainted, and was found some time afterwards in a doubled-up position and unable to rise. By-and-by, when sufficiently recovered, her friends strongly urged her to pay a visit to the wise man of Aldborough.

At last she was prevailed upon to do so, when a supreme effort on his part was made to break the witch’s power. Much of what the wise man did, the old lady had forgotten. All she remembered was that at midnight, with closed doors and windows, a black cat and a black cock bird were roasted to a cinder, on a fire made from boughs of the rowan tree; a long incantation was also pronounced, of which she could not call to mind a single word, for as she put it, ‘wa war all ti freetened.’ The ‘all’ consisted of the widow, my informant – then a maiden – and a mother of seven sons, the trio being necessary for the working of the charm.

When the baby was born, it was a boy, but a cripple. Once again the wise man was visited. This time the almost heart-broken mother was assured that, if she remained unwedded for seven years, her son would outlive his weakness, his back would grow straight, and all would be well. This demand was readily complied with. “But,” added the old dame, “t’ au’d witch tried all maks an’ manders o’ waays ti git her ti wed. Ah nivver knaw’d a lass seea pesthered wi’ chaps for ti ‘tice her, bud sha kept single, and bested t’ au’d witch i’ t’ end, fer t’ bairn grew up ti be ez straight an’ strang a chap ez yan need wish ti clap yan’s e’es on. Ah mahnd him weel, an’ ther’s nowt aboot that.”

From ‘Wit, character, folklore and customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire’ by Richard Blakeborough (1898).

One for folklore quibblers. All you have to do is Believe these stories, you don’t actually have to believe them.
The author is talking to an old lady of his acquaintance.

“Why,” said I, “when you were a girl there would be witches, or was that before your time?”
“No,” said she, “that it is not. There was one Dolly Makin; I once saw her myself, but she will be dead now, for she was over a hundred then; but my aunt once had a strange bout with her.”
“And where did Dolly live?” I asked, for I had years before heard of this same Dolly Makin.
“Nay, that’s mair ‘an Ah can tell ya,” said she.

“And what did she do to your aunt?” I inquired.
“Nothing; she only tried to. It was like this. There was one Tom Pickles wanted to keep company with my aunt, but he found out that she had a liking for one William Purkis. It was always thought, that when Tommy found this out, that he went to the witch and gave her something to work a spell on my aunt. Anyhow, one night when she had just finished milking, a fortune-teller came up and took hold of her hand, and told her a long story about the carryings-on of William Purkis and another lass, and she advised my aunt to take up with Tommy, telling her that things looked very black for her if she did anything else.

“But my aunt said that she would wed who she liked, and it would not be Tommy. At that the fortune-teller struck the cow with her stick; the cow lashed out and knocked the milk-pail over; my aunt flung the milk-stool at the fortune-teller’s head, but she ducked, and it missed her, and next moment they were one grappling with the other like all that. My aunt, however, was a well-built, strong lass, and after they had fought for a long time, neither gaining an advantage, the fortune-teller screamed out that my aunt had something about her that belonged to the unburied dead, or otherwise she would have mastered her, and had her in her power for ever. ‘But,’ said she, as she walked away, ‘I have not done with you yet;’ and then my aunt saw it was the old witch.

“My aunt did not know what the witch meant by saying she had something about her that belonged to the unburied dead; but news came next morning that her uncle had died the day before, and it happened that a brooch she was wearing had a bit of his hair in it. It was that which had saved her.

“It would have been useless trying to overtake the witch when she left her, even on horseback, for she once went from the top of Ingleborough to the top of Whernside at one stride.”

“But,” I ventured to say, “it is a long way, that.” I was not quite sure of the distance, but I knew I was within bounds when I added, “It will be quite nine miles.”

