Rhiannon

Here’s an alternative name for the circles I’d not come across before.

The range is still called “Priddy Nine Barrows.” They stand out boldly on the ridge of the hill as you look towards Wells on the road thither from East and West Harptree [...]

Within a quarter mile south of this line, is another range of seven barrows [...]

Near them are some circular banks, called by the peasants “The Castles;” the diameters of which are each 500 feet, the mound is low, and they have no external ditch. They are a quarter of a mile from the barrows opened, and about 250 feet distant from each other.

From the Archaeological Journal, v16 (1859) p150 (in the Rev. Harry M Scarth’s Account of the Investigation of Barrows).

Welcome to another of my speculative posts. But I like to think this one’s got something going for it. Ifan Gruffydd was a farmhand, also an author of two books of memoirs. He was born in Llangristiolus in 1896, so it seems highly likely to me that when he talks about

Did your mother believe in the fairies?
Well, I can’t say if she believed or not, but she would give me the impression that she did. And that impression, of course, caused me to believe. Yes to believe firmly in the fairies and to take a keen interest in them, although I would be afraid of them. And you’d be in trouble if you came across the fairies, or they came across you, in some enclosure or wood where they lived. And they lived in many places. They lived in Coed yr Henblas (Henblas Wood), as we say. And in the cave – Ogof Pitar Graen (Peter Green’s Cave) we used to call it. Well, the fairies were there. There was no argument about that. But, of course, they wouldn’t be out all the time. Sometimes when it was quiet the fairies would play outside the cave’s door, so they said. And the old people used to say that they always had their eye on small children – if they could get hold of them. If they caught a young child, they would take it inside the cave and keep it for a year and a day.

More notes on the story are here at the Museum of Wales site:

In the printed version of this story Ifan Gruffydd stated that he was around seven to eight years old when he first saw the little family on Christmas Day, and he calls the cave ‘Yr Ogof Fawr’ [’The Great Cave’]. In his reminiscences on tape, however, when questioned further about the cave he made this comment:

‘We call it ‘Ogof Pitar Graen’ [“Peter Green’s Cave”]. Some old boy called Peter Green had been living there, you see. Well, the old cave was frequented by many people such as those I’ve mentioned to you. The occasional tramp, you see, making his home in the cave for a week, say, or a fortnight, or sometimes for the whole winter. Venturing out to gather what food he could in the countryside... and some were craftsmen who could go round the farms asking whether they needed tools sharpening, or dishes mended – wooden dishes I mean now... An old tailor, perhaps, wandering. Well, no one would know how he’d come to be in that state... I saw many a family, too, who’d seen better times.‘

I’m happy to be disproved, but it seems a reasonable assumption to me? Here https://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/folktales/stories/?id=7 he tells the story of how as a boy he fell in love with a girl who lived at the cave. Or Was She A Fairy. Etc.

Campville – formerly known as Lanternside – the shooting box of Major Thompson of Walworth Hall, Darlington, stands about a quarter of a mile west from Holystone, on the verge of a romantic gorge, and within the lines of an ancient camp, the ramparts of which are quite distinct in the field below the house. A Roman causeway, leading from Rochester, Redewater, passes through a portion of the camp. In the deep ravine close to the house, where the Dove Crag burn tumbles and tosses in a series of waterfalls, there is a cave-like recess, known as “Rob Roy’s Cave.” The cavern is only accessible by a very narrow path along the face of the rock, other means of ingress being entirely closed by the lofty cliffs overhead.

If you follow the burn back to its source, there’s a big waterfall, and “in days gone by, this was reputed to be one of the favourite haunts of the Fairies, and stories were told by the country folk of belated travellers when near the spot at the ‘witching time of night’ having been spell-bound by the sweet entrancing music of the little elves, while in the midst of their midnight revels at the foot of the Dove Crag.”

From ‘Upper Coquetdale, Northumberland: its history, traditions, folk-lore and scenery’ by D D Dixon (1903).

A tiny addition about the adjacent lough’s traditions.

...a footpath leads up past the Drake Stone to Harbottle Lough, a lonely eerie tarn in the hollow of the hills – a stretch of long heather and sphagnum marks an old extension of the lake. The west end of the lough is packed with a dense growth of buckbean, horsetail, and rushes. The water is always pure and very cold – so cold that it was said to be certain death to attempt to swim across. We, however, know of several who have performed the feat and are still alive to tell the tale. A number of large round blocks of sandstone is to be seen lying about on the top of the hill; these are rejected mill-stones, which puzzle strangers very much as to their origin.

