Rhiannon

Above Porlock Hill, imbedded in the heather, to the left of the road, are two large stones called the Whitstones. Mentioned in Guide Books of the district, they are traditionally said to have been thrown by St. Dubricius and the Devil, from Hurlstone Point, during a hurling contest.
Mr. H. of Porlock, giving a variation of this legend, said they were thrown by “Dr. Foster” and the Devil. He said many attempts had been made to remove the stones from their horizontal position to upright, but that no one could move them an inch.
Between sixty to seventy years ago a Mr. M., steward to the Squire of Porlock Manor, made an attempt without any success.
Another informant, old Tommy S-- of Porlock, said the stones were thrown by an Angel and the Devil, and a third informant, an old inhabitant of the nearby village of Horner, again said they were thrown by Dr. Foster and the Devil. No information about the legendary person, Dr. Foster, could be obtained.

Scraps of Folk-Lore from Somerset
E. O. Begg
Folklore, Vol. 56, No. 3. (Sep., 1945), pp. 293-295.

A writer on Somerset superstition in Cassell’s Family Magazine for November, 1890, says: “The prophecies of Mother Shipton are nowhere more widely believed in than in the county of Somerset. Not long ago a report was in circulation that a great catastrophe had been predicted by this old sage. She had prophesied that Ham Hill, one of the great stone quarries of Somerset, would be swallowed up on Good Friday. This catastrophe was to be the consequence of a tremendous earthquake, which would be felt all over the county. Some of the inhabitants left the neighbourhood to escape the impending evil; others removed their crockery and breakable possessions to prevent their being thrown to the ground; others, again, ceased cultivating their gardens. Great alarm was felt, and Good Friday was looked forward to with universal anxiety. And yet when the day came and went without any disaster at all, even that did little to dispel the faith in Mother Shipton; the calculator had made a blunder about the date, and it was not her fault; and many Somersetshire folk are still waiting, expecting to suffer from the prophesied catastrophe.

The Folk-Lore of Somerset
Edward Vivian; F. W. Mathews
Folklore, Vol. 31, No. 3. (Sep. 30, 1920), pp. 239-249.

On Palm Sunday there were gatherings on Longbridge Deverill Cow-down to play “trap,” going up by “Jacob’s ladder.” The young men, with the elders to watch them, would “beat the ball” up Cow-down and then play trap.
And on Palm Sunday the women and children would go out into the fields “to tread the wheat.” (1897)

Folklore Notes from South-West Wilts
John U. Powell
Folklore, Vol. 12, No. 1. (Mar., 1901), pp. 71-83.

Phantom Coaches
Bill Elliot said that, when a boy, he used to leave Upwood at 2a.m. to take the wheat into Salisbury. One morning, by first light of dawn, he saw near Handley Cross a coach drawn by a pair of headless horses plunge across Oakley Down from the direction of Cranbourne and disappear near the Yew-Tree Garage on the main Blandford-Salisbury road. He told me several other people had seen this apparition.

From:The Folklore of Sixpenny Handley, Dorset, Part I
Aubrey L. Parke
Folklore, Vol. 74, No. 3. (Autumn, 1963), pp. 481-487.

I have not recorded in the body of the text the story that the Rev. A.R.T. Bruce was chased off Oakley Down by a ghostly warrior because, when I asked him if this adventure had indeed occurred, he denied it, albeit regretfully.

I have also omitted the tradition, told me by several people, that Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, fought a battle at Handley Cross, because all historical evidence is against the possibility of this event. The story probably originated because of the large numbers of barrows in the area, which tradition claims to be the war cemetery for the dead from the battle.

I think he’s slightly missing the point. Whoever said folklore had to be factual?!
From: The Folklore of Sixpenny Handley, Dorset, Part I
Aubrey L. Parke
Folklore, Vol. 74, No. 3. (Autumn, 1963), pp. 481-487.

Another version of the story:

Kit’s Grave. A copse on the county border is said by some to be named Kit’s Grave after a highwayman, Kit, who was hung and buried there. However, Herb Lucas, the chauffeur at Upwood, said that Kit was an old woman, possibly a Romany, who lived a nomadic life between the parishes of Bowerchalke and Ebbesbourne Wake, and died on the boundary. No one knew her well. Those who found the body approached the authorities of both parishes, but neither would meet the funeral expenses or claim the body. Kit was therefore buried where she was found, and the copse was named after her.

The Folklore of Sixpenny Handley, Dorset, Part I
Aubrey L. Parke
Folklore, Vol. 74, No. 3. (Autumn, 1963), pp. 481-487.

.

Bottlebush Down. I was told that one evening a man lay down to rest on top of one of the barrows on Bottlebush Down, and was astonished to see a crowd of little people in leather jerkins, who came and danced round him. Since hearing ths tale, I have been told that the man was the late curate of Handley, the Rev. A.R.T. Bruce, but unfortunately he died before I could confirm this.

The Folklore of Sixpenny Handley, Dorset, Part I
Aubrey L. Parke
Folklore, Vol. 74, No. 3. (Autumn, 1963), pp. 481-487.

Can you doubt the testimony of a man of the cloth? Did his fatigue / relaxation predispose him to dreaming, hallucinations or Actually Seeing Something? Or did it happen at all – this isn’t a first hand story after all.