For a moment the old lady hesitated; even to her, after making all allowance for the witch’s marvellous power, it did seem a prodigious stride. “Well,” she said, with a sigh of relief, as an idea struck her, “maybe I am wrong; it would be a leap;” (or, as she put it, ‘mebbe Ah’s wrang; sha wad loup it.’) Again I pointed out that it was an enormous leap. “Deean’t ya want her ti ‘a’e deean’t?” (i.e. ‘Don’t you want her to have done it?’) she questioned, losing her temper. And then I had to smooth her ruffled feelings.

From ‘Wit, character, folklore and customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire’, by Richard Blakeborough (1898).

Flint arrow-heads were for ages looked upon as elf-stones, and are to-day worn as charms against unseen evils. They also possess healing power in certain diseases. So, too, do the belemnites – a fossilized portion of an extinct cuttle-fish. These, in the hand of a skilled person, work wonders in the case of sore eyes and ringworm. Unfortunately, though belemnites are common enough, the skilled hands are rare, and so their virtue in thousands of instances lie dormant. The belemnites are supposed to fall from the clouds during a thunderstorm; the same is said of rounded pieces of quartz or flints, one and all being called thunder-bolts, or ‘thunner-steeans.‘

When I was a boy, I was an ardent archaeologist. I remember on one occasion having been told that chipped flints were to be found in a field near Blois Hall. Hurrying thither the first whole holiday, I was fortunate enough on that occasion to find a flint arrow-head – the only one I ever did find.

This I showed to an old fellow who was hedging; without hesitation he pronounced it to be an elf-stone, declaring that the elves were evil spirits, who in days past used to throw them at the kie – I had up to that time always been told they were shot at cattle – but my informant stuck to throwing.

I well remember that he also said the elves got them out of whirlpools, where they were originally made by the water spirits, but he could not say what the water spirits used them for, though he knew of several instances in which both cattle and horses had been injured by the elves throwing their elf-stones at them. He further informed me that when the elves got them from the whirlpools, they had much longer shanks than was on the one I had found: this was so that better aim might be taken with them.

‘But,’ said he, ‘tha’re nivver fund wi’ lang shanks on, acoz t’fairies awlus brak ‘em off, seea ez t’elves wadn’t be yabble ti potch ‘em at t’beasts neea mair;’ and he had been told that fairies often wore them as ornaments. Sore eyes could be cured by the touch from an elf-stone, if a fairy had ever worn it, and they were also a potent love-charm if worn so that they rested near the heart.

From ‘Wit, character, folklore and customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire’ by Richard Blakeborough (1898). I’m not really moaning but it is quite laborious typing out (let alone reading) the ‘humorous’ renditions of common folk’s accents from these books :)

This isn’t so much a folklore post as proof that cutting remarks have not been invented by the users of social media. Or at least that’s the way I’m interpreting it (I think you can’t help but hear it read in a pompous voice, and I think things like ‘to whom we are, no doubt, indebted’ and ‘expressly stated’ are not kindly phrases. And I think confounding placenames in Wales is probably quite easy especially if you aren’t Welsh):

I am indebted to Professor J.E. Lloyd for most kindly furnishing me with the following note with reference to the name of the camp:-

“It was Pennant who first, in his Tour of North Wales in 1773, took note of the remarkable hill-fort above Llanbedr-y-Cennin. He understood it to be known in the district as ‘Pen Caer Helen,’ and scaled the height in the hope of finding some traces of the Roman road style ‘Sarn Helen’. In this respect he was disappointed, though the discovery of the fort was ample compensation.

‘Pen Caer Helen’, we are assured in the Gossiping Guide to Wales was a mispronunciation of the actual name, ‘Pen Caer Llin’; Mr Egerton Phillimore, to whom we are, no doubt, indebted for the correction (Y Cymmrodor, xi, 54) does not mention his authority.

The ordinary form is the shortened one – ‘Pen y Gaer’ – under which the place appears in the old one-inch Ordnance Survy Map of the district (engraved in 1841).

