Tag: folklore
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The Wishing Stone
This has been on my to-do list since the spring after reading a blog post on the Arcanum web-site. It’s a large, deep, circular basin on a boulder on Ingleby Moor that is speculated to have be manmade and used for ritual purposes: the making of wishes or prayers, or curses and so on. As…
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Making a mountain out of a mole-hill
Cringle End, overlooking the tiny village of Kirkby. Or should that be Kirby? The name suggests some antiquity, ‘the farm by the church’, from the Old Scandinavian word for church kirkja, but the structure of the modern church is pretty much Georgian. That an earlier church did exist is without doubt. It was given by…
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Whorl Hill, the lair of the Worm of Sexhow
Autumnal sunshine, long shadows and a morning chill. A slight navigational error opened up this fine view of Whorl Hill, where there be dragons. Or rather one dragon, the worm of Sexhow. Thomas Parkinson wrote about it in his “Yorkshire legends and traditions” of 1888, but it was John Fairfax Blakeborough who suggested Whorl Hill…
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Nanny Howe and the Devil’s Court
A view across Kildale from Park Nab to the densely forested Coate Moor. The highest point towards the left is actually Easby Moor with its monument to Capt. Cook but this story is about a Bronze Age barrow hidden amongst the trees on Coate Moor called Nanny Howe. It’s a story about a witch and…
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Scapa Flow from Keelylang Hill
Had a lovely walk around the headland of the Deerness peninsula with its dramatic sea cliffs and geos. One spectacular feature was a collapsed sea cave resulting in a huge chasm, 40 metres long and 25 metres deep, funnelling up the sound of waves and sea birds. But the main photo is of Scapa Flow…
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Swona
This must be my laziest post by far. I had read about the witch of Swona in Jennifer Westwood and Sophia Kingshill’s book “The Lore of Scotland: A guide to Scottish legends” but I never expected to get so close. Swona is a smallish island west of the southernmost tip of South Ronaldsay and the…
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Blackthorn, Thief Lane
In 2012, a human headless torso was discovered during industrialised cutting of peat from a bog in in Rossan, Co. Meath. The lower half had been destroyed by the peat cutting machinery. It was dated to the Iron Age and became known as the Moydrum Man although the slenderness of the skeletal remains suggests this…
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Byanna’s Sunday
The sun was being a bit elusive this morning, remaining hidden behind a bank of cloud until I was almost home. A gap through the trees provided this view of the still sleepy village. Tomorrow is the Winter Solstice or Yule, the old pagan celebration. Which means that today, the Sunday before Yule is Byanna’s…
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Whorl Hill
I am on Live Moor and looking across to the conical hump of Whorl Hill, the glacial outlier that is a distinctive landmark on the western fringe of the Cleveland Hills. Behind me is the ditch and ramparts of the pre-historic promontory fort, so this is a view that our Iron Age ancestors would probably…
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Nanny’s Nook
A dull morning for a bike ride, but dry. Just outside Commondale on the Kildale road, there is a small copse. It hides a double right-angled bend in the dry stone wall called Nanny’s Nook, said by Frank Elgee to have been frequented by a witch and the site of an ancient settlement. This may…