Rhiannon

Author Herbie Brennan has a video on YouTube in which he describes his strange experience at Longstone Rath. I hope he wouldn’t mind me typing out an excerpt here.

It’s presented as the truth.. though of course it’ll be up to you whether you Believe.

uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EclmR01xSds

... I was living on a country estate in County Kildare in Ireland, and on the property was a Bronze Age monument.. an earthen ring, I suppose about 15 feet high, which surrounded a megalith which I suppose was 18 feet high. The whole place was known as Longstone Rath.

Along came Halloween of 1971. An old friend of mine asked if he could see this rath. It was well after 11 o’clock at night but we decided to go anyway. We were looking up at the standing stone and Jim suddenly said “I don’t think this place likes me.” The two of us turned, and we were walking together out of the ring fort, when suddenly, on top of the earthen ring, I saw a herd of tiny white horses. They were about 20, 25 in all, and none of them was any larger than a cocker spaniel. And they galloped along the top of the earthwork, and moved down out of sight down the other side. And the two of us ran out of the earthwork to see what had happened to these horses, and – they were gone.

Years later I was talking to [another] old friend.. who was a writer like myself, and very interested in mythology. I told him the story of the white horses, exactly as I’ve told it to you now, and he said “Oh, dear boy, don’t you know what those were?” And I said, “No, I’ve absolutely no idea, I just know that I saw them.” And he said, “They were fairy horses. They’re associated with the megaliths of Ireland, and you also find reports of them in Japan.”

There are two more Strange stories on his video too.

In a valley to the east of Philpots Promontory Camp wanders the ghost of a Black Dog. A poacher in the area has said : “There’s one thing I dare not do; I’d be afear’d to walk through that girt valley below Big-On-Little after dark. It’s a terrible ellynge place and a gurt black ghost hound walks there o’nights”. Ellynge is a local Sussex word for eerie and the hound is called “Gytrack” which is very similar to the “Guytrash” found in the north of England. Ian Hannah notes that the valley “seems to have no name (except that it is locally known as the Grattack, after a dog)“.

This is taken from the Sussex Archaeology and Folklore website – Ian Hannah’s article on the camp is in SAC Vol. 73 (156-167) 1932.
sussexarch.org.uk/

We first visited the Manne-er-Hroek, the Montagne de la Fee, or de la
Femme, which bears in the marine charts the name of “Butte de Cesar,” for it was the fashion with antiquaries to attribute to Caesar and the Romans every Celtic monument, although bearing no resemblance whatever to any
work of these conquerors.

....

The guide who furnished the light and showed us the grotto is the widow of a Polish officer. She had a Scotch terrier, which she wanted us to accept. The legend of the mound is this:--A widow had the misfortune of losing her only solace, her son, compelled by law to embark for foreign lands. Years rolled by; he did not return. All said he was lost; but the heart of a mother hopes for ever, and the sad Armorican went every day to the point of Kerpenhir, whence she
surveyed the ocean, and searched the depths of the horizon with tearful eyes for the purple sail which was to bring joy and peace to her dwelling.

One day, when she was returning sad as usual to her desolate home, she was accosted by an old woman, who enquired the cause of her
troubles; and, on hearing them, advised her to heap a pile of stones, so that, mounting on the summit, she might see to a greater distance, and perhaps discern the long looked-for vessel. During the whole night the two women worked, and carried in their aprons the stones they gathered on the heath. In the morning their task was finished, and the Bretonne was scared to see the enormous heap that had been piled together; but the other quieted her fears, and helped her to climb to the top, whence soon the happy mother beheld the vessel of her son. The fairy, her assistant, had disappeared.

This story evidently bears a vague tradition of this tumulus having been raised by a woman, and of some maritime expedition made by him for whom it was probably destined. The name of fairy is attached in Brittany to everything--mountains, springs, grottoes, rocks; every accident in nature is explained by a fairy origin.

From ‘Brittany & Its Byways’ by Fanny Bury Palliser (1869), which you can read on Project Gutenberg.