In the notes to Lady Charlotte Guest’s edition of the Mabinogion, Pen y Gaer is identified with the ‘Kaer Dathal (or Dathyl)’ of theRed Book text. In order to dispose of this conjecture, it is enough to point out, as Mr Phillimore has done, that Caer Dathal is expressly stated to be in Arfon (Rhys and Evans’s text), while Pen y Gaer is in Arllechwedd Isaf – two districts which a mediaeval writer was not in the least likely to confound.

Moreover, Caer Dathal was near the sea, and not far from Aber Menai, Dinas Dinlle and Caer Arianrhod, as may be seen from the references to it in the Mabinogion.”

From ‘The Exploration of Pen-y-Gaer above Llanbedr-y-Cenin’ by Harold Hughes, in the 1906 volume of Archaeologia Cambrensis.

Should you wish to know who ‘Ronald’ is (although he’s a bit of a latecomer in TMA terms:

The next important personage to appear in Galloway history is Ronald the Dane, titular King of Northumbria, styled also Duke of the Glaswegians, in right of the ancient superiority of the Saxon kings over the Picts.
With Olaf of the Brogues (Anlaf Cuaran), grandson of Olaf the White, as his lieutenant, he drove the Saxons before him as far south as Tamworth. This was in 937, but in 944 the tide of victory rolled north again. King Eadmund drove Ronald out of Northumbria to take refuge in Galloway. Of this province he and his sons continued rulers till the close of the tenth century.

‘A History of Dumfries and Galloway’ by Herbert Maxwell (1896).

Also I noticed that the cairn is on the side of ‘Crotteagh Hill’ – this could come from ‘cruiteach’, meaning lumpy and uneven (spotted in ‘Studies in the topography of Galloway’, also by Sir Maxwell, 1887).

An interesting standing stone is to be seen on the southern slope of the Chevin above the town of Guiseley in the valley of the Aire (...). This stone is well-known to the small number of people who live near at hand. A similar stone is said to have stood at the head of Occupation Lane on the western end of the Chevin, and to have been broken up when the cottage was erected at that place. It is always called the “Bull Stone” and is said to be “lucky.”

Editorial Notes in the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, volume 34 (1938).

Also, I read in ‘The English Dialect Dictionary’ (Joseph Wright, 1898) that a bullstone is a West Yorkshire word for a whetstone – which makes sense maybe as an explanation for (or even genuine use of) the grooves?

Another gravestone of interest [in the churchyard at Llansantffraid-Yn-Mechain] is the one on moulded pillars at the east end of the church, and was pointed out to us as being the stone marking the resting-place of the body of “David Maurice, the Suicide.” Tradition is a little at fault, as this is not the grave; but, for all that, Maurice or Morris may have been buried here in preference (under the circumstance) to the family vault at Llansilin. (...) The story touching David Maurice’s grave is that the entombed committed suicide in the river Tannatt, near to his father’s house, Penybont or Glan Cynlleth. The pool till lately was called “Llyn Dafydd Morris.”

Tradition asserts that D. Maurice, of Penybont, caused the “Carreg y big,” or “stone of contention,” to be removed from the centre of Llanrhaiadr village, in consequence of the great fighting caused by the assumption of the prize-fighter of the neighbourhood of the title of “Captain,” by leaping on the stone and proclaiming himself “Captain Carreg y big.” This was carried to such a pitch that the vicar of Llanrhaiadr begged David Maurice to remove the stone, which he did with a team of oxen, and placed it in his farm-yard; when, lo! and behold! the cattle, horses, sheep, and pigs, like maddened creatures, danced and pranced about the stone, and ending their joust with horning, biting, and eventually killing each other at the shrine of the “stone of contention.”

David Maurice, thinking the place haunted because of the stone, caused it to be rolled into the river near at hand, thinking the “charm would be thereby broken,” but, sad to relate, one morning he himself was found drowned in the pool which was called until lately “Llyn Dafydd Morris.”

The country people look at the death of David Maurice as a just retribution because he had removed the “Carreg y big,” which was said to be a boundary stone, and should not have been disturbed. This story received general credence.

