According to the stories Zel was either buried on horseback or in a golden coffin or armour, or that both the horse and rider were an effigy made of solid gold. Unfortunately excavations have been unable to find evidence of a burial of any kind, and the story appears to have come about because of the etymology of Sil+bury.
Zel (pronounced Sil) is the king said to be buried beneath Silbury Hill, the largest ancient mound in Britain that dates from around 2660 BC. Traditionally his ghost rides around the mound on moonlit nights.
According to the stories Zel was either buried on horseback or in a golden coffin or armour, or that both the horse and rider were an effigy made of solid gold. Unfortunately excavations have been unable to find evidence of a burial of any kind, and the story appears to have come about because of the etymology of Sil+bury. Yallery Brown is a Lincolnshire brownie story. One day a farm labourer freed a little man who was trapped under a large stone. His hair was yellow and his skin brown, which is probably were the name came from. The little man asked the labourer what he wanted for a reward, and the labourer asked for help with his work. Yallery Brown agreed, but specified that he should never be thanked.
The laborer's work was made easier, as agreed, but others around him began to suffer as their work was spoiled and their tools blunted. They accused the labourer of witchcraft and he was sacked. "I'll thank thee to leave me alone," he raged at the brownie. "I want none of thy help!" Yallery Brown screeched with laughter, and told the labourer that now he'd been thanked, and the man would be poor ever after. Yes, seriously. And there was me thinking I'd have to resort to Xmas.
More commonly known as photocopy-lore, since we don't tend to use Xerox as a verb in the UK, this was the practice of passing around photocopied jokes and cartoons which were then further photocopied and passed on. As more and more copies were made the content faded and degraded, and was redrawn and retyped which introduced changes in much the same way as oral storytelling. Although it was popular from the 1960s, when photocopiers became more common in offices, it has fallen out of favour in recent years due to the jokes now being passed on by email and social networking. A silly one, because some of the posts have been quite dark lately.
This is a custom at the Westminster School in London, which takes place on Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day). The earliest references to it date from the mid-eighteenth century. Modern participants often wear fancy dress. The school cook makes a giant pancake, apparently reinforced with horse hair, which he takes to the dining hall and tosses over the iron bar that runs across the room about twenty feet up. Pupils from each from in the school try to grab a piece. Whoever takes the biggest piece gets a guinea from the Dean. In past centuries, any cook who failed to get the pancake over the bar would be "stoned" with Latin primers. The "V-sign" is basically the peace sign facing the other way (so palm towards gesturer). It's a particularly British offensive gesture, being taken over now by the more widespread "giving the finger", which came over from America. When I was younger I always had the sense that it wasn't quite as rude as the one fingered salute, although I have no idea if that's the case.
The sign is said to date from the Battle of Agincourt, from the French habit of cutting off the two fingers needed to draw a bow from captured English archers - archers with those fingers remaining would display them to the French as an insult. Unfortunately there's no evidence to support this story, as there don't seem to be any recorded instances of it from before the twentieth century. Uffington White Horse is one of many chalk figures in the hills of southern England. It's earliest recorded reference is from the twelfth century, and although it is presumably much older it has proven impossible to date it with any certainty. Popular theories are that it is of Celtic or Anglo Saxon origin. An explanation for the horse's presence is that it's a portrait of St George's horse - although this seems unlikely given that there's no sign of George himself.
Other explanations are that it's not a horse at all, but that the "fangs" on the face indicate that it's a sabre tooth tiger. This is also unlikely since the earliest dating of the figure only goes back as far as 1000BC. There are other ancient hill figures: the more famous Cerne Abbas Giant is thought to be Romano British, and the Long Man of Wilmington pagan Anglo Saxon. Although medieval manuscripts contain references to many figures now lost, other remaining hill figures date from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. Across Britain there are several towns which are said to have treacle mines. In Chobham, Surrey, this was caused by a breach in an abandoned stockpile of military supplies. At Patchem in Sussex, the mine was caused by the compression of pre-Ice Age sugar cane, in the same way that oil is formed. One town in Hertfordshire has an underground treacle lake.