From ‘Upper Coquetdale, Northumberland: its history, traditions, folk-lore and scenery’ by D D Dixon (1903).

Having been informed by Mr. Geo. Turnbull, the farmer at Great Tosson, that there was a very large cairn on the northern slopes of Ravensheugh, just below two standing stones, called by the country people “Kate” and “Geordie,“* under his guidance, we proceeded to the spot, and found an enormous pile of stones on a projecting ridge, having a steep declivity in front with the hill rising behind. The cairn measured 27 feet from E. to W., and 30 feet from N. to S.

Their digging uncovered a cist, and a stone with possible cup-marks was found near the centre of the cairn. Well, he thought it might have them anyway, comparing it to ‘the markings on the rocks at Lordenshaw’s camp’. You can see a picture here.

From ‘Upper Coquetdale, Northumberland: its history, traditions, folk-lore and scenery’ by D D Dixon (1903).

*elsewhere in the book he says the stones ‘probably got their names during the hundred years the Donkins ruled at Tosson’.

The ‘Magic’ map shows an iron age settlement here at the edge of Bomere Pool, though no details are given yet. But it’s interesting that folklore seems to know about this long-lost place. You can read the stories in Hope’s ‘Legendary Lore’ on Feorag’s site on holy wells (Hope is actually quoting Charlotte Burne’s 1879 ‘Shropshire Folklore’).

One story talks about a village full of heathens who didn’t want their winter festival spoilt by a Christian priest nagging them – the village got completely flooded as comeupance. If you sail over the mere on Christmas eve at midnight though, you can here a church bell ringing.

Another story talks of a Roman soldier, similarly trying to make the ungrateful wicked locals repent. There’s a love interest in this version, because the British governor’s daughter is a good christian girl. At Easter Caer Caradoc apparently ‘sent forth flames of fire’ and the town was flooded. Unfortunately the soldier’s betrothed didn’t get spared, and when he rowed across the mere in search of her, he was drowned too. How very depressing.

The mere’s bottomless by the way. And it contains a fish wearing a sword. No really. It’s a bit of a complicated tale so I’ll let you read that yourself.

Lomond Hills Easter and Wester.
These isolated heights were called by the old Highlanders “Wallace’s Goals,” because the national hero was held to be capable of jumping from the one summit to the other.

Probably from J W Jack’s 1890s ‘Glenfarg and District’, but quoted in ‘Examples of Printed Folklore’ by E S John.

There’s lots of stone-related folklore up here and stoney things with strange names, such as the crags called the Devil’s Burdens and Wind and Weather. There’s the Bonnet Stone (Bunnet Stane) which from this photo looks totally mad. And there’s a story about Maiden Bore rock:

Directly below the steep verdant base of the highest peak or top of the hill, where it begins to subside into a plain, there is a cluster of free stone rocks which jut out from under the base of the hill close beside it, with a large perforation through the rock called the Maiden-bore, because maidens only were supposed capable of passing through it. The passage had been originally very small, yet it is now so enlarged, in consequence of so many people trying to pass, or rather to creep through it, that it will now admit the most bulky person.

Seems a bit of an odd explanation but whatever. This is from Small’s ‘Interesting Roman Antiquities’ (1823). The link above has folklore about ‘Maiden’s Bower’ which sounds a suspiciously similar noise, but the bower is a cave where she used to hang out.

At the back of the house [known as Ffynnon Beuno] ran a narrow valley which terminated in the Craig Fawr (Great Rock). [...] Tremeirchion, literally translated, means the Maiden’s Town, and was so named from a convent which stood in its vicinity, and was supposed to be the refuge chosen by St. Winifred, when she retired with a company of virgins after her revivification by good St. Beuno at Holywell. Compared with the famous spring of St. Winifred’s at Holywell, that of St. Beuno is a modest affair, and boasts of no virtues beyond purity and sweetness. The water is collected in a stone tank adjoining the house of Ffynnon Beuno, and is allowed to escape, for the benefit of the villagers, through the open mouth of a rude representation of a human head, which is affixed in the front wall.