In ‘A History of the Parish of Llansantffraid-Yn-Mechain’ by Thomas Griffiths Jones, in ‘Collections, historical and archaeological, relating to Montgomeryshire’ (1868).

The Foel Camp is situated on the summit of a commanding eminence, of a conoid form, close in the rear of the village. The internal area covers nearly two acres; its shape following, as most ancient camps do, the conformation of the ground. It has all the marks of a British post. The lines of defence around it partake more of the character of terraces than ditches, (but there are traces in two places of parts having been sunken), and make up one spiral road of access to the great arena.

The sides of the hill, excepting one, are very steep, and this steepness would be a great defence. The entrance is at the east end, where the sides are more approachable. There are no historical records concerning this, but tradition relates that there have been terrible combats about the foot of the mountain.

The spot on top of the Foel is called by the people “Soldiers’ Mount,” and it is said that the soldiers shot at each other from the Ffridd, (an opposite hill to the west), to the Foel, and from the Foel to the Ffridd, with bows and arrows.

It is of a spiral form, and has three ditches winding spirally one above the other. Some say that it was Caradog (Caractacus) ab Bran Fendigaid who encamped his left wing here while defending his country against the invasion of the Romans under Publius Ostorius, about the year of our Lord 51, his centre being on the Brewer. But all is conjectural.

Sul y Pys, or Pea Sunday (the Fourth* Sunday in Lent).

A custom prevailed among the old inhabitants of this parish of roasting peas or wheat grains, and then taking them to the top of the Foel, there to be eaten with very great ceremony, and drinking water out of the well on the Foel. This was done near the spot where the church was to have been built.

It is probable also that our forefathers sent presents to each other on this day, for it was an old saying with our mothers when asked for a gift, “You shall have it on Pea Sunday.”

The custom of eating peas was part of the Lent fasting, and the old people believed that they would be choked if they ate peas before Lent!

*Actually the fifth Sunday? This pea-eating event is known as Carlin Sunday in the north of England.

The Church stands on a piece of ground above the village, from which a fine view may be had of the vale below. Our ancestors delighted in building their temples on slightly elevated ground, that they might worship their God according to the fashion of their forefathers, the Druids, “in the face of the sun and the eye of light,” and this feeling was so strong in them that they had determined (so tradition relates), to build their temple on the Foel, on the opposite side of the hill facing the village; but neither peace nor prosperity attended the work, for all done during the day was removed in the night to the spot where the church now stands; therefore the church was built on its present site, because it was believed to be the spot where God desired to be worshipped.

Formerly the rejected site on the Foel was distinguished by a yew tree which grew there. This yew tree was accidentally burnt at the roasting of a kid on celebrating the jubilee of George the Third’s accession, and it is worth mentioning that the kid was taken out of a herd of goats that were depasturing on the side of the Ffridd.

In ‘A History of the Parish of Llansantffraid-Yn-Mechain’ by Thomas Griffiths Jones, in ‘Collections, historical and archaeological, relating to Montgomeryshire’ (1868).

The Dog.

Mrs Pembro, of Bridgnorth, remembers her mother telling her a story about Titterstone Clee. Her mother was born on Titterstone Clee and one day, when she was a child of about eight or nine, she was walking, with her sister, to her uncle’s house, which was about five or six miles from her home. On their journey back home it was dark. They met a huge black dog. The thing they most remembered about it was the beautiful red and green collar with jewels on it which it was wearing. They thought about approaching the dog but it would not let them go near it. Then, suddenly, it disappeared.

They mentioned the dog to their family but nothing else was said about the incident until the children were grown up. Their father then revealed that someone had been murdered at that spot and other people had seen the dog.

I do like a nice Black Dog (one of our great spooky animals). This one’s mentioned in ‘Some Ghostly Tales of Shropshire’ by Christine McCarthy (1988).

An alternative explanation of the grooves...

