Almias Š 2010 Phil Legard, Layla Smith, Simon Bradley www.almias.org.uk Commissioned by Harrogate International Festivals www.harrogate-festival.org.uk Map on page 63 produced from the www.old-maps.co.uk service with permission of Landmark Information Group Ltd. and Ordnance Survey. Map on pages 73 and 102 produced from Historic Digimap, Š Crown Copyright/database right 2010. An Ordnance Survey/EDINA supplied service.
A L M I A S
Phil Legard
Layla Smith
Simon Bradley
With thanks to: Harrogate International Festival Fringe, Mr. P.B. Liddle, Graham Chalmers, James Littlewood and the staff at Leeds City Local History Library and the British Library reading room.
Contents i
Preface
1
Rural Psychogeography?
7
Anomalous Grit: The Chronography of Almscliffe
15
Competing Toponyms
17
Boundary and Omphalos
21
Shape & Colour
23
Westron Wynde When Wilth Thou Blow?
29
The Memory Theatre of Baal and Top Cat
35
Baal and Nature
43
Beacon Burning
47
Toponymic Deification: Rombald’s Lore
51
Wart Wells, Pin Wells
59
The Stone Palimpsest
67
Fairy Lore: An Underworld Nexus
83
Almias Astronomy
85
Black Dogs & Norsemen
87
Omphaloskepsis
93
Wart and All
99
Almias
101
Appendix: No Pigeons in Space
117
References
Preface
Y
OU can hardly miss Almscliffe Crag. As more than one Victorian commentator tells us, it first appears to us “like some stupendous fabric crumbled into ruin.� It dominates the local landscape. It is a constant point of reference to those who wander near and far, visible as it is from Otley Chevin and Ilkley Moor. It is a high place and as such calls out to be visited. That people must have been drawn to it for thousands of years seemed enough to justify a closer examination. I recall my sighting the crag on a stormy childhood day. I noticed it for the first time, squatting on the horizon beneath the gritgrey sky as the family car rattled home. i
Later, I found myself writing corporate databases. Commuting daily from Harrogate to Leeds both the crag and River Wharfe became focal points: symbols of height and depth within the local landscape. As I became more interested in recording music at rural locations and attempting to open an imaginative conversation with the ‘genius loci’ of each place through sound, Almscliffe called out to me. There were rumours of its importance in the local calendar of folk custom, Beltane fires and druidic rituals all but lost to history. When Graham Chalmers approached me and asked if I’d put something together for the Harrogate Festival Fringe, Almscliffe Crag seemed the obvious choice. Over the last few weeks, Simon Bradley, Layla Smith and I have been exploring, documenting and researching the place. The bulk of the text being penned by myself I am aware that it is often highly speculative and ‘mystical’. There should, however, be sufficient references to satisfy those who would prefer to bypass the mystic fog in favour of cold, hard, bibliographic fact.
ii
Rural Psychogeography?
T
HE term ‘psychogeography’ is most often related to ideas of urban exploration and Situationist critiques of the civic landscape, such as speculating on effect of the urban on the behaviour of its inhabitants, and contriving methods of subverting the tyranny of city planning. The association of psychogeography with architecture is well established, but it's worth returning to Situationist agitator Guy Debord’s early definition of the term: Geography, for example, deals with the determinant action of general natural forces, such as soil composition or climatic conditions, on the economic structures of a society, and thus on the corresponding conception that such a society can have of the world. Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals. The adjective psychogeographical, retaining a rather pleasing vagueness, can thus be applied to the findings arrived at by this type of investigation, to their influence on human feelings, and even more generally to any situation or 1
conduct that seems to reflect the same spirit of discovery. (Debord, 1955) The idea that psychogeography can apply to an environment which is not ‘consciously organised’ suggests that that, as with mundane geography, psychogeography can present broader arenas for exploration than solely urban space. As a discipline, geography itself is not solely about the urban, but also suggests further ‘pleasingly vague’ branches of art and science such as psychogeology, psychometeorology, psychopolitics, and so on. A town and city, for all its schemes and anthropocentric design, can never quite escape the landscape that it is founded on. Akin to the unconscious topologies of the mind, the landscape itself influences the form and function of the city. Even Futurist visions of cities bored into the earth or floating in the upper reaches of the troposphere are bound by subterranean and atmospheric geographies. Although we have done our best, mankind’s attempts to destroy what Martinetti called “the old sickly cooing sensitivity of the earth,” will always fall into entropy, returning to earth and nature. (Hughes 1991, p.43) Considered as the unconscious terrain beneath our worldly endeavours it is not 2
surprising that contact with the unadorned geographies of natural world tends to make people susceptible to mystical flights of fancy and feelings of expanded consciousness. Even full blown ‘extrovertive mystical experiences’ are not so rare (Marshall 2005). Who can say they have been unmoved by the majesty of a dramatic sunset? Or suddenly felt indescribably transformed by the contemplation of a vista? Or felt a deep sense of cosmic unity and benevolence echoed in the seemingly harmonic arrangement of leaf, stone, river and hill? Would it be too extreme to speculate that it is not a peculiarity of the rural that provokes such feelings, but the shortcoming of the urban landscapes that deaden such a response to our environment? 3
Furthermore the building of cities is not man’s sole method of transforming and rationalising the strange world that he finds himself in. We should consider the psychogeographical implications of more conceptual constructions such as folklore, which still cling to our landscape and psyches of its inhabitants as ancient ruins and strange monuments to an eroding valley. In addition to this we see around us evidence of centuries of landscape cultivation: here human hands have created geographies on a subtractive basis. For example, we may see evidence for the felling of great post-glacial forests to create farmland. This not only encourages us to mentally visualise a past world (- and possibly even attempt to mentally visit it via Robert Graves’ “analeptic” method), but it also demonstrates before our eyes a revolution of the human psyche in geographical language, namely a shift from the nomadic hunter-gatherer in his forest to the settled farmer in his field. It may be suggested that that psychogeography and ‘earth mysteries’ are two sides of the same coin. Certainly elements of earth mysteries, such as the concepts of ‘ley lines’ and ‘numen’ have been incorporated into the ruminations of psychogeographers. However, on the other side of the coin things are different. As an 4
outside observer I feel that earth mysteries itself seems to be undergoing a period of ‘rationalisation.’ Those who were attracted to the movement due to a possible connection with nature mysticism have moved on, while many of those that remain seek to explore the world in terms of archaeology, evolutionary psychology and so on. As our ditch-vision dims, the ‘mysteries’ seem to be migrating from our rural landscape and moving into the service of the urban psychogeographers, seeking meanings in the concrete anomalies surrounding them. We suggest that the aesthetics of traditionally urban psychogeography, such as the tendency to drift, play, radicalise and make ‘irrational’ connections have a significant part to play in engaging with the rural landscape. Consider seriously the way you “make meaning” from your environment: all places are locks behind which deeper and more personal meanings are found. The results of some such approaches can be found here, while others will be explored in our communal visit to the crag. Psychogeography doesn't necessarily provide a key, but at least gives us a reasonable set of mental lock-picks. Or a battering ram.
5
6
Anomalous Anomalous Grit: The Chronography of Almscliffe
A
LMSCLIFFE Crag is a gritstone outcrop. It lies in the civil parish of North Rigton. As a celebrity it has appeared in Emmerdale and The Beiderbecke Trilogy. A select few might also know it as the planet Obsidian in Blakes 7. It is popular with climbers. This much most Yorkshire folk know. Historically we know that from the 18th century it marked the westernmost boundary of the Harewood estate. The crag is split by an extensive natural fissure, which marked the boundary. At various places we see the initials “TF” and “EL”, indicating which land belonged to Thomas Fawkes of Farnley, and which to Edwin Lascelles of Harewood. Climbers will tell you of their own boundaries: that the larger outcrop is called High Man, the lesser is Low Man. Prior to the Norman conquest, Harewood apparently was the domain of three Saxon lords: Grim, Sprot and Tor (Jones 1859, p.14). We can almost interpret the meaning of these names without recourse to Boswoth & Toller, although they confirm our suspicions: Fierce, Sprout (or branch) and Tower (or rock) – the last name of which seems fitting for the locale under discussion. 7
Prior to the manors of this Saxon triumvirate the history of the area seems uncertain. The reference to Tor, Sprot and Grim comes from the description of Harewode in the Domesday Book. Later we will look at the possibility of the lands being connected to the great kingdom of Viking Northumbria. What is certain, however, is that after the invasion of 1066 the land was given to Robert de Romelli a lord of noble Norman stock. Romelli’s daughter, Cecily, married William de Meschines, Earl of Chester, although she kept her maiden name. The couple established a priory at Embsay, which was later moved to Bolton. The cause of this was 8
apparently related to the death of the son of Cecily’s daughter Avicia. The story, known to folklorists as The Boy of Egremond, and celebrated by Wordsworth (amongst others) tells us that while hunting, the son of Avicia had attempted to leap the Strid: a notorious section of the River Wharfe. His hound hesitated and the boy was drowned. To quote Mr. Wordsworth himself: “He sprang in glee - for what cared he That the river was strong, and the rocks were steep! But the greyhound in the leash hung back, And checked him in his leap. “The boy is in the arms of Wharf, And strangled by a merciless force; For never more was young Romilly seen Till he rose a lifeless corse.” This accident seems to have established the River Wharfe as an example of what E. & M. Radford called “life-demanding rivers” (Radford 1978, pp.70-72), whose roots may lie in “ancient river-worship, which was once widespread.” The idea that the Wharfe is connected with an ancient goddess has intrigued historians since Camden (1577) made am observation about a Roman altar stone at Ilkley being devoted to “Verbeia, 9
haply the Nymph or Goddesse of Wherfe” (Camden 1610). Persistent folklore tells us that a white horse either presages a death in the Strid, or that victims appear later as white horses, leading some to posit that this is the totem animal of Verbeia (Gyrus 1999), although the horse is also traditionally associated with the Celtic water spirits known as Kelpies (Briggs 1976, p.256). The connection between Almscliffe Crag, fire (beacon burning and Baal – or solar – worship) and water (the River Wharfe) is one that will come up countless times over the course of these pages. However, to bring us back to the physical world from our mythic digression let us note the geological and archaeological natures of the place. 10
Scrutton (1994) provides a good overview of the physical geography of the place, noting the composition of most of the rocks as “coarse to very coarse-grained sandstone with scattered pebbles of quartz.” (p.79) “The crag is clearly an anomalous feature, a local rocky projection from what elsewhere is a smooth grassy ridge,” (p.80) formed by glacial action and furthermore “eroded by the trickling action of rainwater over 10,000 years, the period since the last ice sheets melted.” (p.82) It is part of the great strata of Kinder Scout grit that slices across Wharfedale.