A slightly different version:

Between Honiton and Sidmouth is an inn called The Hunter’s Lodge (more recently The Hare and Hounds), and opposite the house is a block of stone, over which hovers a gruesome mystery. It is said that in the dead of night the stone used to stir in its place, and roll heavily down into the valley, to drink at the source of the Sid, and, some say, to try to wash away its stain. Human blood has given it this power--the blood that gushed upon it when the witches slew their victims, for it was once a witches’ stone of sacrifice.

From ‘Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts’ by Rosalind Northcote (1898).

gutenberg.org/files/22485/22485-8.txt

Robin Hood was believed to possess supernatural powers. In the parish of Halifax is an immense stone or rock, supposed to be a Druidical monument, there called Robin Hood’s penny-stone, which he is said to have used to pitch with at a mark, for his amusement. There was likewise another of these stones of several tons weight, which the country people would say he threw off an adjoining hill with a spade, as he was digging.

From an 1832 Reader’s Digest-esque miscellany called ‘The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction’ by Reuben Percy and others – p205 (it’s on Google Books).

The river flowing from the Upper Lake divides St. Kevin’s Kitchen from the Rhefeart church: near the bank of the rivulet, a stone is shown, called the deer-stone. The origin of this denomination is derived from the following circumstance:
-- The wife of a peasant having expired in the pains of child-birth, the surviving infant was left destitute of its natural mode of nurture, nor could any equivalent substitute be procured. The disconsolate father applied to the revered spirit of St Kevin for relief, and was directed to attend at a certain hour every morning, near the Rhefeart church, at a stone having a little circular indenture in the top, into which a deer would regularly shed her milk, and leave it for the infant’s use: the little destitute is said to have been nourished by the milk procured at this stone, which is hence called the deer stone.

And there’s a little more stoney folklore nearby:

On the way to the Rhefeart church, another of the miracles wrought by the sainted Kevin is exhibited: – A number of large stones, extremely like loaves of bread, and possessing marks analogous to those made by the adhesion of loaves to each other in the oven, are scattered on the ground.

It is related that St. Kevin, having met a female bearing five loaves in a sack, and inquiring the contents of the sack, she answered that they were stones; for it being a time of scarcity, she feared to tell the truth; upon which the saint replied, “If they be not so already, I pray that for your perfidy they may become so;” when instantly five stones rolled out of the sack. These clumsy relics were preserved for many years in the Rhefeart church, but now lie at some distance from it down the valley.

From p127 of ‘A guide to the county of Wicklow’, by George Newenham Wright (1827) – you can read it at Google Books.

Numbers of Druidical stones (or, as some people say, in honour of Danish heroes) are scattered about Shap; they are different from the mother stone* (*Granite) of the neighbourhood, yet they seem too large to have been brought by art, and too careless on the surface to have formed there.

It is said that many of them were broken up to build Shap Abbey in 1158, which is, in its turn, dismantled to build paltry houses. Part of the steeple, with trees upon it that have withered with age, and cells under the once body of the abbey, are the only remains of this ruin: it has been shamefully dismantled. A fine stream runs near it, and the ground produces sweet grass, and hay that is all fragrance!

[..]

In our evening walk we passed a man who was driving his cart towards Bampton, and we asked him what names they called these stones* by, and how they came there? -- He stared, and asked “What dun yaw want t’kno for?” -- I dare say this answer was occasioned by evening fears, especially as he was to go by a barn that has always been the reputed haunt of ghosts, and which I believe is never passed in the day without a thought of them.

*“The Devil’s Stepping Stones” by the country people.

In Joseph Palmer’s “A fortnight’s ramble to the lakes in Westmoreland, Lancashire, and Cumberland” of 1792.

Bob Pyle’s Studdie might well be a ‘natural rock feature’ – it’s a large sandstone boulder – but it’s deemed worthy of Scheduled Monument status. A ‘studdie’ was a local word for an anvil, and Bob Pyle allegedly a blacksmith who lived in Rothbury in the 19th century*. It’s on the western slope of Simonside.

