Fairies, Ghosts, King Arthur, and Hounds from Hell

Robin Melrose

Description

Britain has a rich folklore, and the most fascinating figures in it are undoubtedly the fairies. Many explanations have been given for British fairies, but the most popular is that they are the souls of the pre-Christian dead, living in pagan strongholds like Bronze Age barrows or Iron Age hillforts. This book first looks at burial practices and religious beliefs of Iron Age Britons. It then surveys the people, places, language and pagan religion of Roman Britain. After the Romans left the people of Wales, western England and most of Scotland lived much as they had before, and it is here that we find Celts and Celtic place-names and with this the best preserved fairy lore. The Anglo-Saxons eventually settled in most of England and from them came the fairy lore of East Anglia.The Vikings occupied large parts of northern England, and we probably owe the shape-shifting bogles and boggarts of the north to the paganism of these Norse settlers. Fairy lore first emerged in the Middle Ages and flourished in the 19th century, with the folklore of fairies and fairy-like creatures such as mermaids, ghosts in the landscape, hounds from Hell, and King Arthur and his knights.

Sujets

• Folklore
• Folclore
• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 30 juin 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838595814
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2020 Robin Melrose

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Matador
9 Priory Business Park,
Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,
Leicestershire. LE8 0RX
Tel: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
Twitter: @matadorbooks

ISBN 9781838595814

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by 4edge Limited
Typeset in 11pt Baskerville by Troubador Publishing Ltd, Leicester, UK

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
Contents
Introduction
What is Folklore?
The Main Characters of British Folklore


1. Iron Age Britain: Fragmented Burials in Pits and Ditches, Humans Buried with Animals, and the Question of Reincarnation Among the Celts
The Middens of Wiltshire and Early Iron Age Burial
Iron Age Hillforts and Burial Practices
Burial in Non-Hillfort Settlements
Evidence for Excarnation and Secondary Burial in Iron Age Britain
Iron Age Cemeteries in East Yorkshire
Reincarnation in Iron Age Britain?
Pythagoras, Reincarnation, and the Amber Trade


2. Roman Britain (1): People and Places
Southwest England
Wales
The West Midlands and Northwest England
Southeast England
East Anglia
The East Midlands
Northeast England
Scotland
The People of Roman Britain


3. Roman Britain (2): Burial Rites, Temples, and Curse Tablets
Decapitated Burials in Roman Britain
Temples and Curse Tablets
Curse Tablets in Eastern Britain
The Afterlife in Roman Britain


4. Celtic Britain After the Romans (1) The Survival of Native Britons After the Departure of the Romans
Britain After the Romans: Anglo-Saxons and Celts
Southwest England
Wales
The West Midlands and Northwest England
The East Midlands
Northeast England
Southern Scotland
Western Scotland
Eastern Scotland
Pictland


5. Celtic Britain After the Romans (2) Celtic Saints and Animals
Saints and Animals in Early Christian Traditions
Saints and Animals in Britain
Saints and the Resurrection of Animals
“Resurrection” in Irish Mythology
Resurrection of Reincarnation?


6. The Folklore of the Celtic Countries from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (1) The Fairies, Ghosts and Supernatural Dogs of Cornwall and Devon
Devon and Cornwall as a Single Unit
The End of the Kingdom of Dumnonia
Cornwall and Devon from the Norman Conquest to the Reformation
A Medieval Ghost on Bodmin Moor
Fairies in Cornwall
Pixies and Piskies
Hell hounds
Fairies as the Souls of the Dead
Cornish Interpretations of Fairies


7. The Folklore of the Celtic Countries from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (2) The Fairies, Water-Horses and Death Omens of Wales
Later Medieval Wales and its Saints
Fairies (Tylwyth Teg)
Water-Horses
Hell Hounds
Omens of Death
Welsh Interpretations of Fairies


8. The Folklore of the Celtic Countries from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (3) The Fairies, Kelpies and Water-Horses of Scotland
The Viking Period in Scotland
Scotland from 1066 to the Reformation
The Medieval Tale of Thomas the Rhymer in Fairyland
Later Tales of Fairies
Water-Horses, Kelpies and Mermaids
Ghosts in the Landscape


9. The Folklore of the Celtic Fringe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (1) The Folklore of Wessex: Fairies, Demon Horses, and King Arthur
The Wessex Region
The Early Anglo-Saxon Period
A Short History of the Kingdom of Wessex
the Saints of Late Anglo-Saxon Wessex
Wessex from the Norman Conquest to the Reformation
Two Medieval Folk Tales of Wessex
Later Tales of Fairies and Pixies
Ruborough Camp (Somerset)
King Arthur
Demon Horses