11
The National Monuments Record hold a file on Almscliffe Crag, which tells us that numerous stone tools have been discovered at the site “presumably in connection with the rock shelters here.” Flint drills, blades and miscellaneous tools are in the collection of the Pump Room Museum, Harrogate. The 1960s OS maps indicate a the site of these finds on the ridge of Low Man – in the vicinity of the cavernous passage known as the Fairy Parlour into which we shall descend presently. One of the earliest patrons of J.M.W. Turner was Walter Fawkes of Farnley Hall. Turner apparently “enjoyed social and sporting, as well as artistic pleasures on the heather. From commanding eminences such as Almscliff or Otley Chevin he would look down on the widespread valley, and depict the receding curves of trees crossed by the 12
silvery streak of the river.” (Radford 1870, p.60) Almost two centuries earlier Almscliffe Crag was mentioned in the work of metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell. As tutor to the daughter of the 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron, he depicted his patron bestriding the “pillars of Northern Hercules,” delineated by the edges of his estates at Almscliffe Crag and Bilbrough: Cernis ut ingenti distinguant limite campum Montis Amosclivi Bilboreique juga! Ille stat indomitus turritis undique saxis: Cingit huic laetum fraxinus alta caput. Illi petra minax rigidis cervicibus horret: Huic quatiunt virides lenia colla jubas. Fulcit Atlanteo rupes ea vertice caelos: Collis at hic humeros subjicit Herculeos.
13
-
or in our native tongue:
See how the heights of Almscliff And of Bilbrough mark the plain with huge boundary. The former stands untamed with towering stones all about; The tall ash tree circles the pleasant summit of the other. On the former, the jutting stone stands erect in stiffened ridges: On the latter, the soft slopes shake their green manes. That cliff supports the heavens on its Atlantean peak: But this hill submits its Herculean shoulders. (Donno 1972, pp.73-75)
14
Competing Toponyms
A
LTHOUGH Rigton appears in the Domesday Book (1086) as Riston, the first record of Almscliffe Cragg - according to Smith (1961, pp.4445) - is as part of the Cartulary of Fountains Abbey ca. 1245, where it is referred to as Almuseclyue or Almusclyue and later Almiseclyue. The Yorkshire Feet of Fines for 1591 catalogue the place as Almnsclyff. Elsewhere we find Almestclyf (1410), Almescliffe (1591), Almostcliffe (1678), Amoscliffe (1695) and finally the familiar Almias Cliffe (1822). We also find AlmasCliffe (G.H. 1852, Parkinson 1889) and Aumous Cliffe (Parkinson). Regarding an explanation of the name, Smith himself suggests that it derives from a Middle English feminine personal noun Almus, possibly a name with Old Norse roots too. One alternate etymology we find in1874 (Conway) suggest that it is named after one “St. Alme�, a saint who has so far evaded identification in the various indices of the beatific consulted so far. Toponyms with a religious flavour also include the suggestion that it was a site relating to the distribution of alms by the local church (Jones 1859, p.217) and the hypothesis that the name may be related to a 15
local tradition that at some point mass was celebrated on them (G.H.). It is Speight who suggests one of the most intriguing religious toponyms, suggesting, on the speculation of an un-cited 18th century author, that the name derives from an ancient epithet of Jupiter: almnus or alumnus. (Speight 1903, p.123) Simpson (1879) favours Elmet's Cliff, and indeed any place name with the prefix “Al-” he explains in this way (pp.12-13). Elmet was an ancient British state roughly corresponding with West Yorkshire, that existed within the Saxon kingdom of Deira. Speight, however violently disagrees with the Elmet connection (loc.cit.) The most pervasive toponym is that of al mias, seemingly first proposed by Hargrove (1821) and of Celtic derivation, meaning ‘rock altar.’ Grainge (1871) notes the name Orm’s Cliff (as used by Bogg), proposing that perhaps this is the serpent's cliff. A fitting epithet considering its position above the serpentine Wharfe and there is also a ‘Snake Bank’ where a wishing well is found not too far away, at Castley (Bogg, p.6). A more prosaic explanation is that the Orm in question was not the mythical world-serpent of Norse mythology, but the son of a Norse invader who owned the estate or even set up a camp in the area (Bogg, p.18). 16
Boundary and Omphalos
O
CCASIONALLY, when discussing the crag, the word ‘omphalos’ comes up. Greek for ‘navel’, the omphalos at Delphi was a stone marking the centre of the world: the axis mundi. It's hard to disagree, considering the way it dominates the surrounding landscape, that this high place is our local star, “heart of the kingdom of Elmet.” (Bennett 2010) In symbolic physiology the navel indicates the division between upper and lower worlds: man (microcosm) and the universe (macrocosm). It is at once the physical centre of man and also a metaphysical boundary. The Crag itself is both the centre of a landscape and also serves as the conceptual boundary between the Fawkes and Lascelles estates. Bennett mentions that the ancient custom of beating the bounds was practised by one or both of the parishes that the crags divided. In this ancient ceremony the priest and churchwardens, accompanied by a crowd of boys perambulated the boundaries of the parish. They would beat the boundary markers with birch or willow boughs. Hartland (1893, p.463) also mentions beatings being given to the boys during this ceremony as an aid to their memories 17
(alongside this he also mentions the curious practice of parents in Lorraine who beat their children on occasions of capital punishment). Historically the boundary fissure marks an ideological division. The Lascelles family came to Harewood in 1739. Previously resident in Barbados they made their fortune as sugar merchants, money-lenders, owners of 47 plantations, customs officers, suppliers to the navy and slave traders (Anon. 2007). In the 1807 election Henry Lascelles, typified as a ‘Slave dealing Lord,’ was in competition with the abolitionist William Wilberforce. On the other side of the crag, Walter Fawkes was a vocal abolitionist and 18
supporter of Wilberforce. The family appears to have used slaves up until the bitter end of the practice in the 1830s. An 1825 indenture from Henry Lascelles to Foster Clerk details an exchange of “three Mulatto slaves whose names and sexes are as follows, that is to say Polly-Kitty (a Woman) John Thomas (a Boy) and Betsey Ann (a Girl)” for “several Negro and other slaves being Four in number, whose names and sexes are as follows, that is to say Betsey Ann (a Woman) and William Thomas, JohnJames and Gabriel-William (Boys).” (Clarke 1825) Closer to home, the rights of cloth-workers was a pressing issue for the common man. In the 1806 election Lascelles stood down due to his unpopular support for increasing mechanisation in the industry. Fawkes, however, was esteemed by clothing operatives of West Yorkshire (Thorne, 1986, p.437) The Harewood Estate has in recent times gone some way to acknowledge and come to terms with their past. However, as a consequence of local chronography, the fissure begs us to ask ourselves: which side would we stand on?
19
20
Shape & Colour
T
HE crag has been decorated by the elements. From the peaks hang banners woven from vibrant green lichens. Some rock faces sport patches of rouge. Vertical channels, worn by an aeon of rainfall embellish the edges. Where rocks have toppled their lines become horizontal, or else seem to point the way toward unknown stars. Most intriguing are the waves, seemingly carved by flowing waters and testament to a vanished glacial age. Most dramatic is the prehistoric gill that runs from east to west across High Man. The shapes worn by ancient waters are perfect waves, almost as if nature were imitating a child’s drawing of the sea. There is something visceral about these shapes: here the gestalt of water is captured by a stone tape. The fissure evokes powerful associations with the burial chambers of Gavrinis, Brittany, whose walls are decorated with a consciousness-tilting array of carved spirals. What poor souls we wonder had been washed down this treacherous rift in ages past? Hyena, deer, foolhardy hunters presaging the boy of Egremond? Now that the flow has failed, it is the resting place of cans and cider bottles. Knee deep they have 21
been cast aside, one atop the other, patiently awaiting their eventual decay. Elsewhere the elements have created pockmarked plateaus. Scattered points whose distribution suggests the well plotted randomness of stars. In lines, points and curves we find on the surface of the crag a treasury of Euclidean hieroglyphs.
22
Westron Wynde When Wilth Thou Blow?
M
OST people visiting the crag grasp two things: it is high, and it is windy.
Standing on the western side of the crag in all but the calmest of weather is an experience. You are drained as the cold western and northern winds batter against you. It is more comfortable to retreat into one of the many fissures and listen to the wind as it rages across the stone. I stood on the top of the crag at sunset, my favourite alto recorder in my hands, attempting to coerce the wind into playing for me. Angling the head of the instrument toward the strongest gusts revealed that the blasting wind was composed of not one many distinct breaths. Until practically experiencing the winds I’d considered antique mariner’s compasses with their complex divisions into 16, 20 or 32 winds to be a matter of pedantry. If Classical authorities like Vitruvius could survive with eight then why complicate things? Whatever invisible weavings compose the wind there can be no doubt that the feeling is visceral and bracing. At sunset it blows directly from the solar mouth. Hildegard
23
tells us that the western wind derives from the purus aether, or zone of pure air. The northern wind is earthy, conveying ignis niger: storms, snow and hail as well as the spirit of decay and disease, which the vivifying purus aether attempts to counter (Kenton 1928). It seems appropriate that, while visiting the location on a full moon in May, we were suddenly set upon by a hail storm, which forced us to take cover in a natural shelter of tumbledown rocks at the northern end of Low Man. In older times the air was considered to be composed of a curious substance that was a medium for many things. Virtruvius tells us that the north wind makes the residents of 24
an island of Lesbos cough, but the south wind cures it. He goes so far as to demonstrate how to construct a city to safeguard against such ill winds (Vitruvius I.vi). Furthermore thoughts, dreams, the whispers of spiritual creatures, emotions and a whole host of other intangible things were hypothetically conveyed by the wind (Agrippa I.vi). Until relatively recently the cunning-folk of Eastern Europe practised ‘sending on the wind’: a form of malefic magic in which items such as ground glass were mixed with the wind blowing in the direction of a victim (Ryan 1999). The appearance of radio and television, along with the proliferation of mobile devices mean that the Medieval dream of 25
aether is a physical reality, its reception no longer through some exalted mystical imagination but in the hands of all. The air is thick with encoded emotions, dreams and secrets. Sitting at the highest point of the crag with calm mind we may attempt to divine for ourselves what is ‘sent on the wind’ without recourse to technology. The smell of manure. The song of sunset. The language of birds. Tender and warm breaths from the puris aeuther before the winnies prick thee to the bare bane. The dreams and cares of the farming families below us. The coarser aroma of spilled lager and burned-out joints. Not to mention the miasma of fissures that double as latrines. The rays of Vega, shining from 25 light years away it maketh a man
magnanimous and proud, and giveth power over devils and beasts. (Agrippa II.xlvii)
26
27
28
The Memory Theatre of Baal and Top Cat
T
HE notion of the spirit of the place, or genius loci, became a formal element of landscape and garden design from the 17th to 19th centuries. In this regard Alexander Pope was notably compelled to sing: Consult the genius of the place in all; That tells the waters or to rise, or fall; Or helps th’ ambitious hill the heav’ns to scale, Or scoops in circling theatres the vale; Calls in the country, catches opening glades, Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades, Now breaks, or now directs, th’ intending lines; Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.
