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Folklore and prehistoric sites - Ep 28
347 Plays4 years ago
Ghosts, magic, witches and sacrifice, just in time for Halloween! Kim talks to Sue Greaney and Joana Valdez-Tullet about folklore and prehistoric sites in Europe. Sue is working on. PhD about Neolithic sites in Britain and Ireland and is responsible for interpretation at Stonehenge for English Heritage but got into folklore due to a chance find in a junk shop. Joana works for Scotland’s Rock Art where she uses her doctoral research into rock art, and has uncovered lots of folk tales related to panels of rock art.
Links
Contact
- Twitter: @prehistpod
- Kim Biddulph: @kimbiddulph
- Sue Greaney: @SueGreaney
- Joana Valdez-Tullet: @JoanaValdez
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Transcript
Introduction to Prehistories Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Welcome to Prehistories. I'm Kim Biddelph. If you've come back to listen after listening to one of the other episodes, then thank you very much for returning. If you've never listened before, then welcome.
The Influence of Ancient Stories on Modern Narratives
00:00:23
Speaker
In this podcast I talk to guests, usually archaeologists of some description, about the evidence behind the stories people tell, particularly about prehistory, although sometimes a branch out into other periods as well. We've talked about novels, films, poems, and more recently some of the myths and legends that were possibly the crystallised form of an oral tradition, stretching back in some cases to the prehistoric past.
00:00:53
Speaker
In the last episode, for example, I talked to Rina Maguire about On Raven's Wing by Morgan Clewellyn, which was a modern retelling of the Ulster cycle, particularly the life of Colin, including the Tyne Bocouli. I really feel that these stories have inserted themselves into many narratives of Iron Age Europe, even while the archaeologists who do so decry their reliability for telling us about the Irish Iron Age, or the British Iron Age, or the European Iron Age.
00:01:21
Speaker
But in fact, Reena was able to tell me about some of the actual evidence for things like cattle raids from the Irish Iron Age that do confirm some of the things in these old stories. Of course, some of it's a load of rubbish, of course.
Exploring Neolithic and Western European Folktales
00:01:36
Speaker
Today, I'm talking to two archaeologists of the Neolithic of Western Europe, but we're looking at the later folk tales attached to these Neolithic and other remains that later people saw around them.
00:01:48
Speaker
including stone circles, burial mounds and rock art. So let me introduce my guests. Returning after being on the podcast a couple of years ago now, I think, is Susan Greenie of English Heritage.
00:02:09
Speaker
We talked about Bernard Caldwell's Stonehenge at that point, didn't we, Sue? We did. It seems like a long time ago. I know. Maybe it's more than two years, actually. And Sue is in charge of the interpretation at Stonehenge itself, as well as other English heritage properties. You're also studying for a PhD in the Neolithic monuments of Britain and Ireland. What is the exact topic, sorry, Sue? My PhD at Cardiff is Neolithic monument complexes, so looking at clusters of monuments and how they develop through the Neolithic period.
00:02:39
Speaker
Ah, lovely. So, I mean, the Stonehenge is obviously one cluster and you've got, but you're looking perhaps at the Boyne Monuments as well, the Bent of the Boyne? Yes, that's right. Yeah. So, Stonehenge obviously is one of my case studies. The Bruna Boynea, which is the Boyne Valley Monuments, is another one. Also looking at, particularly at monuments in the town of Dorchester in Dorset, where I've been doing quite a lot of new radiocarbon dating of those monuments to try and work out a much better chronology for them. Oh, great.
00:03:07
Speaker
Yeah, Dorchester is really interesting because it's got that henge, hasn't it? Then it was later used by the Romans as well, wasn't it? That's right. Yeah, there's a henge, a really unusual henge called Mambri Rings right in the middle of town, which you can still visit today. And it's a very small kind of henge, but it was completely remodeled and used as an amphitheatre in the Roman period. Yeah, they do make quite good amphitheatres, especially if they're small, like that one. I remember going there many, many years ago,
00:03:36
Speaker
and of course, Visiting Made in Custom nearby as
Stonehenge: Reopening and Research
00:03:38
Speaker
well. Yeah, there's a whole load of monuments that sit underneath the town that are kind of really interesting. Ah, there. Yeah. Cool. I didn't know that. I only knew about Monbury Springs. That's interesting. I find it so strange sometimes to think about the sites that we forget about because they are built on. So in my local area, there's just been a hill fort project in the Chiltons. And although Aylesbury is slightly outside the Chiltons,
00:04:03
Speaker
because it's the town there, the hill fort there hasn't really been taken on as part of any kind of project theorising or anything. It has had a few explanations, but it's always forgotten about because it's underneath the town, basically. Yeah, I think particularly with prehistoric monuments, we all know the kind of ones that survive, the breeze and the stonehenges and the Ring of Brodger, but there's so much more than that built of earth and timber that we've lost. And those ones are the ones that actually tend to be sometimes more interesting. Yeah, absolutely.
00:04:33
Speaker
I wanted to ask actually too, is Stonehenge open now for the visiting public? Yeah, we are back open. We reopened on the 4th of July. You have to pre-book if you would like to visit, but we are definitely open and socially distancing. And in fact, it's a really, really good time to come visit Stonehenge because it's not very busy and we don't have our kind of huge numbers of international tourists
Cataloguing Scotland's Prehistoric Rock Art
00:04:54
Speaker
at the moment. So if you fancy a walk in the Stonehenge landscape and a nice quiet visit, now is a good time to come.
