Glastonbury Thorn

South Glastonbury from Wearyall Hill - The Glastonbury Thorn Tree in the foreground, and the Tor in the distance.

  © Copyright Ken Grainger and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

"The Glastonbury thorn still blossoms about Christmas; frequently on Christmas Day. It also blossoms again in May. Aubrey, the Wiltshire antiquary, tells us that a Mr. Hinton grafted a bud of the Glastonbury thorn on a ordinary thorn at his farm-house at Wilton, and it also blossomed at Christmas. In Parham Park is a similar tree. This thorn is supposed to have been brought by some pilgrim from the East."

Valentine (undated)

Map - Glastonbury

[Parham Park is in the South East, and I can not find Wilton Farm]

Other Graves at Glastonbury Abbey

Joseph of Aramathea - west front of Glastonbury parish church

 "Here also are buried Coel, king of Britain,; father of the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, Edmund the Elder, King Edgar, Edmund Ironside, St. Joseph of Arimathea (it is said), St. Patrick, St. Dunstan, and Gildas, one of our earliest historians."

Valentine (undated)

Map - Glastonbury Abbey

Edmund Ironside

The grave of Arthur and Guinever - part 2

Supposed tomb of King Arthur and Queen Guinever - By Tom Ordelman [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

"...The bones of the king were of extraordinary size; the skull was covered with wounds, ten distinct fractures were counted, one of great size, probably the fatal blow. The beautiful Guinever's form was singularly whole and perfect. Her burnished gold hair fell in plaits on her shoulders, but when touched fell instantly to dust. 

 

The bodies were again interred, but Edward I. and his queen desired to look, if possible, on that noble king, and the remains were again solemnly exhumed. The skulls were then placed in the Treasury, to remain there, and the skeletons were returned to their grave, Edward enclosing an inscription recording his visit. The beautiful monument erected over Arthur and Guinever was destroyed at the Reformation."

Valentine (undated)

Map - Glastonbury Abbey

The grave of Arthur and Guinever - part 1

Arthur Rackham (1917). "How Mordred was Slain by Arthur, and How by Him Arthur was Hurt to the Death". - Public Domain, from The Romance of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table Alfred W. Pollard. New York: The Macmillan Company.

"King Arthur, wounded in one of his battles, was taken to Glastonbury to be cured of his wounds by these healing waters. And after his last fatal battle, that of Camlan in Cornwall, in which he fell, he was conveyed by sea to Glastonbury to be buried. In course of time the spot where he slept was forgotten; but a Welsh bard singing to Henry II., as he passed through Wales on his way to Ireland, of the great British king, declared that Arthur slept between two pyramids at Glastonbury. When the king returned to England he told the abbot what the bard had sung, and search was at once made for the grave. One of our chroniclers, Giraldus Cambrensis, was an eye-witness of what ensued, and has recorded it.

Digging down seven feet below the surface, a huge broad stone was found with a small thin plate of lead in the form of a cross, bearing in rude letters the Latin inscription: "Hic jacet sepultus Inclytus Rex Arturius in Insula Avalonia." Nine feet deeper they found the trunk of a large tree hollowed out for a coffin, in which lay Arthur, and by his side Guinever..."  [cont..]

Valentine (undated)

Chalice, or Blood Well

Chalice Well - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/ChaliceWell%28GB%29Well%2Bcover.jpg

"At the foot of the lofty Tor on the north side rises the Blood or Chalice well, and somewhat higher, south-westward, rises another spring; both are medicinal, "strongly impregnated with iron and fixed air." Asthma and dropsy, scrofula and leprosy are the diseases they were said to cure."

Valentine (Undated)


Map - Chalice Well

The Fire in the Abbey

The main structure of Glastonbury Abbey, 1900 - By Photoglob AG, Zürich, Switzerland or Detroit Publishing Company, Detroit, Michigan [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

"The kitchen of the abbey, some fragments of the church, and the chapel of St. Joseph alone remain now; and of the origin of the kitchen the following anecdote is told. The abbot had offended Henry VIII., and the king sharply reproved him for his sensual indulgences in food and wine, which he asserted disgraced the abbey, and added that he would burn the monk's kitchen. The abbot replied haughtily that he would build such a kitchen that all the wood in the king's forests would not suffice to burn it; and he forthwith built the one whose ruin we see. Thus runs the story, but the architecture of the kitchen is of an earlier date, and the speech would scarcely have been made to the despotic Tudor."

Valentine  (undated)

Map - Glastonbury Abbey

The Kitchen of the Abbey - By NotFromUtrecht (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

"Dunstan, the Devil and Glastonbury Abbey

Carving of a Devil Woman from Cambridge - Photograph © Andrew Dunn, 15 February 2006.This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

"The celebrated and undoubtedly gifted Dunstan was born within the precincts of the abbey, and received the tonsure within its walls. He left it for the court of Athelstane, but seems to have been disgusted with court life and returned to Avalon, where, near the abbey, he built himself a cell or hermitage with an oratory attached, where he dwelt, spending great part of his day in devotion, and the rest in making crosses, censers, or vestments for the abbey; for Dunstan was a skilled artist and a fine musician. It was in this hermitage that tradition said he had his contests with Satan, who (the Golden Legend, printed by Caxton, tells us) appeared to the hermit in the form of a beautiful woman."