This is all mentioned on the Northumberland National Park website, which also suggests that the boulder could have had significance for those bringing animals up the holloway onto the hilltop. There are a number of Bronze Age cairns around here too.

But an anvil on a hill.. oh how I would like this to belong to someone a bit more legendary and supernatural, with lightning bouncing off it when they thump it. Maybe Mr Pyle was quite a legend. Or maybe he was just the latest person for the anvil to be associated with? (ever hopeful) And might not a duergar have a use for an anvil?

I wonder if it looks convincingly like an anvil?

(*certainly the Pyles were the blacksmithing family at one time, as you can see from this locally memorable mishap here. But it’s not Bob.
books.google.co.uk/books?id=dEEJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA155)

Further to Paulus’s fairy folklore:

Many years ago I took note of another example of these ‘footmarks,’ which was found in the parish of Carmyllie, also in Forfarshire. This was discovered in the course of making agricultural improvements some thirty-five years ago, on which occasion stone coffins or cists were got, and in one of these was a bronze (?) ring, of about three inches in diameter, now said to be lost.
Apart from the cists there was a rude boulder of about two tons weight; and upon the lower side of it, as my informant told me, was scooped the representation of a human foot. This too was associated with the elves; for the hillock upon which these discoveries were made was called the ‘fairies’ knowe;’ and tradition says that, but for a spirit that warned the workmen to suspend operations when they began to prepare for the foundations of the parish church, the church would have been built upon that spot!

books.google.co.uk/books?id=Gx0vAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA451
Mr Andrew Jervise’s observations, from the Journal of the Kilkenny and South East of Ireland Archaeological Society
p451 in ser. 2, v. 5 (1864-66).

Nigel Callaghan has some folklore about the area on his Taliesin website . He says that the Christian and prehistoric remains here are associated largely with Columb Cille (St. Columba), who’s said to have preached here in the 6th century.

“The turas is a pilgrimage performed annually on 9th June. Starting at midnight pilgrims (ideally bare-footed) walk round the fifteen stations of the turas, saying various prayers as they go. Whilst some of the stations are directly associated with Columb Cille (like his chapel), many of them are pre-Christian standing stones and tombs, which were ‘adapted’. This example is a standing stone, which has had beautiful celtic crosses inscribed on it.”

He mentions the well of St Columba which is surrounded by a massive cairn, allegedly “built from stones carried up by the pilgrims on the turas, who take a drink from the well before continuing on their journey.

In the ruined chapel there is the saint’s bed (a stone slab) – the clay beneath it has healing properties. There’s a wishing stone nearby, and also St Columba’s chair.

The church with the souterrain is just north of the earlier chapel.

Miss J M Dunn is another reliable witness who claims, on a clear moonlit night, to have seen a number of small human-like figures abroad; figures that seemed to hurry from one spot to another and then back again as though preparing for some festival or special occasion; figures that were plainly there one moment and gone the next [..] There have also been stories of phantom horsemen being seen in the vicinity of Avebury Circle, riding wildly over the ground on small horses with flowing manes.

p10 in ‘Ghosts of Wiltshire’ by Peter Underwood (1989).

At 700 paces from the Pilgrims’ Way we (Mr. Payne and Mr. A. A. Arnold, F.S.A., August, 1889) came on the fine but little-known cromlech called by the local people “Coldrum Stones and Druid Temple.” [..]

About forty years ago, and when this property belonged to a Mr. Whitaker, and when the area within the dolmen was divided into two chambers by the medial stones, some unauthorized persons, simply to test the tradition of an underground passage, an evergreen idea, betwenn the dolmen and Trosly [ie Trottiscliffe] church, half a mile south-west of Coldrum, dug a cave, which my informant saw, at the entrance to the dolmen, now indicated by flint concrete. This falling in of the cave, too, has been the cause of most serious disturbances within the dolmen. The Vicar of Trosly here intervened and stopped this, fearing the stones might fall.