From the Autobiography of Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1909) – as in ‘Livingstone-I-presume’-Stanley, who as a boy spent some miserable time in the nearby workhouse at St Asaph. Ffynnon Bueno is ‘Beuno’s Spring’, whereas Cae Gwyn is ‘White Field’ (maybe even with a touch of white = pure and spiritual, who knows).

From Archaeologia Cambrensis (1858):

Martin Davy’s Stone, near Haverfordwest.--

About half-way between Haverfordwest and Little Haven, on the southern side of the road where it crosses a common, is a small upright stone, not larger than a mile-stone. Tradition calls it Martin Davy’s Stone, and says that a man of this name, who had stolen a sheep one night, and was carrying it on his head, with its four feet tied together, sat down in front of this stone to rest himself, and let the animal lie on the top. The sheep, however, gave a convulsive movement; its legs slipped down in front of the man’s throat, and its body slipped down behind the stone. The thief could not, of course, raise the body up sufficiently high, and he was found throttled, and dead, in this position.

The text with Ceridwen’s photo on Geograph has the idea that the stone’s properly prehistoric. Coflein isn’t so sure. It’s on a boundary, about a metre high, and has two crosses carved on it.

From Archaeologia Cambrensis (1858), in an article about the history of Radnorshire:

Near to the above-mentioned place, Cwystudwen [Gwastedyn, Nantmel], are two remarkable carns, named Carnwen, and Carnfach, that is, the white and the little carn, each being of an elliptical form, and having in the centre an erect stone of superior magnitude ...

On the eastern extremity of this hill, and on a farm named Gifron, is a place which the common people distinguish by the appellation Gwar-y-beddau, that is, the ridge of graves; it consists of three mounds, or elevations, in which tradition reports three brothers, who, returning from the wars, quarrelled, fought, and fell by each others’ swords, were interred.

In Coflein’s description, Carn Wen is described as a much robbed cairn with a bouldered kerb and a possible cist. ‘A battle-axe, a bracelet and some other relics’ were found in 1844. The three cairns in the folklore are said to be 20-110m to the north east. Coflein calls the other cairn ‘The Druid’s Circle’ – it might be a prehistoric enclosure with a roundhouse inside.

They are mentioned in Camden’s Britannia (originally published 1607, this from the 1722 edition):

On the top of a hill, call’d Gwastedin, near Rhaiadr Gwy, there are three large heaps of stones, of that kind which are common upon mountains in most (if not all) the Counties of Wales; call’d in South-Wales Karneu, and in North-Wales Karned-heu. They consist of such [?] stones from a pound weight to a hundred, &c. as the neighbouring places afford; and are confusedly pil’d up without any farther trouble than the bringing them thither, and the throwing them in heaps.

... Beith was the occasional residence of St Inan, a confessor of some celebrity, whose principal place of abode was at Irvine. He flourished about 839. On the Cuff Hill there is a cleft in the rock, which is still called St Inan’s Chair; and, at a short distance from it, a well of excellent water, called St Inan’s Well. From the Callendar of Scots Saints, we find that the festival of this saint was celebrated on the 18th of August; and to this day there is a fair at Beith, held on the corresponding day, old style. Tradition still bears that this fair used to be held on the Cuff Hill. It was removed to Beith after the town had increased in population, and become a more suitable place for a market. It is one of the principal fairs in the county. The fair is vulgarly pronounced Tenant’s Day; but this is evidently a corruption arising from the final letter of Saint, being sounded with the name Inan. Similar corruptions occur in Tantony, which is a corruption of St Antony; and Taudrey, which is a corruption of St Audrey. [...]

But the Cuff Hill has antiquities much earlier than the days of St Inan. On the north declivity of the hill, there is a rocking-stone of considerable size, which can be set in motion by the slightest touch. This stone is of common trap.

From the New Statistical Account for Ayr and Bute (1845).

Gruagach, a supernatural female who presided over cattle and took a kindly interest in all that pertained to them. In return a libation of milk was made to her when the women milked the cows in the evening. If the oblation were neglected, the cattle, notwithstanding all precautions, were found broken loose and in the corn; and if still omitted, the best cow in the fold was found dead in the morning. The offering was poured on ‘clach na gruagaich,’ the ‘gruagach’ stone. There is hardly a district in the Highlands which does not possess a ‘leac gruagaich’ – a ‘gruagach’ flagstone [...]