A forester accounted for the tumuli on Beaulieu Heath in this fashion:-- “We calls ut Saltpetre Bank. All these here mounds was throwd up by Uliver Crummle when he tuk the Farest; he and the Danes beat the English the fust time they ever was beat, and he druv the English into Wales.”

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

Headless Ghost.--On Roundway Down a headless ghost is said to walk. Some years ago a shepherd declared that he met it, that it walked some distance by his side, and then vanished. The gentleman to whom he told the story asked why he did not speak to the ghost. “I was afraid,” he replied, “for if I hadn’t spoken proper to him he’d a tore ‘un to pieces.” A barrow is near the place, which was excavated some time ago, when a skeleton (not headless) was found. Since the barrow was opened the ghost has ceased to walk.

Death and Burial Customs in Wiltshire
L. A. Law; W. Crooke
Folklore, Vol. 11, No. 3. (Sep., 1900), pp. 344-347.

I don’t know how well this equates to the source of the following:

We have been reading the story of the man who carried his head under his arm and disappeared by a barrow on Roundway Hill, near Devizes, but has not been seen since the opening of the barrow and the finding therein of a skeleton lying on its left side in a doubled-up position.*

*Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette, May 16, 1895.

Wiltshire Notes and Queries , June 1895, p482.

Silbury Hill. ---“Silbury Hill is to this day thronged every Palm Sunday afternoon by hundreds from Avebury, Kennet, Overton, and the adjoining villages.*”

*Wilts Archaeological Magazine, December, 1861, p181.

Quoted in Wiltshire Folklore
T B Partridge
Folklore, Vol. 26, No. 2. (Jun. 30, 1915), pp. 211-212.

Hill Sliding. ---Martinsell Hill, on the top of which is an ancient encampment, formerly used to be the scene of a great fair on Palm Sunday. Boys used to slide down the hill on the jawbones of horses; men from the neighbouring villages used to settle their disputes on this day by fighting; oranges were thrown down the slope and lads used to rush headlong after them. At the present day only a few children stroll about the hill on Palm Sunday

Wiltshire Folklore
T B Partridge
Folklore, Vol. 26, No. 2. (Jun. 30, 1915), pp. 211-212.

In addition to Fitz’s information:

On Kirkby Moor.. is a low ringwork of loose earth and stones. “It goes by the name of ‘The Kirk,’ and a ‘venerable inhabitant’ (Archaeologia, liii.) could recollect that it had once borne a peristalith. The natives assert that the spot was traditionally ‘a place where their fathers worshipped’, and, as a matter of fact, games used, until recent times, to be held on the spot by the Lord of the Manor at Eastertide” (Allcroft, Earthworks of England, 1908, p139).

Lancashire Folklore
T B Partridge
Folklore, Vol. 26, No. 2. (Jun. 30, 1915), pp. 211

“’They’ say that a king is buried on Denbury, and among several couplets one goes:
‘Whoever delves in Denbury Down
Is sure to find a golden crown’.”

This comes from Tristram Risdon’s ‘Chorographical Description.. Devon,’ written in the early 17th century, and quoted in ‘The Folklore of Devon’ by Theo Brown, in Folklore, Vol. 75, No. 3. (Autumn, 1964), pp. 145-160.

The story of a bull’s hide filled with gold is connected with many stones. At its simplest it is found at the Binghill stone circle on Deeside, at Lulach’s Stone near Kildrummy, at a standing-stone at Glenkindie close by a branch road to Towie, and at the Muckle Stane o’ Clochforbie, near the steading of the farm of that name. The last may be a broken recumbent stone, but there is nowadays no standing-stone near it. In this case also an attempt was once made to remove the treasure, but the great efforts made to shift the stone proved fruitless, and a warning voice having been heard from beneath the depths of the stone to command ” Let be!” the advice was taken and the stone has remained undisturbed ever since.

From: Ritchie, J., Folklore of Aberdeenshire Stone Circles, in Proc. Soc. Ant. of Scotland, LX, 1926, pp304-313. )

The RCHAMS database says “A large block of whinstone 2.59m in circumference; believed locally to mark the spot of a battle. There is one single cup mark in the centre on the W side.” but then goes on to discount the cup mark as a natural feature of ‘nil antiquity’. There is a photo of the stone here:
rcahms.gov.uk/pls/portal/newcanmore.newcandig_p_coll_details?p_arcnumlink=681538

I imagine this folklore also refers to the stone: “At Sinnahard, Towie, there is a standing-stone near which a pot of gold is said to be buried. On one of my visits a good many years ago, the farmer announced that he had no faith in the tale: the only gold he hoped to gain from the place was that of the golden grain then ripening for the harvest.” (from Ritchie, J., Folklore of Aberdeenshire Stone Circles, in Proc. Soc. Ant. of Scotland, LX, 1926, pp304-313. )

The notion that ill-luck attends the destruction of the circles is not yet altogether dead, as is apparent from an incident which occurred in recent times at Corrydoun. Some alterations were being made on the farm buildings, and the mason employed to do the work reckoned that he could make good use in his building operations of the stones in the stone circle. So he set to work to trim one of them, but, finding the stone harder than he had supposed, made little progress. At the dinner-hour he returned to the farm, where it was noticed that he had damaged one of his fingers badly, an injury of which he was not conscious. Someone suggested that it was unlucky to interfere with the stones, and the workman, agreeing, made no further attempt to use them; but his tool-marks still remain.