00:04:59
Speaker
Yeah, that is true actually. I used to run some tours there for a little company and yeah, you had to get there early to get in before the international tourists and their big buses. And is the museum open and the Neolithic houses? Yes, the exhibition is open. The Neolithic houses unfortunately at the moment aren't. They're really small and
00:05:19
Speaker
to get in there and still keep two metres from each other is tricky at the moment. So, yeah, the exhibition space is open, our temporary exhibition space is open, but not the Neolithic houses on the inside at the moment. But you can walk around the outside of them. Exactly, yeah. Lovely. Lovely. My second guest today is Joanna Valdez Tullat, who works with Scotland's Rock Art Project.
00:05:42
Speaker
I think we got to know each other. We came across each other whilst doing Archaeology 31, didn't we, I think? Maybe last year or the year before? I don't know. Sorry. I'm sure that's where I first came across you when it was that in January, sharing a picture a day on Archaeology, a different theme. Oh, yeah, definitely. Yes, I did that. Yeah, sorry. It's a long time ago, don't worry.
00:06:08
Speaker
No, no, it's just that I didn't quite relate immediately to what archaeology 31 was straight away. But yes, definitely, I did share a lot of pictures. I did your challenge, indeed. Yeah, there was some lovely pictures, lots and lots of lovely rock art and a few other things as well. Yeah, no, it's lovely. I really enjoy seeing what everybody has to share. It's quite interesting.
00:06:29
Speaker
Yeah, it is. It was lovely to have lots of people from all over the world get involved. So, and you're looking at the moment at Scotland's rock art. So what kinds of rock art do you get? Is there anything specific you're looking at the moment? The project is hosted by Historic Environments Scotland. And it's also in partnership with University of Edinburgh and Glasgow School of Arts. And basically, what we are trying to do is to catalogue all of the prehistoric rock art that is
00:06:59
Speaker
known in Scotland. And basically, that's the focus of the project. And then it's also a community led project. So we have involvement with local communities and we have trained a few of them who are doing a lot of the recording in the field. And then we are now starting to move on to the research part. So we have a good data set now of over 1000 panels that we've recorded. We were supposed to have
00:07:25
Speaker
more by now, but you know, there's COVID and stuff. Yeah, absolutely. We've not been allowed to go out. But we have already moved to a more research based part of the project where we will, you know, try to understand what is the role of this type of rock art in prehistoric life in Scotland, or what it is now Scotland. Yeah. And of course, you're quite well placed to do that. You did your PhD on rock art in the Atlantic.
00:07:52
Speaker
area and it was published last year by the British Archaeological Report, wasn't it? It was a very good book and very good overview of rock art, but not just in Scotland, in a much larger area. Yeah, so essentially the rock art that we have here in Scotland is very similar to other types of rock art that we find in northwest Iberia, for example, the same one that we have in very well-known areas in England, like Yorkshire, Northumbria and Northumberland.
00:08:21
Speaker
and also in Ireland. Some authors also include France, but to me it wasn't relevant because I couldn't find any examples of open-air carvings in France, I think. It might be that they don't exist anymore or perhaps there is just no research on the topic because it's completely overshadowed by the monuments, perhaps, and the caves. So I didn't include it because it didn't really fit the criteria of my project.
00:08:47
Speaker
But essentially it's the same type of rock art and the project is all about understanding these connections and why we have this rock art that is so similar everywhere. So essentially we're talking about cup and rings and cup marks and spirals and, you know, lots of circular little things. Yeah. And that extends down to the Iberian Peninsula as well, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. Just in the Northwest. Ah, okay. For now anyway. So far, that's what we know. There are a few examples starting to pop up here and there, but
00:09:16
Speaker
It's not very consistent, so we have it well-delimited in the northwest. There are other types of rock art in Iberia that are more or less contemporary of this one, of Atlantic art as well. But Atlantic art, as how we defined it, is very well-defined in northwest Iberia mostly.
Stonehenge's Geological Secrets and Cultural Stories
00:09:33
Speaker
That's where it's located. Lovely. I love that area. I've been to Cantabria a few times. I must go to Asturias and also obviously try to get to North Portugal as well to see some of this stuff. Lovely.
00:09:46
Speaker
That project and your job sound amazing, Johanna. My undergraduate dissertation was on open air rock art in Southwest Ireland, and I was quite into my rock art studies a few years ago, so it sounds like an ideal job. Yeah, well, yeah, no, it's been interesting. I mean, I was going to say, I think I was lucky because this project kind of came up just as I was about to finish. And it feels like it's kind of a continuation of
00:10:11
Speaker
what I was doing, obviously now it's a little bit more geographically constrained, but with a lot more data. Yeah, and it's interesting how new sites do crop up when, you know, they've been around for ages or perhaps recorded many years ago and then lost under turf or something and they turn up again. It's amazing. I believe there are congratulations to you as well, Sue, for a recent study on the provenance of the Sarson stones at Stonehenge.
00:10:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. I was a very small part in a much larger project, which was looking at the geology of the Sarson stones at Stonehenge, which are the really big stones for anyone who isn't familiar with the site. There are two sets of stones at Stonehenge. The blue stones, which we've known for a very long time, came from Southwest Wales. But the large Sarsens, we haven't really ever had conclusive proof of where exactly they came from. And now some new work has shown
00:11:06
Speaker
that they come most probably from the Westwoods area, which is just near Marlborough, up on the Marlborough Downs, about 15 miles north of Stonehenge. We've managed to show fairly conclusively, although there's still some more work to be done, that the geology of the sartans really closely matches the ones that still exist up there at Westwoods. So it's great to be able to finally say we know where the stones come from. Yeah, it is amazing. It's always been, as you say, thought to be in that general area, but to have
00:11:34
Speaker
more of a pinpointed location is amazing stuff. It was great. There was a big splash in British Archaeology magazine this month on it. So I will put a link to that. Is there a published article out in a journal? Yes.