The following account was given to me by a woman at West Bennan in Arran in August 1895:

The ‘gruagach’ lived at East Bennan in a cave which is still called ‘uamh na gruagaich’ – cave of the ‘gruagach’, and ‘uamh na beiste’ – cave of the monster. She herded the cattle of the townland of Bennan, and no spring-loss, no death-loss, no mishap, no murrain, ever befell them, while they throve and fattened and multiplied right well.

The ‘gruagach’ would come forth with the radiant sun, her golden hair streaming on the morning breeze, and her rich voice filling the air with melody. She would wait on a grassy hillock afar off till the people would bring out their ‘creatairean,’ creatures, crooning a lullaby the while, and striding to and fro [...*]

The people of Bennan were so pleased with the tender care the ‘gruagach’ took of their corn and cattle that they resolved to give her a linen garment to clothe her body and down sandals to cover her feet. They placed these on a knoll near the ‘gruagach’ and watched from afar. But instead of being grateful she was offended, and resented their intrusion so much that she determined to leave the district. She placed her left foot on Ben Bhuidhe in Arran and her right foot on ‘Allasan,’ Ailsa Craig, making this her stepping-stone to cross to the mainland of Scotland or to Ireland. While the ‘gruagach’ was in the act of moving her left foot, a three-masted ship passed beneath, the mainmast of which struck her in the thigh and overturned her into the sea. The people of Bennan mourned the ‘gruagach’ long and loudly, and bewailed their own officiousness.

*There’s a song here. But as it’s long and Mr Carmichael was allegedly quite Creative when it came to Tradition, I’m leaving it out. You can see it on google books though in v1/2 of ‘Carmina Gadelica’ by Alexander Carmichael (1900). The huffy behaviour after being given clothing as a present sounds reminiscent of the behaviour of a Hob-Thrush.

The fort on Rubers Law is actually R*man it seems. But there have been plenty of finds of stone arrowheads and so on up here, according to the RCAHMS database.

It’s a very prominent isolated hill and has lots of Named Features, like Peden’s Pulpit:

We have said that Ruberslaw is memorable in Scottish story. It is so in one of its bloodiest and saddest pages. Its hollow dells and rocky recesses were the ‘hiding-places’ of the persecuted Covenanters; and upon its weird summit tradition still points out the stone upon which the martyr-preacher, Alexander Peden, laid his Bible when he poured forth his dauntless and fiery ‘message’ to our eager-listening and right-hearted forefathers.

The same article (in July 1853’s ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’) describes how the ‘stormy Ruberslaw’ assumes a grand and starling appearance when its top pokes through the rolling sheets of fog that hide its lower slopes. The weather is also mentioned in local rhyme, as recorded by William and Robert Chambers in their Edinburgh Journal v3, in 1835:

When Ruberslaw puts on his cowl,
The Dunion on his hude,
Then a’ the wives o’ Teviotside
Ken there will be a flude.

There’s also a “cavity cut in an earthfast block of freestone on the east side of Ruberslaw, vulgarly called ‘Simmie’s pottie’ but whether this would be used as a baptismal font or a knocking trough [for removing barley husks] is uncertain” (as you’ll see here ). It also has a holy well of St Mary’s.

It remains to tell of my latest visit to the “The Stones” [as the temple is called by the natives]. I had resolved to go once in my life with the current or crowd to see the sun rise on the morning of the longest day at that place. This custom or fashion is a declining one: ten or twelve years ago, as many as one or two thousand persons would assemble during the night to wait the great event, but the watchers have now diminished to a few hundreds, and on some years to a few scores. The fashion, no doubt, had its origin when Sir Norman Lockyer’s theories, about Stonehenge as a Sun Temple placed so that the first rays of sun on the longest day of the year should fall on the centre of the so-called altar or sacrificial stone placed in the middle of the circle, began to be noised about the country, and accepted by every one as the true reading of an ancient riddle. But I gather from natives in the district that it is an old custom for people to go and watch for sunrise on the morning of June 21. A dozen or a score of natives, mostly old shepherds and labourers who lived near, would go and sit there for a few hours and after sunrise would trudge home, but whether or not there is any tradition or belief associated with the custom I have not ascertained. “How long has the custom existed?” I asked a field labourer. “From the time of the old people – the Druids,” he answered, and I gave it up.

