Tag: folklore
-
Ling Ness
Our last day on Shetland. It started wet, because of course it did, then turned rather nice — because Shetland seems to do exactly as it pleases. A tad breezy, mind. Those wind turbines on the Hill of Flamister stood completely still on the horizon, shut down to stop themselves tearing apart. The very thing…
-
Vallafield — Where the Trows Lost Their Tune
The name tells you everything. Old Norse: ‘völlr’ for level ground, ‘fjall’ for hill. Between a craggy ridge and sea cliffs sits a narrow platform, barely a kilometre wide, which is precisely what you get. The name nowadays though is usually given to the high point on the ridge, the second highest on Unst. Now…
-
Muness Castle: Power, Corruption and Impunity. Sound Familiar?
Two Shetland ponies graze in front of Muness Castle, Unst, on a grey June afternoon. The castle has looked like this for quite some time. Laurence Bruce built Muness Castle in 1598. He was half-brother to the Earl of Orkney, sheriff of Shetland, and by most accounts an absolute tyrant. The Privy Council found him…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…