Rhiannon

This book, ‘Crop Circles, signs of contact‘ wants us to believe that Golden Ball Hill is so called because of the strange glowing globes seen there, which are connected with the crop circles of the area. Well, it could be true, though you’d think someone would have mentioned these globes before. But whatever, I guess it is an interesting and fitting contemporary example of place name derivation, in the lore-rich landscape around Avebury.

A midwife of Flodigarry was attending a confinement, when, one day, a message came for her to go some distance away. She [agreed to] the summons and found herself inside a fairy mound. She begged to be allowed to go, but the fairies refused to let her till she had performed two tasks. She was provided with a spindle, some wool, and some meal in a girnal. When the wool was all spun, and the meal made into bread, she might go. She toiled very assiduously to get all finished up, but it was of no avail. The wool and the meal remained undiminished. Despairing of ever seeing her home again, she begged of a fairy who was alone with her to tell her what to do. The fairy was moved by her prayers and told her to spin the wool as the sheep eats grass.

[Here the writer says This instruction has no meaning, so I suspect there has been some mistranslation from the Gaelic, which is of course, the language in which all these stories were originally told. Thus she misses the point entirely, because it’s
surely a riddle the midwife has to solve? She continues..]

At all events the midwife understood, and soon finished that task. As to the meal, the fairy told her that she must take some of the dough and form a cake with it. This cake she must bake in front of (before?) the others, and eat it entirely herself. [Again some critical point has been missed, as she says:] In this way the task was done.

The fairies saw she must have had help from one of their own number, but she stoutly refused to tell. They were therefore forced to allow her to go. Joyfully she sped back to her “case,” and on arriving at her patient’s house she found it full of music and merrymaking. Astonished, she asked a bystander what it all meant. “A wedding,” was the surprised answer.
“Whose wedding will it be?” she queried impatiently. What was her surprise to find it was the wedding of the very child she had helped to bring into the world, for she had been absent more than twenty years.

p207-208 in
Folk-Lore of the Isle of Skye
Mary Julia MacCulloch
Folklore, Vol. 33, No. 2. (Jun. 30, 1922), pp. 201-214.

An old man in Borve was very much later than his neighbours in cutting his corn. One day he was standing looking at it, and he said aloud, “This corn is ready to be cut.” Waking next morning this easy-going old gentleman saw, to his amazement, his corn cut and put up in stooks.

The next morning he was met by a man about four feet high and dressed in blue clothes. (This probably meant for green, as my informant, Donald Murchison, while working in the garden always called grass “that blue sing.“) The old man asked the stranger where he had come from. “From Dun Borve,” answered the little man, “and want pay for cutting the corn.”
“What pay?” queried the old crofter.
“A few potatoes and a little pot,” was the reply.
This seems a floating reminiscence of the demands of the much-dreaded tinkers, for, of course, potatoes were entirely unknown in the days when this story was first told. However that may be, the demands in this case were acceded to, and now hardly a day passed without the little man or his still less wife appearing with new requests.

The nuisance became quite intolerable, and the old man beat his brains for a means whereby he might put a stop to it. He at last hit on a plan. One day, when his troublesome visitors were as usual asking for something, he suddenly called out, “Dun Borve is on fire with all in it, dog or man.” Instantly the fairy disappeared and from that time troubled the ingenious old man no more.

But at Portree Market he once more saw the little man. Unwisely, he spoke to him, and the fairy said, “How will you be seeing me?”
“With this eye,” said the old man.
Instantly the fairy put spittle in the eye indicated, and, though the old man retained the normal use of it, the supernormal power disappeared.

p205-6 in
Folk-Lore of the Isle of Skye
Mary Julia MacCulloch
Folklore, Vol. 33, No. 2. (Jun. 30, 1922), pp. 201-214.

This dun would be the natural choice for the location of this story:

A man in Raasay, going to a black still at Suishnish for whiskey, and coming back with a skin bottleful on his back, saw a hill, which he had to pass, open before him, and looking in he saw tables laid. This was too good an opportunity to be missed, and he went in to join the feast, which was being celebrated with all manner of splendour: linene of the finest, massive silver plate, and gaily dressed servants waiting.

Dancing followed, and for a while he joined in; but, becoming sated with gaiety, he thought of returning home. He would have a fine story to tell, but who would believe him? He must have some evidence to show, so he snatched away a tablecloth. The hue and cry was up at once, and he was closely pursued. But he reached home safely with his prize, which he showed to all comers.