At about 2am he goes to find a few hundred people already waiting, and the road to Amesbury looking like a ‘ribbon of fire’ from all the cyclists pedalling in.

Altogether about five to six hundred persons gathered at “The Stones,” mostly young men on bicycles who came from all the Wiltshire towns within easy distance, from Salisbury to Bath. I had a few good minutes at the ancient temple when the sight of the rude upright stones looking black against the moonlit and star-sprinkled sky produced an unexpected feeling in me: but the mood could not last; the crowd was too big and noisy, and the noises they made too suggestive of a Bank Holiday crowd at the Crystal Palace.

A foolish rabbit makes an appearance and hundreds of people shriek and run to catch it. Then lots of people start packing onto the fallen stones ‘like guillemots on a rock’ and start messing about. Nearer the sunrise some posh people in motorcars turn up and are all greeted with whoops and silly remarks until they hurry to hide themselves in the crowd. It all sounds very raucous.

He returns another time at 3am and sits there alone musing on time and the mystery of it all, and wishes somebody could psychically tune in and see something from the past. ‘In the last few years’ various stories had been circulating about a child from the London slums who’d had a vision there of ‘a great gathering of people’ but he reveals this to be untrue and traceable back to a local boy with a creative imagination. Perhaps it says something about the Edwardian interest in the paranormal?

from ‘Afoot in England’ by William Henry Hudson (1909).

The fuggo at Bodinnar, called the Giant’s Holt, was a few years ago much dreaded, as it was thought to be the abode of ugly spriggans that kept watch and guard over treasures which still remain buried in that ancient hiding-place.

From William Bottrell’s second volume of Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall (1873), which you can read at the Sacred Texts Archive website.

About a furlong south-west of Trove, but on a tenement of Boleigh, is the Fuggo. It consists of a cave about six feet high, five feet wide and near forty long, faced on each side with rough stones, across which long stone posts are laid. On its north-west side a narrow passage leads into another cave of similar construction and unknown extent; as it has long been blocked up by a portion of the roof having fallen in. One may be pretty sure, however, that much of the stories about its great length are fabulous. They say that it extends from its entrance, at the foot of Boleigh hill, to the old mansion at Trove; in proof of this the old one has often been heard piping under a parlour of the house. It is supposed he meets the witches down there, who have entered by the Fuggo to dance to his music. Hares are often seen to enter the Fuggo which are never known to come out the same way; they are said to be witches going to meet their master, who provides them with some other shape to return in.

There are also traditions of this cavern having served as a place of refuge to some of the Levelis in troublesome times; and of its having frequently been used by our fair-traders, as it afforded them a secure hold for storing their goods, and to have a carouse therein.

[...] A short time ago an old inhabitant of Boleigh informed us that many persons in that neighbourhood are afraid to enter the Fuggo, even by day, as they believe that bad spirits still frequent this place. Women of villages near often threaten their crying babies that they will carry them down to the Fuggo, and leave them there for the Bucca-boo if they don’t stop their squalling. there are traditions that almost all these caves were haunted by beings of a fearful nature, whose path it was dangerous to cross.

From William Bottrell’s second volume of Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall (1873), which you can read at the Sacred Texts Archive website.

Once when William Ellis, of the Gilwern, was fishing on the bank of Cwm Silin Lake on a dark misty day, he had seen no living Christian from the time when he left Nantlle. But as he was in a happy mood, throwing his line, he beheld over against him in a clump of rushes a large crowd of people, or things in the shape of people about a foot in stature: they were engaged in leaping and dancing. He looked on for hours, and he never heard, as he said, such music in his life before. But William went too near them, when they threw a kind of dust into his eyes, and, while he was wiping it away, the little family took the opportunity of betaking themselves somewhere out of his sight, so that he neither saw nor heard anything more of them.

This is in ‘Cymru Fu’, edited by Isaac Foulkes (1862), which is in Welsh, but I have taken it from John Rhys who considerately translated it in his ‘Celtic Folklore’ of 1901.

Not a terribly cheerful story, actually it’s quite ghastly. I imagine the giants used to live in the hillfort at Aberystwyth? And Penparcau is just outside the ramparts. Perhaps you know the location of the other places mentioned in the tale??