From: Ritchie, J., Folklore of Aberdeenshire Stone Circles, in Proc. Soc. Ant. of Scotland, LX, 1926, pp304-313.

“The devastation of his cattle herd by disease fell ..upon the farmer
of-Cairnfauld, in Durris parish, following upon his removal of some of
the stones of the circle near-by.”

In: Ritchie, J., Folklore of Aberdeenshire Stone Circles, in Proc. Soc. Ant. of Scotland, LX, 1926, pp304-313.

A .. story is told of the Drumel Stone on the farm of Old Noth, near Gartly. The stone was taken to the farm to make a lintel over a doorway in the steading, but thereafter the steading door was so often found open, and the interned animals wandering about the countryside, that at last it was decided to put the stone back again. When this was done the trouble ceased.

From: Ritchie, J., Folklore of Aberdeenshire Stone Circles, in Proc. Soc. Ant. of Scotland, LX, 1926, pp304-313.

The barrows in the group [on Snail Down] (there are at least thirty) are locally explained as the burial places of “the people killed in the battle of Sidbury Hill.” The latter is crowned by an Iron Age hill fort which looms over the downs...
This hill, like many other natural eminences, owes its position traditionally to Satanic action. “It happened this way,” Mr. M--- told the writer. “The Devil was carrying it from Bristol to London, and he got tired and dropped it on the way.” The same story is told of Silbury Hill, a vast artificial mound.. which actually does stand on the Bristol-London road.. the writer is inclined to regard this tale as having been transferred in comparatively recent times from the former to the latter, doubtless through confusion of the somewhat similar place-names.

A much more fascinating story connects Sidbury Hill with the village, a distance of some two miles. According to Mr. M---, “There is a well in Everleigh village, opposite the two cottages up by the racing stables. I was born in one of those cottages, and they were burnt down in 1884. Down the well, there is an opening in the side, and a tunnel leads from there to Sidbury Hill. They say there is a golden chair in the tunnel.”

.. “Place-Names of Wiltshire”, records the following forms of the name; Shidbury, Chydebur’ (1325), Shudburie, Shudburrowe Hill (1591) and Chidbury (1812).

.. a story of certain caves in the chalk, behind a farm near Ludgershall (five miles east of Everleigh). These were believed to run for miles underground, to go beneath Sidbury Hill, and to come out near Pewsey.

.. “There is an old castle at the foot of Sidbury Hill”, Mr. M--- told the writer, “with a wall around it. The castle has gone now, but the wall is still there, and the Forestry Commission raise young trees inside it. This castle belonged to King Ina.“.. Mr. M---’s story confirms a version of the same tradition recorded in 1812. Sir Richard Colt Hoare published in that year the first volume of his Ancient History of Wiltshire; at p181 he states of the linear earthwork running from Sidbury Hill,
“It terminates in a valley, and immediately at a spot where there are several irregularities and excavations in the soil. With all the ardour and fancy of a zealous antiquary, I once fondly thought that here I might discover the traces of King Ina’s palace, who according to tradition, had a country seat at Everley.”

Folklore from a Wiltshire Village
Charles Thomas
Folklore, Vol. 65, No. 3/4. (Dec., 1954), pp. 165-168.

The writer was.. fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of a Mr. M---, who was born in Everleigh about 1880. Mr. M---, a gardener, knew a number of legends and traditions which, he said, “were handed down to me from my grandfather.” Many of his points were corroborated by other villagers of his generation.

Very little information could be obtained about local reaction to the [1950s] excavation, but the general feeling seemed to be that it was regarded as faintly improper – an act of disturbing the dead.. The local aetiology of the place-name Snail Down .. was given thus; “Snail Down is called that because of the number of snails you find on it.” In actual fact the area is unusually poor in mollusc life.. Mr L. V. Grinsell.. suggests that a double bell-barrow amongst the Snail Down group, when viewed from a certain angle, has the appearance of a giant snail in motion, and this may well be the true explanation.

The barrows in the group (there are at least thirty) are locally explained as the burial places of “the people killed in the battle of Sidbury Hill.” The latter is crowned by an Iron Age hill fort which looms over the downs..

...A remarkable and genuine example of folk-memory occurred during the [Snail Down] excavation. It was known that Sir Richard Colt Hoare and William Cunnington of Devizes had already dug the two barrows which were being examined.. It was the practice of this cautious and enlightened antiquary [WC] to place a small bronze disc, bearing his name and the date, in the sites which he dug and filled in, and one such, with the inscription “William Cunnington – 1805”, was discovered, together with the actual mark in the chalk made by the workman’s spade at the time.
An old shepherd who frequented the downs, and who gave his age as 77, volunteered the information that he, as a boy, had spoken to an old man (who died at the age of 93), and that this old man could remember people digging up the barrows on Snail Down, an act for which, it was alleged, they had been put in prison! If the old man had died about 1880-1885, he would have been between 13 and 18 when Cunnington excavated: since the shepherd was born in 1876, he could have been a boy of nine or ten when the old man quitted this life. Links of two generations spanning 150 years are, according to The Sunday Times, not uncommon, but it is still satisfactory to find such an interesting and unusual one. The gloss of the “imprisonment”, it is suggested, may reflect local opinion of Cunnington’s desecration of the dead.