Valentine (Undated)

Map - Glastonbury Abbey

The Glastonbury Thorn

Glastonbury Thorn - By Tom Ordelman [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

"But we are at the foot of an eminence called Weary-all-hill, and we pause, and in our mind's eye see the Eastern traveller, weary and worn, who slowly mounts it, followed by a few monks. It is Joseph of Arimathea, sent from Gaul by Philip to carry the tidings of salvation to Albion, and if possible to overthrow the horrid Druidical religion. 

We see him strike his staff into the ground and hear him say, "Here will I build a temple for the worship of Christ, my Lord." And the staff bursts into white blossoms, and behold the Thorn of Glastonbury. But the spot proved too small for the site of a church, and the missionaries moved forward and built their lowly temple, of wattles and wreathed twigs, in mystic Avalon.

There is still a Chapel of St. Joseph. Did the holy Jew really bring the Gospel to Britain? It does not seem impossible, when we remember how far the Apostles travelled and preached; and of one fact there is no doubt: it was at Glastonbury that the tidings of salvation first reached the ears of the British people. In the most ancient charters of the monastery are these significant words applied to the abbey, "the fountain and origin of all religion in the realm of Britain.""

Valentine (undated)

Map - Wearyall Hill

Dunster Hobby Horse

"The hobby-horse is not yet actually gone by; it exists still here. On the first of May, "hobby horsing" prevails here, or at least did some few years ago. A number of persons, carrying grotesque figures of men and horses, of a sufficient size to cover them, walk about the town, and then go to Dunster Castle, where they are entertained, and receive a gift of money."

Valentine (undated)

Map - Dunster

[This appears to be a description of the Hobby Horses from Minehead, which still visits Dunster on May the 1st.]

The Olive, The Crown, The King and The Church - part 2

Bath Abbey or Cathedral - Some rights reserved by alkruse24

"...He interpreted this dream as calling on him to restore the Church, for Olive answered to his Christian name, Oliver, and King to his family name. Most certain it is," Harrington continues, "he was so transported with his dream for the time, that he presently set in hand with the church (the ruins whereof I rue to behold even in writing these lines), and at the west end thereof he caused a representation to be graved of this his vision of the Trinity, the angels, and the ladder; and on the north side the olive and crown, with certain French words, which I could not read, but in English is the verse taken out of the Book of Judges, chap. ix. :-

'Trees going to choose their king,
Said, Be to us the Olive King.'"

The window to which Harrington refers is, at the present day, one of the glories of the cathedral; it represents the dream which led to the re-erection of the building. 

But Bishop King died and left his work unfinished, and the Reformation arrested all architectural ecclesiastic work, and in Harrington's time the church, which had become dilapidated, lay in a ruinous state."

Valentine (undated)

Map - Bath Abbey

The Olive, The Crown, The King and The Church - part 1

"Bath Cathedral was founded by Bishop Oliver King in the reign of Henry VII. 

"Lying at Bath," we are told, "and musing, or meditating one night late, after his devotions and prayers for the prosperity of Henry VII. and his children (who were all in most part living), to which king he was principal secretary, and by him preferred to his bishopric, he saw (or believed he saw) a vision of the Holy Trinity, with angels ascending and descending by a ladder, near to the foot of which there was a fair olive tree supporting a crown, and a voice that said, 'Let an Olive establish the Crown, and let a King restore the Church.'..." [cont.]

Valentine (undated)

Bath and the Monk from Tours

Bath Abbey - By Diliff (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-2.5 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

"In the insurrection of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, against William Rufus, both the town and abbey were burned and destroyed.

And then a strange thing occurred. A monk of Tours actually bought the ruined city of Bath from Rufus for the sum of 500 marks! His name was John de Villula. Like many of the Churchmen at that time he was a skilful physician, though probably not of the profession of leechcraft, as he is called by the historian Warner a quack. He lived in Bath, where he had made a large fortune by healing the invalids who came for the waters. He could not have belonged to an order vowed to poverty. It was doubtless with great regret that this intelligent man saw the beautiful Roman city where he had lived and toiled, reduced to ruins. As we have seen, he bought it of Rufus, and then he set himself the task of restoring it.

By his liberality and wonderful power of organising he achieved this great work. He restored its chief edifices, and the church and monastery. He then resolved to get the See of Wells removed to Bath, and he succeeded in this also."