(p47) Some fifty years ago, a headless dog was said to be seen near Pen Parcau, Aberystwyth. A MS. collection of giant stories made in the sixteenth century tells how a giant, going to his father’s rescue, rode at such a rate that his dog could not keep up with him and its head came off in the leash, at a spot between the two places where the headless dog was visible fifty years ago.

(p78) Maelor, [a] Cardiganshire giant, with his three sons, Cornipyn, Grugyn and Bwba, lived near Aberystwyth. One day, Maelor was caught by his enemies at Kyfeliog, some twelve miles from his stronghold. Being over-come, his request to be allowed to blow his horn thrice before being put to death was granted him. The first time he blew until his hair and his beard fell off, the second until the nails fell off his fingers and toes, and the third until the horn was shattered. Cornipyn, hearing the sound of the horn, understood what was happening, and sorrow for his father came upon him at a place still known as Cefn Hiraethog (hiraeth, longing). As he rode to the rescue, his dog failed to keep pace with him, and its head came off in the leash, at Bwlch Safn y Ci, ‘the Pas of the Hound’s Mouth.’ Cornipyn made his horse leap the valley, landing at a spot named Ol Carn y March, ‘the Steed’s Hoofmark.’ Coming to his father, he was also killed. The two other brothers were afterwards killed though cunning.

From ‘Welsh Folklore and Folk Custom’ by T. Gwynn Jones (1930).

There’s a bit of a military theme with this spot. Maybe that’s no surprise if it’s on a road following the Annan valley, heading north-south? An RCAHMS report from 1920 says the “stone is said to have been erected to mark the spot where Prince Charlies’ troops bivouacked on their march into England in the ‘45.” That’s the 1745 uprising led by ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ ‘f course. Though confusingly, this book thinks that it was actually another Charles, the English Charles the second, who stopped here for breakfast with his army, in 1651. And according to another contemporary story* “there is a house called Powdine..; that house hath been haunted these fifty or sixty years.. I spoke with the [owner].. He told me many extraordinary relations consisting in his own knowledge; and I carried him to my master, to whom he made the same relations – noises and apparitions, drums and trumpets heard before the last war; yea, he said, some English soldiers quartered in his house were soundly beaten by that irresistible inhabitant..” And Not that I’m saying the stone is related to this folklore (although the house is just across the road) but it’s got a similar theme?

*From ‘Laws’ Memorials’, quoted in ‘Witchcraft and superstitious record in the south-western district of Scotland’ by JM Wood (1911).

The earthworks on Dechmont Law are very slight now, but the Canmore record concedes they’re probably the remains of a hill fort.

The woods around the base of the hill were the setting for one of the UK’s weirder ufo-ish experiences. You can read all about it at the ‘UFO Evidence‘ website.

Dechmont Hill, situated in the parish of Cambuslang, was a place where our forefathers lighted the Beltane [fire]. In the Statistical Account of Scotland (1848) it is stated that a thick stratum of charcoal was discovered underneath a structure of fine loam on the summit of the hill. When the country people saw it they expressed no surprise, as the tradition was familiar to them that it was here where the former inhabitants of the country had been in the habit of lighting their Beltane.

From ‘Old Scottish Customs’ by E J Guthrie (1885). I can’t see the story in the Statistical Account, though I could be looking in the wrong place.

(Yep – here
books.google.co.uk/books?id=o5DVAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA83)

Somewhere in the vicinity of St Serf’s Water, a barrow was opened prior to 1800, and two urns containing bluish 4” polished axes were found. St Serf’s Well was here too, but ‘Canmore’ says that it’s been lost since the Water level rose.

Nigh to this place is St Serf’s Well, and the moor whereon St Serf’s market is held. He was the tutelary saint of the parish of Monivaird. This well is a plentiful spring of water. About sixty years ago, our people were wont, on Lammas day, to go and drink it, leaving white stones, spoons, or rags, which they brought with them; but nothing except the white stones now appear, this superstitious practice being quite in oblivion. It has been useful in a strangury, as any other very cold water would be; for a patient, taking a tub full of it immediately from the well, plunging his arms into it, which were bare to the elbows, was cured. St Serf’s fair is still kept on the 11th of July, where HIghland horses, linen cloth, &c. both from the south and north, are sold.