Folklore from a Wiltshire Village
Charles Thomas
Folklore, Vol. 65, No. 3/4. (Dec., 1954), pp. 165-168.

About a mile east of Berriew, on the green by the side of a lane, is a stone about five feet high, called, on the Ordnance Map, Maen Beuno, but by the people in the neighbourhood “the Bynion Stone.” A man who told me (in 1891) that he was fifty years of age, said he had been told by old men when he was a boy that it was intended to have built a church on the spot where the Bynion Stone stands, but that every night the stones which had been placed in position were carried away and put down on the spot where Berriew Church now stands. (1891.)

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

I was enquiring for the Sarsen Stones or Grey Wethers, when only about a furlong from them, but an old man and his neice did not know either name; at last they suggested that what I was seeking was what they called the Thousand Stones. The man told me (what I had heard before) that the stones certainly grew; he had seen this, for, when he was a boy, there were not nearly so many, nor were they so large, as now. (June 1901.)

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

King Alfred fought on Wolstonbury Hill, and the ten horse-shoes which are on the Bull Hotel at Ditchling are said to have been cast by his ponies. (1905.)

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

I was told in 1875 that the Long Man at Wilmington (called Wilmington Giant by the people of the neighbourhood) was cut on the hills before the Flood.

There are remains of a castle above Wilmington Priory; pilgrimages were made from the castle to the priory, and, at the time of the pilgrimage the giant (Long Man) was slain by the pilgrims.

I was also told that the giant on Firle Beacon threw his hammer at the Wilmington giant and killed him, and that the figure on the hillside marks the place where his body fell.

I was told this again in 1890, and in 1891 was further informed that the Long Man carries spears, not staves, in his hands, and that an upright line (which I was unable to find) runs from top to bottom of the hill a little to the east, and another a little to the west of the figure.

A man told me that the Wilmington Long Man was a giant who fell over the top of the hill and killed himself; he also said that “a boy cut it out; they can’t trace its history, it goes back so far.”

Another man told me that the Wilmington giant was killed by a shepherd, who threw his dinner at the monster. The sun cast a shadow on the hill; the monks marked the place, and cut an outline; thus the Wilmington giant was made.

“One of the Romans” was buried in a gold coffin under the Wilmington giant.

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

Above Aldershot is a hill called Caesar’s Hill. On May 2nd, 1889, I was told that Julius Caesar, from that hill, witnessed a review of his army.

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

Bwakem’s comment above: humourous or confused? Surely local people couldn’t have got confused so recently to the event? Or perhaps Mr Emslie just wasn’t listening properly to his informant. Perhaps it’s the latter.

Titterstone Clee Hill is pretty imposing in itself. No wonder then that Bronze Age people chose it as a place to site some burial cairns. And later a univallate Iron Age fort was built here. There’s a ‘Giant’s Chair’ too but who can say when the giant built that.

On Titterstone Clee Hill “a wall thrown down” was put up at the time of the Revolution, when cannon would fire balls from there to Ludlow Castle. “Old women in their red cloaks” would go up into the enclosure. The hill was an island in the time of St. Paul.

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

The view from up here is just amazing.

Before you write an email signed ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ just remember I only copied this information.

- On the edge of the Ridge Way, near West Ilsley, is Scutchamfly Barrow. The hill here is called Scotchman’s Nob, also Scratch my Nob. I was told (June, 1901) that a battle was fought there with the Scotch, and that the barrow was the grave of those slain in the battle. An elderly woman told me that her father used to say that the battle was called the Battle of Anna.

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

..old John of Gaunt is said to have been the last of [the giants in Cornwall] and to have lived in a castle on the top of Carn Brea (a high hill near Redruth). He could stride from thence to another neighbouring town, a distance of four miles. I do not know if he is supposed to be the one that lies buried under this mighty carn, and whose large protruding hand and bony fingers time has turned to stone. Here, too, in the dark ages, a terrific combat took place between Lucifer and a heavenly host, which ended in the former’s overthrow.

From: Cornish Folk-Lore. Part II [Continued], by M. A. Courtney, in The Folk-Lore Journal, Vol. 5, No. 2. (1887), pp. 85-112.

The legends of Donald-Duival McKay, the Wizard of the Reay country.
Donald-Duival learned the black art in Italy. The devil sat in the professor’s chair of that school, and at the end of each term he claimed as his own the last scholar. One day as they broke up there was a regular scramble, for none wished to be the last. Donald-Duival really was so; but, just as Satan snatched at him, Donald-Duival, pointing to his own shadow, which fell behind him, cried, “Take then the hindmost!” and his shadow being seized, he himself escaped. When he returned to Scotland he was never seen to have a shadow.

Donald went one day to meet his old master in the great Cave of Smoo. They had a violent quarrel, and Donald fled: the print of his horse’s hoofs may be seen there to this day. But Donald was himself very cruel, and a ring may also be seen to which at low water he fastened his victims, who of course were drowned by the rising tide. [..]