00:11:48
Speaker
article out in Science Advances and it's open access so the link is at the end of that British Archaeology article if anyone wants to follow it up. Oh I must have missed that when I read it. I will put the links to that then and also to your book Joanna on the show notes. So I mean we've come together to talk about folk stories related to prehistoric monuments and none of us is a folklorist specialist but finds them all very fascinating.
00:12:13
Speaker
Sue, I often see you post on Folklore Thursday a lot and it's always really fascinating and I'm amazed how many stories there are. Yeah, that was actually, so I got interested in this particularly when I was researching Stanton Drew, which is a stone circle or a couple of stone circles actually sitting together just south of Bristol. And I was working on a small interpretation project there for some new visitor information panels.
00:12:39
Speaker
And there's some brilliant folklore associated with that site, which we might talk about a bit more later. But one of the illustrations I was looking for for those panels, it was a cigarette card. And there was a series of cigarette cards published by churchmen cigarettes in the 1950s, which illustrated 50 different stories of British folklore. And one of those cards illustrated the folklore of Stanton Drew, which is the the dances, the idea that the stones are petrified dancers.
00:13:07
Speaker
And I was looking for this image and looking for image licensing to buy the image and the image was going to cost me about 50 quid to, to buy from a picture library. And then I realized that if I looked on eBay, I could buy the entire set of these cigarette cards, illustrating 50 different stories and the one that stands in drew for about 13 pounds. So I bought it and then have been, I'm nearly at the end now actually, I've been sort of honest that folklore Thursday when the theme has matched one of the cigarette cards, I've been tweeting out the stories from it.
00:13:36
Speaker
I think they're great. And they're written in a really lovely, concise 1950s way, which is quite appealing. Yes. They've got nice illustrations as well. So they are very attractive. Yeah, they are. And it's sort of tapped into it. So Stanton Drew is one of those sites where there's a lot of folklore attached to it. And Leslie Grinsill, who is kind of an archaeologist who works a lot in the 1970s, wrote an entire pamphlet all about the different folklore stories of Stanton Drew. And so, yeah, I find those stories
00:14:06
Speaker
really, really interesting. They're kind of often sidelined a lot as kind of not proper archaeology or not kind of something we would talk about in technical reports and academic articles and things. But actually, they're just as much part of the history of the sites. And I'm quite passionate about the idea that we kind of share
00:14:25
Speaker
I completely agree. Yeah, I agree. Because otherwise they're going to die out. Joanna, you recently have found a few stories. You were told that there's no folklore around Scottish rock outside, but you've found some interesting stories in your research. Yeah, that's right. So my interest in folk stories began because before starting my PhD even, I did a lot of commercial archaeology and I did a lot of surveys back in Portugal and Spain. And we have
00:14:55
Speaker
this, we still have this population is really old population that is now dying out, unfortunately, in their 80s and 90s that are still very connected to the land, you know, they're people who were born in one place and live their whole life in that same place. And so, you know, they know the landscape, and they interact with it in a way that I don't think we will ever be able to understand, because they know all the stories, and they know all the little
00:15:22
Speaker
pieces. So for example, I remember asking, so have you heard of this, and they will immediately tell you from the they have this mental map, and they will tell you where it is. But there's always something more, it's just not, it's just not a map, you know, it's like everything comes alive, where they tell you where they talk to you about it. And often we they'd be telling us lots of these folk tales and legends about particularly prehistoric sites, because I guess that
00:15:48
Speaker
people don't necessarily understand what they were for and how old they are. And I think that there is this need to incorporate them into their own understanding of their landscape somehow. And so, you know, there are these associated folk tales to them that they would kind of tell us about it. And I find that really fascinating. And there's loads of them about rock art as well. So when I moved here, and when I started working, I was also interested in recording that part of the rock art, because as you know, as Sue is saying, this is what really
00:16:17
Speaker
keeps the monuments and the landscapes alive, isn't it? Because otherwise, we're just kind of argumentically recording them. And yeah, I was told that there wasn't much in Scotland. And suddenly, I thought about doing a Facebook post. Scotland's Rock Art Project has a Facebook page, and we have this Monday facts. And I thought I'd look into folk tales. And suddenly, I found quite a few things, which was quite surprising. And yeah, it was it was really interesting, actually. So there are some things.
00:16:44
Speaker
about folktales. Oh, well, we will hear about them after this break. And we're back. So Joanna, you were saying that you did find some tales related to Scottish rock art. Yeah, so there is one that is fairly known, certainly in the area around Edinburgh, which is about a stone, a rock in Tormain Hill, which was destroyed in the mid 20th century at some point.
00:17:12
Speaker
then it's related to witchcraft. So there is this idea that, you know, there's some magic attached to it, and also some fertility rights that people would do. So they say that women would sit on it, and they would kind of just slide down to it, presumably to become pregnant at some point. So that was the only one that I knew about. But then there were others that when I started looking into this, that started playing out. And obviously, there's, there's the
00:17:37
Speaker
relationship with the fairies is that some of them have, you know, connections to the fairies where they live or where they've been seen or where they've been heard for the last time, which is interesting because it's always in the last decade of the 19th century. Yeah. Yeah. And there's lots of them that involve magic and witchcraft and witches. Also evil, a lot of them mentioned, you know, the devil and another
00:18:02
Speaker
evil spirits. There's an interesting tale about the Highlands where they say that people would put milk in the cup marks to appease the ghosts and make sure that they would have, you know, nice crops and the animals would be providing him lots of food and milk and things like that. There's also some others related to healing. So there is one that is known as the measles rock where people would take their children to cure them for measles.