Valentine (undated)

Map - Bath

Bath and Bladud

 

"Bath is situated in an amphitheatre of hills, and takes its name from the hot medicinal springs to which tradition says it owes its foundation. The tale of the discovery of the curative power of the waters is probably well known. Bladud, the son of the ancient British king Lud Hudibras, became a leper. The awful disease of course unfitted him in the eyes of his family and people from inheriting the throne; he was banished from the palace, and had to seek a home and food to live. His dress, which was royal, he offered to a swineherd, with the little money he possessed, in exchange for his peasant's garb, and induced the boy's master to let him herd his pigs, that fed in the great forest which covered the Somersetshire hills at that period. As a natural consequence he infected the pigs with his disease; and became very miserable at the thought that when the owner of the swine came to inspect them he would be at once discharged. He was walking behind the herd of swine in sad thought one day, when they all ran down the hill and plunged into a sheet of water in a hollow of the woods. He noticed that they constantly repeated these baths, and that in a few weeks the leprosy had left them. Taking example by their instinct he plunged himself into the water, which was quite hot, and in a very short time was healed of his leprosy.

The lad then resolved to return to his family. He found a great feast going on at the palace - every one was gay and happy - all had forgotten their young prince's fate, except one; his mother sat with a sad, faraway expression in her eyes beside the king. Bladud had drawn the hood of his cloak over his face, so as to conceal it. He had kept a ring the queen had given him: he now stole forward and, unperceived, dropped it into the goblet from which she drank. The next time she raised the cup to her lips the ring fell against them. She took it out, looked at it, and exclaimed, "Our son is here." Bladud then came forward, was recognised; was found quite free from leprosy; and in time succeeded his father on the throne. The legend adds, that he built a town round the healing waters that had saved him from a cruel death, in commemoration of what they had done for him, and also for the benefit of his people. But in spite of this tradition it is believed that Bath was a Roman city, though probably the Britons may have had a settlement there, and knew the value of the waters."

Valentine (undated)

Map - Bath

Berkeley Castle

"There is a bedroom, called Admiral Drake's room, in which are the bedstead, chairs, and washhand-stand - all of ebony - which the great navigator used during his voyage round the world."

Valentine (undated)


Map - Berkeley Castle

[I include this only to compliment all the other mythological beliefs about the man - some tangible relics]

A Library of Folklore

Westcountry Wide





Parts of the Westcountry

Devon



Cornwall


 
Dorset



Somerset

A Meander with the Sheep

Dartmoor Grey Face - the same sort of sheep that live down the road and roar at me and my daughter...  - By Keven Law from Los Angeles, USA (Anybody know a good barber???..:O)) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

[Just down the road from us are a flock of Dartmoor Grey-faced (or should is say daemon throated) sheep. They look very cute, oh yes, but don’t let that deceive you.  If you hear them bleat… By all the gods, it is like the sound has echoed through from hell…

Having said this my 9 month old daughter loves them, laughing at their zombified blunt-teethed guttural roars like they where singing the dawn chorus.

Anyway, sheep are not always to be trifled with, as some of their lore will show, though I should add that the gentle side of sheep is most acknowledged.

This soft side is clearly shown in the story of John Trinnaman.  The tragic hero of the story, not John himself but his long suffering pantry boy, is sent by the lady of the house to “catch a lamb down in the meadow and bring it to her daughter to fondle.” I am not sure if this is a euphemism or not, but it does lead to a strong protective love between the daughter and the pantry boy, as well as inspiring the jealousy of John Trinnerman himself, so you can fill in the blanks as you please…

Lambs could also signal the number of years a Devon maid had to wait before marriage - the count of the first lambs she sees being equal to the years she had to wait (from Roy and Ursula Radford's West Country Folklore1993).  Another Westcountry lore from the same book involves taking note of the position of the first lamb you see - facing towards you is lucky!

Lambs! - By Keven Law, Los Angeles, USA [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Of course Christian traditions hold the priest of a parish to be a ‘shepherd’ to his ‘flock’, so in a way good Christian people could be the sheep in some stories.  Joan, a Cornish old woman who is led on a terrible ordeal having put fairy ointment in her eye is eventually found (in effect rescued) by the squire and his boys on Sunday bringing in the sheep.

The Dragon of O Brook, Dartmoor, could be another example of this allusion.  The dragon itself could be seen as a non-Christian, maybe a pagan (like in Saint George and the dragon?), and his main crime was eating both sheep and humans.  Perhaps in this case the sheep were the plebeian Christian flock, and possibly the humans the squires and nobles (the people who ‘mattered’). Alternatively the eating of sheep (specifically) could be seen as someone attacking the economic stability of the locals. This economic importance is witnessed by Tom the Cornishman’s lack of greed given a plentiful supply of cattle and sheep – beef, mutton and homespun clothes being the height of luxury, and no further advance being needed. In another story of Tom his wife Jane is ashamed to serve a guest only beef and peas, and wishes instead to serve him a better dish of freshly killed mutton or lamb.  Tom also placated Jane’s previous Giant husbands dogs, Catchem and Tearem, with the carcus of a sheep, whom the Giant had given to Tom when he was vanquished.  Alternatively the sheep eaten by the Dragon of O Brook could have belonged to monks, who brought large scale sheep keeping to the uplands in the medieval period.