Donald once explored the Cave of Smoo. Having penetrated further than any man had ever gone, he heard a voice cry, “Donald, Donald-Duival! return!” Undaunted, however, he pushed on till he came to a large cask. In this he bored a hole, and out of it, to his surprise, there jumped a little man about an inch and a half long. Surprise grew to terror when this creature gradually assumed colossal proportions, and addressed him as follows: “Donald, did you ever see so great a wonder?” “Never, by my troth,” replied the wizard; “but wert thou to shrink again, that would be a bigger wonder still.” The giant grinned assent, and, after diminishing to a span, was simple enough to jump into the cask, which Donald closed immediately, and then left the cave much quicker than he had entered it.

From The Folk-Lore of Sutherland-Shire, by Miss Dempster, in The Folk-Lore Journal, Vol. 6, No. 3. (1888), pp. 149-189.

Looking across the western valley that bounds Minchinhampton Common, we see Selsley Hill, which is partly Common, and has earthworks, including a tumulus called “The Toots.” On Selsley Hill is a small enclosed piece known as “Kill Devil Acre.” An old farmer accounted to me for the name by the story of a man who was promised that he should have as much land as he could fence round in a day. He fenced in this piece (no doubt with a dry wall, as is usual here), and then fell down dead of overwork. Another version of the story was given me in these words by Miss Fennemore, of Randwick:- “Some man, having taken a fancy to this piece, determined to enclose it for his own use. To ensure safety and success, he determined to do this by night, so that he might not be disturbed, as his success depended on being able to build a row of stones round it, make a rough chimney, and light a fire therein, after which no one dared molest him. He worked all through the night, but died as he finished the task.

I’m not sure what all that’s about. It sounds more than usually confused. Wasn’t there a law where you could build a house quickly and thereby become a ‘legal squatter’? And where’s the connection with the devil anyway?? From Cotswold Place-Lore and Customs, by J. B. Partridge, in Folklore, Vol. 23, No. 3. (Sep., 1912), pp. 332-342.

Near Enstone is a ruined cromlech known as the ”Hoar Stone.” The villagers say that “it was put up in memory of a certain general named Hoar, who was slain in the Civil War. It was put there, as that was a piece of land no one owned. A letter signed ZWn in the Oxford Times of March 29, 1902, mentions this story, and adds that “there was a battle over there, Lidstone way.” Lidstone being a hamlet of Enstone, about one and a half miles to the north west. Mr W Harper in ‘Observations on Hoar-Stones,’ printed in Archaeologica (1832) xxv., 54, speaks of the “War Stone at Enstone. This conspicuous object is said by the country people to have been set up ‘at a French wedding.’”

From:Stray Notes on Oxfordshire Folklore, by Percy Manning, in Folklore, Vol. 13, No. 3. (Sep. 29, 1902), pp. 288-295.

Near Steeple Barton is another ruined cromlech, also called the ”Hoar Stone,” which is now only a confused heap of small stones, having been broken up by an ignorant farmer. Some fifty years ago it was much more perfect, and two of the side stones were standing about four feet out of the ground. “They used to say that whenever they tried to drag them two pebbles away with horses, they would roll back of their own accord. Them two pebbles growed out of little uns: at least that’s my way of thinking.” (From George Nevill, of Yarnton, aged 74, March, 1901.)}

From:Stray Notes on Oxfordshire Folklore, by Percy Manning, in Folklore, Vol. 13, No. 3. (Sep. 29, 1902), pp. 288-295.

Beacon Hill is a very conspicuous landmark, just above Eynsham Bridge, on the Berkshire side of the Thames, about two and a half miles in a straight line from the “Quoits.” [..] The devil was playing quoits on Beacon Hill on a Sunday, and in a rage at being told it was wrong, he threw these three to where they are now.
One of the quoits standing in Walker’s Field was once taken away and put over a ditch called the “Back Ditch” in the “Farm Close” to make a bridge; but it was always slipping, and although often put back, it would not rest, and they were obliged at last to take it back to where it now stands. Wheel marks can still be seen on it – (From Chas. Batts, labourer, of Stanton Harcourt, aged 35, who had it from his father. January 1 1898).
{Mr. Akerman, in 1858, records a rationalised version of the same story, as follows: “There is a tradition in the neighbourhood that the northernmost stone was once removed by an occupier of the land, and laid across a watercourse, where it served as a bridge over which waggons and carts for some time passed, and that it was restored to its old locality at the request of one of the Harcourt family. A grove in this stone, eight inches from the top, seven inches in width, and about three inches deep, is believed to have been caused by the wheels of the vehicles when it lay prostrate.“}

{Joseph Goodlake of Stanton Harcourt (now of Yarnton), aged 63, in March, 1901, gave me the following particulars which he had from his father: “When the war was in England, the fighting ended at Stanton by those stones, and from there across to Stanlake Down by Cut Mill. Harcourt was the general; he was Emperor in England; he is buried in the church with his sword and gun and clothes.” Further: “When the war was in England the officers used to hide behind them” (the Devil’s Quoits) “from the bullets,” and the men used to pick the bullets out of them when my informant was young.}

{The legend connecting the Quoits with a battle is confirmed by a story told by Tom Hughes [Scouring of the White Horse, 1859]: “An old man in that village” (Stanton Harcourt) “told me that a battle was fought there, which the English were very near losing, who was in the thick of it, and called out, ‘Stan’ to un, Harcourt, stan’ to un, Harcourt,’ and that Harcourt won the battle, and the village has been called Stanton Harcourt ever since.“}

From:Stray Notes on Oxfordshire Folklore, by Percy Manning, in Folklore, Vol. 13, No. 3. (Sep. 29, 1902), pp. 288-295.