Coldrum Monument and Exploration 1910.
F. J. Bennett
The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 43, (Jan. – Jun., 1913), pp. 76-85

That part of the Upper Icknield Way which, on the Ordnance Map, is called Ickleton Way, leads, “they say,” to the world’s end.
A gentleman once travelled along this road till he came to the fiery mountains. He turned back long before he reached them, for the smoke and smell nearly suffocated him. he lived near Watlington, but the woman who told me this had forgotton his name, though she had heard many speak of him. He died before she came into this part.

The road is also called Akney Way and the Drove Road, on account of the number of sheep driven along it at fair time. It is said to go all round the world, so that if you keep along it and travel on you will come back to the place you started from. It is also said to go from sea to sea.

A drover who had been “everywhere,” Bucks., Oxfordshire, Herts., all over Wales, had always found the Akney Way wherever he had been. (Heard in 1891.)

In April, 1892, I walked along the Icknield Way from Crowmarsh, in Oxfordshire, to Dunstable, in Bedfordshire (a distance of 35 miles). I was unable to gain any further information about the legend previously mentioned, but, all along my route, heard that the road went all round the world, or that it went all through the island, that it went from sea to sea, that it went ” from sea-port to sea-port.”

Well regardless of the ‘Truth’ (see misc.), it was obviously a long distance route in the tales of the people living by it, so I don’t know what that means.

From
Scraps of Folklore Collected by John Philipps Emslie
C. S. Burne
Folklore, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Jun. 30, 1915), pp. 153-170

This seems to support Stubob’s story -

You mention, in your History of Leicestershire, a hill called Robin o’ Tiptoe, in the parish of Tilton. Upon the summit is a fortification, of an oblong square, which I take to be Danish, containing about an acre. There is one tree within the camp, in a state of great decay; probably not less than a thousand years old: from this, I apprehend, the hill took its name. I purchased the hill, with other contiguous lands, for 11,500l.

From a letter of 1813 by W. Hutton, reproduced in ‘Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century’ v9, 1815.
books.google.co.uk/books?id=_DwUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA105

You can zoom right in with the Google satellite images.. but sadly there only seem to be cows and no tree. But you can see the enclosure very well.

I imagine the Corby of the name is really a ‘Corbie’? – that is, as the OED says, a raven (or maybe a carrion crow).

That’s a nice image – the Corbies’ Crags.

But they’re not always ‘nice’ of course, as in this traditional Scottish ballad, The Twa Corbies, in which they daydream about picking out and eating the eyes of a dead knight:
books.google.co.uk/books?id=_g4JAAAAQAAJ&pg=RA1-PA283&lpg=RA1-PA283

Careful on those crags then.

Almondsbury is said to have derived its name from being the burying-place of Alemond, a Saxon Prince, and father of King Egbert; but more probably from a burg, or fortification, constructed by him, and the remains of which are yet visible on an eminence to the eastward of the Church. The traces of a Camp are also discoverable round the brow of Knowle Hill, within the area of which is the Manor-House [..].

From ‘The Beauties of England and Wales’ v5 (1810).

Witt’s 1880s Handbook calls it ‘Knole Park Camp’ :

This stands on a steep hill in the parish of Almondsbuary, six miles north of Bristol. Though conforming to the shape of the ground, the camp was nearly oval. The defences consisted of a mound and two ditches, but these have been mostly destroyed by buildings, a large house having sprung up within the area of the ancient camp. There seems to have been an entrance at the north-east end, but nothing very definite can now be said on the subject. The views from this position are very fine, and embrace both shores of the Severn and the district of the Silures.

penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Great_Britain/England/Gloucestershire/_Texts/WITGLO*/Camps.html#59

The fort doesn’t seem to be a scheduled monument? Maybe it’s just been ruined too far.

I wonder if Ike’s still about. I’d love to know how he knows about this site and its name.. I can’t see the name on the maps. But anyway. Once there must have been a barrow round here and maybe this is it.

In a Tumulus at Over, in this parish [Almondsbury], opened in the year 1650, was found a human skeleton, in a sitting posture, which report affirms to have exceeded the common stature by three feet. No well-authenticated account of the discoveries made on the opening of this sepulchre, appears to have been written.