(Pope 1731) Here the genius of the place is in both the immediate and surrounding landscapes. Landscaping enhances the feel and function of the surrounding topology. This is one conception of the genius, although its roots stretch back to Classical antiquity and likely beyond to a pre-literate animistic past. By the 18th century the genius was attached to a quaint Satyric sculpture. Prior to this expression of Arcadian sentimentality the genius was somewhat harder to pin down… Also known as numen, the term genius denoted some ‘spirit’ that inhabited a place or object. The protector of a holy well, the 29
spirit of a holy tree, a god who travels with a river, and so on were all expressions of a spirit of place or genius loci. These could also be considered as what Dan Paich calls ‘place-markers’ and ‘imagination triggers’ (Dan Paich 2007). The genius is ultimately a mirror of our own souls, as Violet Paget wrote: the genius is an “indwelling god whom we make for ourselves.” (Paget 1925) As part of the process of investing places with meaning we have our initial gut reaction serving alongside the memories and interpretations we attach to objects within our surroundings. This overlaps with the idea of cognitive maps in psychology, a form of mental processing whose relation to the ancient rhetorical “method of loci” is well established. In its most rudimentary form, the method of loci was a way to remember things. Developed in Classical Greece and popularised by Cicero it later known by its Latin name ars memoria in Renaissance Europe. The basic method is to place striking mnemonic images within an imaginary landscape, often based on some physical location known to the practitioner. During visits to places we make similar things happen. We attach images to the 30
space around us, enthroning the genii locorum and revisiting, even opening dialogues with them, them in our reminiscences. The climbers – or as Bogg calls them, The Fraternity of Petrogymnasts – who use the crag participate in this process, each route having its own name and character, overlaid and internalised by their own experiences. Considered as personalities in their own right, a hierarchy of genii emerges from the rock, their names most often analogous to their natures: Silver Trout and Gypsy, Barley Mow and Hanging Rib, The Virgin, Limbo and the Wall of Horrors, Crucifix and Demon Wall, Dreamland and Black Wall, Top Cat and Stretch Armstrong. In our own historical and folkloric wanderings around the area we have delineated a number of place-markers and dwelling places of the genii to be used as triggers for the imagination, the subjects of many of the obscure perigrinations contained herein. As a working “memory theatre” the physical geography of the place dictates its function: at the most prosaic level the situation of the mnemonic image of a large-uddered elephant, wearing a sunhat and eating pizza situated on top of High Man tells me that it 31
is highly important to remember are to buy the things which that image symbolises on my next trip to town. At a more mystical level we might follow the lead of Giordano Bruno and followers who seem to suggest that interaction of memory place and mnemonic images might be used to “organize the psyche through the imagination.� (Yates, 1966, p.290) It was recognized that the power of mnemonic images to convey moral and mythic themes was also akin to the practice art of creating talismanic images, which were often based on surreal juxtapositions. For 32
example, the image of “a man sitting upon a chaire, or riding on a Peacock, having Eagles feet, and on his head a crest, and in his left hand holding a cock or fire” was considered to be a talisman of Mars (Agrippa II.xliii). Drawing on the notion of ‘as above so below’ would not a mnemonic figure, for example, comprising of symbolic representations of all the qualities of a planet, when placed within a memory place akin to the scheme of the zodiac act as not only an imaginary construct but also an internal conduit for the influences unique to that planet? Can images that we create in our imaginations become animated by exterior forces through some kind of sympathetic process? Whether such an archaic magical theorisations hold any charm we will leave to the reader. However, the effectiveness of memory places and mnemonics as a general system of memorisation has a solid grounding as the testimony of not only Ciceronian orators attests, but also those of contemporary memory champions. It is in the spirit of Bruno and followers that we present a reduction of Almscliffe Crag into a memory theatre. Each locus might also be considered a dwelling of a genius: composed of, if nothing else, a complex of memory and experience, whose meaning could then be further explored through symbolic imagery. 33
A “Memory Theatre,” or Numenograph, for Almscliffe Crag.
34
Baal and Nature
H
ENRY Trail Simpson is the kind of Victorian clergyman that one imagines as a missionary having a nervous breakdown in some far off land, before being shipped off to an unassuming pastoral post in dear old Blighty. This romantic notion might at least rationalise his raving preoccupation with the topic of Baal worship in Yorkshire that runs throughout his Archaeologia Adelensis (1879), written during his time as rector of Adel. The census of 1841 lists his birthplace as Calcutta, so perhaps this idea is not so far wide of the mark. Simpson tells us that Almscliffe Crag is a perfect example of a “high place of Baal”, preserved to perfection. Before laying down his particular and startling vision of the place he makes the admirable that “it is to be hoped that attention will henceforth be awakened to the value of this singular relic of antiquity and its preservation secured.” (p.126) To his credit Simpson wished to preserve such sites, even if it was only so they could serve as a sombre reminder of the dark ages of blood sacrifice prior to the coming of Christianity. One of Simpson's sources is Robert Weaver's Monumenta Antiqua, subtitled 35
“Stone Monuments of Antiquity […] particularly as illustrated by Scripture.” Weaver claims that the pagan religions of Britain came from traffic with the Phoenecians who travelled along the trade routes of the ancient world. This conveniently brings the history of ancient Britain into the scope of Biblical narrative and commentary. Simpson draws on the Book of Tobit to draw parallels between the worship of a goddess Baal, depicted as a heifer, with that of Gaia, Rhea, Demeter (p.28), Ashtoreth (p.101), Priapus and Adonis (p.121) and Dionysis (p.146). A footnote courtesy of the brilliant Sabine Baring Gould also connects Baal with Osiris, the sun and St. George. For Simpson prehistoric Yorkshire was a hotbed of “horrible worship” and in the case of Almscliffe Crag “on no other spot in the kingdom is clearer testimony to be afforded to the former existence amongst us of Baalworship”. (p.126) Rombald’s Moor is also posited as a place of ceremonial import: we will read elsewhere that the giant Rombald is connected with the sun, so it's tempting to make an etymological link between Rombald and Rom-baal, which Simpson surprisingly neglects to do although he does discuss Baildon on this regard. One interesting point is that Simpson indulges in a bit of numerology to demonstrate that Baal-Peor, 36
rendered in Greek, enumerates to 365 (p.147). How this proves that “Baalworship, or the worship of the Sun, is, in reality, Devil-worship” is unclear, but it opens up an interesting connection between Baal and the Gnostic expression of the divine power known as Abraxas, whose name also enumerates to 365. Abraxas’ head is that of a cockerel (regarded as the supreme Solar animal, since even lions feared it) and his feet are snakes. Within a personal mythos of the landscape it is tempting for me associate the Crag with the head of Abraxas and the serpentine Wharfe with his feet. According to Simpson Almscliffe in particular seems to have been awash with the blood of humans and animals sacrificed to the sun. He transplants the account of Baal worship from 1 Kings, chapter 18 into our own hallowed riding: 26 And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made. [...]
37
28 And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them. His vision is somewhat undermined by his assurance that the various weathered channels and bowls that characterise the crag are man-made, undoubtedly “cut with some edged tool.” (p.127) A victim’s blood was apparently poured into the bowls, from whence it flowed into vertical channels to assist its collection as it seeped down the rock face. That Simpson cannot distinguish between natural erosion and the man-made is worrying. Grainge (1871) may have been a source of inspiration since he also 38
seems to believe that the channels on the crag have been aided by human hands, boldly stating that on the westernmost portion of the “altar” stone “is sculptured the figure of a large tree, which we take to be the monogram of the Celtic Jupiter, whose representative was an oak tree.” (p.318) Such a sculpture eluded us until we stood above the Low Man at sunset and Layla demonstrated that the naturally weathered channels, which converge midway down the rock, do indeed (with a small leap of imagination) resemble a tree. Below the altar rock we find the Idol Stones – two fearsome, weathered upright rocks, apparently sacred to the deities of the place. 39
Their black eastern faces suggest that they have been burned at some point in their past. The tradition of Almscliffe as a dark, Druidic place actually seems to pre-date Simpson's publication: the Juvenile took the Intelligencer opportunity to reprise its earlier forays into Britain’s dark history, this time with a description of a place in Yorkshire called Almias Cliff. According to local legend – and etymology – the cliff was the site of an old Druid altar, though now ‘the shrieks of murdered children and the uproar of savage men, are no longer heard amongst its rocks’, and ‘summer visitors may gaze out on it and ponder its dark history’. (Brooke 2006) [I]n
1850,
Whether the views of Victorian Christendom on the subject of rude Druidic worship have any semblance to fact is debatable. However, I would at least recommend the experience of lying on the highest point of the crag, head toward one of the great bowls, a deep fissure to your left. The blood rushes to your head; a vertiginous 40
feeling overtakes you; the wind beats its tattoo, followed by the mounting panic that the sacrificial victims may have experienced. There is a more sobering contemporary thread to Simpson’s notion that nature worship is tantamount to diabolism. The right-wing Satanic group Order of the Nine Angles has included Almscliffe Crag as the location for a scene of oath-taking in a short story concerning a gang of Leeds-based skinheads set in 1973 (Brown 2009). The crag certainly seems an appropriate locale to be connected with a group that believes “people can explore their limits by contemplating human sacrifice.” (Baddeley 1999).