..the dolmen has become to the young girls of the neighbourhood a kind of primitive oracle. At least it has been so used within the memory of man. Old Betsy Hughes.. informed me that years ago, at the time of the barley harvest, when they were often out till dusk in the fields near the “Whispering Knights,” one of the girls would say to another, “Let us go and hear them whisper.” Then they would go to the stones, and one at a time would put her ear to one of the crevices. But “first one would laugh and then another,” and she herself never heard any whispering.
Another old crone told me that the stones were thought to tell of the future. “When I was a girl we used to go up at certain seasons to the ‘Whispering Knights’ and climb up on to one of the stones to hear them whisper. Time and again I have heard them whisper – but perhaps, after all, it was only the wind.”

From: The Rollright Stones and Their Folk-Lore, by Arthur J. Evans
Folklore, Vol. 6, No. 1. (Mar., 1895), p25 in pp. 6-53.

The fairies dance round the King-stone of nights. Will Hughes, a man of Long Compton, now dead, had actually seen them dancing round. “They were little folk like girls to look at.” He often told a friend who related this to me about the fairies and what hours they danced. His widow, Betsy Hughes, whose mother had been murdered as a witch, and who is now between seventy and eighty, told me that when she was a girl and used to work in the hedgerows she remembered a hole in the bank by the King-stone, from which it was said the fairies came out to dance at night. Many a time she and her playmates had placed a flat stone over the hole of an evening to keep the fairies in, but they always found it turned over the next morning.

Holes in hedgebanks eh. A terrible cynic might think of something more furry than a fairy as culprit. From: The Rollright Stones and Their Folk-Lore, by Arthur J. Evans, in Folklore, Vol. 6, No. 1. (Mar., 1895), pp. 6-53.

There is a Long Barrow on the roadside at Walmsgate, in the Wolds; locally the name is pronounced Wormsgate, and it is said that once, long ago, three Dragons lived in the neighbourhood, devastating the land. An unnamed hero took arms against them. He slew one, and it is buried in the long mound – this accounts for the name Wormsgate. Another Dragon flew away towards the Trent, but did not succeed in crossing that river. It settled down in Corringham Scroggs, a flight of some 35 miles; the place was known as Dragon’s Hole ever after; in fact, it is mentioned in the late Enclosure Award of 1852. The third Dragon was fatally wounded, and crept away and died at the next village of Ormsby, which they say was once Wormsby.

From: Folklore of Lincolnshire: Especially the Low-Lying Areas of Lindsey, by E. H. Rudkin, in Folklore, Vol. 66, No. 4. (Dec., 1955), pp. 385-400.

..the account of the practice at Pudding Pie Hill in which a knife is stuck into the centre in order to hear fairy speech.. [is the something like the reverse of how a knife is used in] a story concerning Dun Borbe on South Harris, in the Hebrides. The fort was believed to be a fairy abode, and on one occasion:

a sailor of Harris.. sat down to rest on this fairy knoll and heard great lamenting therein. He was curious by nature and also kindly, so he set out to try to find out what was causing the Little People such distress. Being a practical man he decided that the best way to find out was to go into the dun and ask, and he set off walking round it slowly and carefully seeking the entrance. No sign of a door could be seen, but the cries and piteous sobbing continued, indeed seemed to grow more hopeless. He stood wondering what to do next, when he noticed a knife plunged to the hilt in the earth. Without thinking, he pulled it out; instantly an unseen door opened and out rushed the Little People, to surround him and, with cries of joy and welcome, to hurry him into the dun to their Queen. As soon as he saw here he asked what had been wrong. He felt very sorry for the Little People, who still showed signs of having been in great trouble; nevertheless, he wisely held fast to the knife while the Queen explained. She said that a man of the dun had loved a Harris maiden and they met and spent the long summer days together while she herded her father’s cows. But her father had found out, and, being very angry, he had learnt from his daughter how to find the entrance to the dn and had then come and stuck his fisher’s knife in the door frame, and they, unable to touch or pass cold iron, were prisoners in their dun, expecting to starve to death. He had saved them.

Erm I don’t know what they gave him as reward. The story’s from Otta F Swire’s ‘Outer Hebrides and their Legends’ 1966, p77, and quoted in ‘Circling as an Entrance to the Otherworld’, by Samuel Pyeatt Menefee, in Folklore, Vol. 96, No. 1. (1985), pp. 3-20.

