Unlucky in Devon - 67, 68 & 69 (robins and wrens)

Wren - (Troglodytes troglodytes) - By Sonja Kübelbeck (own picture --Kuebi 16:31, 5 May 2007 (UTC)) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

It is unlucky -  

"To take eggs from robins' or wrens' nests. Should this be done, cows feeding in the neighbourhood will yield discoloured milk, for 

 Robin Redbreast and Jenny Wren

Are God Almighty's cock and hen.

Whoso the wren robs of its nest,

Health loses in a day ;

The spoiler of the swallow's house,

Will ail and pine for aye.

And he who with his ruthless hands

Shall tear the robin's cot,

In his coffin shall have a guilty mark

A deep red gory spot.

For a robin to fly into a room and utter its weep! weep ! weep !"

Hewett 1900

Unlucky in Devon - 48

Candle - By Liam Quin (Quin, Liam: “Pictures of old books” (2003)) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

It is unlucky -

"To see a coffin-ring in a candle : it shews that some member of the household, or a very near relation, will very shortly die."

Hewett 1900

Devon Dreams O - R

"The following few examples shew " the stuff which dreams are made of."

Oats. 
Are lucky omens of success.

Onions.
If you dream you are eating them you will find much money.

Pall. 
One over a coffin is prophetic of a wedding dress.

Parcel.
If you carry one you should receive a foreign letter.

Quarrels.
If you dream of them it is a sign that you will soon be very profitably engaged in a business matter.

Rain.
Is an omen of misfortune.

Rats. 
Prophesy enemies near at hand.

Hewett 1900

Spilled Salt in Devon

Salt

"Salt, in country districts, is held as a sacred article, and the vessel used to contain it is considered hallowed and looked upon as a valuable possession. Dire calamities follow on spilling salt, and a charm is used to counteract the dread consequences...

...An old Devonshire friend has sent me the following lines, which he is in the habit of repeating when small matters go wrong in his household. I believe they were written by the poet Gay, from whom he must have learnt them when a child.

 

Alas, you know the cause too well !
The salt is spilt : to me it fell ;
Then, to contribute to my loss,
My knife and fork were laid across :
On Friday, too, the day I dread.
Would I were safe at home in bed !
Last night (I vow to heaven 'tis true)
Bounce from the fire a coffin flew.
Next post some fatal news shall tell
God send my absent friends are well !""

Hewett 1900

Map - Bristol

[I was told in Bristol that salt should be put over the left shoulder "into the eye of the devil" who was looking over it, or else to make sure the salt passed you by and was not used for salting you down like a pharaoh... My wife, however, puts the salt over her shoulder as a gift for the pixies!] 

The Ghostly boat of the Bottoms - Part 2

Ghost Ship - By George Grie (self-made, http://www.neosurrealismart.com) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

"...[cont.] They, kept a boat in the cove, and would start in it at daybreak, disappear out at sea, and never return till it was night; nay, sometimes they remained out all night if the weather were stormy. At times they remained on shore arid hunted, generally, however, at night, and in storms, when the cry of the hounds, ringing out at midnight, would startle the sleeping country.

The stranger died, and his coffin was carried by the peasants to the churchyard, the servant and the dogs following it. But when the earth was thrown into the grave, servant and dogs all disappeared, and were never seen again. At the same moment their boat disappeared from the cove. Ever since that time the ghostly vessel sails at certain periods in awful silence and mystery to the pirate's grave."

Valentine (undated)

Map -The Bottoms

Map - Croft Pasco Pool

Map - Chygwiden area

The man who lived too long - Wimborne Minster

Inside Wimborne Minster church

"In the south aisle beneath an arch is a raised black marble coffin, painted with heraldic shields, and guarded by iron railings, which contains the remains of a very eccentric old gentleman, named Ettrick, the first Recorder of Poole. He had a conviction (probably created by some dream) that he should die in 1691, and had his coffin thus prepared, and the date cut on it. But his previsions proved false; he survived till 1717, and the alteration of the date on the coffin is visible. He fixed it in position with his own hands; for in a fit of anger, caused by some offence the people of Wimborne had given him, he had vowed to be buried neither in their church nor out of it, neither above their ground nor below it. In order to keep this paradoxical vow he obtained permission to place his coffin within the thickness of the wall, and on a level with the pavement. He left a sum of twenty shillings a year for the repairs in trust with the corporation of Poole."

Valentine (undated) 

Map - Wimborne Minster

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)

The Coffin Stone above Dartmeet

"So we may as well turn off the road as we descend, and look on the left-hand side for a grassy track whereon stands the Coffin Stone, used for generations as a resting-place when a funeral is on its way from parts of the forest to Widecombe. A sense of reverence creeps upon us as we look at the block, cut with rude crosses. Around us is scenery the grandest that can be conceived. It should bring consolation with it, for surely those who come here with their dead must have a sense of the nearness of God."

Cresswell 1921

Map - The Coffin Stone

The adventurs of Chery of Zennor - part 11

Cherry told the old woman she "wouldn't cum ony furder for the wurld," She thought from the first she was got into a land of Small People underground, only master was like other men; but now she know'd she was with the conjurors, who had turned all these people to stone. She had heard talk on 'em up in Zennor, and she knew they might at any moment wake up and eat her.

Old Prudence laughed at Cherry, and drove her on, insisted upon her rubbing up a box, "like a coffin on six legs," until she could see her face in it. Well, Cherry did not want for courage, so she began to rub with a will; the old woman standing by, knitting all the time, calling out every now and then, "Rub! rub! rub! harder and faster!" At length Cherry got desperate, and giving a violent rub at one of the corners, she nearly upset the box. When, O Lor! it gave out such a doleful, unearthly sound, that Cherry thought all the stone-people were coming to life, and with her fright she fell down in a fit. The master heard all this noise, and came in to inquire into the cause of the hubbub. He was in great wrath, kicked old Prudence out of the house for taking Cherry into that shut-up room, carried Cherry into the kitchen, and soon, with some cordial, recovered her senses. Cherry could not remember what had happened; but she knew there was something fearful in the other part of the house. But Cherry was mistress now--old Aunt Prudence was gone. Her master was so kind and loving that a year passed by like a summer day. Occasionally her master left home for a season; then he would return and spend much time in the enchanted apartments, and Cherry was certain she had heard him talking to the stone-people. Cherry had everything the human heart could desire, but she was not happy; she would know more of the place and the people. Cherry had, discovered that the ointment made the little boy's eyes bright and strange, and she thought often that he saw more than she did; she would try; yes, she would!..' [cont.]

Hunt 1903

Tavistock and Ordulf

'The chief lion of the place is the Abbey founded in 961 by Orgar, Earl of Devonshire, the father of "Elfrida" who bartered her husband's life for a king's love; endowed and completed (981) by his gigantic son Ordulf, and dedicated as a Benedictine house to Sts. Mary and Rumon...'

'[At the parish church] ...Some bones of extraordinary size discovered in a stone coffin among the debris of the Abbey are reputed to be those of the giant Earl Ordulf.'

Hope Moncrieff 1895