ECHO MEMORIES: TAKE A STROLL WHERE THE GHOST HOUNDS ROAMED From the Northern Echo, first published Wednesday 12th Feb 2003. SPOOKY. No other word will do. Harewood Grove is one of Darlington’s spookiest corners. A hulking, forbidding terrace, unlike anything...
Folklore
The Fiddlers of Inverness
Tomnahurich is a steep wooded hill just on the outskirts of Inverness. It is said to be a fairy hill into which people could be lured often never to return. This tale of two fiddlers recounts the story of just such an unfortunate pair… The two travelling Fiddlers were...
The Harper in Fairlyand
A Story from Celtic sourcesAs retold by Beth Vaughan The King, Sir Orfeo, could play the harp like no one else. When he played, birds stopped singing, just to listen. It was a small harp, one he could tuck under his arm and take with him wherever wanted. On afternoons...
Dando and the Wild Hunt / Dandos Dogs
There are many tales to explain the origin of the spectral wild hunt, this one is from the Parish of St Germans in Cornwall. It explains how a priest with low morals became a demon huntsman. In the medieval period the priest of the parish of St Germans was called...
The Wild Hunt in Dartmoor, Devon
This particularly sinister folktale of the wild hunt is from Devon, and is based in the Dartmoor area, a place full of tales of the supernatural, especially the wild hunt. One wild stormy night a farmer was returning home from Widecombe, somewhat worse the wear from...
The Lambton Worm
The story of the Lambton worm is perhaps the most famous of the dragon/worm/wyvern stories that abound in the north of England, alleged to have inspired Bram Stokers final novel “The Lair of the White Worm”. There are many similar stories from the region...
The King of the Fairies
The King of the Fairies – From J. Bowker, Goblin Tales of Lancashire, p. 52.On the high road from Manchester to Stockport, where Levenshulme Church now stands, there lived many years ago an old man named Daniel Burton. (His grandson was afterwards for many years...
Elf Bull
Jamieson’s Northern Antiquities gives the story of the most famous of the Crodh Mara, the cow bred by the visit of a water-bull and of the farmer too mean for gratitude. The elf-bull is small, compared with earthly bulls, of a mousecolour; Mosted [crop-eared],...
Elidor and the Golden Ball
Giraldus Cambrensis in ITINERARIUM CAMBRIAE, the account of his journey through Wales in 1188, gives a remarkable narrative of a boy’s visit to Fairyland. It contains so mush information in so short a space that it deserves to be included in full. It is one of...
Tale – The Doctor and the Fairy Princess
Late one night, so the story goes, a great doctor, who lived near Lough Neagh, was awoke by the sound of a carriage driving up to his door, followed by a loud ring. Hastily throwing on his clothes, the doctor ran down, when he saw a little sprite of a page standing at...