Tag: folklore
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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…
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The Sea-Man of Skinningrove
Skinningrove again. Second day in the row. The cool sea breeze was so refreshing after heat of the day. I was reminded of a tale I once read about when the fishermen of Skinningrove found a merman or sea-man on the shingle beach, which would put it below Hummersea Point, the cliff opposite in the…
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Royal Oak Day,twenty nineth of May,if you deean’t give us holiday,We’ll all run away.
If you see someone out wearing a sprig of oak leaves today, May 29th, he, or she, is celebrating Royal Oak Day. The day traditionally commemorating King Charles II‘s return to London and his restoration as King on this day in 1660, which also happened to be his birthday. The oak leaves symbolise his escape…
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Dunnet Bay
What do you call a group of imps or fairies? A herd, a flock, perhaps a mischief? Anyway, Dunnet Bay is the landfall of a bridge across the Pentland Firth that the imps employed by the wizard Donald Duibheal Mackay had been told to build. They wove the main rope out of sand, but when…
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Bamburgh Castle
Or should I say Bebbanburg, the ancestral home of Bernard Cornwell’s Uhtred in the book and film ‘The Last Kingdom‘? An Uhtred the Bold did exist, he was made Earl of Northumbria in 1006. But Cornwell’s Uhtred lived 140 years earlier. A long, long time ago, maybe the time of Uhtred, maybe before or maybe…