‘Extracts from a History of the Parishes of Monivaird and Strowan’, by Mr Porteous, in vol.2 (1822) of Archaeologia Scotica.

At Blidworth in a hollow to the west of the village are some masses of Bunter conglomerate, which stand out above the level of the fields. They remind us of the Hemlock Stone, and like it, are connected by tradition with the pre-Roman past, under the name of Druid Stones. The largest of them rests upon a knob of rock which juts a little above the soil; it has been hollowed from the western side for a distance of about six feet into the interior of the mass. The hollow is pierced through the back in such a way that, it is said, the aperture exactly faces the sun on the morning of Midsummer Day. Thus we are again pointed, as in the Beltane usage on Stapleford Hill*, to rites in which reverence for the sun played a leading part.

*ie the location of the Hemlock Stone.

From ‘The Victoria History of the County of Nottingham’ v1 (1906), edited by William Page.

The cairn on top of Carn Mor is modern, but it’s thought to hide the remains of a prehistoric version. There are a few boulders around the edges which could have been kerb stones.

Grimm refers to a remarkable instance of this superstition, which occurred in the island of Mull as recently as 1767, which vividly illustrates the “toughness” of tradition, as Dasent expresses it. He says:- “In consequence of a disease amongst the black cattle, the people agreed to perform an incantation, though they esteemed it a wicked thing. They carried to the top of Carnmoor a wheel and nine spindles, long enough to produce fire by friction. If the fire were not produced before noon, the incantation lost its effect.

They failed for several days running. They attributed this failure to the obstinacy of one householder, who would not let his fires be put out for what he considered so wrong a purpose. However, by bribing his servants, they contrived to have them extinguished, and on that morning raised their fire.

They then sacrificed a heifer, cutting in pieces and burning, while yet alive, the diseased part. They then lighted their own hearths from the pile, and ended by feasting on the remains. Words of incantation were repeated by an old man from Morven, who came as the master of the ceremonies, and who continued speaking all the time the fire was being raised. This man was living a beggar at Bellochroy. Asked to repeat the spell, he said the sin of repeating it once had brought him to beggary, and that he dared not say those words again.”

I don’t know where he’s quoting this Grimm from, but this is collected in Hardwick’s “Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-lore” (1872).

As I have previously observed, striated boulders, brought from a great distane by what geologists term the “glacial drift,” are especially regarded as debris resulting from giant warfare or amusement. Many rocks of this class lying to the south of Pendle Hill, near Great Harwood, I am informed, are still looked upon by the vulgar as stones which have been hurled by giants from the surrounding hills.

From ‘Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-lore (chiefly Lancashire and the north of England)’, by Charles Hardwick (1872).

This hill is next to Croxton Abbey, whose Abbot looked after King John when he died in Newark in 1216. Apparently he got to take the king’s entrails / his heart back (whilst the rest of the body went to Worcester). That’s fairly gruesome an idea. You’d think the guts would have been put in the abbey, but the Remember Waltham On the Wolds website has the nice local twist that they ended up in this barrow (there’s also a photo. Of the barrow, not the entrails.)

If you look at the scheduled monument information for the site, it says it’s the remains of a medieval post mill. But it concedes it ‘is thought likely to have utilised a well preserved Bronze Age burial mound.’ Because the mound of a post mill wouldn’t really be a suitable resting place for a kings innards would it. And the idea of reusing a prehistoric mound for burying people in later times is common enough.

A more modern update on giant-related folklore, and why not:

I followed, and found myself in the famous subterranean passage known as Chapel Uny Cave, walled and roofed with flat stones of granite. It is thirty-five feet long, and leads to a circular domed chamber twelve feet in diameter, now open to the sky.

I remarked upon the size of the slabs of granite that form the roof, and asked the farmer how these heavy weights, that a football team could hardly lift, were placed in position.

“The giants put them there,” he answered. I pricked my ears. Was I, on my last day, to stand face to face with a man who believed in the giants? Alas no! He did not refer to the fabulous Bolster, nor to the giants of Trencrom and St. Michael’s Mount, who played at bob-button, but to mortals, Cornishmen of vast strength and stature, like Anthony Payne, who seem at one time to have been common in Cornwall.

