The Fairy Butter Tree – Scugdale

 Scugdale is a long valley cutting into the Cleveland Hills just to the South of Swainby village, ten miles to the south of Middlesbrough.

 The first edition OS map (1857) marks a ‘Fairy Butter Tree’ alongside Rank Crags at the head of the Scugdale valley. This curious name does not appear on later edition maps, so in order to get a grid reference for its location, the old map was overlaid as accurately as possible onto the newer OS map. This, combined with the Google Earth images, seemed to suggest that a tree still exists at that location (SE 52801 99357). Could it possibly be the same tree all these years later?

Hob in the Hole and the Giant’s Lapstone – Baysdale

 Hob Hole is located alongside a ford crossing Baysdale Beck, on the road between Kildale and Westerdale, five miles to the south of Guisborough.

 Up until the early 1800’s, a large boulder known as the ‘Giant’s Lapstone’ sat on the hillside overlooking the ford at Hob Hole. Around the year 1830, a great storm caused a landslip, which carried the boulder down the hillside and into the beck. The large rock must have come to rest close to the crossing, as it diverted the flow of water running over the ford. This led to the boulder being removed, which due to its size, had to be broken up.
(See this Youtube video of Gavin Parry and Bob Fischer at Hob Hole discussing the story behind the Lapstone boulder).

The Dannsa Na Cailleach – Dance of the Old Woman

   A previous post (Cailleach an Dùdain) suggested that the North York Moors folklore figure known as the ‘Old Wife’, could well be related to the legendary Cailleach, who is to be found further north, in Scotland. Gavin Parry’s ongoing project to map locations connected with this archetypal ‘Old Woman’ is both fascinating and illuminating, and shows just how widespread a figure she was.  In later times, the Cailleach (Old Woman) seems to have played an important role in the harvest, with the last sheaf cut on a farm being called the Cailleach, which was then formed into a corn doll, and treated as an honoured guest at the harvest celebration. The corn doll figure was believed to contain the luck, fertility, and prosperity of the harvest, and was hung up in the farmhouse until the following year.

The Ingleby Greenhow Wishing Stone

  The village of Ingleby Greenhow is located at the foot of the Cleveland Hills on the northern edge of the North York Moors, 6 miles to the south of Guisborough.

  The Hand of Glory by J. Fairfax-Blakeborough (1924) includes a story called ‘The Maid of the Golden Shoon’. The original folk tale was noted down in the early 1800’s from an old lady called Betty Ellis, who in turn heard it from her grandmother during the 1770’s, when she was living at Ingleby Greenhow. This written version was later adapted and extended to create a Mell Supper play, and the manuscript eventually came into the possession of Richard Blakeborough in the 1890’s, who then ‘put together’ the Maid of the Golden Shoon folk tale in its current form.

  Reading the story does suggest that an original piece of folklore has been adapted and extended to create a much longer drama, with a virtuous and moralistic conclusion. The first part of the story seems to be the older, more authentic section, with the stealing of several babies from their mothers side during the night, which is a well known fairy theme, but in this story it is a group of witches who are suspected. The local wise man is sent for, and in a dream his spirit is taken to a boulder known as the ‘Wishing Stone’, which is located on the moors above Ingleby Greenhow. Here, he witnesses the witches ceremony as they transform the babies into black cats to act as their familiar spirits. The wise man later instructs four men to visit the stone and perform a ceremony in order to learn from the fairies how to recover the missing children. From this point onwards the story takes on a more moralistic tone with the introduction of the ‘Lady Winifreda’, who seeks a virtuous knight to help her fight the witches – now transformed into dragons.

Nanny Howe of Kildale

The village of Kildale is located on the northern edge of the North York Moors, 4 miles to the south of Guisborough.

 Here’s a question – is it possible for a burial mound to also be a person? This might seem rather odd, but at first glance this appears to have been the case at Kildale – at least according to the local folklore.

 The village sits in the river Leven valley, with the North York Moors stretching away to the south, and the Cleveland Hills forming the higher ground to the north. A narrow lane on the north side of the village leads up onto Coate Moor (originally Court Moor), with much of this hill top now covered by tree plantations. Before the forestry, there were three ‘howes’ or burial mounds standing approximately 45m apart on the eastern end of the ridge, with one of them being known as Nanny Howe. Frank Elgee (1933) visited the site in the early 1900’s, and in addition to the burial mounds, he also noted stone walled enclosures and pits. Elgee also referred to the site’s local name as ‘the Devil’s Court’, from a tradition that witches used to gather there, and that Nanny Howe was named after a ‘famous’ local witch. In the regions dialect it was apparently not unusual for the possessive ‘s’ to be dropped from a name, and so this is likely to have been ‘Nanny’s Howe’.