41
42
Beacon Burning
H
ENRY Trail Simpson, writing in 1879 mentions that: Bonfires are still lit on the 1st May at Elmscliffe, and in many other parts of the kingdom. These are still existing memorials of the old sacrificial and fire-worship of Baal, the rising sun being particularly conspicuous from this eminence, and receiving adoration. (1879, p. 127)
Having previously been inclined to take Simpson’s words with a pinch of salt I was surprised to see that evidence of a tradition of bonfires at the crag was confirmed by a report in The Leeds Mercury, June 22 1887: The Beacon Fires in the North of England During the evening some hundreds of the inhabitants both of Thirsk and Sowerby wended their way to the top of the Clump Bank, about a mile to the east of Thirsk, where a splendid view of the beacon 43
fires, which were lit at ten o'clock on Hambleton range, was obtained. The people could not only see those on the western hills of Yorkshire and Westmoreland, but also that of Cleveland and the more southern portion of the county of Durham. […] At Otley a large bonfire was lit on the Chevin Top, in the ancient beacon field, where many hundreds of people had assembled to witness the answering fires on Rombald's Moor, Beamsley Beacon, Almes Cliff, &c. This report indicates that ceremonial beacon lighting was a practice until relatively recent times. Although these fires don't relate to Simpson’s conception of a lingering pagan Beltane (Baal-tane) – the beacons were actually being lit to celebrate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee – the date is coincident with the summer solstice. The last record of beacon burning in the area that has come to light is a record of the beacon at Otley Chevin being lit to celebrate the end of the second world war, a date itself not so far from the spring equinox 44
(Burrows). However, according to the landowner, the practice was resurrected by a group of unknown persons to mark the Millennium. In his classic The Old Straight Track (1925), Alfred Watkins makes a number of interesting observations about beacon sites. He theorises that beacons were lit in ancient times to fix the points of seasonal sunrises. Ultimately their ceremonial function became obsolete and they eventually became a type of warning system: It is said that when England was threatened with invasion, perhaps at the time of the Spanish Armada, a beacon fire was lighted on Swill Hill to communicate with Otley Chevin on the north, and Almondbury Bank on the South. In this manner notice of the approach of the enemy might quickly be given to many parts of the kingdom. A fire on Otley Chevin would be seen on the top of Ingleborough, which was used for the same purpose, the word “Ingle� meaning fire. (Johnson 2001)
45
Particularly relevant to Almscliffe is the notion that the natural and carved bowls found on such outcrops have in the past been filled with burning oil or fat as a method of providing a beacon light (Watkins, p.58). How this may relate to the burnt sacrifices of the Druidic “Baal” is a question left unanswered. Forrest and Grainge (1868) provide an extensive list of beacon sites in the old West Riding, which, as if to vindicate some of Henry Trail Simpson’s more bizarre theories does at least prove him to be right on at least one count: high places attract fire.
46
Toponymic Deification: Rombald’s Lore
W
RITING in the Harewood News in the 1930s an author –
possibly even Lord Harewood himself – discusses the folklore of the surrounding area as part of a brief series on the history of the estate: The legend I have always heard of the formation of Almscliff, a large rock to the North West or Harewood, runs as follows: Once upon a time, a certain Giant lived on Ilkley Moor. From this vantage point, on a clear morning, he used to be able to see right across the vale of York. However, one fine day, he awoke to find his view obscured by the newly build York Minster. The Giant was not unnaturally rather peeved at this outrage. Retaliation seemed essential. So, picking up two of the rather large pebbles which lie ready to hand on Ilkley Moor, he hurled them a the cause of his wrath. But he had considerably overestimated his throwingpowers, for one of the stones landed at Almscliff and the other 47
on Grey Stone Harewood Park.
Hill
in
An alternate story names this giant Rombald, and tells of how he fled to Almscliffe Crag from his wife, who dropped an apronful of stones while chasing him (Collyer 1885, p.82; Cowling 1946, p.116). It is said by Collyer that the crag even bears the impression of his footprint. The motif of stone-throwing giants creating geological anomalies is a common one in folklore. Cowling, however, interprets this story in an intriguing way: the giant fleeing to a high sanctuary is a mythic allegory for the displacement of the worship of a solar god with that of an earth deity (p.116). A 48
conclusion that makes sense when the connection of the place with beacons and socalled ‘Baal’, or solar, worship is considered. But who was Rombald? Was he perhaps Rom-baal as we speculated earlier? Likely not: the name ‘Rombald’ seems to derive from Romille or Romilly. As we have seen, the De Romillies were a noble Norman family, to whom the domains of Tor, Sprot and Grim were distributed post-Conquest. Here we have a form of “toponymic deification” in which the landowner becomes identified not only with the extents of the land itself but also with a mythical figure, perhaps even the shade of an older god. From Almsliffe Crag, the cult of Rombald seems to have further migrated eastward. The priests evidently settled at the Airedale Shopping Centre, Keighley, wherein his great effigy of the god may be found. It is said that his lingering adherents will one day return to burn the Beltane fires amidst the grove of Café Brasilia.
49
50
Wart Wells, Pin Wells
T
HE tradition of the Wart Well is one of the most interesting aspects of crag-lore. Grainge (1871) offers us a fairly comprehensive account of the area and tells us that: On top of the main group [of rocks] are many rock basins [one of which] is situate further to the north, and very near the edge of the cliff […] and is known as “the wart well”. To remove these excresences from their hands the country people come here, prick them until they bleed, let the blood drop into the well, then was their hands in the water, and, if they have faith, in a short time the warts will take their departure and no more be seen. (p.319) The association with the crag and the magical cure of warts seems fitting: a number of people with only a casual acquaintance with the place have remarked that it looks like a “wart on the landscape”, while apparently it is locally known as “the wart”. 51
There is also lore that describes the basins’ role in maidenly fortune-telling, of how a needle dropped in the well would foretell love. This is a long established method of binary divination, a “yes” or “no” being indicated by whether the needle turns clockwise or counter-clockwise. It is still apparently practised among Native Americans: whether it is a European import or an earlier relic is uncertain. Some pin wells are also used as places to offer prayers for gaining husbands (Hartland 1893, p.455). Finally we find the act of dropping a pin in the well to be a general charm for good luck:
52
Into these basons, the country people hereabouts do frequently drop a pin; to which ceremony, they certainly annex the idea of propitiation, as they confess, their motive is to obtain good fortune. (Hargrove 1821, p.176) All of these practices are related to the tradition of the “pin well”. There exists at least one fairly thorough treatment of this subject in the journal of the Folklore Society, by E. Sidney Hartland (1893). Picking up some threads from a previous article by John Rhys (1893) on the subject of sacred wells in Wales, Hartland concentrates on the area of ‘pin-wells’, which 53
often travel the company of ‘rag-bushes’. Close to home, Parkinson mentions both a pin-well and rag-well to be found in Yorkshire (1889, pp.103-105). Hartland outlines a folk magic practice in which wells and other sacred waters were visited to heal a number of afflictions such as sore eyes, rheumatism and warts. Often a pin plays some part in the procedure and in some cases rags used to bathe afflicted areas are tied to certain sacred trees or bushes. Discussing the holy well at Tan-y-graig, Wales he notes that it “was much used for the cure of warts. The wart was washed, then pricked with a pin, which, after being bent, was thrown into the well.” (p. 453) At some point in the 19th century this well was cleared and two basinfuls of pins removed, whether at the behest of a churchman or not is unknown, but it seems likely that a similar clean-up occurred at Almscliffe at some point. Almost without exception these wells are associated with saints and the likelihood of them also being sites of pre-Christian importance. Could the same perhaps be said of Almscliffe Crag? Perhaps this would explain the strange reference made to it being sacred to one St. Alme (Conway 1874) and the suggestions that water from the crag was used to serve the nearby church at Chapel Hill? 54
Be that as it may, the water to be found in the wart-well hardly seems an appealing place to dunk one’s bleeding hands. If there was not a pre-existing tradition of a sacred well at Almscliffe then it seems likely that the basin was elected a wart well purely on practical grounds. Hardy (1878, p.223) notes that “stagnant water contained in the natural hollows of rocks and stones is an excellent remedy for warts”, known in Berwickshire as “verter water” - or virtue water. The idea that water from such a source is sacrosanct will be explored below, but Hardy goes on to note various folkmedicine practices of washing with or using a poultice of leaves and verter water to alleviate warts. Hartland concludes that: I venture to submit, then, that the practices of throwing pins into wells, of tying rags on bushes and trees, of driving nails into trees and stocks, and the analogous practices throughout the Old World, are to be interpreted as acts of
ceremonial union with the spirit identified with well, with tree, or stock. In course of time, as the real intention of the rite has been forgotten, it has been resorted to (notably in Christian
55
countries) chiefly for the cure of diseases. (p. 469, my italics) We have talked about the role of memory places and the notion of certain locii being the dwelling places of the local genii. Next time you visit be sure to pay your tithe to the genius of the well. * To further dwell on the stone bowls of Almias, most commentators tell us that their intention is to gather pure water “from the clouds.” (e.g. Bogg, pp.18-19) The bowls are rarely dry and in this respect remind one of the ancient practice of constructing ‘dew ponds.’ The term “dew pond” is something of a misnomer, since, although it was supposed that their water came from dew or mist it appears that the bulk of their supply comes from rain (Heselton 1997, pp.40-51). However, the supposed purity of dew and its magical formation from the atmosphere have resulted in a number of religious and magical mysteries being attached to the substance (Legard 2009). Notably dew has been identified with the mana that sustained the Israelites after the Exodus, and in alchemy it has a persistent association with the mysterious prima materia, or vital first 56
matter. Within the sparkling of dew there seems to be some kind of celestial fire, as a Hebrew prayer for Passover puts it: “May the city of Jerusalem, once empty, be turned into a crown that sparkles like the dew.” (Isaacs) As accumulators of ‘pure’ water for sacred use the bowls suggest a number of both religious and magical uses, not least their function as scrying pools, which were often employed used throughout the European world and Mediterranean (Dalette 1932). An extension of predictive pin-dropping, such pools were gazed into on starlit nights in the hope that some vision may manifest itself to answer the daring querent.