Sheep (and their wool) was once vital to the economy of the Westcountry, influencing even the political allegiance of towns and villages. The Abbots Way, or Jobbers Path, across Dartmoor linked up the abbeys of Buckfast, Buckland and Tavistock, and along its granite cross marked way the monks of old where said to have hauled the precious commodity. Widecombe fair (of folk song fame) was once a great spot for the selling of sheep, as are many other annual fairs around the area.  Priddy Sheep Fair in Somerset springs to mind, while Ralph Whitlock (1978, A calendar of country customs) gives a vivid description of Britford sheep fair near Salisbury, Wiltshire, held on Lammas by the old calendar where to travel a mile took an hour and a half because of all the flocks of sheep. Cricklade in Wiltshire also had a Lammas sheep fair, While Devon and Cornwall also had Lammas fairs, though whether these where connected to sheep is uncertain.

Michaelmas Fairs (September - October time) where also a big thing, and in Wiltshire (pushing the Westcountry thing a little, I know) Wilton Great Fair was and is a major event. In the 1860's 100,000 sheep were sold annually ( Ralph Whitlock,1978, A calendar of country customs).  The night before this event the shepherds of Wiltshire would compete for the title of 'King of the Shepherds' by having an anything-goes fight. This also happened at Hurtisbourne Priors, Wiltshire, and involved Somerset shepherds as well, though this had some rules and involved 'shepherd's sticks', ending with first blood.

At Weyhill Fair, near Andover, New shepard where initiated by placing a metal cup filled with ale between two rams horns on his head while the following rhyme was repeated -

Swift as the hare; cunning as the fox;

Why should not this little calf grow up to be an ox!

To get his own living among the briars and the thorns, 

And die like his daddy, with a great pair of horns.

(Ralph Whitlock,1978, A calendar of country customs).There are other versions of this rhyme. The initiate then drank the ale and bought a round.

In Wiltshire and perhaps other Westcountry counties, right up until at least the 1970's, the hills would have rung to the sound of sheep bells, as a protection from straying and witchcraft.  Sensibly the most adventurous ewes would have the honor of waring the bells (Margaret Baker - FOLKLORE AND CUSTOMS OF RURAL ENGLAND, 1974).

 Hurdles stored for the Priddy Sheep Fair -

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/61968 
  © Copyright Patrick Mackie and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

One has to be careful purchasing sheep, though, especially on Dartmoor, where an unwary stranger was once tricked into buying a flock of “grey wethers”, or white castrated rams. Upon approaching the sheep the stranger found to his horror that he had purchased not flesh and bone, but some low slung granite boulders, known as “The Grey Wethers”, that form a prehistoric double stone circle on the moor, now much ‘repaired’.

An important time for the sheep keeping comunity was sheering time. Margaret Baker, in FOLKLORE AND CUSTOMS OF RURAL ENGLAND, 1974, reports that in 19th century Devon (along with most other places) sheering time was marked by dancing, often going on all night and all day.  It was a tough time, but a communal time, with everyone coming together and helping each other in turn. Special clothing was used ("duck white 'sheering suits'") which where cleaned daily, the dirt and grease from the sheep making them quite filthy after a day. Hands where washed using wild mint in flower in water.

In the 19th century in Buzcote Farm, Devon, (according to Devonshire idyls, 1892, by Hannah O'Neill) sheering would stop periodically for food brought in by the "girls" and the sheering would pause for about three minutes while the sheerer stuffed down their 'Cut -Rounds' (presumably bread?) spread with cream (presumably clotted!) or gingerbread, and tea.  The day ended with a feast of beef, whole pigs, cheese, junket and cream, and, of course, plenty of strong ale!

The end of sheering (as well as the dancing mentioned above) was marked in some Westcountry areas by a feast including a portion of Christmas pudding saved for the six months for this purpose (from Roy and Ursula Radford's West Country Folklore1993).  Roy and Ursula also mention a couple of rhymes that act almost as wassailing does for apple trees, a blessing and a toast on next years flock.  I shall let you purchase their book if you want to read them (one includes the line "for their dung serves the corn ground", a good solid recognition of the value of sheep).

Chagford Show Sheep Sheering competition - complete with a bonnet full of beer!

In fact I lead you rather astray when I said the lore of sheep would show you a dark side, it is rather more magic than dark...

In reffrence to the comment left by the Faerie at the bottom of the post, I found a Gidleigh (Dartmoor) rhyme that runs -

If your flock begins to blacken

Your luck then begins to slacken

Black sheep, it seems, were not wanted (from Roy and Ursula Radford's West Country Folklore1993).  Perhaps this was from the days when a white fleece could be died any colour, while a dark one stayed dark, thus was less profitable. Burning onion skins was also said to be bad luck (from the same book).