10. The Folklore of the Celtic Fringe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (2) The Folklore of the West Midlands: Fairies, Mermaids, and Demon Horses
The West Midlands
The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Mercia
The West Midlands Region After the Norman Conquest
Two Medieval Tales of Fairies
Later Tales of Fairies
Mermaids
The Geography of the Supernatural in the West Midlands


11. The Folklore of Anglo-Saxon and Viking England from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (1)The Folklore of Northern England: Fairies, Bogles, Boggarts, Supernatural Dogs, and King Arthur
The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria
Later Medieval Northern England
The Medieval Folklore of Northern England
Later Tales of Fairies
Bogles, Barguests and Boggarts
King Arthur
The Devil and Demons
Hell Hounds


12. The Folklore of Anglo-Saxon and Viking England from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (2) The Folklore of East Anglia: Fairies, Mermaids, and Will-O’-The-Wisps
The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of East Anglia
The Viking Invasion and the End of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom
East Anglia from the Norman Conquest to the Reformation
Two Medieval Tales of Fairies in Suffolk
Later Tales of Fairies
Mermaids
The Demonic Hound Shuck
Will-O’-The-Wisps
Anglo-Saxon Fairies and Mermaids?


13. The Folklore of Anglo-Saxon and Viking England from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (3) The Folklore of the East Midlands: Fairies, Headless Huntsmen, and the Phantom Horses of Lincolnshire
The Anglo-Saxon Period
The Vikings in Lincolnshire
The East Midlands from the Norman Conquest to the Reformation
A Medieval Tale of the Wild Hunt at Peterborough
The Fairies and Headless Huntsmen of Northamptonshire
The Shag-Foals of Lincolnshire
A Saint and Her Phantom Coach at Peterborough


Notes


Select Bibliography
Introduction
What is Folklore?
As Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud say in their Introduction to the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore , “folklore” is notoriously difficult to define with rigour, and the term “now covers a broader field than it did when invented in 1848, linking many aspects of cultural traditions past and present. It includes whatever is voluntarily and informally communicated, created or done jointly by members of a group (of any size, age, or social and educational level); it can circulate through any media (oral, written, or visual); it generally has roots in the past, but is not necessarily very ancient; it has present relevance; it usually recurs in many places, in similar but not identical forms; it has both stable and variable features, and evolves through dynamic adaptation to new circumstances.” 1
Although the term “folklore” was invented in 1848, traditional stories of fairies, ghosts, King Arthur and hounds from Hell existed long before that. Folklore has its roots in the past, and Britain has a long past. The first written texts (in Latin) date from the 6th century, but the prehistory of Britain is much older: we now know, thanks to archaeology, that Britons began settling down, growing crops and raising livestock around six thousand years ago. Of course, medieval and Early Modern Britons did not know this, but they could see the remains of Bronze Age barrows or of Iron Age hillforts and knew they were built by earlier inhabitants of Britain.
With such a long history there is naturally a wealth of folklore, so I have had to restrict what I can cover. I have tried to include only folklore collected before 1900, and much earlier if possible, in the belief that earlier folklore is closer to the “folk” and more “authentic”, since it is less influenced by later folklore. And I have restricted my survey of prehistory. Initially I was going to start with the Roman period, when the first writing came to Britain, but I realised that this made little sense without a survey of Britain in the Iron Age. For that reason, my first chapter concerns Iron Age hillforts and the strange burial practices of some Iron Age Britons, and the Romans appear only in Chapter 2 (the people and places of Roman Britain), and Chapter 3 (burial practices, temples and curse tablets). Since fairies are associated with the Celts, Chapter 4 concerns Celtic survival after the coming of the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th and 6th centuries, while Chapter 5 looks at Celtic saints (mainly Welsh and Irish) and their strange ability to resurrect animals. These chapters are by no means exhaustive, and consider only those places that are in some way relevant to the story of fairies and other supernatural beings.
These first chapters are general, and from Chapter 6 I begin looking at folklore by region: these regions include the Celtic countries of Cornwall, Wales, and Scotland; those areas which border on the Celtic countries – Wessex (the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire), and the West Midlands (Herefordshire, Shropshire and Cheshire); and what I call the Anglo-Saxon/Viking areas of England, namely East Anglia (Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire); the East Midlands (Northamptonshire and Linco