57
58
The Stone Palimpsest
N
ATURAL erosion aside, the gradual destruction of the crag by human hands can probably be traced to the mid-18th century and the decision of the Lascelles and Fawkes family to mark their territory with their initials on opposing sides of the crag. Looking at the amount of Victorian graffiti that follows it one gets the impression that people either misinterpreted the boundary markings to be idle graffiti, or interpreted these lordly signs as carte blanche to add their own. As it stands now, the Crag is a stone palimpsest. As the wind and rain erase older carvings new ones appear to obscure them. As to whether declining educational standards and the rise of ‘Broken Britain’ can also be traced through the carvings it is difficult to speculate and is perhaps best left to the psychogeosociologists. The neat copperplate of a Victorian, possibly a professional or apprentice monumental mason certainly has more charm than the contemporary, crudely carved pot-smoking goldfish that lies beyond it. At the southern end of High Man we find a carved tribute to a 19th century military operation in Lithuania, not too distant from the juvenile “Mat + Bob Flood bum each other.” Which of these is a more fitting testament 59
to future generations I leave at the reader's discretion. One spring evening, while surveying the Wart Well two lads approached from the east. One wore a white t-shirt and shorts emblazoned with the St. George’s cross. They roved across the top of High Man, propped themselves over a fissure and began to carve at the stone with a pocket-knife. We stood, startled by their impudence. Layla cleared her throat loudly until they eventually got the message and sloped off. The first thought that crossed my mind: the irony that the flag-wearing lad who would probably count himself a patriot was here, desecrating part of his local culture. Or, alternatively, was he just participating in a form of folk ritual that had sprung up about 60
the site, adding his own initials to the sprawling register of names and dates that spans the rocks? However, it is not just a few-hundred pocketknives that have caused the most damage to the Crag. It seems like a fair chunk at the southern end of High Man vanished around the turn of the century. Although not mentioned by the Victorian commentators up to the late 1870s it appears that a quarry was in operation at Almscliffe Crag for some years. While rambling round the westernmost side of the Low Man I noted a number of incisions in the rocks, which Layla suspected to be evidence of quarrying, namely the “fire and water� method of breaking stones, 61
which had been famously employed in the attempted destruction of Avebury. Later, having looked at maps from the late 19th and early 20th centuries it became obvious that this hunch was the correct one. The signs of industry are all around, but concealed: the buried spoil heaps imitate lost fortifications, while telltale blocks of dressed stone – cubic and rectangular – dot the landscape. Looking more closely at some rocks we can see that a number of surfaces obviously show signs of splitting and extraction. The marks of drilling can be seen east of the “Black Wall”, which itself appears to have been engulfed by fire at some point. 62
There is a single dressed stone at the foot of the black wall, one face toward a gap in the boundary wall. It feels like an unconscious imitation of a church lichgate, the temporary resting place of the body en route to the next world: a symbol of crossing metaphysical boundaries. The exact dates of the quarry are uncertain. None of the 19th century authors surveyed up to and including Simpson in 1879 mention a quarry. The 1890s Ordnance Survey map shows two old quarries and an old gravel pit as well as a functioning quarry all on the eastern side of the crag. The 1909 OS map shows only an old quarry and graffiti from around 1903 on some of the 63
quarried faces at what seem to have been areas of concentrated activity indicate that the quarry had largely ceased operations by that time. The presence of quarrying – on both sides of the crag – may explain the disappearance of the alleged “cromlech” recorded by both Simpson and Grainge. There is also a stone recorded on the northeastern edge of the crag enclosure and an old well just over the wall beyond it. The well seems to have disappeared at some point between the 1900s and the 1960s, while the stone has vanished within the last 50 years. The legacy of the quarry is found in the cubic stones and grassed-over, beautifully eroded spoil heaps. Contemplative features in an industrial Zen garden.
64
65
66
Fairy Lore: An Underworld Nexus
I
’D HEARD of the Fairy Parlour before, perhaps after reading Paul Bennet’s overview of the crag some years ago. It was a cave, apparently, but exactly where it was to be found was unknown. All that I could discover was that it lay “somewhere on the western side of the crag.” A trip to the library to consult Northern Caves described the interior in spelunker jargon, but exactly where the entrance could be found was still unknown. With incomplete information we set out to find it. There are a number of walled up fissures on High Man. That seemed to be the place to look. We shone a torch in every hole, explored every ledge, circumambulated the High Man countless times. Nothing. We mentioned it to Rhid Williams, a climber friend, who seemed to doubt the story. “Nah, wrong kind of stone for any kind of cave.” Two days he came back and told us he'd found the entrance.
67
“It's tight. You could just about squeeze in. I'll hold your legs.” We found what he'd been talking about toward the top of high man. A tight fissure. It definitely led somewhere, but was only for those of elfin stature. Then, “Eh up, this looks more promising.” Yes, this was definitely it. Excitement and fear. It looked a tight and terrifying squeeze. Layla, always the bravest or most foolhardy of us, descended first. I could see her squatting at the end of the tunnel. “There's a drop.” 68
We took it in turns to survey the fairies’ entrance hall: a tight stone passage leading to a ledge with enough space to kneel and turn round. Beyond was a drop of indeterminate depth – not deep, but possibly too deep too get back up from once down. However, the passage looked to be about 5 ½ feet high. Too dark to see far, it tempted us with mystery and danger. We backed off for the night. A beer bottle was shattered in the entrance tunnel, crisp packets had been blown down the passage. These fairies are not house-proud.
69
We got a little further each visit, meeting a new obstacle and backing off. This came to characterise our exploration of the Parlour. Two arachnophobes in a tight space full of cave spiders was bound to be a bad idea. “I don't want to mention the spiders. . .” “Too late.” Then there was the search for the dog-leg, a tortuous hairpin squeeze to be found at the end of the main passage. “Y’know, I read a bout a dog-leg called the Woggle Press.”
70
“Why?” “A boy scout became jam during a collapse.” “Why?! Why do you say these things?” Our climber friend was right. This is not the kind of stone you’d expect to find a cave. It was once part of a fissure, into which boulders have tumbled and great millstone blocks roofed. That it exists at all is chance. As you wriggle on your back beneath precariously poised blocks, you can feel the weight of the crag above you. “And if a ten-tonne block, kills the both of us...” 71
After each journey – a few more feet covered – we'd berate ourselves. “Northern Caves says a middle school caving club extended this place.” Admittedly, they had a guide who knew the score and they probably had the luxury of head protection. I recall the Victorian magus Eliphas Levi (1856) declaring that a magician must gain mastery over the elemental spirits by, for example, climbing a mountain during a storm to make declare himself worthy of the association of sylphs (1854, p.281). However, although our progress has so far been “laborious and patient, like the Gnomes” we are simply skirting around the fact that we must at some point give ourselves over to the subterranean dwellers and throw caution to the wind, or else never know what lies at Almscliffe's hollow heart. It is said to have been explored to a distance of one hundred yards, and to end in a beautiful room sacred to the ‘little people,’ a veritable fairy palace. (Parkinson, 1889, p.88) *
72
“It's strange what you find coming out of the ground these days,” remarked one climber as we returned to the blustery evening air. Without exception the climbers we spoke to who frequently ventured up Low Man had no idea what lay beyond the partly walled fissure, having never heard of the Fairy Parlour. This is understandable: it is rarely marked on maps. The only instance we have found is on the 1851 1:10,560 map of Yorkshire, indicating the “Fairies Hole”. The Victorians were particularly fond of christening places Fairy-this and Fairy-that. Practically every guidebook from the age has some spot fancifully dedicated to these creatures who were once a feared, invisible force causing illness and mischief. As their malevolent influence waned and the village cunning man was no longer consulted for 73
his advice on “elf-shot” cattle they became the delicate, twee creatures that we now know. I would have automatically consigned the appellation “Fairy Parlour” to unfounded Victorian fancy, although the collection of fairy lore about the place provided by the Reverend Parkinson in 1889 does go some way to justify the name: It is to be doubted if any mortal has ever reached the fairy parlour. Some years ago, the story was related of daring explorers making the attempt, but so loud was the din, raised upon their advance, by rattling 74
of pokers and shovels by the fairy inhabitants within, indignant at this invasion of the sanctity of their abode, that the too daring mortals precipitantly fled, by the way by which they had entered. (p.89) The appearance of a fairy or spirit is often announced by such a terrifying din. A 17th century spell to call the familiar spirit of “The Genius of Pomona� mentions that: [T]he Exorcist will hear great noises of Swords and fighting, Horses neighing, and Trumpets sounding, and at last there will appear four little Dwarfs or 75
Pigmies naked before the Circle, their speech will be antient Irish. (Scot 1665, p.225) Oberon, the fairy king himself, was often called by magicians for the purposes of seeking treasure and his appearance is similarly accompanied by “tremendous noises and frightful hissings, tumultuous yellings, and fearful shrieks.” (Raphael 1825, p.223) So said the Victorian astrologer Robert Cross Smith, a.k.a. Raphael, who was once custodian of a manuscript that detailed the conjuration of Oberon (Mowatt 2001). Parkinson then relates the story of a local farmer, by the name of Bradley, who lived in the house nearest the rocks and had his three children exchanged for changelings. Of his eight children five were fine and handsome, while the three fairy children were “dwarfish, cooked and ill-tempered.” (p.90) The same author also tells us that one George Bolton of Kettlesing related that his father had seen fairies “of nearly all colours, scores of times dancing upon Little Almscliffe,” the group of rocks three miles westward. (ibid.)
76
“So who are the fairies? Might they be entities existing in their own right in non-ordinary realms of consciousness? Or are they an artistically anthropomorphised way of thinking of spirituality in nature - the soul dimensions of birds and insects, trees and fishes, and even rocks and wells and so forth? And could there be a sense, a very real metaphoric sense in which, as Mike Collard of Future Forests near Bantry, Co. Cork, says, “We are the faeries”? For at one level, fairies can be seen as icons of the human psyche connecting deeply into the consciousness of nature: a mechanism for knowing deep ecology. At another, buried deep in Celtic mythology, it is worth recalling that the fairies were once the original gentle and nature-connected peoples of this land, driven underground.” (Laviolette & McIntosh, 1997)
77
We may consider Almscliffe to be one of the legendary “hollow hills” of the fairy folk. Such a passage into another world is often seen as a metaphor for imagination – indeed, this ancient place has found its way into our own dreams as a transitory passage between two worlds. The Bradford poet Stephen Fawcett also passed through such a portal of mind into a realm of gaudy fantasy as he set down the following lines in 1837:
78
’Twas the hour when in Riffa the fallow deer hide, And Washburn forms cascade and linn. That De Lacy alone with his bright virgin bride, A portal espied upon Aumous Cliffe side, And a varlet, who bid him walk in. “Whose servitor thou ?” quoth De Lacy, “I pray, For I ken but a gateway and thee.” “’Tis the Fairy King’s palace ; his daughter to-day In marriage he gives to an Indian fay, And invites you the espousals to see.” “Lead on,” said De Lacy, “I long for the sight ;” And the door opened wide with a bang, And a vast pillai'd hall, full of spangles of light, Blazed round him with garlands and jewels, bedight, And eldrich wild laughter-peals rang.
79
To dances of fauns, afrits, elfins burlesque, Played fifty horned pipers in green; De Lacy they honoured with greetings grotesque; And high on a dais of gold arabesque, King Oberon sat with his queen. In his presence, with crown of flame-spiral, bright red, Stood the monarch of India’s son; And the king's blushing daughter before him was led In mirth, song, and music the marriage rite sped; Then off like a flash, on the wedding tour fled The pair to see “Prester John.”
80
Then the king raised his wand, and the silence, to hear His majesty’s ‘hest, was profound; And he spoke, as he lifted his goblet in air, “From my cup, never drained, drink a health to the fair, Drink wisdom, and let it go round.” Round, round birl’d the bowl, till its circuit was made. And De Lacy drank deep with his bride; And the palace was gone, and they found themselves laid. Awake and unharmed, in a witch-hazel shade. Upon haunted old Aumous Cliffe side.