00:18:30
Speaker
Yeah. And obviously there are others that are related to, you know, saints, which I think have to do with Christianization processes. And there's some other odd ones. So for example, Donat in Argyle, there is this shape on a rock, which is supposed to be the shape of a foot where supposedly the new Scottish kings would be crowned. So there's quite a variety of them. I haven't really had time to kind of delve into it in a lot of detail, but you know, there seems to be quite a lot to look into it.
00:19:00
Speaker
There does seem to be quite a lot now and some of them sound very familiar. You were talking about Stanton Drew, so what kind of other things did you find out about that? Well, interestingly, the themes that come out of these stories seem to be very, the reason they sound so familiar is because they do get attached to lots of different sites. So, you know, sites being named after giants or devils is just really common. You just get so many different sites that are, you know, the devil's arrows and the devil's seat and the devil's
00:19:30
Speaker
you know, hunchback.
Legendary Myths of Stone Circles
00:19:31
Speaker
And often these names are replied not just to prehistoric sites that we know today are monuments, but also to natural features and natural stones, aeratics and things like that. But yeah, at Stanton Drew. So Stanton Drew is one of those sites that kind of has a number of different stories attached to it. The most famous one is the fact that it's the petrified dancers. So the idea is that there's a wedding. So three of the stones stand together
00:19:57
Speaker
probably some sort of cove, so a little kind of arrangement of three stones and they're known as, you know, the bride, the groom and the priest basically. They're standing as if they're at a wedding and the stones are referred to as the wedding by John Albury who visits in 1644. So he says that they're called the wedding. And the idea is that the wedding party, so all the stones are the guests at the wedding, they attend this big wedding, it's a massively happy occasion
00:20:22
Speaker
that as the night draws on, they are dancing in the field and there's a fiddler playing for them. But when at midnight strikes, he says, I can't play anymore because it's the Sabbath. The Lord's Day has begun. And the bride basically says, you know, I want to carry on dancing. Someone send me a musician and a gaily dressed fiddler comes by and it's the devil in disguise, in effect, who then plays the fiddle faster and faster and faster until the revelers are turned to stone.
00:20:48
Speaker
So the idea is that this is a petrified wedding party. And that's actually quite a common idea. You get that with the merry maidens down in Cornwall. Yeah. There are lots of stories that stones can dance at night or that they move at night. Yes. The nine stones down in Devon is often said to be sort of maidens that dance. And of course, there's others like the hurlers down in Cornwall, where they are supposed to have been turned to stone because they were hurling, playing.
00:21:16
Speaker
sporting match again on the Sabbath on the Sunday. So they're turned to stone by St. Clair who's the local saint there. So it's a really common theme and it's probably part of a kind of widespread Christian movement that placed massive emphasis on keeping the Sabbath holy and keeping it free from toil and you know not dancing, not playing sports etc etc.
00:21:36
Speaker
that gets kind of attached to these prehistoric sites. So that's the main story at Stanton Drew, but there are also another story, which is that the stones are countless. So if you try and count the stones, you never get the same number twice.
00:21:49
Speaker
Oh, I've got that. Yeah, that crops up so often. It does, it crops up on many sites. And it often, it usually does crop up at sites where it is actually quite tricky to count the stones. As someone who works on Stonehenge a lot, I always get asked how many stones are there. And you have to say, well, it depends if you count every stone that's fallen down and broken into two as one or two stones.
00:22:09
Speaker
And it depends if you count the stones that are still under the ground or, you know, so it's no wonder that, you know, that the idea comes up that you can't count the stones twice. And if you are successful, that you would basically drop down dead. Yes. So this is attached to Stanton Drew, but it's also related with Stonehenge. Again, in the 16th century, people record that this legend attached to the stones at Stonehenge. There's a site down in Kent called Kitscote House, which is another English heritage guardianship site.
00:22:37
Speaker
and next to it is Little Kitsukote House, which again is actually known as the Countless Stones. So that's a kind of really common theme. Yeah, and then there's also a few other small ones which get attached to Stanton Drew, but I think they may be ones that get attached to it from other places. So there's an idea that the stones go down to the river to drink, that the stones move, particularly if there's a full moon or a hunter's moon. But actually I'm not sure that's an original story to Stanton Drew. I think it may have been
00:23:06
Speaker
kind of projected onto it from it being because it does crop up other prehistoric sites. That's the thing with folklore, isn't it? It's kind of, it gets confused, it gets added to, it gets kind of merged together, smushed together, and moved into different places. And it's like a tangled bank of webs, you know, kind of not able to really
00:23:29
Speaker
untangle the stories that well. Yeah. By the way, is there a bird or a very vocal cat somewhere? I'm sorry, it's my cat. Oh no, that's okay. We love her. She's been purring around me. She's been meowing around me. I'm trying to keep her quiet, but she doesn't stop. She's got a sweet little kind of like a, it does sound a little bit like a bird, kind of
00:23:53
Speaker
Yeah. A little trill. That's beautiful. Yeah, she has a funny meow. What's her name? She's the Gira. Ah, the Gira. She's all black. Cool. Oh, lovely. No, that's absolutely fine. Don't worry about that. Don't apologize for your pet. That's great. Yeah. We don't mind that. So I was going to say, yes, that is some of those things that you mentioned, Sue there.
00:24:18
Speaker
reminds me of a site that I sometimes go to to do some interpretation, some live interpretation, and dressing up and stuff. And it's the Rollrise Stones, which are on the Oxfordshire Warwickshire border. And they have the same one about not being able to count them. But that does make it makes sense in the same way as it does at Stonehenge, because
00:24:39
Speaker
some of the stones that were taken away, some were put back. They've all been moved, some of them had fallen down, so they were put back up. And they're really quite eroded as well over the years because of the particular type of stone they're made out of, a limestone. So you've got no idea really if two stones used to be one, and now it's been eroded into two. So it's got the same kind of story, but it's also got a really interesting story
00:25:06
Speaker
I don't know if it's unique as such, but it's kind of a slight kind of variation on the theme of witches and turning people to stone. So at the Royal Rite of Stones, what you've got is...