I have only one story giving any reason to be fearful of sheep, and in this the sheep is not so much evil as a justified executioner.  I got this story from an information folder in Beer on the coast, but there is also a good description in Roy and Ursula Radford's West Country Folklore1993. Up on the hills of Broad Down in Devon is Hangman's Rock, and it is said a sheep rustler once rested here. Under his large coat was tied a restless sheep.  Somehow, as the thief slept the sheep wriggled free and climbed the rock before attempting to make a quick get-away on the far side. Unfortunately the rope was still secured around its middle, and in leaping off it never made it to the floor, dangling midway down. On the far side of the rock the thief was also left dangling – by the neck, a loop of the rope had caught him there. He was found the next day, quite dead, while the sheep lived.  Could this be another Christian allegory?

On a tor near Holne, Dartmoor there was an annual Ram Roast associated with midsummer (Ruth St. Leger-Gordon, 1965, The Witchcraft and Folklore of Dartmoor; Ralph Whitlock, 1978, A calendar of country customs) that took the form of a sacrifice more than a meal (sacrificing Christians? - I think I take this analogy too far!).  The ram was chased, decorated in roses and other flowers, slaughtered on a menhir, roasted in its skin, and eaten at precisely mid day, the youths competing for meat for their girls. In Kingsteinton, Devon, a similar sacrifice took place at Whitsun (the beginning of summer) Which came with an associated legend.  The local water supply dried up in a drought and there was not enough water to provide even for a baptism. The locals therefore took a ram onto the dry watercourse and let the blood seem through the dry stones.  The water then miraculously bubbled up, and there is said to be a stone, still baring the hand print of the mother as she lent over the rising water and baptized her child (also in Ruth St. Leger-Gordon's The Witchcraft and Folklore of Dartmoor 1965).

Sheep skull on Dartmoor - Richard Knights [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The power of a sheep was also harnessed in another bloody rite, this time for protecting the flock from evil spirits  (Margaret Baker, - FOLKLORE AND CUSTOMS OF RURAL ENGLAND, 1974). A man in 1954 recalled how in Crowcombe Court, Somerset, a Sheep's heart was stuck through with pins and nails by the shepherd for this purpose (see a Meander Through the Lore of Eyes for more animals used in a similar way).

However, to stop your sheep bleeding, for instance after docking a lambs tail, you should consult a blood charmer such as Kelland from near Yealmpton, Devon (from The Transactions of the Devonshire Association - cant remember which one!).

The idea of being seen as a passive part of a flock (of woolly headed victims) is rather unappealing to my modern mind, so I like this last tiny snippet's best of all –

Sheep, it is said, on Dartmoor, are not all always what they seem (Ruth St. Leger-Gordon The Witchcraft and Folklore of Dartmoor 1965). Along cattle they can sometimes be decidedly fae, and it takes a trained eye to spot an interloper (in sheep's clothing!).  They can be wild spirits in disguise.  If one of these weird beasts where found among his beats the moor-man would have to leave well alone until the being left of its own accord.  Any interaction with the other sheep had to wait until this had happened.

On a side note I once encountered a very strange stallion on Dartmoor. He stank - I smelt him from quarter of a mile off.  His hair hang down in long dreadlocks to the ground and his coat was thick with mud.  He was however, in fighting wild health, and I steered a wide course around his hollow, while he stared at me and stamped some paces towards me with ears pointed and nostrils flared. If ever their was a Piskie horse - he was it...

Sheep also form a curious roll as curers of whooping-cough, a child with the condition being thought to benefit from being around them.  I have read of this in two different places in Devon, one being on Dartmoor.

The idea that underneath the impenetrable wool and strange devilish bleating they have some kind of magical child-healing agency makes me think more fondly of them.

I think I may feel brave enough to take my daughter for a walk down the road…]

Evil King John at Corfe Castle

Corfe Castle - Some rights reserved by treehouse1977

"King John made the crime-stained castle his residence, and deposited his regalia in it. He also converted it into a State prison, and starved to death in it, in 1202, twenty-two French prisoners, the very flower of the Poitevin chivalry. Not many years afterwards he brutally tortured here Peter of Pomfret, the poor hermit who had prophesied that John should lose his crown in 1213. The king actually did resign it that year to the Papal Legate, and the truth of the hermit's prediction so infuriated the royal monster that he caused Peter to be dragged to and fro through the town of Wareham at the tail of horses, and afterwards he had the poor mutilated man and his son hanged in sight of the walls."

Valentine (undated)

Map - Corfe Castle
Map - Wareham

Corfe Castle - part 3

"...Fearfully was that doom fulfilled by the Danish invasions. Three years after little Ethelred's coronation the "dreadful banner of the Raven was again unfurled." Sweyne came with an army; Southampton was plundered, and the inhabitants carried off into slavery. Chester was taken; London was burnt down; and the whole coast from the Mersey to the Thames was ravaged.