81
82
Almias Astronomy
S
TANDING at the entrance to the Fairy Parlour, beside the great ‘Altar Rock’ we observe a number of interesting points. To the north a fallen rock lies. Standing vertically it would point the way to Polaris. This might be called the most sacred spot on the site. More astonishing are the sunsets and sunrises of the spring and autumn equinoxes. The sun rises at the foot of High Man and comes to rest behind the great Idol Stones. Might, therefore, the presence of these strange stones be more than geological chance? The Beltane sunset may also illuminate the secondary fissure in the Fairy Parlour. When we first descended into the hole, the spring sun was shining through this crack. A beautiful sight as it caught a dewdrenched cobweb and the wind rushed over its mouth. Here the combination of place and the luminary stirred something deep within my being. Whatever may have happened beyond this stone passage: the quarries, tarmacked roads, urban sprawl, this view, this shaft of diminishing solar light was the messenger of a more ancient time. Each dewdrop reflected 83
the world on a geological time scale. Beyond the entrance early man gazed into the darkness, observing his Holocene children with curiosity.
84
Black Dogs & Norsemen
A
S you walk through Huby, toward the Crag you will pass Sleights Lane. Having in past ages crossed common grazing land, this is reputed to be a spot haunted by a padfoot or hell-hound. Bogg mentions speaking to an elderly resident “nigh four-score” who told us that “he remembered hearing ‘the demon beast’ rattling its long chain ‘wi’ a pair o’ een like twa saucers, and flat padfeet ’at clompt and clapt in its nightly waaks.’ (p.16) Elsewhere Bogg claims that the village name, Huby, derived from the Norse seaking Hubba (Ubbe Ragnarsson) settling there (p.15). As one of the kings of the Great Heathen Army that captured York in the mid-9th century, the presence of another Huby also in what would be the Viking kingdom of Northumbria seems to suggest this is a possibility. Hubba’s father, Ragnar Lodbrok, was. according to his Saga. thrown into a pit of vipers by the Northumbrian Saxon king Ælla after being shipwrecked. Once more an interesting element of serpentine symbolism that can be associated with the River Wharfe. In Norse mythology the black dog was a psychopomp: a being that guided the soul in the otherworld. The scholar Hilda Ellis 85
Davidson noted “we are faced with a way which is not trod by the dead alone, but which the living also may follow. The land of the dead according to Norse heathen thought is not a wholly undiscovered country, and from it the traveller who has learned the old wisdom aright may return to the world of men.� (quoted in Trubshaw 1994) This unassuming country road leads to liminal lands.
86
Omphaloskepsis
T
HE midsummer air is still. I stand by the ditch on Sleights Lane, listening to a small stream of water trickling underground. I survey the landscape for the tell-tale mound, where Ubbe Ragnarsson lies within his longboat. Silent amidst his horde, a black dog curled at his feet. A cow idly grunts. To the west dogs bark. It must be a hunting party. In bygone days they met at Little Almscliffe. Perhaps the scent is leading them in this direction? As I contemplate the cadent sun the hunting pack rounds the corner, canine nails rattle on the tarmac and their jaws slaver. A shaggy, shapeless thing leads them. I remain rooted to the spot as they pass. They leave the atmosphere heavy with a static charge. As I watch them disappear, taking the left-hand path at the end of the Lane, one dog slows down, turns to face me and sits attentively. He is a greyhound. My own heraldic beast. My totem animal. I cautiously approach before taking his gold chain in my hand. My arm is almost jerked from its socket as the animal bolts. Intoxicated with scent it leads me in bounds to the top of the road and beyond. 87
Fields and trees bolt past us. This is how the boy of Egremond must have felt pursuing the trail; landscape skipping below. I thank my star that the only large body of water is far below, deep in the valley. Within moments we have reached the perimeter of the crag. We take the less known route, past the farm and toward the natural cromlech on the south-eastern side. Dusk drizzle spots this makeshift stone shelter, emblazoned with the ancient solar sign of Baal. We come to the foot of the black wall, where ashlar blocks weigh upon the topsoil. Each one a medal on a mossy breast, hard-won symbols of progress and destruction. The grim tor sprouts above and the drizzle turns to hail, frozen by the frigid occidental breath. A cold coming to the foot of High Man. Standing before the lichgate the shades of climbers past cling to awkward holds. Alan ‘Tubby’ Austin finds his foothold, almost at the apex, his agility belying his stature. I see Claude Frankland below him, but suddenly my attention is called to the queer figure of Arthur Dolphin, a wraith-like albino, and agile leaper of abysses. He has appeared at the top of Black Wall. For a second his spectral visage is seen in high contrast against the dark sky. Then he leaps into the unknown. 88
α
365
Beyond the Altar Rock I see clouds of steam rising from a small quarry, where the fires of men are tempered by the hail. Above, on High Man, a beacon burns. It is nourished by a powerful light. Inextinguishable by the waters it is as though a spark from the sun itself on the millstone peak. Ascending to the basin wherein it burns I find within it the heart-fire of the universe. α for Almias? For Abraxas? As the celestial light casts shadows on the surrounding landscape the serpentine earthworks beyond the crag are dance. ω for Wharfe? For Verbeia? For Abraxas’ constant companion: the serpent Ouroboros? Orm? And before them both am I. ΙΑΩ. We make the magic word. Such speculations are interrupted by a significant darkening of the sky. Moon-blot, darker even than the swollen storm clouds. I know exactly what this is: the corpse of Rombald, elevated by unseen hands hangs above the crag. The fire below illuminates his face, a twisted visage caked in frost. Without warning and without difficulty the hands of God tear his limbs, as easily as one might a well-aged fowl. His blood falls in great torrents: the water of the Wharfe. It rushes down the valley, gathering up great rocks, shifting peaks and boring passages through the softer stone. Beneath the frothspattered surface a team of white horses
89
course down the valley to swell the river below. The giant’s bloodless flesh is picked from his bones. It is scattered across the Ridings. Where skin drapes bone so a hill appears. Where bone pierces flesh an outcrop is made. Finally his skull is split against the crag with such force that the stone itself splits asunder. His grey teeth scatter, fixing themselves in the surrounding fields. His final toothless cry becomes the west wind, into which his brain is cast; his skull is set into the dome of the sky. A shelter must be sought to escape the violent death-rage wind of a dead titan. The concealed passage is sought, which pene90
trates this navel of the world. Howling wind behind back pushes me on, down through the damp subterranean passage. A foothold is missed. I am pitched over the edge, falling, flailing into a passage, flooded with Wharton’s jelly. The face-up slide beneath poised blocks brings me out on the other side of the passage, half choked on the mucus of creation to find. . . What? A dead end. Hard, cold stone. Yet there is something beyond it – a dim buzzing noise, which seems to be the sound of distant music, being played almost with the sole purpose of frustrating me. I remember Simon saying “There’s really enough here to keep you busy for a lifetime.” The hidden door to the world beyond cannot be forced. This earth will yield its mysteries when both of us are ready. Ι
Α
Ω
91
92
Wart and All
‘I
WANNA be rid.’
‘Keep your eyes closed. Turn around three times… stop!’ Mercia proffered her thumb forwards gingerly having no idea on earth in which direction she was now pointing. Instinctively her index finger arched round above the wart to stroke it. Strangely comforting, in the light of her irreducible wish to be rid. She felt its knobbly summit blossoming like bouquet of clustered thyme spears. She knew its contours intimately: two distinct sloped plateaus: the one noticeably more prominent than the other. She curled the edge of her fingernail over and ran it up and down the narrow groove between the two. ‘Don’t try and hide it. Clench your fist, thumb out straight.’ She felt the cool rubber clamping around her fist, a splint on either side of the thumb prevented any possible movement. The reassuring smell of chlorhexidine-alcohol did not reassure her at all with its cool caress. Metal insects fidgeted, searing light penetrated her eyelids, and there was momentary silence soon to be broken. 93
A low chant emanated from the Surgeon. So low the instruments began to vibrate. Mercia couldn’t make out any words, only a continuous stream of seemingly meaningless vowels. A bead of sweat burst through her forehead and trickled down between two frowning eyebrows to the tip of her nose where it set up camp. Gradually the chanting faded, she listened for the next cluster of instructions. ‘You will feel this. It will help if you try to imagine you’re somewhere else, somewhere far, far away. A place removed from this brief pain.’ Mercia crept over the horizon of her mind’s eye and followed the sunset, matching its pace as it raced over the surface of the earth. All before it ablaze, all behind it as dark as the pit of her stomach. Day and Night: equal partners in her psychic voyage. She’d had many dealings with this pair before. As a child she had feared both the dark and the light. Sometimes she needed all the lights on in order to sleep; sometimes only hours of total darkness would suppress the barbed wire vice of pain lacing the inside of her skull. Today, the two states resonated strangely. She perceived a liminal pareidolic shift of infinite fractal symmetries, jumping, snapping and bickering like a couple of 94
spectral hounds. Initially lightning speed, these flickering displacements began to slow down, gradually achieving solid parity once more. Light and Dark became frozen, fixed in intransigent opposition; they became stone. Two craggy masses glaring at one another across the void. Suddenly, she felt a pinpoint of searing pain on the flank of her wart. A sharp intake of breath and she bit her lip; but kept her eyes closed. She had no desire to see the menagerie of medication unfolding around her hapless digit. She recalled the last thing she had seen: a glass jar on the window sill housing a huge horned grasshopper scuttling around doggedly. Her ears must have become super-sensitised, for now she could hear that beast as if it were in her head. Fizzing pain penetrated the wart, making a lateral traverse right to the core. A familiar smell bloomed in her nostrils summoning a hidden inquisition of dæmons who had been quietly biding their time. Human flesh burning. ‘I wanna be rid, I wanna be rid!’ ‘I call zis my little Warzenbeisser,’ the Surgeon croaked with discernable Schadenfreude.
95
She felt her blood gushing forth, warming the clinical surfaces, gathering her jittering nerves into central focus. The burning probe continued forwards, and burst right through the far side of her trembling excrescence. More blood, and more sweat. The droplet at the tip of her nose distended like the belly of a starving dog, quivering and yearning to fall. It held on until all of Mercia’s attention was focused upon it. She eased inside, back into the craggy landscape of light and dark that she had been coursing before the pain had begun. A vast, empty valley rolled out in all directions pressing the void into a graceful sward of vernal greens and glistening browns under a blood red sky. As the sun set, the valley floor rippled and ruckled up, then its young skin stretched so taut that it finally sheared, releasing a 96
mangled clutch of rude rock, knotted and billowing in all directions but maintaining a fearful integrity. Suddenly the probe in her thumb retracted, and her pain ceased. She clawed at the crust of rock. A weird bowl appeared in its wizened carapace. Now the sweat droplet fell from her nose. A dancing tangle of bloodworms seethed in the cool waters, each little soul squirming its way up to the air and then falling back down into the darkness sucking in her, so recently secreted, elixir. In the depths, she saw wispy flowers of blood rising from a glinting silver pin that lay bent, clinging to the unforgiving rock. ‘Wart, be gone!’ intoned the Surgeon, ‘You may open your eyes now.’