00:25:17
Speaker
a heap of stones that are leaning towards each other, which is probably the earliest monument there and it's probably middle Neolithic chamber tomb that has lost its covering of earth. So it's a dolmen basically. You've got the stone circle and you've got a single monolith which is now over the road and there was a real battle, oh I think the battle is still going on actually with the council who want to widen the road.
00:25:42
Speaker
And seriously, there's not much to widen it between the stone circle on one side and the king stone, which is the monolith on the other side. And the king stone, the single one on its own, might be the latest, probably might even be Bronze Age, put there as a burial marker. But the story, of course, is much more interesting in many ways, that there was a king who had come from battle, been defeated and was very upset. He had his men with him and his men set up a camp in a circle around a fire.
00:26:13
Speaker
But there were some knights who weren't very happy, who went off a little way away and were leaning together, whispering to each other. So the stones that used to be in the chamber tomb and now denuded, those are known as the whispering knights. So they're plotting against the king. And he wanders off because he's very disconsolate. And a witch comes up and says, I will grant you the kingdom if you can see Long Compton from the top of this hill by only taking seven steps.
00:26:43
Speaker
And he thinks, gosh, that's easy. I can do that. And as he's taking his seven steps up the hill, the hill grows higher and higher above him so that he can't see it. And she turns him and his bend to stone. And she turns into an elder tree. I think it's a lovely story. And what was quite interesting is that up until the 1980s, it wasn't realized that where the kingstone sits is actually on top of another burial mound.
00:27:11
Speaker
So the hill was originally not that high, but you know. Yeah, it's a great story. It is a great story. It so cleverly evokes what the stones look like now because the whispering lights do really look like a group of people kind of huddled whispering together, don't they? You can kind of really imagine why people kind of
00:27:30
Speaker
gave that story to the site. It is quite an unusual one as far as I know, though of course Stonehenge is also referred to by Geoffrey of Monmouth as being a memorial to a fallen battle to a crew of kind of early medieval supposedly battle who get killed and defeated in a big battle against the Saxons. So that idea of having kind of a king and his army is kind of repeated there. But as far as I know, I don't know of any others that are so specific about that. It's a really good story.
00:27:58
Speaker
is very well developed here. And about Stonehenge, then it's Merlin goes and gets Stonehenge from Ireland. Is that right? That's right, yes. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth. Yeah. So we think that Geoffrey of Monmouth is doing a bit of taking things that he's heard from local people and stories and a bit of embellishing and making up because basically, you know, his history is writing a nationalist history of
00:28:22
Speaker
of Britain. But yeah, he describes how Uther Pendragon, who is the king at the time, there's a big battle and the army gets defeated on Salisbury Plain, but he then wins the overall kind of war and comes back and decides to erect a memorial to all these 460 slain soldiers. And he asks Merlin for his help basically in bringing a stone circle from Ireland
00:28:45
Speaker
which is known as the Coria Gigantam, so the Giant's Dance. So again, we see the idea that this is the Giant's Dance or the Giant's Ring, same as the dancing idea at Stanton Drew. And Merlin takes off a load of men and goes and fetches this stone circle from Ireland and uses magical kind of machines of some kind to bring them all the way back to Salisbury Plain, where he sets them up in a circle in the same way that they had been in Ireland.
00:29:11
Speaker
and it's then a memorial to the slain dead. So it's a really, obviously, Geoffrey kind of develops this as quite a detailed
Evolution of Folklore Over Time
00:29:19
Speaker
story. But he is probably drawing on other older stories because another antiquarian also records the idea that the stones come from Ireland in a completely different kind of setting. Yes, it was Tom Wood. You found something in one of his books recently. Yeah, so that was about how
00:29:36
Speaker
I'm going to remember the story of stuff in my head now, but that he was brought from Ireland and it was brought from a witch.
00:29:42
Speaker
And it looked like her behind or something? Yeah, it was supposed to be from her backside, but I'm not sure if that's her backside as in it was her mountain or her land, her backland. I don't know, it just tickled me. It was quite funny. But yeah, again, Merlin sort of went and tricked the witch in effect by saying, basically, I'll take the stones from you in the time it takes to count out as many coins as you can. So she thinks it's going to take him forever to move all these stones.
00:30:10
Speaker
she's going to get loads of money. But even before she's picked up the first coin, the stones have gone. They've been moved by kind of magic. Bad magic. Yeah. There's an idea there that, okay, so that story is quite complicated. He also suggests that Merlin is a giant. I mean, in the earliest depiction of that story in Wace's Roman de Brute, Merlin is a big man. He's a giant.
00:30:34
Speaker
And the stones are called the giant's dance. So again, we've got an idea there, which is very common that the giants built prehistoric monuments, which is a kind of logical conclusion to come to really in some ways about how people might've moved such enormous stones. Well, of course they were just giants, so it was easier for them. So you get that a lot with kind of giant stones and apron full of giants. And there's a famous passage tomb on Anglesey called Barcloid the Gaius, which is the giant's apron full.