[Chanctonbury’s] traditions have been extensively reported and collected by Dr. Jacqueline Simpson. The earliest example which she reports occurs in Arthur Beckett’s The Spirit of the Downs: ‘If on a moonless night you walk seven times round the Ring without stopping, the Devil will come out of the wood and hand you a basin of soup.’ [1909].
Others substituted a glass of milk, or stated that Satan will ‘offer you porridge from his bowl’ after you have run thrice round the earthwork. Several variants of this versioin have been collected from newspapers and from oral informants during the past fifteen or so years.

‘If you run round seven times while the clock is still striking midnight, the Devil will come out. There’s something about porridge, but I cannot remember what.”

“If you run round backwards seven times at midnight, the Devil will give you a glass of milk.”

“It is said that if you run round the Ring three times at midnight on Midsummer Eve, the Devil comes out from the trees and offers you a bowl of soup.”

Other versions of the circumambulation also involve raising the Devil; thus, a teenage girl reported that seven circuits at 7.00am on Midsummer morning would raise Satan. Another informant stipulates that the circling is to be ‘three times anticlockwise on Midsummer Eve,’ while a more earthy variant calls for the practitioner to circumambulate ‘17 times stark naked on a night of the full moon.‘

[..]The Devil, however, was not the only one being raised – three circuits brought a view of ‘a lady on a white horse,’ while twelve rounds at midnight on Midsummer Night conjured up a Druid. In the 1940s, some people apparently feared to circle the Ring at night ‘lest they should meet the old white-bearded ghost that walks with bent head, seeking his treasure.’ Finally, a 50 year old teacher reported that circling seven times at midnight on Midsummer Eve would mean that ‘all your wishes will come true. We all believed that when I was a girl.‘

There’s obviously no single version but lots of variations – though the idea of ‘circling’ is at their heart. Simpson apparently laments that no version explains whether you should accept the beverage/food or not, or what will happen if you do. “She considers at arm’s length” a suggestion that it could come from folk memories of real rites in the Romano-Celtic temple, but concludes that it, and ‘that the Chanctonbury Devil is a dim memory of a Romano=Celtic god’ is “an attractive hypothesis, but no more.“!

Circling as an Entrance to the Otherworld
Samuel Pyeatt Menefee
Folklore, Vol. 96, No. 1. (1985), pp. 3-20.

Simpson’s (surely definitive!) article on Chanctonbury’s folklore can be found in Folklore volume 80, p122-131.

A reasonably old record of the legend:

This was recorded by Francis Wise in 1738:
“All the account which the country people are able to give of it is ‘At this place lived formerly an invisible Smith, and if a traveller’s Horse had lost a Shoe upon the road, he had no more to do than to bring the Horse to this place with a piece of money, and leaving both there for some little time, he might come again and find the money gone, but the Horse new shod.”
(Letter to Dr Mead concerning Antiquities in Berkshire, Oxford, 1738, p37).

The stone tomb is usually called ‘Wayland’s Smithy’, but Wise and other early writers call it simply ‘Wayland Smith’.

From: Weland the Smith, by H. R. Ellis Davidson, in Folklore, Vol. 69, No. 3. (Sep., 1958), pp. 145-159.

How strange that this site, only a kilometre from both Uffington and Wayland’s Smithy, has not been added before? Though it’s not crossed by a footpath one runs close by. It’s an Iron Age promontory fort – it uses mostly the natural contours of the land for protection, unlike most of the forts along the Ridgeway which have big man-made defences.

The neolithic long-barrow on the Berkshire Downs known as Weyland’s Smithy is mentioned by that name in a tenth century land charter. Between White Horse Hill and Weyland’s Smithy is a prehistoric earthwork now known as Hardwell Camp, but in the ninth century called Tilsburh, that is ‘Til’s Castle’. Til is the same person as Weyland’s brother Egil the Archer (the prototype of William Tell). *

The names of Beadohild and Wittich which also occur in the bounds of local Saxon charters are thought to refer to the princess seduced by Weyland, and his son by her, and there are some other place-names less certainly identifed which could be fitted into the same story.

From: New Light on the White Horse, by Diana Woolner, in Folklore, Vol. 78, No. 2. (Summer, 1967), pp. 90-111.

*Is this a convincing argument or stretching the pronunciation? This article might be useful if you can find it: LV Grinsell’s “Wayland’s Smithy, Beahhild’s Byrigels and Hwittuc’s Hlaew” in Trans Newbury and District Field Club VIII, 1938-45, p136, which mentions Beahhild (?Beaduhild) and Hwittuc (?Widia) in local charters of Anglo-Saxon date.

Tumuli and Buried Treasure. – On the opposite side of the road to the Longstone, in what was also once part of the Common field, is Gatcombe Tump, a long barrow, of which the following story is told. I got it from a middle-aged woman who keeps a small shop; her mother, from whom she heard it, knew the heroine of the story.

“There was an old woman in Minchinhampton who used to charm ailments; she was called Molly Dreamer, because her dreams came true. She dreamed she would find a pot of gold in Gatcombe Tump and she and her husband dug there many times. Once she actually had her hand on the pot, and was saying,- “Come up! Labour in vain!” when a spirit rose up and frightened her. At another time a spirit appeared to her husband there, and asked him to name five parish churches, [apparently as a condition of getting the gold], but he could remember only four.”