97
98
Almias
W
AVES carry us to stowaway atop tumble stones islanded alone in green grass seas clear cut, ice cracked undulations pirated by hoary hands A stark mirror within isle of unnatural eruptions bent-pin charms refract hideous lesions, marriages, death the inevitable failure of life Worming down the eel-hole darkness plays a burlesque of reveal a golden anenome of light undulating like fairy-fronds lightly playing some spider-web song of dying sun
99
100
Appendix: No Pigeons in Space The following pages present highlights from an oral history interview with the landowner, Paul Liddle, of Cragg Farm. The Quarry
I
T’S as if they’ve just jacked up and gone out, that’s quite interesting that side. I would say years ago there would have been a lot of people working up there when it was a quarry. You haven’t got any more information from your dad or your granddad? No, no, it’s a long, long time ago I suppose you could find out actually if you knew when Rigton church was built ’cos the stones were from there. And the war memorial in North Rigton: that was a stone cut off the crag. That’s in North Rigton, just near the stocks in the village, opposite the pub. Right so people have been sort have been using it as a resource? Yeah I suppose I never thought about that. When the church was built, that’s when it nearly jacked up […] 101
So what happened with that boundary when you bought it? Is there still a boundary there?
Boundaries
No I don’t think so, I don’t know how they used to do it, I don’t know how these big estates used to do it. I think, a long time ago, I think they maybe swapped farms, you have this one, I’ll have this one… I don’t know, honestly don’t know. Do you have field names and stuff stuff for these at all? [laughs] Yeah we have field names for them all! Could you just put numbers and tell me what they are? Just let me get me bearings… Number one is Corner Meadow, number two is Footpath Field ’cos there’s a footpath in it. Number three, Bean Field, ‘cos they used to grow beans in it. [laughs] Do you not do that now? No no no no… well it were wartime when my granddad took the farm and that used to grow all different protein crops for the cattle
102
Field Names
and now its all bought in, well, this land isn’t suitable for arable cropping really. We’ve certain land that’s suitable but the bulk of it at the top side of the road, its heavy, heavy soil, its grass growing land… and most of this is called Ben’s: all that land there because the fella that used to own it was called Ben. [laughs] That’s the whole area then? Yeah that’s a big lump, yeah. Number four is Crag Field, and number five is Crag as well ’cos its all kind of connected to the crag, and then we get back here, number five is Cliff Bank Meadow, number six is Top of the Eleven Acre.
103
What’s that then? I dunno, eleven acre top! Then Sixteen Acre is number seven, because its sixteen acre, and then most of this is just pasture land because the cows live down there most of the year… So that doesn’t really have a name? No it doesn’t have names really as such. Ah this one is, number eight, is Seventeen Acre, and number nine is Cocksfoot Field. Cocksfoot is a variety of grass: a very old variety, used to grow a lot of cocksfoot but it’s gradually being burnt off, it’s not viable now. You don’t reseed? What’s up there now? A medium to long-term grass lay. Cocksfoot was a breed of grass that grows in extremely dry times. It just keeps growing, but there’s no goodness in it for cattle now, its just belly-fill really. And then number ten is…. Ponderosa. I dunno why it’s called Ponderosa! [laughs] Ponderosa! holiday….
104
Sounds
like
a
Spanish
Celebration and Worship
So, have there been any ceremonies done up there with a beacon, do you recall? recall? On the Millennium, there was a lot of people up there and they lit a beacon, but I don’t think it was anything official. I think they just wanted to light a beacon. They never asked our permission or anything but we noticed there were a beacon up there; they’d burnt something. But no, we never have much. The church goes up there every summer solstice. They’re up there very early and they go up, they have Easter. They go up very early on Easter morning as well, just for a service, they have a service up there at about 6 o clock in a morning. Easter and the summer, not the winter? No, no, not in the winter! Too cold in the winter! Bit dark as well. [laughs] So which church is that? North Rigton and Pannal. Pannal church go up there as well. At the same time? No, different time. I think Pannal go up Easter and North Rigton go up later on. I 105
can’t just remember which way round right now. No we’ve never had any witchcraft or anything like that, no burning goats or anything! [laughs] Not really no, no. But it is a spooky place at night, it is an eerie spot to walk across at night. But there’s still a lot of climbers go up, go night climbing. But it is an eerie sort of place at night. Did you sneak out there as a kid? [laughs] No I didn’t, no! No, because I used to live where my mum and dad live which is just in Huby so it was too far a walk really and my dad was at work then, so I used to come up here at a night after school and go home with my dad really. So what sort of situations have you been there at night then? Haven’t really, never really had the… if it’s on your doorstep you don’t do you? No, but there’s a lot of people up there on a night. You often hear ’em up there at midnight. I don’t know what they’re doing but there’s quite a lot of fireworks let of at various times of the year, New Year’s Eve there’s usually quite a lot of fireworks go off, and the run up to Bonfire Night usually goes with a few fireworks… but nothing much really, because it could be a nuisance if they did.
106
Particularly Particularly with the animals? Yeah, definitely, yeah. Accidents and Emergencies
So no specific runrun-ins or any confrontations with anybody then? No, no, we haven’t really no. So basically people have been very… People have been very good yep, ’cos they respect it’s our property and they know they are getting something for nothing really, ’cos there’s we don’t charge anybody really. Sometimes think we could do with some facilities on there, could do with the council putting a toilet and car park up, but that’ll never happen. Very rare we get people coming wanting anything. We have quite a lot of accidents up there. There’s quite a few accidents, but now with the onset of mobile phones they don’t come running down here, but in my granddad’s day when he lived in the house often people came running down for the telephone to call the ambulance. But now, as soon as there’s an accident up there, the air ambulance is scrambled. Because there’ll be one…two or three a year.
107
We had one last Easter Monday: we were moving sheep out of the field at the back just down the road there, had about two hundred sheep coming up the road with the lambs and there was the paramedic come flying up out of North Rigton, couldn’t get past us ’cos we’d got all the sheep on the road and my sister was walking in front, she was sweating ’cos she thought she’d killed someone up on the crag, and with that the air ambulance flew over and landed just up in the field up here. It was a lady that had, well it was something of nothing really, she’d fallen and split her lip, just, how much will that of cost? About five, four or five months ago, there was the same scenario again, air ambulance landed on the corner there. They’d scrambled the air ambulance then, because the paramedic realised she’d only twisted, twisted her ankle but fairly bad and they’d sent two women ambulance drivers and they couldn’t lift the stretcher over the wall so they scrambled the air ambulance. And they brought a lighter stretcher and gave it to them … absolutely unbelievable how much it would have cost, and she’d sprained her ankle. They’d been called away from a motor accident going in to Leeds somewhere. Must have cost thousands and just an absolute waste a lot of it, but I
108
suppose if you were in a lot of pain you’d be glad to see ’em wouldn’t you? We do get quite a lot of accidents, but not many climbers. Very few climbers cos the climbers come prepared and know the dangers and stuff, but it’s usually walkers really and people, just day-trippers that up ‘n’ run about, or the wind gets them and, away they go. There isn’t many with a fatality, maybe three, four years ago and they’d been blown off the top right at the far side. It’s a big drop at the far side and it runs away off the top of the crag, and I suppose once you get going down there there’s no way back. It’s straight down onto rock. Oh and we’d a jumper, somebody committed suicide two or three years ago, the car was left at the bottom with a note in it and that was it. Do you know who they were or anything? No idea, no idea where they were from. We’ve had a few sort of suicides up near the crag. Had one, be ten or fifteen years ago, I went to go to the cattle early one morning and me uncle was with me and we drove into the field and there was a car parked and there was a fella laying in it, well just sat in the drivers seat, and I said “he’s dead.” And he’d gassed himself, and that was just up 109
onto the crag so, yeah, you see some sights but yeah generally there’s a lot of accidents but not in the climbing fraternity really. So, one fatality as far as you know, apart from the suicides? Yeah but we will have had a few, over the years they’ll have had a few yeah. If you looked it up, dunno what you’d look on for that but there’s a few yeah. Is it, apart from the person in the car, is it all the same place that they use? That far end is it? Yeah that’s where a lot of the accidents are, the big ones. If they’re gonna jump off they jump off around that far side because it’s a big drop. It’s, oh I dunno how far, about 100 foot I think. It’s a big drop. […] The new craze now is bouldering, which I suppose is the poor man’s climbing you get a lot of students come and all they need is a mattress, you get a thick rubber mattress like a cot mattress really, and they don’t need anything else. They just and climb the small rocks but try and climb up as far as they can get and if they fall off they land on a mattress. Apparently its very dangerous 110
Bouldering and Climbing
because you can hurt your back more falling from a smaller distance because you don’t have time to right yourself. Right, that’s interesting… You see a lot of students coming up from the train with a mattress on their back, yeah, it’s called bouldering. It’s the poor man’s climbing ’cos you don’t need any kit: just a pair of trainers and a bit of chalk on your hands and away you go, but…a lot of climbers go up there. It’s one of the most famous areas for climbing. Sir Chris Bonington goes up there quite a lot, or he used to do, it was in one of his books, he wrote about it. Very good climbing, very good climbing. It’s up there with a lot of ’em for climbing. Good difficult climbs. The Army practice abseiling off it at night, they do night time assaults off it, and the SAS have been once or twice in the Chinooks: bring ’em in at night and drop ’em off in their Chinooks… What, off on to the top? Just in the field, they came in September last year with their Chinooks. Two Chinooks landing, amazing spectacle really, all the 111
army men get out. They’d set up a big death slide off the top of the crag to do their assaults. I think they’d meant to be coming this spring with a Chinook, think they’re a bit unreliable! [laughs] [laughs] Maybe detained elsewhere…! So what about Weeton: is there a festival run or something? They used to do the Almscliffe Run from Weeton show but it was banned. Not last year, but two years ago and now they call it the Rougemont Chase because the police wouldn’t stop the traffic on the main road for them so they couldn’t do it. They wanted a phenomenal amount to have a policeman shut the road and let them come across the road, so they had to ban it. So now they go down around… well it’s called the Rougemont Chase, which is in Weeton, but no, it used to be a famous. A killer! An absolute killer running up there and back and a lot of runners used to come and do it that were good runners. Few friends of mine have done it and said it was the hardest, because they used to run…they used to run right up onto the top and then back again, from Weeton show. Come out of the Weeton show field and then straight up, straight up and straight across the main road, up the neighbouring farmer’s field, 112
The Almscliffe Run
and then straight across onto the top road, and then along what we call Sandy Lane, which is the lane that goes up on to the crag. Up that and over the stile and up onto the top: touch the rock and then back down again. It’s a big pity that they stopped doing it, because it was a good crowd puller for the Weeton show really. Yeah I think it was two years ago they finished it. But other than that, there’s nothing much else that goes on really up there, can’t think of any other stories to tell you…no. […] Prisoners of War
They used to live in - that room in there. When my granddad moved into the farm, it was in the war years, and in them days the government used to send prisoners of war out to help on the land, I think… I think we used to have two, two German prisoners of war, and they lived in what is our dining room now. They lived in there and worked on the farm. I think there were some more on at my granddad’s cousin’s farm at Stainburn, and I think they used to go out to the crag quite a lot did the German prisoners of war, just to have a bit of time off. They were just like one of the family.
