Tag: folklore
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Burra: In Search of the Kraken
We went in search of the kraken today, a lap of Kettla Ness, the southern tip of the island of Burra. The weather was a tad breezy, and it was not hard to imagine this Atlantic edge in the early 1800s. It was off the coast of Burra that a crew of fishermen spotted what…
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The Noggle’s Playground: Folklore of the Horizontal Mill
Beneath a wide Shetland sky, a line of stone ruins follows the Burn of Clumlie toward the sea. These are “clack mills” — what is left of a row of nine horizontal water mills along a 450m stretch of the burn that once ground grain for local crofters north of Troswick. The engineering is rather…
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Fire, Seaweed and a Green Lady: The Legends of Dunnottar Castle
Some places earn their legends. Dunnottar Castle, two miles south of Stonehaven on Scotland’s north-east coast, is one of them. Perched on a sheer clifftop above the North Sea, it has been collecting stories for over fifteen hundred years — and frankly shows no sign of stopping. It starts early. A chapel here is said…
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Skinningrove: Facebook History and Other Unreliable Gossip
Yesterday’s descent of Hummersea Cliff into Skinningrove. Terraced houses cluster around Kilton Beck where it meets Cattersty Sands. Rocky breakwaters hold back the North Sea, which is doing its level best to reclaim the shore. The wooden shoring in the foreground is losing an argument with coastal erosion. Will this be the first instance of…
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Pen-y-Ghent: Where Giants Trod
What a splendid view to stumble upon. Pen-y-Ghent, that stubborn Yorkshire monolith, standing proud above the limestone pavements of Winskill Stones, looking as though it has absolutely no intention of going anywhere. A mountain with a name like that ought to come with legends attached, and Pen-y-Ghent does not disappoint. Stories of giants are ten…
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The Wild Boar of Westmorland
Imagine standing here eight centuries ago in this small tributary of Kentmere. The place feels still now, but once it was no quiet backwater. Here, a family’s fate hung by a thread, and the stakes were as high as the fells around you. At the heart of it stands Richard Gilpin, said to have killed…
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Hob Holes: Where the Hob Lived and the Jet-Diggers Evicted
Runswick Bay takes its character from the Hob Holes, raw wounds in the shale cliffs cut by the North Sea going about its daily vandalism. They are not just the work of water on stone. They are the blank spaces where memory used to live. In those gaps sat the Hob, a local figure of…
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Little Fryup Dale
Little Fryup Dale on a very dreich day. The cloud lifts its base just enough to show the moors in the distance, a wide sweep of heather and bare earth. Even under this leaden sky it is both beautiful and desolate. It feels unchanged, as if wind and rain have been quietly getting on with…
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The Quiet Side of the Wainstones
Folklore has a habit of latching itself to a place, especially when the landscape looks as if it needs an explanation. A strange rock, an awkward slope, a stone where no stone ought to be, and the human mind gets to work, explaining things away with a story. Few landmarks on the North York Moors…
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Clearing the Blackthorn: The Mother of the Woods Fights Back
A grey, soaking day settles over the National Trust property at Port Mulgrave. Rain drips from every branch and bramble. The task at hand: cutting back the blackthorn regrowth that is threatening to re-swallow the public footpath through a tangle of unyielding woodland. Far below, the North Sea heaves and claws at the base of…