He spoke of John and Richard Row, brothers, who could lift enormous stones with the greatest ease. Once the wheel of a heavily laden waggon came off. John raised the waggon with his mighty shoulder, while Richard replaced the wheel.

From ‘Days in Cornwall’ by Charles Hind (1909).

Pendene vowe, a holl or deepe vaute in the grounde, wherinto the sea floweth at high water, very farr under the earth: Manie have attempted, but none effected, the search of the depth of it.

From John Norden’s “Speculi Britanniæ pars: a topographical and historical description of Cornwall”, written in the beginning of the 17th century. (I have transcribed this from the scan on Google Books.) I take it he didn’t go in. But then I’m a coward as well.

Borlase (in 1769) didn’t think much of his story – “but the sea is in truth more than a quarter of a mile from any part of it. The common people also thereabout tell many idle stories of like kind, not worth the reader’s notice, neglecting the structure, which is really commodious, and well executed.”

I think he rather liked the place, saying “Of all the artificial Caves I have seen in Cornwall, that called Pendeen Vau (by the Welsh pronounced Fau) is the most entire, and curious”, and “You see nothing of this Cave, either in the field or garden, ‘till you come to the mouth of it, as much privacy as possible being consulted.”

Fowre Burrows, fowre litle hills raysed upon the vaste Downes nere the north sea; they stande together, and are the burialls of slayne men in the feylde. In those partes are manie like borrowes, as in manie partes ells of Englande, upon the spatious playnes wher, in the Saxon and Danish Broyles, battells have bene fowghte.

From John Norden’s “Speculi Britanniæ pars: a topographical and historical description of Cornwall”, written in the beginning of the 17th century. (I have transcribed this from the scan on Google Books.)

Major Mercer was further informed of the site of a monolith called in the district “The Sack Stone,” which he at once went to see. From his notes I gather that this is a great smoothed boulder, having one side flat and the other rounded, both with deep longitudinal glacial grooves. It stands about 9 feet 6 inches in height, is 6 feet in breadth and about 3 feet thick near the base, from which it increases to about 4 feet near the upper part.

Its position, as far as could be ascertained from the map, is about three-quarters of a mile N.E. of Creag na Criche, near the 1000-foot contour-line, and on the north side of the burn that divides Tullybeagles from Tullybelton, on the slope of the hill near the latter place. Anderson, the old keeper, said that the current tradition – doubtless, to account for the name – was that some one had brought this Sack Stone in a bag and left it there! If this is a residue of some early legend telling of the Stone being “dropped out of the apron of a witch,” it is still one more instance of the folk-lore of Standing Stones.

From ‘Report on Stone Circles in Perthshire’ by Fred Coles, in PSAS v45 (1910-11).

In the memory of men still living, two well-known weavers, named James Livingstone and James McLaren, lived in Barnkettick, at the west end of the town. Livingstone was a through wag, and McLaren was somewhat of a simpleton. Livingstone was in the habit of telling his neighbour all sorts of extravagant stories about ghosts and witches. The facility with which the latter fraternity could turn themselves into hares and scamper about was an accepted fact, which McLaren as truly believed as his Bible.

The Rocking or Cradle Stone on the brow of the Knock, behind the town, was supposed to be of Drudical [sic] origin, and for ages drew forth the fear and wonder of the natives. A belief prevailed that something valuable was buried in its foundation, and worth lifting, if it could only be got at.

The story’s told at great length. Basically, Livingstone gets a few of his mates involved, and they turn up early with snares and ‘squibs’. When the two friends start digging, “a strange unearthly sound came up the hill, and on looking round, a ball of fire was seen careering through the underwood. McLaren felt queerish and almost speechless.” But Livingstone said they were only bits of falling stars. McLaren thought otherwise, that it was something to do with the Monzie witches. When Livingstone yelled that he smelt brimstone, McLaren rushed terrified down the hillside, scaring rabbits and hares that then got caught screaming in the snares. He makes it home but Livingstone clearly doesn’t know when to stop and ties a live hare to the bed, which McLaren of course interprets as a witch.

The RCAHMS record says the Cradle Stone is a huge boulder that’s been split in two. Surely it’s called the Cradle Stone because it rocks / rocked at some point? but in a mention in PSAS (v45/1910) it says “the local story is that the Cradle Stone is where the babies came from!” Maybe that’s a kind of back-explanation with a fertility related twist?