One old inhabitant, who lived as a child at a farm quite near, lays the scene of Molly’s search at the Longstone itself, and adds that, just as she was lifting a stone that hid the treasure, there came a flash of lightning on to it, and Molly was never the same again. Some say, however, that she did find the gold..

From: Cotswold Place-Lore and Customs, by J. B. Partridge, in Folklore, Vol. 23, No. 3. (Sep., 1912), pp. 332-342.

In Avening parish, about half a mile south of the Longstone, is “Tinglestone,” a menhir crowning a long barrow; Mr. Frost of Avening tells me that it too* “runs round the field when it hears the clock strike twelve.”

*’too’ refers to the Long Stone. From: Cotswold Place-Lore and Customs, by J. B. Partridge, in Folklore, Vol. 23, No. 3. (Sep., 1912), pp. 332-342.

That was a good Inn down in Wiltshire where I put up once, in the days of the hard Wiltshire ale, and before all beer was bitterness. It was on the skirts of Salisbury Plain, and the midnight wind that rattled my lattice window came moaning at me from Stonehenge. There was a hanger-on at that establishment (a supernaturally preserved Druid I believe him to have been, and to be still), with long white hair, and a flinty blue eye always looking afar off; who claimed to have been a shepherd, and who seemed to be ever watching for the reappearance, on the verge of the horizon, of some ghostly flock of sheep that had been mutton for many ages. He was a man with a weird belief in him that no one could count the stones of Stonehenge twice, and make the same number of them; likewise, that any one who counted them three times nine times, and then stood in the centre and said, “I dare!” would behold a tremendous apparition, and be stricken dead. He pretended to have seen a bustard (I suspect him to have been familiar with the dodo), in manner following...

From Charles Dickens’ story ‘The Holly Tree’, which you can read online at The Complete Works of Charles Dickens:
dickens-literature.com/The_Holly-Tree/0.html

..at St. Nicholas, near Cardiff, a man told me that his mother took him to ‘Castle Corrig’ (a cromlech near St. Nicholas, perhaps the biggest existing in Britain), when he ‘had a decline’ as a boy, and she spat upon the stone, rubbed her finger in the spittle and rubbed him on the forehead and chest.

... I feel convinced there is a good deal of this sort of thing, but I cannot get it out, or else it exists among a residuum which feels such a gap to exist between student and peasant that freedom of speech becomes impossible. But I have felt the sort of thing to underlie many ordinary stories, from certain turns of expression.

From ‘A Fisher-Story and Other Notes from South Wales’ by E. Sidney Hartland and T. H. Thomas, in Folklore, Vol. 16, No. 3. (Sep. 29, 1905), p339.

Perhaps he could have got more out of his informants if he didn’t use words like ‘residuum’ on them. It’s a shame though.

.. I found some five years ago that there were [magical rites] connected with Arthur’s Stone (Gower), though denied by my informant. But she “did hear that gels went and walked round it to see their sweethearts – a long time ago – and if they didn’t see him they took off their shawls and went on their hands and knees – nobody is so fulish now.” This from a young girl at Port Eynon.

Oh right. Just their shawls then is it. From p339 in ‘A Fisher-Story and Other Notes from South Wales’ by E. Sidney Hartland and T. H. Thomas, in Folklore, Vol. 16, No. 3. (Sep. 29, 1905).

..the inhabitants of the villages around Coldrum once believed that a battle was fought there, and that a ‘Black Prince’ was buried in the chamber.

From ‘Notes on the Folklore and Legends Associated with the Kentish Megaliths, by John H. Evans, in Folklore, Vol. 57, No. 1. (Mar., 1946), p42.

‘The’ Black Prince (Edward, the son of Edward the Third) was married to ‘Joan of Kent’, and was buried in Canterbury Cathedral in 1376.

A somewhat similar story [to that at the Countless Stones] is that Kits Coty House cannot be measured for as fast as the imprudent surveyor takes his measurements he is made to forget them even before he can commit them to paper.

From ‘Notes on the Folklore and Legends Associated with the Kentish Megaliths, by John H. Evans, in Folklore, Vol. 57, No. 1. (Mar., 1946), p. 39.

Up to the last generation there was a widespread belief that [megalithic] monuments could not be measured, nor the stones which composed them counted. Hence the name of “The Countless Stones” for the destroyed Lower Kits Coty, and as proof of their uncountability the story is told of a clever baker who placed a bread roll on each stone, thinking that when he collected his rolls again he would have the hidden number. His ingenious trick was in vain, however, for the Devil ate some of the rolls and then sat gibbering at the discomfited baker.

From ‘Notes on the Folklore and Legends Associated with the Kentish Megaliths, by John H. Evans, in Folklore, Vol. 57, No. 1. (Mar., 1946), p38.

As the Lower Kits Coty [the Countless Stones] were destroyed about 1690 it might be thought that this legend [of them being countless] arose after their dispersal, but this is not a necessary inference, sinceI was told many years ago by a countryman that the stones of Coldrum were ‘difficult’ to count, and that no two persons got the same number.

From ‘Notes on the Folklore and Legends Associated with the Kentish Megaliths, by John H. Evans, in Folklore, Vol. 57, No. 1. (Mar., 1946), p39.