Work in Progress: Landscapes of Folklore
In popular culture dragons haunt the fictitious realms of Earthsea or Hogwarts but, a story my son’s school revealed, was rooted within the landscape of west Somerset, just over an hour’s drive from home. Unlike the dragons in fiction, this dragon had a home marked on an Ordnance Survey Map. The Gurt Wurm of Shervage Wood is cited as terrorising the folk of the Quantocks and neighbouring villages, such as Stogursey. This is a dragon that owes its existence to an oral tradition of storytelling that is passed down from one generation to another as local lore. What was the purpose of such a tale, unless of course you believe the Gurt Wurm existed? Was it a veiled prohibition to enter the woods, a deterrent, or a morality tale?
It doesn’t take a great deal of research to uncover a whole raft of such tales. Within a few miles of Shervage Wood lies Kilve Beach, home to Blue Ben, a dragon who became stuck in the mud of the Bristol Channel while escaping the Devil – a folklore regular. Drive in the opposite direction, to Kilve, from the car park adjacent to Shervage Wood and you come to St Audries. This is home to the Sea Morgans, an amphibious race, who adopted a human child, found abandoned on the beach. Three stories within a relatively small area. And more stories reveal themselves all the time. Somerset alone, fills several volumes of folklore collections.
A question that has come to the fore during my search for folklore landscapes is: how old does a story have to be before it is considered folklore? Would the stories of UFO sightings over Cley Hill fit the criteria? It seems a strange place to go UFO spotting, located as it is close to the military ranges of Salisbury Plain. There are numerous flying objects in the vicinity, most of them identifiable, I suspect. If Cley Hill doesn’t count regarding UFO stories then its inclusion is guaranteed in the tale of its origin. Once again the Devil, as protagonist, was on his way to bury Devizes under a pile of mud. The Devil, however, dropped the mud prematurely and so formed Cley Hill. This appears to hint at clue as to where to find such marvellous tales within the landscape. Cley Hill is a landmark. You can’t fail to notice it from the surrounding landscape. It’s an outlier from the chalk landscapes of Wiltshire. Not far from Salisbury Plain, but separate. In this respect it is distinct, which gives it a certain obliqueness and oddball quality.
It doesn’t take a great deal of research to uncover a whole raft of such tales. Within a few miles of Shervage Wood lies Kilve Beach, home to Blue Ben, a dragon who became stuck in the mud of the Bristol Channel while escaping the Devil – a folklore regular. Drive in the opposite direction, to Kilve, from the car park adjacent to Shervage Wood and you come to St Audries. This is home to the Sea Morgans, an amphibious race, who adopted a human child, found abandoned on the beach. Three stories within a relatively small area. And more stories reveal themselves all the time. Somerset alone, fills several volumes of folklore collections.
A question that has come to the fore during my search for folklore landscapes is: how old does a story have to be before it is considered folklore? Would the stories of UFO sightings over Cley Hill fit the criteria? It seems a strange place to go UFO spotting, located as it is close to the military ranges of Salisbury Plain. There are numerous flying objects in the vicinity, most of them identifiable, I suspect. If Cley Hill doesn’t count regarding UFO stories then its inclusion is guaranteed in the tale of its origin. Once again the Devil, as protagonist, was on his way to bury Devizes under a pile of mud. The Devil, however, dropped the mud prematurely and so formed Cley Hill. This appears to hint at clue as to where to find such marvellous tales within the landscape. Cley Hill is a landmark. You can’t fail to notice it from the surrounding landscape. It’s an outlier from the chalk landscapes of Wiltshire. Not far from Salisbury Plain, but separate. In this respect it is distinct, which gives it a certain obliqueness and oddball quality.