Macgilliechallum, the chief of the Macleods of Raasay, asked for the cloth, and asking, in the case of a chief, being then much the same as taking, it was given up to him. It was long in the possession of the MacLeods of Raasay.

p205 in Folk-Lore of the Isle of Skye
Mary Julia MacCulloch
Folklore, Vol. 33, No. 2. (Jun. 30, 1922), pp. 201-214.

And the Dun is surely the location for this story too. And if it isn’t it should be.

A well-to-do couple in the neighbourhood of Edinbane had but one lack in their prosperity – they had no child. But, at length, to their pride and joy, the wished-for child arrived. A bountiful harvest demanded all hands at work, and the mother carried her infant out, and left it comfortable and apparently safe inthe charge of a young girl. But the latter was heedless and false to her trust, and she left the sleeping infant to the many dangers which menace infant life.

During her absence the fairies, attracted by the beauty of the human child, stole it, leaving in its place a peculiarly unattractive infant of their own species. From that time the healthy child “dwined,” always wailing and refusing to eat. After all ordinary means had been tried and had failed the mother consulted a “wise man.” This person bade the mother listen if she could hear the crying of her own child, which she soon perceived to be coming from a little hill.

By the advice of the wise man the mother took the fairy child near this hill and slapped it hard. Immediately a voice was heard exclaiming in anger, “Throw her out her own ugly brat,” and the fairy child disappeared, leaving, at her feet, her own comely infant.

p204-205 in
Folk-Lore of the Isle of Skye
Mary Julia MacCulloch
Folklore, Vol. 33, No. 2. (Jun. 30, 1922), pp. 201-214.

This just has to be the location of the following story.

Two hunchbacks lived at Edinbane, about fourteen miles from Portree. One of these fell ill, and asked his comrade in misfortune to go and feed his herd of cattle, the beautiful shaggy creatures one still sees in the Highlands. As the neighbour, a kindly, merry man, proceeded on his mission, he heard sounds coming from a small hill, and, listening, he heard a voice chanting continuously, “Monday, Tuesday.”
With a sudden impulse he joined in, “Wednesday, Thursday.”
A voice inquired, “Who will be adding nice verses to my song?”
“A hunchback bodach,” the man replied.
“Come in to my house,” said the voice, and the hunchback obeyed.
An old fairy man greeted him, and in gratitude for the addition to his song he took off the disfiguring hump.

We can picture the neighbour’s astonishment when the transformed hunchback returned home. Jealousy consumed him, and the next day he hurried to the same place and heard the same song, which now included the nice new verses. Jealous of his neighbour’s good fortune, for he was a sullen, discontented man, he joined in, “Friday, Saturday.”

But this did not have the desired effect, for a wrathful voice demanded, “Who will be spoiling my nice song?” and the fairy man emerged and dragged him inside. With somewhat arbitrary cruelty he added the neighbours hump to that already on his back and drove him out.

p203-4 in
Folk-Lore of the Isle of Skye
Mary Julia MacCulloch
Folklore, Vol. 33, No. 2. (Jun. 30, 1922), pp. 201-214.

A relative of Donald Murchison, who was employed as a herd boy on the farm of Scorybreck, fell asleep on a hill known as Dun Torvaig. Awaking from a heavy sleep, he found himself surrounded by fairies, and was a delighted spectator of their feasting and dancing. Meanwhile, in his home, he was mourned for as dead, and sad funeral feasts and loud wailing (and the latter is most heartrending) filled the house. What was the astonishment of the mourners when he arrived home, safe and well. Three weeks had elapsed, but he refused to believe it, and said, “It was the fine long sleep I had, but who would be sleeping the three weeks? It was but half a day I was after sleeping.” He was safe and well certainly but never again the same lad, for he was ever distraught in manner, and ever sighing for the joys of the fairy-haunted Dun.

p203 in
Folk-Lore of the Isle of Skye
Mary Julia MacCulloch
Folklore, Vol. 33, No. 2. (Jun. 30, 1922), pp. 201-214.

Donald was one of Mary’s informants – he did her garden for her and was the local postie. He had “the magnificent salary of four shillings a week [and] could read English and was fond of reading.” When she went round his house for tea (she was “served with a courtesy worthy of a ducal palace”) she couldn’t help noting that his hearth was in the centre of the room and the cows were eating just through a door in the kitchen. I kind of feel she mentions these things to prove he’s ‘one of the folk’ to her readers, rather than marvelling at the quaint way he lives.