Elfrida, miserable and despised, tried to expiate her crimes by building and endowing two nunneries - those of Amesbury in Wiltshire, and Wherwell in Hampshire. She took the nun's habit in the latter, and spent the rest of her life in great austerity, confessing on her death-bed another most atrocious secret murder. Her servants appear to have been a band of assassins."

Valentine (undated)

Map - Corfe Castle

Map - Wareham

Map - Bere

Map - Southampton

Map - Chester

Map - London

Map - Amesbury

Map - Wherwell

Corfe Castle - part 2

"Edward was hunting in the forest of Wareham one day, when the clever, cankered dwarf of the queen, Wulstan, came up to him, and by some story of strange bird or beast, lured the boy-king to follow him into the wood, and leave his attendants. Then, finding that Corfe Castle, where his brother dwelt, was close at hand, Edward thought he should like to see little Ethelred - then ten or eleven year' old - and rode thus unattended to the door of his stepmother's home. She received him at the doorway, kissed him, and asked him to alight. He declined, but asked to see his brother. Elfrida then called for wine, and whilst the king held the cup to his lips, either the queen or one of her attendants stabbed him in the back. The wounded prince had, however, strength enough to set spurs to his horse, and attempt to rejoin his suite; but fainting from loss of blood, he fell; his foot got entangled in the stirrup, and he was dragged a considerable distance, till the horse stopped of itself Elfrida, alarmed at his apparent escape, sent servants after him, who found the poor young prince dead, and his face much cut by the flints of the road over which he had been dragged. The queen ordered his body to be lodged in a house near; on that spot a church was afterwards built. The next morning she had it conveyed to a marshy place, and retired herself to a mansion of hers called Bere, ten miles off. Little Ethelred had seen the murder, and was overpowered by his mother's wickedness; he reproached her so bitterly, in his childish grief and horror, that she beat him most severely with the great wax tapers, the only weapons she had near her hand. Ethelred was so much hurt that he hated the sight of them ever afterwards. Edward's body was found, and the murder discovered; but Ethelred, who of course was quite innocent of his beloved brother's death, succeeded to the throne. Dunstan was compelled to crown him ; but as he placed the royal diadem on the boy's head, he accompanied the act with an awful prophecy. It ran thus: "Even as, by the death of thy brother, thou didst aspire to the kingdom, hear the decree of Heaven. The sin of thy wicked mother and of her accomplices shall rest upon thy head, and such evils shall fall upon the English as they have never yet suffered, from the days when they first came into the isle of Britain even until the present time."..." [cont.]

Valentine (undated)

Corfe Castle - part 1

orfe Castle has an unenviable notoriety as the scene of one of the most shocking crimes that stain our annals. Elfrida, the wife of Ethelbald, Alderman of the East Angles, betrayed her unhappy husband, and wedded King Edgar after his murder. 

She was Edgar's second wife. His first, Elfleda the Fair, left a little son, to whom Elfrida became step-mother. She also had a son, and the young princes, Edward and Ethelred, were extremely attached to each other, though Edward was seven or eight years older than Elfrida's child. After the death of Edgar, she made a party to get the crown for her boy; but the famous Dunstan was on the side of the rightful heir, and succeeded in placing young Edward on the throne. But Elfrida, who hated her stepson, determined to destroy him, and thus make way for her own son to the throne. She watched for her opportunity, and it came in about two years' time.... [cont...]

Valentine (undated)

A Meander Through the Lore of the Eyes...

[I have decided it is silly to have two blogs going on the same subject.  I shall keep the other one going to keep all these meanders together, but I shall also post them here. So, the first one...

I think I will start this exploration of the Westcountry Folklore Blog with the eye. This is the first point of contact between people about to communicate; some might say it is the seat of the soul.

Down here in the west there are many traditions associated with this potent body part.

The fear of the Evil Eye and in ‘overlooking’ where powerful tools used by some old Devonian witches. The results of being 'overlooked' could range from bad luck, to ill animals or even to death.

‘Bleeding’ (basically stabbing with the intent to draw blood, often with a rusty nail) of those thought to have given you the evil eye was one counter charm (Nummits and Crumits by Sarah Hewett 1900)

Charm against the Evil Eye - from Nummits and Crumits by Sarah Hewett 1900

The use of nails in toads, bulls hearts and other creatures also served as a devise to deflect the overlooking, as did (do) bottles filled with pins or thorns, or any sharp objects.  The intention here is to let your enemies encounter an array of sharpness, rather like a headgehog, instead of an easy soft target.

Hawthorn hung in Devon doorways protects against the evil eye, or so says Sarah Hewett in Nummits and Crummits (1900).

In the Three Crowns pub ladies toilet in Chagford there has been reported to me (by three separate women) a sensation of being watched, with loath full hatred, perhaps by a ghost.