00:31:04
Speaker
translators. So, kind of, you know, the mound of earth that's fallen from the giant's apron. But the Geoff me and Momma story with Stonehenge is really interesting because there are some hints that there are some truths in it and... I was going to ask about that, yeah. Yeah. So the idea that the stones come from Ireland, we now know that they come from Southwest Wales, or some of them do, the blue stones do. Is there some folk memory of the fact that the stones were brought over really long distances, kept
00:31:33
Speaker
since the Neolithic period, it's kind of mad to think about it. But it is quite uncanny how that they, you know, that they have described these stones as coming from the far west. And to be honest, at the time, they're writing, you know, Ireland and southwest Pembroke share up are not dissimilar places in terms of, you know, where you're thinking. So and the idea is also told in that that they're healing stones, that these blue stones have got healing properties. And we have several records of people using the stones
00:32:01
Speaker
at Stonehenge to pour water over them and use that water for healing purposes. And again, healing is a common motif of quite a lot of these sites. Yeah, is that in the medieval period they were doing that at Stonehenge? Yeah, it's recorded for a few sites, but not recorded directly for Stonehenge itself, as in people actually still doing it, but for the blue stones. So there's quite a few wells and springs in
00:32:27
Speaker
the Procelli Hills, which I think locally are recorded as having healing properties. Yeah, holy wells and things, yeah. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating. Joanna, when you were talking a little bit about some of the prehistoric sites that you've come across in your researchers in Spain and Portugal, and talking to people about them there, are they similar kind of folk tales that they have, or are there any differences?
00:32:53
Speaker
Well, the characters are slightly different, but the essence of the stories is very similar. So essentially, our folklore and the folk tales tend to be about the Arab peoples who came to Iberian the eighth century. So in 711, that's the official date, we see a lot of movements of people from Northern Africa.
00:33:15
Speaker
coming into Iberia, and then you have the people who are living in Iberia all moving up north. And they did establish themselves there. And obviously, you know, there was lots of back and forth in terms of territory regaining. They never really settled completely in the north of the peninsula. But still, even in that area, you have lots of stories and legends about them.
00:33:40
Speaker
And they tend to be about princesses that are stuck in, well, when it comes to rock art anyway, but they are similar to, you know, other funerary monuments and things. Princesses, so Moorish, we call them the Moors. So Moorish princesses that are stuck in these great big outcrops and, you know, it needs a specific person, usually a male, to come and break the curse somehow. Oh, wow.
00:34:09
Speaker
generally the story, when they do get to break the curse, often the princess can leave, but then they get stuck in the outcrop themselves. When it's not a princess, and they're always incredibly beautiful, when it's not a princess, then there's treasure buried in. So there are lots of stories like that as well. We also have stories of fertility, interestingly, with similar things, like people have to slide and things like that. So we don't have fairies. Yeah, we have other types of characters. But I think, you know,
00:34:39
Speaker
the magic, the witches, and all these kind of mythical creatures. And I hate to say it like the otherness of these places. It's about putting people who are other than us in them. And whether that's fairies, the two I did date in Ireland, or trolls and elves in Scandinavia, or
00:35:03
Speaker
whatever, because you've got a lot of those in burial mounds and stuff, haven't you? And it's about having something that's different to us. Because it's not something that is part of people's culture directly. And I think that they have to explain it somehow. We also have some that relate to the Virgin Mary, for example, and other stories that are, you know, obviously about the Christianisation process, for example, there are some caves
00:35:32
Speaker
at some point in the fourth century, fifth century, all the worship of natural features was forbidden. And then people started transforming their rituals into something that was more appeasing to the Christian church. So they started saying that they started seeing these Virgin Marys in these caves that potentially already had some importance for the people, but now they needed the church to approve it. So they started kind of, let's say,
00:36:01
Speaker
putting different clothing on, you know, Christian clothing. We also have there is a really interesting tale about this one rock with lots of cup and rings that I find fascinating, where they say that the Virgin Mary was passing by and then she stopped to have her meal. And you know, she had lots of little plates that she just, you know, put on the on the rock. And when she left, because she is this kind of magical creature, this magical person, obviously, something like
00:36:30
Speaker
miraculous happen and all the shapes of the plates were stuck on the rock. And that's how they kind of explained the cup and rings. That's a lovely one. Yeah, no, it's really, it's really interesting.
Folklore's Role in Preservation and Rituals
00:36:43
Speaker
So I think I think that the essence is there. It's just that they're, you know, they have, we don't have fairies and fairies in Iberia, for example. So they call them something else. Do you have any records in Iberia of the idea that to destroy or to
00:36:59
Speaker
to damage the sites or stones is dangerous or, you know, those kind of warnings against destruction. Yes. Yes, we do. We do. And in some cases, that's the reason why the rocks were preserved until today. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Because there's quite a lot of stories about kind of people who try and destroy sites and then
00:37:20
Speaker
come to a bad end in effect. It's the cursors, isn't it? Those are the cursors. Yeah, so I think the roll rights has one of those, Kim. Yes, I think it does. I can't remember whether it was the roll rights or another site I was reading about where they tried to take one of the stones down.
00:37:36
Speaker
And it took like 24 horses to take it down and drag it down the hill where it killed people and it wouldn't stay where it was put. And then it took one horse to drag it back up the hill and put it back in its place. Yeah. And when they'd taken it away, the crops failed and all kinds of bad things happened. So that's why they had to decide to put it back. So that idea that the stones, even if you try and drag them away, they'll find their way back or they'll
00:38:04
Speaker
know, cause problems. Yes. We're going to take a quick break here and we'll be back. No, it's in the middle of a very interesting discussion. We'll be back to it in a second. Welcome back. Sue, I think you particularly in the break there, you expressed an interest in the milk left in some of these cup and ring sites that Joanna was talking about. Yeah, that's really fascinating because I think, I don't know them very well, but I think there's quite a few Irish
00:38:30
Speaker
tales and folklore stories that relate to milk and cows. And one of my favourite folklore stories is attached to Mitchell's Fold, which is a stone circle, a really small stone circle up in the Welsh borders in Shropshire. And the story there is that a fairy gave a magic cow to the people that lived in the local area, which had an endless supply of milk. But one night an evil witch came along and milked the cow into a sieve
00:38:58
Speaker
And when the cow realised the trick, she disappeared and the witch was turned to stone and a circle of stones was erected around her to ensure that she couldn't ever escape. And so I think it's quite interesting that there's kind of that milk comes into a few different stories you were saying about milk being poured on the rock art. Is that right?