So far as I can make out, for I have been unable to refer to the original, Hollinshed in his Chronicle came to the conclusion that these stones were erected as memorials to the Scots who fell in a skirmish with the two Percies and their followers at Grindonmarsh in the year 1558; and this rather strange opinion has been copied from one book to another, down almost to the present time; though how those useful persons who compile county histories, and so forth, have been able to reconcile the deep weathering to which these stones have been subjected with so comparatively recent a date as 1558 (to say nothing of the further anomaly of funeral monoliths in Tudor times) it is difficulty to see. The probability is, however, that these good people have never seen the stones in question, for even Kelly’s Directory of Northumberland for 1902 seems to be unaware of the existence of the fifth stone in this group.

Tradition, however, gives an even more interesting origin for the Duddo cromlech. Among the field workers on the neighbouring farm of Grindon it is, or used recently to be, told that these stones are five men who not so very long ago – for tradition pays no regard to such trifles as a matter of centuries, and, as Chesterton says, it is the essence of a legend to be vague – brought down divine vengeance on themselves by godless behaviour which had culminated one day in going out into the fields and singling, or thinning out, a crop of turnips on the Sabbath.

Not merely were they turned into stones as they stood together on the top of the little eminence in the field where they were working, becoming a memorial for all time, somewhat after the manner of Lot’s wife, but the ringleader in this desecration was knocked flat on his back, where he lies to the present day. And if you don’t believe it, go and look for yourself and you’ll see the cording of their trousers running in stripes down the stones!

At Grievestead farm, alongside Grindon, this tale is told too; but there they were sheep shearers who were turned into stone for working Sunday.

In ‘A Border Myth – the standing stones at Duddo’ by Captain W.J. Rutherfurd, in the History of the Berwickshire Naturalists’ Club vol. XXIV (1919) p.98.

Pembrokeshire – in common with several other districts in Great Britain and Ireland – possesses a good phantom coach legend, localised in the southern part of the county, at a place where four roads meet, called Sampson Cross.

In old days, the belated farmer, driving home in his gig from market, was apt to cast a nervous glance over his shoulder as his pony slowly climbed the last steep pitch leading up to the Cross. For he remembered the story connected with that dark bit of road, that told how every night a certain Lady Z. (who lived in the seventeenth century, and whose monument is in the church close by) drives over from Tenby, ten miles distant, in a coach drawn by headless horses, guided by a headless coachman. She also has no head; and arriving by midnight at Sampson Cross, the whole equipage is said to disappear in a flame of fire, with a loud noise of explosion.

A clergyman living in the immediate neighbourhood, who told me the story, said that some people believed the ghostly traveller had been safely “laid” many years ago, in the waters of a lake not far distant. He added, however that might be, it was an odd fact that his sedate and elderly cob, when driven past the Cross after nightfall, would invariably start as if frightened there, a thing which never happened by daylight.

I think all that universal headlessness happening every night is a mite ostentatious. But you can’t be too careful at prehistoric stones especially at liminal places like crossroads. So be careful.
From ‘Stranger than fiction, being tales from the byways of ghosts and folk-lore’ by Mary Lewes, 1911 (p.24).

There is one institution connected with Dartmoor that must not be passed over – Bellever Day. When hare-hunting is over in the low country, then, some week or two after Easter, the packs that surround Dartmoor assemble on it, and a week is given up to hare-hunting. On the last day, Friday, there is a grand gathering on Bellever Tor.

All the towns and villages neighbouring on Dartmoor send out carriages, traps, carts, riders; the roads are full of men and women, ay, and children hurrying to Bellever.

Little girls with their baskets stuffed with saffron cake for lunch desert school and trudge to the tor. Ladies go out with champagne luncheons ready. Whether a hare be found and coursed that day matters little. It is given up to merriment in the fresh air and sparkling sun.

And the roads that lead from Bellever in the afternon are careered over by riders, whose horses are so exhilerated that they race, and the riders have a difficulty in keeping their seats. Their faces are red, not those of the horses, but their riders – from the sun and air – and they are so averse to leave the moor, that they sometimes desert their saddles to roll on the soft and springy turf.

‘A Book of the West’ by Sabine Baring-Gould (1899).