One Cornish tale tells of the entrapment of Walter, an unfaithful lover, by the eyes of a powerful mermaid.  Similarly his conscience is finally opened and his fate sealed when he looked deep into the eyes of the mermaid, who is bent on revenge.

Legends of the pixies and the fairies and their ilk make great use of the power of sight and the eye.

At St Just in Cornwall at a place called the Gump a man who witnessed a fairy revel found all his senses sharpened, including his eyes, by the sound of fairy music.

The story of Anne Jefferies, born in 1626 in St. Teath, Cornwall, uses the motif of the bewitching power of the eye numerous times. When she first spots her fairy companions she notices immediately their beauty and the brightness of their eyes. When they finally abduct her after kissing her (another common fairy bewitchment) one runs his fingers over her eyes.  She feels them pricking as if with a pin, and then is left blind, only able to experience the transition to the faerie realm via a sensation of being whirled through the air at speed. Some time later one of her fairy companions says “tear away” and her site is returned, along with an exquisite vision of the fairy realm.  Her troubled return to this world also passed without vision, a fairy once again having passed his fingers across her eyes.

Anne Jefferies from Hunt

Similarly a girl taken as a servant to a fairy widower, by the name of Jenny Permuen from Towednack, Cornwall, had a bunch of small low growing leaves passed over her tear filled eyes to bring her into the widower’s realm.  Later on their journey the widower states “" there is yet a tear of sorrow on your eyelids, and no human tears can enter our homes, let me wipe them away."  With a final wipe from similar leaves an amazing vision of the faerie realm is opened up to her

More common is the power of fairy ointments on the eye.

Chery of Zennor, Cornwall, did not need blindness, nor freedom from tears, to take her far enough into the fairy world to be of use as a servant, but when she was there she was told to keep her eyes shut at night, for fear she might ‘see things which she would not like’.  Her day time duties there involved the care of a small child, whom she was to take to a spring and anoint his eyes with an ointment kept there.  She was strictly forbidden from letting this potion touch her own eyes. After many fearsome adventures that would have frightened a lesser girl out of her wits Chery decided that this ointment would allow her to solve the riddle of the place she was in, for the child whose eyes she anointed seemed to see more than she could perceive.

Having touched but a “crum” of ointment to one of her eyes she found it overwhelmed with burning pain, much like that experienced by Anne Jefferies.  She washed her eye in the spring and found a myriad of small people revealed to her, an every tree and blade of grass, and even in the spring itself. Using her magic eye to spy on her master he found him to be unfaithful (as she perceived it), her jealousy leading to her banishment back to this world.

Another story from near Zennor and Saint Ives tells of a housewife who is taken blindfolded to a strange home and given a child to care for.  Part of the care involved anointing the boys eyes with special water after dawn. The water was not to touch her own eyes. She was taken back home, again blindfolded.  When she regained her sight she found the boy was not as beautiful as she had first thought, but his eyes retained their piercing glare. She carried out her duty before one day she thought to try some of the water on her own skin. Some went in one of her eyes and after blinking she saw little people all around her.  One day she went to the market and saw the boys father. He asked her which eye she saw him from, and from that day forward she was left blind in the water splashed eye, and the child was taken from her, as was her good fortune

Jenny Trayer, of Pendeen Cove, Cornwall, had the reputation of a being a witch, and used the power of her reputation to sell her husband Tom’s fish at a very profitable price, as well as engaging in some alcoholic smuggling. When her fiend Nancy caught sight of her applying some ointment (later revealed to be made from four leaved clovers gathered on a certain phase of the moon) to her husband’s eyes trouble eschewed.  Nancy seized her opportunity and managed to get some into her right eye (thinking it must be beneficial) without Jenny noticing. Later when Jenny caught Tom in the market steeling from a stall she confronted him, only to find she could only see him with the anointed eye.  Tom quickly poked the eye with his figure and she was forever blind on that side.  Without doing this Nancy would have had the power to see into the Fairy Realm, and all Tom’s misadventures.

A very similar story is told of Joan, from near Penzance, who caught reputed witch Betty Trenance rubbing ointment in her children’s eyes.  Immediately the little people, the fairy folk were revealed to her. On going to Penzance market she found Tom (Betty’s husband) engaged in thievery. As before Tom finds out which eye and blinds her in it, though this time by simply pointing at it.

But unlike Jenny, Joan’s adventures where not over yet.  She accidently climbed upon a fairy horse, disguised as a blind old nag. She was treated to a terrifying gallop across the countryside and a dipping in a filthy pond, as well as witnessing the devil and his headless (presumably also blind!) hell-hounds out hunting.