Doesn’t seem unreasonable that a 8ft+ man would have been a king, fair enough.

From v5 of ‘The Beauties of England and Wales’, 1810.
books.google.co.uk/books?id=gtsuAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA728

On a map from 1880 I see ‘site of tumulus’ is marked at 58828178. So maybe that’s the one referred to above, rather than Ike’s mound?

The name “Thunderbolt” was also given in Scotland to stone axes until within recent years. A finely formed axe of aphanite found in Berwickshire, and presented to the Museum in 1876, was obtained about twenty years before from a blacksmith in whose smithy it had long lain. It was known in the district as “the thunderbolt,” and had probably been preserved in the belief that it had fallen from the sky.

In Shetland stone axes were said to protect from thunder the houses inwhich they were preserved. One found at Tingwall was acquired from an old woman in Scalloway, who believed it to be a “thunderbolt,” and “of efficacy in averting evil from the dwelling in which it was kept;” while another, believed to have “fallen from the skies during a thunderstorm,” was preserved in the belief that “it brought good luck to the house.”

In the North-East of Scotland they “were coveted as the sure bringers of success, provided they were not allowed to fall to the ground.”

In the British Museum there is a very fine axe of polished green quartz, mounted in silver, which is stated to have been sewed to a belt which was worn round the waist by a Scottish officer as a cure for kidney disease.

The late Sir Daniel Wilson mentions an interesting tradition regarding the large perforated stone hammers, which he says were popularly known in Scotland almost till the close of last century as “Purgatory Hammers,” for the dead to knock with at the gates of Purgatory.

From ‘Scottish Charms and Amulets’ by Geo. F. Black. (In v27 of PSAS -1893, p433).
You can check out his sources in the footnotes at
ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/PSAS_2002/pdf/vol_027/27_433_526.pdf

The legend of Carnac which explains these avenues of monoliths bears a resemblance to the Cornish story of ‘the Hurlers,’ who were turned into stone for playing at hurling on the Lord’s Day, or to that other English example from Cumberland of ‘Long Meg’ and her daughters.

St Cornely, we are told, pursued by an army of pagans, fled toward the sea. Finding no boat at hand, and on the point of being taken, he transformed his pursuers into stones, the present monoliths.

The Saint had made his flight to the cost in a bullock-cart, and perhaps for this reason he is now regarded as the patron saint of cattle.

From ‘Legends and Romances of Brittany’ by Lewis Spence (1917?), which you can read on the Sacred Texts Archive.
sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/lrb/index.htm

After nearly an hour’s walking, we reached the village of Crehen, on the other side of which the character of the river and of its banks changes. Near the village my guide pointed out to me a tumulus, evidently the work of man.

He said that “les paysans” told a great many strange tales about it; that human bones had been found by digging in it; and that, in stormy nights, a female figure, dressed in white, came forth from it, and went down to the river to wash her clothes, making the whole valley resound with the strokes of her beater upon the linen.

He told me all this with a sneer of supreme contempt for the good rustics who believed thes old-world tales; for my friend, the letter-carrier, had served in the army, and seen the world, even to the extent of having been quartered in Paris for three months.

So he had returned to his native village an educated man, and an “esprit fort,” far too wise to “believe any thing of which he did not know the why and the how.” Thus, with the same self-sufficient educated ignorance, which, in minds too suddenly emancipated from the trammels of long-reverenced ideas, produces similar results in more important matters, he had rejected the truth together with the fable.

For true enough it is, as I afterwards ascertained, that bones to a considerable amount had been found in the tumulus in question, which, in all probability, had been a Celtic place of sepulture.

books.google.co.uk/books?id=XqIKAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA227
From ‘A Summer in Brittany’ by T A Trollope (1840).

As this book was going to press, the tumulus which bore the now demolished Prince’s Tower in Jersey, and which is known as “La Hougue Bie,” was opened by the Societe Jersiaise, under the supervision of my friend Mr. E. T. Nicolle.

