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Tag: #legends

Down Through The Okey Hole

Down Through The Okey Hole

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Okey Hole. You may know it better as Wookey Hole, a village on the edge of the Mendip Hills, famous for its caves. Long ago it was known for its otherworldly nature. Today it’s one of Somerset’s main tourist attractions. There is little evidence of early human occupation in the caves but the last five hundred years have seen exploration, mining and recreational ‘pursuits’ impact directly, structurally and culturally. This has permanently damaged the delicate infrastructure previously untouched for millennia….

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Bailiffs & Boundaries: History in the Landscape

Bailiffs & Boundaries: History in the Landscape

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This is a blog about how a18th century map, a 7th century abbess and folklore collection on the 19th century may hold clues about an old processional route across the South Shropshire hills. The ‘Map of the Wastes of Earnstrey’ was made back in 1712 and shows a number of ‘gospel places’ marked at intervals across the top of Brown Clee, the tallest of the Clee Hills in Shropshire. Gospel places are where gospels were read, often local landmarks, to…

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The Spirit of Morwen, Pilgrimage & a Witches Brew of Memories

The Spirit of Morwen, Pilgrimage & a Witches Brew of Memories

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Sea dragons, merry maids, sea witches and tempestuous seas are part of the lure of the otherworldly North Cornwall coastline. Artists, writers & poets have thrived and taken inspiration from its raw, and sometimes terrifying beauty. Its wildness & unpredictability is not for everyone but for myself it is part of that westward pull that has taken me from St Kilda to Kerry, from St David’s to St Just. November storms are sometimes exhilarating, often brutal, air howling as the…

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Tales from the Deep Earth: The Descent of Giants

Tales from the Deep Earth: The Descent of Giants

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Or, The Fall and Fading of Vadi… With All Hallows behind us and the ever darkening nights of winter ahead, this is the time of year to dig in and burrow down into the warmth of home and hearth and listen to, or read, stories. Our folklore and legends are full of tales of giants but what happened to them between their appearance as fearsome primeval entities and the much later blustering entities uttering fee fi fo fum? I wrote…

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Fae winds & tiny lights – Portal to the Otherworld.

Fae winds & tiny lights – Portal to the Otherworld.

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Fae winds and tiny lights may sometimes alert us to subtle changes in our place of being, whether they appear in a tale or as we climb up a hillside. Either way they signal a risk of enchantment, a visit from something, or someone, supernatural and we must make shrewd and canny choices about what may happen next…. The wind bites. It is freezing cold. You walk up the path bent against the stinging rain. The threshold of the cave…

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There Be Giants In Them Blue Remembered Hills….

There Be Giants In Them Blue Remembered Hills….

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The Giants of the Blue Remembered Hills of Shropshire… Ever since my small days I particularly liked folklore and legends concerning giants: wicked, kind, silly or funny giants they were all the same to me. Amongst my favourites were Jack’s adversary of ‘fee fi foe fum’ fame who fell down the bean stalk and Oscar Wilde’s ‘Selfish Giant’ whose heart was melted by a gentle child. Later I discovered there were older, more dangerous giants, movers and shapers who tore…

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3. Five go down to the Cotswolds or ‘Of Lemonade and Kings Men’

3. Five go down to the Cotswolds or ‘Of Lemonade and Kings Men’

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September 2017 ‘In the Oxford country there are great stones, arranged as it were in some connection by the hand of man. But at what time this was done, or by what people, or for what memorial or significance, is unknown. Though by the inhabitants that place is called Rollendrith’ 14th century With Chris, David and two dogs, I made the long(ish) journey down to the Cotwolds to pick up my new Barefoot caravan – how excited was I? This…

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