00:39:16
Speaker
Yeah, so I think most of these stories actually come from the highlands. And in the highlands, most of the rock art, it's not very elaborate. So you have lots of there are plenty of carved rocks, but essentially they have cut marks. And the idea is that people would pour cow's milk in these hollows to appease the local spirits and to make sure that the herds and the crops were safe. Yeah, yeah. So I think that this is well, it kind of illustrates the relationship with this supernatural
00:39:45
Speaker
but it also a really mundane concern for their subsistence and their survival. These were often called cat troughs. Okay. Interesting. I mean, it sounds very much like, you know, votive offerings for the gods. It does, doesn't it? Yeah. And reminiscent of Roman libations. Yeah, they do. I mean, is there a specific, I know it's quite difficult to do this with folklore, but is there a specific time where we can say that these stories arose
00:40:14
Speaker
I mean, for instance, around near me again in the Chiltons, there is and across quite a lot of
00:40:20
Speaker
the south of England, there are places called Grimmsditch or Grimmsdite, and Grimms seems to be an alternative name for Woden, and so is related possibly to an Anglo-Saxon or early English, let's call them instead, early English kind of appropriation of these monuments and deciding who had created them. And of course, then Grimms does become associated with the devil as well. But also, for instance, Wayland Smithy, I mean, the whole name of it,
00:40:50
Speaker
It's a neolithic stone tomb again, but you're supposed to be able to leave your horse there. It's in Oxfordshire, by the way, near the White Horse at Uffington.
00:41:02
Speaker
It's an English heritage looked after site, isn't it? It is, yep. I thought it was. You leave your horse there overnight, you leave some silver on one of the stones and your horse is shooed by Weyland, who is a great smith in early English mythology. So do, I mean, is there a particular time period? I mean, obviously, if we're looking wider than southern England, it might not be that they're all early English myths, and some may be a lot older.
00:41:31
Speaker
or some maybe younger. What's your sense? Yeah, I think it's a really interesting question. I think a lot of the kind of Christianisation stories, so the ones where people have turned stone for dancing on the Sabbath, and a lot of the ones that are named sort of after the devil are kind of perhaps a bit later. So if so in that kind of 15th, 16th century, I think that's perhaps when they become really as late as now. Yeah, because because that's the time when people are really into this idea that the Sabbath was sacred.
00:42:00
Speaker
But I think some of them may be much, much older than that. But I think it's really difficult because of course they only get written down for the first time at about that point. And so with all of these sort of stories and ideas, Geoffrey of Monmouth is pretty unusual because he's right back into the 12th century. But tracing it back further than that is tricky because you just haven't got the historical records to trace them back.
00:42:25
Speaker
But yeah, I'm sure a lot of them go back an awful long way, particularly things like the healing and the fertility sort of rituals and things. I mean, there's an amazing book by Ronald Hutton, if people don't know it, called Stations of the Sun, which is all about the ritual year in England. It's a brilliant book, yeah. Yeah. And he struggles to trace back any of the kind of annual festivities, apart from midwinter and midsummer bonfires and possibly May Day, back beyond really kind of that
00:42:55
Speaker
almost quite late kind of medieval period. So yeah, it's one of those things where they could be very, very old indeed, but proving that is a bit tricky. And obviously, by the time that they were written, they were probably quite different as well. So there was a while ago, a few years ago, there was a journal article called The Philogony of Little Red Riding Hood.
00:43:19
Speaker
And I think that what they were arguing is that a lot of the stories that we know today actually have an origin in the Bronze Age or something like that. Oh, yes, I saw. Yeah, I saw that article about things like what was the oldest one? It was Beauty and the Beast. I think it was maybe all the way back to the Bronze Age. Yeah. And it was but it was down to historical linguistics, wasn't it? Yes, I think it was. Yeah, it wasn't really archaeology. But I think that certainly in terms of rock art, the way that
00:43:49
Speaker
I think it worked was, you know, you have you have these signs on on the rocks. And they probably meant something when they were when they were created, they had a specific meaning that disappeared with the people who are using those signs. And even, you know, it's like, whenever you tell we have a saying in Portuguese, it's like, whenever you retell a story, you will always add another full stop, which basically means that you will add your own input to it. So
00:44:17
Speaker
as the knowledge of what of the meaning passed on, things were different. And obviously, the original meaning is probably lost at some point, but the symbols are still there, the signs are still there. So whoever comes next, and you know, these are these are not things that disappear from people's knowledge forever, you know, most of the most most of the things that we find today are still in the memory of the local people who live there. So some of that knowledge must have passed on somehow.
00:44:47
Speaker
even if just a reminiscence of the original purpose of why they created them in the first place. In Iberia, we have another type of rock art that is more or less contemporary of Atlantic rock art. It's mostly based in crosses that, we tend to say, represent human figures. A lot of them were, in many cases, recarved during medieval and modern periods because people relate to that sign.
00:45:14
Speaker
they kind of appropriated the symbol and they probably gave it a different meaning as well, even if perhaps completely ignoring the previous or sometimes even having some kind of, you know, little bits of story that came attached to it. So I think that some things that probably pass on, you know, with gesture as well, and other sorts of, I don't want to say rituals, but I'm going to say rituals.