I remember reading a very similar story of the market and the blinding of an eye by a faerie in Devon. The story is of Morada of Holne, who looked after a fairy babe and had ointment for his eyes. Her comeuppance came at Ashburton, though unlike her Cornish compatriots only her fairy sight was removed (along with the baby, and she was well paid (from Folk Tales of Devon, by V Day Sharman 1952)

It seems that the transition to the ‘other’ realm in the Westcountry involved the power of the eye was all important. As we have seen blindness often marked the transition, just as transgression of the rules regarding the eye marked the end of the adventure. Sometimes there was pain, most times ointment.  There is the possibility that it is a hallucinogenic ointment that is being referred to (or am I too cynical? Perhaps it was simply the fairies!).  The ingredients are certainly vague – though maybe plant related and involving the moon.

Given the potency of the eyes it is not surprising that such care was given to looking after them, to guarding the amazing sense it gives us, which without most people in the past from which these traditions grew would have found the hard life of a labourer even harder still.  In the age before corrective glasses and contact lenses it could even effect the perceived beauty of an individual, in their crossed or boss-eyes. Imagine if everyone you currently knew with glasses on must live their life without them, and when the ‘stigma’ of uneven or peculiar eyes could lead to a loss of social standing. A single eye was given to the giant of Saint Michaels Mount to indicate his gruesomeness, and glassy sunken eyes an infant where even seen as a sign of being a Changeling, a thing to be feared greatly, for it meant your own child had been stolen.

By far the most common cure, was to use the supposed curative properties of Holy Wells or springs.  This brings to mind the pixies use of special dew or liquid, (especially Chery of Zennor’s use of ointment kept in a spring). Water sources associated with eye cures can be found across the Westcountry.

In Somerset those that specifically mention eyes are Bully Well, in Chew Magna (unusual because it is not connected to a saint) and a well in Saint Anne’s Wood, now in Bristol. As yet my research has not turned up any wells in Dorset. In Devon I remember reading of a couple of wells near Ashburton in Devon, including Saint Gudula's Well, that cured eyes.  Fice's well near Princetown I think had an eye curing attachment, as did one of the Leechwells in Totnes, both in Devon. Cornwall, predictably, has the most eye curing wells recorded by the Victorians, the country being particularly fascinating to them given its recognized Celtic heritage. Saint Minver’s Well, near Wadebridge, Saint Breward’s Well, near Camelford (for inflamed eyes) and Saint’s Well, Polperro (also for inflamed eyes and other ailments) all gave relief to eye problems. The later had an associated ceremony, involving the potent power of three – on three successive sunrises while fasting bathing in the well was recommended.

‘Kenning’ or ‘Kinning’ stones (large beads) where another eye cure, one being kept at the end of the 19^th century in Black Torrington, Devon, another at Thrustleton, Devon and two more were to be found in Cornwall.

The eye itself can be curative. This Devon rhyme from Nummits and Crummits by Sarah Hewett (1900) says of an itching hand-

Rub it on the eye,
'Twill go by-and-bye ;
Rub it on wood,
'Twill sure to come good.

As my research progresses I may well add to this essay, filling out the blanks and expanding my thoughts.  I hope you have enjoyed this little jaunt into the world of eyes and their lore in the Westcountry.

Eye have.]

The Black Goat of King Rufus - part 3

"..."Robert the Earl related the circumstance to his followers, and they shortly after learned that at that very hour William Rufus had been slain in the New Forest by the arrow of Walter Tyrrel."

If this fable is not of later invention than William's time; if Earl Robert really told such a story, it would appear that the fatal arrow was not discharged accidentally, and that Earl Robert knew something about it; but most probably the legend (which is very old) may have originated in the imagination of the people at that time; and mark only the great unpopularity of the second Norman king."

Valentine (undated)

Map -Glyn Valley, begining
Map - Glyn Valley, end
Map - New Forest

Black Goat - By Dirk Beyer [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.5 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], from Wikimedia Commons

The Black Goat of King Rufus - part 2

"It happened that Robert was hunting in the extensive woods round Bodmin - of which some remains are still to be found in the Glyn Valley - when the following fabulous incident is said to have occurred. 

"The chase," says Mr. Gunn, in "Abbeys and Castles," "had been a severe one. A fine old red deer had baffled the huntsmen, and they were dispersed through the intricacies of the forest, the Earl of Cornwall being left alone. He had advanced beyond the shades of the woods on to the moor above them, when he was surprised to see a very large black goat advancing over the plain. As it approached him, which it did rapidly, he saw that it bore on its back 'King Rufus,' all black and naked, and wounded in the midst of his breast. Robert adjured the goat, in the name of the Holy Trinity, to tell what it was he carried so strangely. He answered, 'I am carrying your king to judgment; yea, that tyrant William Rufus, for I am an evil spirit, and the avenger of his malice that he bore to the Church of God. It was I that did cause this slaughter; the proto-martyr of England, St. Albyn, commanding me so to do, who complained to God of him, for his grievous oppression in this isle of Britain which he first hallowed." Having so spoken, the spectre vanished.." [cont..]

Valentine (undated)