A Wishing Cell. -- At St. Govain in Pembrokeshire there is a “wishing cell” in the rock. It is said that any one who turns round inside wishing for the same thing all the time, will get it before the end of the year. The place is still visited by young people who are in love.

p157 in
Notes on Welsh Folklore
Jonathan Ceredig Davies
Folklore, Vol. 30, No. 2. (Jun. 30, 1919), pp. 156-157.

Two pieces of stoney folklore from the vicinity. I doubt they’re connected to the rock art (they rarely are) but there various natural rocks and even a ruined chambered tomb in the Brahan Woods.

[..]Mr. W. Mackenzie, Procurator Fiscal of Cromarty, writes me from Dingwall (10th September, 1917) as follows:

“We are not without some traces and traditions of phallic worship here. There is a stone in the Brahan Wood which is said to be a ‘knocking stone.’ Barren women sat in close contact upon it for the purpose of becoming fertile. It serves the purpose of the mandrake in the East. I have seen the stone. It lies in the Brahan Wood about three miles from Dingwall.”

J.G. Frazer.

‘In close contact’ – what a polite way of putting it.
And another, also fowarded by Sir James Frazer:

In the Brahan Wood there are a number of conglomerate boulders, some of considerable size. Two of these boulders lean against each other, meeting near the top. A few years ago an old woman aged 84 died near this town. When she was a child she had a fit – perhaps a convulsion – which her parents supposed to be epileptic. They lighted a fire at the top of the leaning stones, and passed the child through the opening below. This reminds one of the Biblical account of passing through the fire to Moloch.”
W Mackenzie, Dingwall.

From:
Women Fertilized by Stones
J. G. Frazer
Folklore, Vol. 29, No. 3. (Sep. 30, 1918), p. 254.
and
Scotch Cures for Epilepsy
W. MacKenzie
Folklore, Vol. 29, No. 1. (Mar. 30, 1918), p. 86.

This mound of earth is generally called the Castle by the peasantry, among whom some singular tales are current respecting the cause of its formation.

One of these is a vague story of a certain Queen, who having made a wager with the King, that she could encamp a large army of men within a bull’s hide, ordered the bull’s hide to be cut into strings, and the greatest possible circle to be encompassed therewith: this was done accordingly, and the encampment made upon this spot.

From p29 of ‘The Beauties of England and Wales’ by John Britton, and others (1801).

[Quoting Dr Stukeley:]“A high prominence of the Chiltern overlooks all, called the Five Knolls, from that number of barrows, or Celtic tumuli, which are round, pretty large, and ditched about, upon the very apex of the hill.

Close by is a round cavity, as often observed in Wiltshire [ie a dry valley in the chalk hill]. This, we are informed, is called Pascomb Pit, and is a great hollow in the downs.”

Tradition, that unwearying journalist of marvellous tales, reports that a church was intended to have been erected on this spot, but that the materials were removed invisibly as fast as brought together.

From p29 of ‘The Beauties of England and Wales’ by John Britton, and others (1801). Yeah, John Britton sounds like a pseudonym for such a book title, but he was an antiquary. Online at Google Books.

More on the ‘Pascombe Pit’, where there was the tradition of rolling oranges on Good Friday. The writer connects this with the removal of the stone from in front of Jesus’s tomb. But really that wasn’t orange and didn’t roll down a hill.

The tradition of orange rolling is believed to have started in the mid to late eighteenth century and involved hundreds of people. The juiciest oranges were reserved for pelting one another and knocking off the top hats of those foolish enough to wear them at such a spectacle. Additional entertainment was provided by a local band which was later joined by several fairground attractions including a merry-go-round, a coconut shy and a shooting gallery. They positioned themselves at the foot of the hill.

Attendance grew each year with people travelling from as far away as London by train, bus and eventually by motor car.

Sadly lack of oranges in the war led to the activity’s suspension. And a revival later was ‘squashed’ by local traders in the sixties. Bring back the orange rolling!!

see Rita Swift’s article here, at the Collections Picture Library.

The devil threw a stone from here to Cleeve Hill Tumulus, as you may read about on that page.

But due to my impressionable childhood mind voraciously devouring the Reader’s Digest ‘Strange Stories, Amazing Facts’, Meon Hill always reminds me of the story of the witchcraft-related? murder of Charles Walton.