Treacle mines often form an integral part of the identity of the villages that hold them. Persuading children or gullible outsiders of the mine's existence can often lead to complicated backstories being created - for example that the mine in Chobham was used to make sticky bombs and limpet mines during the First World War, although only in winter. In Lancashire, the town of Sabden used to run correspondence about local treacle mining. Apparently a local toy company sells figures of treacle miners, including the Great Treacle Eating Boggart. The 1990s children's TV show The Treacle People was set there. Lesser known extensions of the treacle mine idea are porridge quarries, and jam sandwich mines. Skulls figure prominently in English folklore. They were once believed to have been a cure for all manner of ailments, from epilepsy to headaches. Often this involved drinking from the skull, but sometimes shavings were put into food as a remedy. A tooth from a skull was said to cure toothache.
Recorded since the eighteenth century is the custom of keeping skulls in houses, usually grand houses with a long-standing family, and displayed in a prominent position. This was sometimes at the request of the deceased: for example the skull at Burton Agnes Hall in Yorkshire belonged to a woman who didn’t live to see the completion of the house she and her sisters were building. Another skull of indeterminate origin was nicknamed Dickie, and kept at Tunstead Farm in Derbyshire. It was looked upon as a guardian (one of the origin stories is that it belonged to a previous owner of the house), and attempts to remove it from the premises were met with disturbances until it was returned. However Dickie hasn't been seen since 1938, and is believed to have since been buried in the garden. Less benevolent skulls are associated with Calgarth Hall in Westmorland. The hall was built after the original owners of the land - who refused to sell - were framed for theft and executed. One Christmas two skulls appeared at the top of a staircase in the new hall, and reappeared despite attempts to remove them. Some accounts have them being manipulated by ghosts. They were eventually bricked up in a wall niche. There is also a tradition of "screaming skulls", which make a screaming noise when displeased. However, examples of these seem to be embellishments of an already existing skull story. Everyone's heard of the lucky rabbit's foot, or saying "rabbit" at the beginning of a new month, but rabbits have a much wider footprint in British folklore.
In Kidsgrove, Staffordshire, there is a phantom white rabbit said to predict the death of a family member of anyone who sees it. Similarly, the appearance of a white rabbit at Wheal Vor in Cornwall presaged a death in the mine. The ghost of a white lop-eared rabbit is said to haunt Crank in Lancashire. It belonged to Jennie, the granddaughter of an old woman accused of being a witch by a man called Pullen. He and another man, Piers, entered her house during the night and stabbed the old woman in the arm to break her power. Frightened, Jennie fled the house with her rabbit in her arms. The men chased her. They lost Jennie but found the rabbit and kicked it to death. The next day Jennie was found dead. Shortly after, the rabbit's ghost showed itself to Piers who eventually jumped into a quarry out of remorse. Then, in a nicely ironic twist, the rabbit hounded Pullen to death through the open fields, where he died of exhaustion and exposure. The rabbit was also one of the forms it was believed witches could take. Queen Rat is a piece of Victorian folklore, based around the occupation of "toshing" - searching for saleable items in the sewers and along the river Thames. She was said to have the form of a rat, but if she took a fancy to a man would become a beautiful woman and seduce him.
If the man performed to her satisfaction Queen Rat would reward him with good luck. If not, or if he told anyone about her, he would lose it, die by drowning, or otherwise meet with an accident. Although this sort of luck-bringing supernatural woman is common in folklore, Queen Rat is unusual in that there are no stories of descendants of these unions. Instead, the man's family is marked through the daughters of his human partner - one girl would be born with odd eyes and acute hearing. This is said to have happened though several generations of the tosher Jerry Sweetly, who on his deathbed told his grandson about his encounter with Queen Rat. |
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