Up on Lansdown above the city of Bath.
"Also of course, the ghost stories someone told me of the 'Roundhead' soldier that marched down the path one evening, a Civil War escapee from the battle at Langridge. I have traced the 17th century banks and ditches of this war, stopped in solemn silence to read on the notice board of one Royalist friend fighting and seeing his old friend a Roundhead killed. My ghost, I kid you not, was he real? was spied early one foggy Sunday morning a Scottish man complete with kilt and hat walking along the path, Moss went berserk as first the hat appeared and then the kilted man walked into view through the fog and he strolled by with a pleasant 'good morning'!
----------
Maybe he was just out for an early stroll I will never know but at 6 in the morning and no dog? And Moss had never shown such fear before.
I went to another meeting at the Folklore Centre, this time about the Legends and Folklore of Todmorden and the lecturer John Billingsley mentioned a story which brought the above to mind.
In his story he had been walking up on the moors along the road and had just come to a stack of rocks, they are rather ugly rocks around here, fashioned by the ice ages, they are rounded and bold but of course attract their own legends. An expensive Land Rover pulled up by Billingsley and out got a middle-aged man who strolled over to him. He then asked Billingsley if he had seen a small pack of hounds running around. A strange request in the middle of nowhere, the man then blew on a hunting horn but nothing happened. Off he went and Billingsley heard the hunting horn across on the other side of the valley later. A couple of days later he heard of a deer that was found dead, after an apparent fall from some stones. The deer's head had been decapitated. So had the hounds chased the deer till it fell from the rocks and who was it that had taken the head? As a trophy to hang on the wall, though it would need some sort of taxidermist work. And why did the man in an expensive car not have a horse ;)
A folklore tale to take forward, and perhaps embellish through the years. For those of us who recall our Celtic tales, visions of red eared white hounds, the Hounds of Annwen running through the sky will immediately colour our thoughts.
So the premise through the talk was how and why such stories came into existence, did we story the landscape to give it a meaning. Did a 'happening' in the village become so unexpected that it was told through the ages.
One of the other things he talked about was the 'brocken spectre', which is created by a misty morning and the sun shining directly behind a person and casting a long shadow in the mist, pretty scary if you don't know anything about the phenomenon.
 |
| A Brocken Spectre on the Isle of Skye taken from The Scotsman |
I spent the night on Glastonbury Tor once, and in the misty morning I looked down to see my spectre cut into the fog with a rainbow ring around my head like a god from an Indian painting. A rare sight. During the Battle of Lansdown a group of soldiers leant their pikes and lanterns up against a stone wall (which still exists) to make the enemy think they were still there when they walked down to the inn where the Hare and Hounds is now for a few drinks.
ReplyDeleteTom you had a very hippy lifestyle through your younger years. And of course you became a spectre up on Glastonbury, you can always beat my stories. But was the Hare and Hound in existence at the time of the Civil War ;)
ReplyDeleteAcross from the pub was a priory I think - St.Catherine maybe. You can still see remnants in the farmhouse.
Well I was on acid all night up the Tor. I recently found out that there has been a pub where the Hare and Hounds now is for hundreds of years. Interesting about the priory. St. Catherine was down the hill a few miles where Jane Seymour lived, I think. That house began as a priory. I'll have a look over the road from the pub.
Delete
Deletedon't Tom, I got my pubs mixed up (sure you do sometimes) it was the Blathwayt pub up the road just by the racecourse.