You can read all about it in Adrian Pengelly’s White Dragon article here:
whitedragon.org.uk/articles/charles.htm
(amongst countless other internet sites).

The article also teasingly mentions in passing that “there had long been stories of a ghostly black dog on Meon hill that heralded death to those it appeared to”. The detective investigating the case is said to also have seen a black dog on the hill..

There are two barrows marked here on the summit on the OS map, although Magic doesn’t actually list them as scheduled monuments. I read this about the Down in ‘Folklore’*: “.. in Hampshire “stones grow.” If you doubt this, you only have to gather the flints off a field and see if a double crop will not face you shortly! Besides, has not Shanklin Down increased one hundred feet in height?”

Well how bizarre. I found a bit more here. I guess it must have been local drollery in the C19th Isle of Wight. Unless of course, the hill really has been on the move.

“That high peak that we see is St. Katherine’s, the highest point of the island, is it not?”
“Yes,” he replied, “St. Katherine’s is at present the highest point of the island.”
”Is at present! Why, you do not mean to say that there ever was a time when its elevation was different?”
“That I know nothing about,” he replied; “but it appears very probable that Shanklin Down will soon overtake it in height.”
“Why, you don’t mean to say that Shanklin Down is growing higher?”
“That, indeed, appears to be the case, or, at any rate, relatively to other heights in the island. The inhabitants of Chale will tell you that formerly Shanklin Down, from the interference of Week Down, could only be seen from the top of St. Katherine’s, whereas it is now visible from Chale Down, which is much lower consequently, unless Week Down has sunk lower than it was, Shanklin Down must have risen considerably. Now, if Week Down is sinking, it is very probable that St. Katherine’s is slipping down too; so that, whether Shanklin Down is growing higher or not, it seems very probable that it will in the course of time overlook all the rest of the Isle of Wight.”
“Very curious,” said [another], with a kind of supercilious air. “I suppose the two hills playing at see-saw.--Now we go up, up, up; and now we go down, down, down. Very curious, -- very,” picking his teeth incredulously between the two last words.

“There is no animal,” thought I to myself, “so jealous of another of the same species, as your regular story-teller.”

From ‘Tales and Legends of the Isle of Wight – with the adventures of the author in search of them.’ by Abraham Elder, Esq.
p535 in Bentley’s Miscellany, vol 5 (1839). Apparently it’s mentioned in Worsley’s 1781 History of the Isle of Wight, if you can find it.

*Hampshire Folklore
D. H. Moutray Read
Folklore, Vol. 22, No. 3. (Sep. 30, 1911), pp. 292-329.

Charm-Stones.

The two holed-stones exhibited are from the collection of Sir F. Tress Barry, and were dug out of brochs, popularly called “Picts’ houses,” in the neighbourhood of Keiss Castle, Caithness.

They measure on and three-sixteenths and one and seven-sixteenths of an inch respectively in diameter. The smallest is from one-eighth to a quarter of an inch in thickness, whilst the larger and less perfect specimen has a thickness of three-eighths of an inch on one side, but on the opposite is chipped away to little more than one-sixteenth of an inch. The perforation of the first is a clean cut circle not quite a quarter of an inch in diameter. The hole of the larger stone is rougher, and has a diameter of three-eighths of an inch. Sometimes these stones are found decorated with small patterns of scratched lines. They are, in fact, ancient spindle whorls.

A few people in Caithness still attribute some superstitious power to these stones, and on the first night of the “quarter” they tie one of them between the horns of each of their cows and oxen, to frighten away the fairies and ill-luck. There is a tradition that the magic stones were made by seven vipers, who worked them into shape with their teeth, and that as they were finished the king of the vipers carried them off up on his tail ! *

When cattle sickened it used to be the custom in the old days – and, indeed, until quite recently – to call in a man with “charm stones” to conjure out the evil spirit. The grandfather of a middle-aged man now living in Caithness was celebrated for his wonderful cures, and declared that he had often seen the “fairy darts” sticking in the sick oxen when called in to doctor them.

He had to be left quite alone when practising his magic arts, but one day a neighbour – being very curious to see what he did – hid in a stable where he had shut himself up, and saw him rub the sick animal with the charm-stones, while at intervals he turned the stones over in the basket he had brought them in, saying “Swate ye! Swate ye!” He then administered a “drink of silver” (a bucket of water with a piece of silver money in it), and the animal was cured. The “silver drink” is still believed to be very effective in many parts of Caithness, and certainly it is a simple remedy, not likely to do any mischief.
F.BARRY.

