Closeburn Castle, A Kirkpatrick Family Legend
‘In the family of Kirkpatrick of Closeburn the tradition was, that when a death was about to take place in the family a swan invariably made its appearance on the loch that surrounded the...
Category: Folktales
Clay’s Light
In Halton Holegate, Lincolnshire, it is said that whenever someone in the village is about to die, a mysterious light will appear above their home. The origins of this legend stretch back to the...
Broadwater Midsummer Skeleton Dance Oak
‘There stood, and still may stand, upon the downs, close to Broadwater, an old oak-tree, that I used, in days gone by, to gaze at with an uncomfortable and suspicious look from having heard...
The Chagford Pixies
According to Sarah Hewett in her ‘Nummits and Crummits’ published in (1900), ‘As a gentleman, late at night, was driving across the moor to Chagford, a village in mid-Devon, he was startled by the...
The Great Paw
A common story in the Highlands is recounted here by John Gregorson Campbell in his 1902 book ‘Witchcraft & Second Sight in the Highlands & Islands’. ‘In the big church of Beauly (Eaglais mhor...
The Apparition In A Dornoch Kirkyard
Dating from the13th century, the parish church in Dornoch is a Cathedral in name only and was historically the seat for the Bishop of Caithness until the 17th century. In his book The Peat-fire...
Fairies Foiling A Pig Theft
In her ‘Some West Sussex Superstitions Lingering in 1868’, Mrs Latham recounts the following story. ‘There is an unromantic fairy-tale told in our nurseries the scene of which is laid in West Sussex, how,...
Osmotherley
According to The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England by Robert Charles Hope (1893). ‘The village of Osmotherley is seven miles from Northallerton in the Cleveland hillside. Tradition has it that Osmund,...
Why The Wren Flies Close To The Earth
ONE day when the birds were all together, one of them said, “I have been watching men, and I saw that they had a king. Let us too have a king.” “Why?” asked the...
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