The legend concerning it was that it was once the lair of a devastating dragon. A gallant knight, the Seigneur of Hambie, crossed from Normandy to slay it. He succeeded after a desperate fight, but was murdered by his treacherous squire. The latter returned to the Seigneur’s beautiful wife, and married her on the strength of his lying statement that he was solemnly enjoined to do so by his master, whom, he said, the dragon had killed. The false squire was later unmasked and executed.

The tumulus, which is forty feet high and one hundred and eighty feet in diameter, has been found to contain a covered way, four feet high and five feet wide, leading to a central chamber seven feet high, thirty feet long, and twelve feet borad, the length of the whole structure being about seventy feet.

Further particulars as to this magnificent discovery are not yet forthcoming, but it is evidently a sepulchral chamber, which, judging by the numberous other megalithic remains in Jersey, is of neolithic age. It is exactly the kind of relic of an earlier race which would give rise to the legends which form the nuclei of so many of our fairy-tales.

From ‘The Folklore of Fairytales’ by MacLeod Yearsley (1924?), p 235.
books.google.co.uk/books?id=au0RPGI2K8QC&pg=PA235

About the year 900 [..], Ethelfleda built a town called Eddisbury, in the very heart or “chamber” of the forest, which soon became populous and famous for the happy life led by its inhabitants. Though all vestige of this once happy town has now disappeared, yet its name remains, and its site in the chamber of the forest can still be pointed out.

And certainly a finer site the Lady Ethelfleda could not have chosen. It was placed on a gentle rising ground in the centre of the forest, overlooking finely wooded vales and eminences on every side. A little brook rippled past through a small valley, and the old Roman road wound its way round the eminence on which the town was built.

This antique Saxon lady seems to have had a strange passion for building, as we are told she not only built this town, but that she also built fortresses at Bramsbury, Bridgenorth, Tamworth and Stafford, and most probably would have built many more had she not died at Tamworth in 922.

books.google.co.uk/books?id=sN0wjxyotFwC&pg=PA214
From ‘English Forests and Forest Trees’ (1853). Information about Ethelfleda largely comes from a short Anglo Saxon document called the ‘Mercian Register’ which covers the years 902-24.

La glissade appears rarely to have been practised on true megaliths, for the reason that they rarely present the inclination necessary to its accomplishment. It is, however, said at Loc- mariaker, in the Morbihan, that formerly every young girl who wished to marry within the year, on the night of the first of May got on the large menhir, turned up her skirts and let herself slide from top to bottom. The menhir mentioned was the largest one known; but it is now broken in four pieces which lie on the ground; according to most authors it was still standing at the beginning of the eighteenth century. This custom, which could not be followed when the stone stood vertical, twelve meters in height, is, then, relatively modern, yet it is possible that the young girls of the locality have come to follow, on the pieces, an ancient custom which was formerly held on some natural stone in the neighborhood.

The Worship of Stones in France
Paul Sébillot and Joseph D. McGuire
American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Jan. – Mar., 1902), pp. 76-107

Sliding (la glissade), the best-preserved of the pre-megalithic forms of worship, is characterized by the contact, at times brutish, of a part of the person of the believer with the stone itself. The most typical examples which have been preserved (and as the rites have no doubt generally been carried on in secret, much has escaped the observer) are in relation to love and fecundity.

In the north of Ille-et-Vilaine are a series of large blocks, at times, but not always, worn into cups, which have received the significant name of “Roches Ecriantes” because the young girls, that they may soon be married, climb to the top of them and let themselves slide (in patois ecrier) to the bottom; and some of them, indeed, are to a certain extent polished because of the oft- repeated ceremony, observed by numberless generations, which we are assured has been practised there.

[..]

At Mell( (Ille-et-Vilaine) the ” Roche Ecriante ” was worn full of basins; on the rock of the same name at Montault, a neighbor- ing parish, inclined at an angle of 45 degrees, there were visible evidences of numberless girls who had there ecriees. After the sliding it was necessary to place on the stone, which, however, no one must see done, a little piece of cloth or ribbon.

From
The Worship of Stones in France
Paul Sébillot and Joseph D. McGuire
American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Jan. – Mar., 1902), pp. 76-107