*In the Hebrides these stone whorls are known as adder-stones.

Veterinary Leechcraft
Edward Lovett; F. Barry; J. G. Frazer; F. N. Webb
Folklore, Vol. 16, No. 3. (Sep. 29, 1905), pp. 334-337.

This must link to the idea that Harold fought a battle here (and hence erected the memorial stones):

We have many place-names, whose folk-etymology recalls the long-past border wars and commemorates real or imaginary battles. [..] At Trelleck (Mon.) is the Bloody Field, on which no crops will grow, nothing but gorse. “Eh, but it have been ploughed again and again, but ‘tis no use; because of the blood spilt there, ‘tis no use.”

[..]

Legend said [the stones Jacky Kent threw] could never be moved, but alas! gunpowder has accounted for one at least on the English side of the Wye.

p163 in Folk-Lore of the Wye Valley
Margaret Eyre
Folklore, Vol. 16, No. 2. (Jun. 24, 1905), pp. 162-179.

This story is known in similar forms around Britain, for example Llanymynech Hill and Fiddler’s Hill. It seems odd that although this one’s based in Trelleck, the stones themselves aren’t mentioned. Unless of course it was obvious to the teller and implied, but not known to the recorder.

There was a tradition at Trelleck, [so says Mrs Perrett or Bevan at Tregagle], of a fiddler having been lost in a cave; he was heard playing underground for years afterwards. Another story of the same sort, or possibly an explanation of the above, is that some people passing through a certain meadow used to hear lovely music. Several times they heard it, and at least they collected some folk together to investigate it. They traced the music to a certain spot, and there they dug in the ground, disclosing at last an underground cave wherein were two old men, hermit-like, playing, one a violin, the other a harp. They had been there many years, and used to take it in turns to go out at night and fetch food. Very old and decrepit they were, and soon after they were taken from underground they died.

p64 in Miscellaneous Notes from Monmouthshire
Beatrix A. Wherry
Folklore, Vol. 16, No. 1. (Mar. 25, 1905), pp. 63-67.

Wandering a little further to the north-east, you reach the top of Cairnpapple with its round Pictish fort – the place, as a not very intelligent workman whom we met on the hill told us, “where they aye met to burn witches.”

By the oh so intelligent and conveniently anonymous contributor to p266 of ‘Things New And Old in Religion, Science and Literature’ (1857). Online at Google Books.

Craig y Llyn towers above the lake, and it..

..had a green lady in the seventeenth century. Every seven years she came and sat on one of the rocks, making chains and necklaces of wild berries. The rowan or mountain-ash was her favourite tree, and she could be seen wandering about gathering an apronful of the bright red berries, which she conveyed to her favourite rock. Once when a man wished to follow her, but stood irresolute, she beckoned to him and smiled. He went towards her, and she gave him a handful of red rowan-berries.

He thanked her, and put them in his pocket. Then there came a crash, and the lady disappeared. She wore a green robe and green jewels. The berries changed to gold coins.

From chapter 15 of Mary Trevelyan’s ‘Folk lore and folk stories of Wales’ (1909). Online at V-Wales:
vwales.co.uk/Folklore/trevelyan/welshfolklore/chapt15.htm

There are two walled enclosures on the summits of Moel Offrwm, and the traces of many small round structures (surely roundhouses, though Coflein does not commit the site to any particular period).

It’s not connected with the forts*, but is a very local story: There was an oak just beneath the mountain on the west side, known as Derwen Ceubren yr Ellyll, ‘the goblin’s hollow tree’. It must have been quite crowded in there as it was also supposed to have been haunted by a compatriot of Owain Glyndwr, Howel Sele. The two men had been enemies but had allegedly made up, and were hunting deer together. Sele took a crafty shot at Glyndwr, but was rather surprised when his arrow bounced off the armour he was cunningly wearing underneath his vest. Gyndwr was understandably angry. Years later a skeleton ‘resembling Howel Sele in stature’ was discovered in the hollow tree. The tree met a natural fate in the early 1800s.

From: ‘Llanvachreth – Llanvagdalen’, A Topographical Dictionary of Wales (1849), pp. 111-15.
british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=47858

*unless you’d like to think that Sele had his stronghold in one of the forts.