113
So there might be some graffiti or whatever left up there? There’s a lot of graffiti up there, a lot of etchings on there, which you don’t see much of now, they don’t… There used to be people’d go up and chisel it, but you don’t see much of that now. I don’t think anyone has enough time today. One of my colleagues saw them them trying to do it with a penknife I think [laughs] Yeah! It’d take ’em a while….it’s a big, big landmark, big landmark… it’ll have a lot of history won’t it? Well, it was part of the Fawkes family estate originally. The boundary marks they’ve got, E.L. and T.F. … T.F. that was what was on the crag, that’s it…. Thomas Fawke’s one yeah, yeah. Thats gone missing, it was T.F., yes it was it was the boundary for the Farnley estate side, but it definitely had T.F. on, yeah. Someone pinched it! Amazing isn’t it? It would have just taken a bit of carrying down as well ‘cos it was a fair piece of stone! It’s surprising nobody’s tried to nick the stones that are in the quarry now, but they are just physically too heavy. They’d need a 114
machine and we have all the gates locked because we used to have quite a bit of bit of bother with motorbikers coming before a few years ago we used to have a lot of, well, quite a lot of trouble actually with people going up on a night on motorbikes and scrambling about. Actually on on the crag? Well, on the far side, round the far side where the quarry was would be. A good motorbike scrambling area, but ever since we put double gates on, one on the roadside and one at the top, that’s stopped it now. […] Filming
I went to watch ’em filming Blakes 7 and I was sat for ages watching ’em. The director was getting madder and madder ’cos pigeons kept coming out of the rocks and there weren’t any pigeons where Blakes 7 was! He were going bananas with these pigeons! It were taking ages to film ’cos he’d just get it all nicely set up, all filmed and everything and… a pigeon’d come out. [laughs] It were really funny to watch actually, ’cos Blakes 7 was set on… well… set in space wasn’t it?
115
No pigeons in space apparently! I was with my friends and we just went up to sat and watch ’em, and these pigeons kept coming out he just kept getting madder and madder… So what about other films up there, have they filmed anything else do you remember? They do quite a lot of Emmerdale up there. Quite a few fight scenes with Emmerdale, and bits and bats of people being pushed off the rocks. There was a short film that was filmed up there a year ago as in November and I was talking to the director that filmed it now and he’s a director for Coronation Street. I bumped into him in Harrogate the other week and he was saying they still haven’t finished it and it was only seven minutes long. They’ve run out of money because they were all people that were made redundant from Yorkshire Television, and they were hoping to get it finished and show it at one of these film festivals, but there were nobody really famous in it… There was a series called The Chase which was a BBC serial, and they did quite a lot of filming up there with that. They also filmed in the farmyard, which was quite interesting. They were on for a full day in the yard, which was a better job than farming! [laughs]
116
References Agrippa, Cornelius [Trans J.F.], 1651. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. London: Gregory Moule. Online at: http://esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agrippa1 .htm Visited 13 July 2010. Anon., 2007. Harewood 1807: A Commemoration of the Bi-Centenary of the Abolition of the Salve Trade. [Pamphlet, Harewood House]. Bennett, P., 2010. “Almscliffe Crags, North Rigton, North Yorkshire� in The Northern Online at Antiquarian. http://megalithix.wordpress.com/2010/04/15 /almscliffe-crags/ Visited 28 June 2010. Bogg, E., n.d. Higher Wharfeland: The Dale of Romance. York: John Sampson. Briggs, K., 1976. A Dictionary of Faries. Middlesex: Penguin Books. Brook, J., 2006. Providentialist Nationalism and Juvenile Mission Literature, 18401870. Available online at: http://henrymartyn.dnssystems.net/media/documents/Archive%20S eminar%20Papers%2020032009/Providentialist%20Nationalism%20an
117
d%20Juvenile%20Mission%20Literature% 201840-1870.pdf Visited 7 June 2010. Brown, S., 1999. A Sinister Sport. Online at: http://onanxs.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/asinister-sport/ Visited 9 June 2010. Burrows, J., n.d. A History of 2nd Otley Online at: Scout Group. http://212.69.44.120:1605/joomla15//joomla 15/index.php?option=com_content&view= article&id=47&Itemid=45 Visited 10 June 2010. Camden, W., 1610. Britain: Yorkshire: West Riding. Available online at: http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/text/chap _page.jsp?t_id=Camden&c_id=25 Visited 16 June 2010. Clarke, F., 1825. Deed of Exchange of Slaves between Lord Harewood and Mr. Harding [manuscript]. Online at: http://php.york.ac.uk/projects/harewoods lavery/transcribed.php?path=3-58%20%20A&recID=3/58 Visited 28 June 2010. Collyer, R., 1885. Ilkley: Ancient & Modern. Otley: Wm. Walker & Sons. Conway, M. D., 1874. “Ilkley” in The York Herald, Issue 5354, 8 April 1874, p. 3. 118
Cowling, E.T., 1946. Rombald's Way. Otley: William Walker & Sons Ltd. Dalette, A., 1932. La Catoptromancie Grecque et ses Dérivés. Liége: H. VaillantCarmanne. Dan Paich, S., 2007. Scenography and
Genius Loci: Re-investing Public Space with Mytho-Sculptural Elements for Online at Performance. http://www.artship.org/Scenography_Geniu s_Loci2.html Visited 11 June 2010. Debord, G-E., 1955. Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography. Online at: http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/ display/2 Visited 2 June 2010. Donno, E.S. (ed./trans.), 1972. Andrew Marvell: The Complete Poems. London: Penguin Books. Forrest, C. & Grainge, W., 1868. A
Ramble on Rumbalds Moor, Wakefield. “G.H. of S.”., 1852. “Almas-Cliff” in Notes and Queries, Vol.5, 25 March 1852, pp.296-7. Grainge, W. 1871 Harrogate & The Forest of Knaresborough. London: John Russel Smith 119
Gyrus, 1999. “The Altar Stones of Ilkley,” in Northern Earth, No. 78, Summer 1999. Hardy, J., 1878. “Wart and Wen Cures” in The Folk-Lore Record, Vol. 1, pp.216-228. Hargrove, E., 1821. History of the Castle, Town, and Forest of Knaresbrough. Ripon: T. Langdale. Hartland, E. Sidney, 1893. “Pin-Wells and Rag Bushes” in The Folk-Lore Record, Vol. 4, No, 4 (Dec 1893), pp.451-470. Heselton, P., 1997. Mirrors of Magic:
Evoking the Spirit of the Dewponds. Chievely: Capall Bann Publishing. Hughes, R., 1991. The Shock of the New. London: Thames and Hudson. [2005 edition] Isaacs, Rabbi R. H., (n.d.). The Prayer for
Dew: A Spiritual Connection to the Season in the Land of Israel. Online at: http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/ Jewish_Holidays/Passover/In_the_Commu nity/Prayer_for_Dew.shtml Visited 30 June 2010. Johnson,
Bradshaw.
S.,
2001.
Stray Notes on
Online at: http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/Mi 120
sc/Transcriptions/WRY/BradshawHistorica lNotes.html Visited 10 June 2010. Jones, J., 1859. The History and Antiquities of Harewood. London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co. Kenton, E., 1928. The Book of Earths. New York, William Morrow & Company. http://www.sacredtexts.com/earth/boe/index.htm Visited 5 June 2010. Laviolette, P. & McIntosh, A., 1997. Fairy Hills: Merging Heritage & Conservation. Available online at http://www.alastairmcintosh.com/articles/19 97_faerie_hills.htm Visited 28 June 2010. Legard, P., 2009. Abital: Conferences with
the Genii of Nocturnal and Diurnal Dew in vii Chapters. Leeds: Larkfall Press. Levi, E., 1854. Transcendental Magic (Trains: A.E.Waite). London: Bracken Books (1995 Edition). Marshall, P., 2005. Mystical Encounters
with the Natural World: Experiences and Explanations. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
121
Mowatt, B., 2001. “Prospero's Book” in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Spring, 2001), pp. 1-33. Paget, V. (as Venon Lee), 1925. The
Golden Keys and Other Essays on the Genius Loci. London: John Lane. Parkinson, Rev. T., 1889. Yorkshire Legends and Traditions. London: Elliot Stock. Pope, A., 1731. Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle IV To Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington. Online at http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1632.ht ml Visited 11 June 2010. Radford, E. & M.; Hole, C. (ed.), 1978. Superstitions of the Countryside. London: Arrow Books. Radford, G., 1870. “Turner in Wharfedale” in Portfolio, 15, January 1884, pp.59-62. Raphaelm 1825. The Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century. London: Knight and Lacey. Rhys, J., 1893. Sacred Wells in Wales in Folklore, Vol, 4, No. 1 (Mar. 1893), pp.5579.
122
Ryan, W.F., 1999. The Bathhouse at Midnight: Magic in Russia. Stroud, Sutton Publishing Limited. R.,
1665.
Witchcraft,
Scot,
Book
The Discovery of XV. Online at:
http://esotericarchives.com/solomon/scot16. htm Visited 13 July 2010. Scrutton, C. (ed.), 1994. Yorkshire Rocks and Landscape. Maryport: Ellenbank Press. H. T. 1879. Archaeologia Adelensis. London, W.H. Allen & Co.
Simpson,
Slocum, J. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Online at: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/book s/asd Visited 15 June 2010. Smith, A. H., 1961. The Place-Names of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Vol. 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Speight, H., 1904. Kirkby Overblow and District. London: Elliott Stock. Thorne, R.G., 1986. The House of Commons 1790-1820, Volume I. London: Secker & Warburg.
Black Dogs: Guardians of the Corpse Ways. Online at: Trubshaw,
B.,
1994.
123
http://www.indigogroup.co.uk/edge/bdogs.h tm Visited 1 July 2010. Vitruvius [Trans. M. Hicky Morgan], 1960. The Ten Books on Architecture. New York: Dover Publications. Weaver, R. 1840. Monumenta Antiqua. London, J. B. Nichols and Son. Yates, F., 1966. The Art of Memory. London: Pimlico [1999 edition].
124
4
125
126 www.almias.org.uk