00:45:39
Speaker
I think some of the hints, particularly, for example, like the Stonehenge ones I was talking about, they are quite uncanny how correct things have turned out to be. So, you know, I think we should definitely take these things seriously and have a look at them and really explore all the different facets of them. I mean, in Ireland, there's obviously a much, much vaster kind of wealth of early literature. And you get amazing stories in Irish mythology about, you know, the siddin, the fairies and
00:46:08
Speaker
kind of all the different places in the landscape and archaeological monuments that are inhabited by supernatural beings and the fairy forts and things. So it's a really rich source of kind of inspiration and stories. And we all know kind of how much people like Tolkien and Alan Garner and all those people kind of drew on all of that to write their stories, which, you know, that these things, even if there's absolutely no truth of them whatsoever, they're brilliant stories and they're really fun to find out about. So
00:46:37
Speaker
I think we should be making more of them. We should, but I think the writers out there already make a lot of them. As you say, I've been re-written in lockdown because I've needed to go back to safe and easy reading. I've been re-reading a lot of Terry Pratchett books set in the Discworld, and particularly the Tiffany Aiken ones I absolutely love, and the Witches ones. Because they are steeped in the landscape and in the
00:47:04
Speaker
special sites, the fairy rings of standing stones, the great burial mounds where the Nakamak Feagles live and stuff. And those stories are the ones that capture the imagination. Sadly, I'm afraid to say more than the Neolithic ones. Why is it that always these funny stories, these ones that not necessarily have any evidence,
00:47:27
Speaker
catch up. If we come on to more modern folk tales, particularly about Stonehenge with the Neopagans, the Druids, the Wiccans, using the site and seeing the site and perceiving it in a particular way, and then really modern up until the Alien Brigade. There's something about, and I say it a lot on this podcast, there's something about humans. We love to tell a good story and it doesn't matter if it's true or not.
00:47:58
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think that's the great thing about things like rock art that's kind of abstract and sites like Stonehenge where there's that sense of what on earth were they doing and why on earth was this built and what did it mean? That it's so far out of reach that they're perfect for making stories about because you can project onto it anything that you like and it's going to be just as good as the next story that gets told. So there's something brilliant about having a canvas on which to project stories that
00:48:26
Speaker
isn't really going to answer back. That must be quite a source of inspiration for many of these stories. And there are trends as well, aren't there? There are trends with in terms of the stories that are made up for these things. So I was thinking maybe during Victorian period, people were more inclined to think about druids and witches. Certainly the stories that I read, I was kind of going through some of them in Ilkley Moor.
00:48:54
Speaker
And there is someone who writes a lot of stories that involve sightings of dancing figures and druids. And it's all about visions. And it seems to be a trend during that period. Yeah. Yeah. And then in the 80s, someone saw the UFO. And the 80s were full of UFOs. There were sightings of UFOs everywhere. And currently, what people tend to talk more about is representations of the sky. It's like, is this a national map?
00:49:24
Speaker
are these constellations, certainly in terms of the rock art. So I think that there are kind of trends, you know? Yeah. And I guess those stories are kind of influenced by the current contemporary culture, you know, whether it's aliens or... Yeah, because people are still creating these, maybe in the future we're going, we will call them folktales. But they're definitely still creating stories linked to, you know, to these monuments. And I was, again, looking at Ilkleymore, because it was one of my study areas. And it's interesting that a lot of the rocks
00:49:53
Speaker
they have really interesting names. And then, you know, when I, when I tried to find out the stories about them, they really didn't have any stories. People just decided to call them that because they thought that the name was, you know, that's what they looked like or, you know, and sometimes it's, I can't really think of any example now, but sometimes it's, you know, they're really intriguing names. And, but there's no associated story, which is really disappointing, but you know,
00:50:17
Speaker
Oh, maybe there used to be a story and it's got lost. I remember going, I lived around the area when I was growing up, so Ilkley Moor is a great place. We could go on, I think, for another hour, but we should really bring this to a close right now. I think that it is what I would say is a parting
00:50:36
Speaker
remark really that these stories are fascinating and as Sue has hinted they may have grades of truth in them but to push too hard and to get to some original state of the tale I think is perhaps something that should not be attempted and to just enjoy them for what they are. But definitely take note of them. So I want to thank you both so much for a really interesting discussion. Thank you Sue and thank you Joanna for coming and talking to me today. Thank you.
00:51:03
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you. It was really interesting. Brilliant. I will make sure that as I put those links to some of your work on the show notes and if it's all right with you, links to your social media accounts as well. Yeah, that's fine. Wonderful. So that will all be on the show notes. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Bye.
00:51:34
Speaker
Thanks again to my two guests, Susan Greaney of English Heritage and Joanna Valdez-Tillit of Scotland's Rockart. Were any of these stories ones that you hadn't heard before? Is there a prehistoric or maybe a natural site near you with an interesting folktale? Tell me about it. You can tweet me on at prehistpod or leave comments on the show page at the archaeologypodcastnetwork.com forward slash prehistories.
00:52:04
Speaker
If you've got any ideas for topics for the podcast, get in touch! Next month we're going to be talking to experimental archaeologist and lithicist James Dilly about the film Iceman. The subject is the frozen Tyrolyan mummy popularly known as Utsi. Have you already seen it? Oh it's so good. What did you think? Let me know.
00:52:27
Speaker
If you can't wait that long, you've got 27 other episodes of Prehistories to tide you over, and the huge back catalogue of the Archaeology Podcast Network with literally hundreds of shows to listen to. Until next time then!
00:52:57
Speaker
This show is produced by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.