“An old story about a witch living near the Ogmore River, in Glamorgan, describes a man listening to the muttering of a woman, and instantly giving her chase, with the result that in the “twinkling of an eye” he found himself on the top of the Garth Mountain, near Whitchurch.”

from chapter 16 of Marie Trevelyan’s “Folk-lore and folk-stories of Wales”, published in 1909. Online at V-Wales:
vwales.co.uk/Folklore/trevelyan/welshfolklore/chapt16.htm

When Eston nabbe puts on a cloake,
And Roysberrye a cappe,
Then all the folks on Clevelands clay
Ken there will be a clappe.---Yorkshire.

on p130 of
Weather Proverbs and Sayings Not Contained in Inwards’ or Swainson’s Books
C. W. Empson
The Folk-Lore Record, Vol. 4. (1881), pp. 126-132.
Apparently also in the Denham Tracts from 1850.

This is a summary of an article printed in Archaeologia volume 9.

Mr. Rooke is the author of the next article, which informs us of druidical remains on Harborough Rocks, Derbyshire; viz. circles, caves, basons, &c. The most remarkable is a rock cut in the shape of a great chair, near another stone having a bason at the top. One of these huge rock-chairs is situated at the side of a small plain opposite to a rock-idol. They are supposed to have been the occasional seats of the officiating druids; who, being near the rock bason, might conveniently consult the pure water, or snow, collected in it.

From p9 of the Monthly Review v2, 1790 (which is online at Google Books). Pretty much says what Stubob says! but 200 years before.

In the 1920s at least, the cave on the south west face was “known locally as the Giant’s Cave”.

so says p204 of ‘Exploration of Harborough Cave, Brassington.‘
A. Leslie Armstrong
The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 53. (Jul. – Dec., 1923), pp. 402-413.

Another story about the Broch.

“In Houstry, Dunbeath, Caithness, about the year 1809 or 1810, David Gunn, a crofter, in the course of making a kail-yaird, interfered with one of those prehistoric ruins known as Brochs which are so numerous in that northern region. Now it was well known that this Broch was a fairy habitation, and, in any case, it was well known that to tamper with a Broch or to carry away any of its materials was extremely uncanny.”

But Mr Gunn didn’t take any notice, and unfortunately a plague broke out that decimated the cattle of the whole district. Thanks a lot.

The was a meeting of local important types, and they decided on a Teine-Eigin as the best step forward. So they got a branch and stripped off its bark, and purified it by popping it on a little island in the Houstry Burn, so it was separated from everydayness by the flowing water. Everyone put out any fires that were burning. Then someone made a fire with the purified wood, and all the other fires were kindled from it anew.

The contributor of this story actually sent in a photo of one of these special bits of wood. It’s got round dips in it as though it’s been used (maybe) for making fire by a bow/drill method. But it hasn’t got little v-shaped notches like wot Ray Mears would recommend.

See
Sacred Fire
R. C. Maclagan
Folklore, Vol. 9, No. 3. (Sep., 1898), pp. 280-281.

I think the following strange story probably relates to the chambered cairn here?

The Druid of Ach a’ bheannaich (i.e. The Druid of the Mound of Blessing or Salutation).

At a short distance to the east of the “Druidical” stones at Acha’bheannaich, parish of Latheron, Caithness, there is a cairn overgrown with heather. In the middle of this cairn there is a small enclosure that closely resembles one of the “Druidical” altars that one may see in various parts of the Highlands. I visited this “Druidical” fane in the winter of 1874. The following legend associated with this tumulus was related to me by one of the Caithness ministers, an intimate friend, now deceased:

“When the principal Druid of that district had become so old and infirm that he could no longer perform the functions of his office, he was burnt alive on this altar as a sacrifice. While he was being offered, the young Druid who had been appointed his successor in office kept going round in the altar-smoke – ex fumo dare lucem-- that he might catch the spirit of his predecessor as it took its flight.”

p87 in
Folklore from the Hebrides. III
Malcolm MacPhail
Folklore, Vol. 9, No. 1. (Mar., 1898), pp. 84-93.

It’s hard to know how to interpret it really. Humour? Pro-Christian propaganda? Real belief? Who knows.

This round barrow (unusual for Staffordshire with its bank and ditch) is on a little hill called ‘The Roundabout’, just outside Norbury. It overlooks the ‘High Bridge’ over the canal, which I believe to be the location for the following story (the other bridge near Norbury looks too near buildings to be scary). I wonder if its presence added to the uncannyness of the location. I’d like to think so.

A short distance from the village there is a bridge over the Birmingham and Liverpool Canal which is always regarded as rather an uncanny place at night. A labouring man who had to cross this bridge with a horse and cart about ten o’clock one evening in January, 1879, arrived at home in an extraordinary state of fright and agitation, and related that just as he passed the bridge a black thing with white eyes sprang out of the hedgerow on to his horse.

The terrified horse broke into a gallop; the man tried to knock off the creature with his whip, but the whip went through the Thing and fell from his hand to the ground. How he got rid of the intruder or reached home at last he hardly knew, but the whip was picked up the next day just where he said he had dropped it.

The story of his strange encounter quickly spread, and this was the explanation that was offered by a local wiseacre: “It was the Man-Monkey as always does come again on the Big Bridge, ever since the man was drowned in the ‘Cut’.”

p368 in
Staffordshire Folk and Their Lore
C. S. Burne
Folklore, Vol. 7, No. 4. (Dec., 1896), pp. 366-386.

She has a longer version in ‘Shropshire Folklore’ in which it’s not a ‘wiseacre’ but the policeman!
archive.org/stream/shropshirefolkl00burngoog#page/n130/mode/2up

You would imagine that the two hills mentioned have got to be Bennachie and Mither Tap. Elspet’s Cairn was at NJ706298. It was trenched in 1849 and a cist with a skull and arrowheads/ axes were found. Nothing remains of it now, but it was on a noticeable bump, a couple of miles west of New Craig stone circle.

On two hills in the Highlands of Aberdeenshire the Banshee had to be propitiated by the traveller over the hills. This was done by placing near a well on each hill a barley-meal cake marked on one side by a round figure O. If the cake was not left death or some dire calamity befell the traveller. On one occasion a woman had to cross one of the hills. She neglected to leave the customary offering. She paid the penalty. She died at a cairn not far from the well. The cairn bears the name of Cairn Alshish, i.e. Elspet’s Cairn.
J. Farquharston, Corgarff.

Notes on Beltane Cakes
J. Farquharson
Folklore, Vol. 6, No. 1. (Mar., 1895), p5.

More on the geese and their origin.. in the 1808 Gentleman’s Magazine where the Ballad was originally? published (p341).

The following Ballad was written at Daylesford, the residence of Warren Hastings, esq. and was suggested by the circumstance of his having removed a number of large stones, which lay in the neighbourhood, to form the rock work which adorns his grounds, furnishing materials chiefly for a little Island, and the declivities of an artificial Cascade.

These stones which were situated on the summit of a hill in the parish of Addlestrop, in Gloucestershire, near the point where it borders upon the three adjoining counties, had stood for time immemorial; and whether they owed their position to Art or Nature, accident or design, has never been determined: hbut popular tradition, as is usual in cases of the like dilemma, has furnished a ready solution to this inquiry, by ascribing their origin to enchantment.

It is accordingly pretended that as an old woman was driving her geese to pasture upon Addlestrop hill, she was met by one of the Weird Sisters, who demanded alms, and upon being refused, converted the whole flock into so many stones, which have ever since retained the name of the Grey Geese of Addlestrop Hill.

In relating this Metamorphosis, no variation has been made from the antient legend; nor has any derivation from truth been resorted to in the narration of their subsequent history, farther than in attributing to the magical completion of a fictitious prophecy, what was, in reality, the effect of taste and a creative invention in the amiable proprietors of Daylesford House.

Next time you want to turn some stones into a water feature, just call it ‘taste and creative invention’, and it’ll be fine.

So. Maybe these aren’t the goose stones at all? and it is the story that has moved from Adlestrop Hill to the common.

The church, called St. Michael de Rupe in old records, (of which one dates as early as 1283,) is a curious little weather-worn structure.. It stands on the verge of a precipice, and in a diminutive churchyard, containing a few mouldering gravestones. An erroneous idea has been very generally entertained, that in digging burial-places at this spot the rock is found to be so saturated with moisture that the excavation is, in a short time, filled with water..

..[On] the eastern side [of the hill] a spring gushes forth which has been never known to fail..

p10 in A Hand-book for Travellers in Devon & Cornwall, by John Murray (1851).