The Crew that Never Rests: England's local legends of the fairies

By Shaun Cooper

Most books which cover the subject of British fairy lore tend to focus on the Celtic parts of the country, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, etc, because the basic repertoire of European beliefs and tales about fairies is more fully preserved in those countries than it is in

• Language: English
• Publisher: Country Books
• Release date: Dec 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781739530334

Book preview

Published by Country Books

an imprint of

Spiral Publishing Ltd

Country Books, 38 Pulla Hill Drive,

Storrington, West Sussex RH20 3LS

email: [e-mail]

www.spiral-books.com

ISBN 978-1-7395824-4-9

© 2023 Shaun Cooper

The rights of Shaun Cooper has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1993.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any way or form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author and publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Illustrations

Contents

Introduction

Chapter One ~ The Fanciful, The Fairy Crew

Fairies in Church Siting Legends

Fairies and Churches

Where the Fairies Gathered

Fairy Hills with Buried Treasure

The Broken Peel

Fairies Baking

Of Will-o’-the-Wisps and being Pixy-led

Pixies

The Sweating Fairies

Fairies and Cattle

The Fairy Threshers

How the Fairy was Laid

Chapter Two ~ Among Those Pretty Elves

The Fairy Ointment or Salve

Markets and Fairs

Fairy Children

The Midwife Taken to a Fairy’s Wife in Labour

Gone to Fairyland

Changelings and Stocks

The Nature of Faery

Mines and Caves

Taking Fairy Cups

Chapter Three ~ As Pleasant A Goblin As The Rest

The Good Neighbours

Hobs and Hobthrusts

Fairy in a Sack

Of Fairy Rings, Witches, and Midsummer’s Eve

Fairies and Witches

Fairies Flying

Fairy Burials and Deaths

Fairy Trees

Fairy Wells, Pools, and Lakes

Hark, ’tis the Fairy Music

Of Elf-rid Horses and Equine Fairies

Descriptions of the Fairies

The Last Place where the Fairies were seen

We’re Flittin’

Afterword

Notes

References

Bibliography

Newspapers in the British Newspaper Archive

A Garland of Sussex Fairy Lore

Introduction

following in the wake of the vanishing people

IN the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, under Fairies, it says: The basic European repertoire of beliefs and tales about fairies is less fully preserved in England than in the Celtic areas of Wales, Ireland, and Highland Scotland, though much of it was well known here in the 17th century and later...

A lot of books about fairies tend to mostly focus on these Celtic areas, but The Crew that Never Rests is mainly about the local legends and tales of the fairies in England, and takes its title from a reference to the Dartmoor pixies, described in an old Hampshire newspaper. The title is apt because the ‘crew’ is reminiscent of the ‘team’ in Pale Hecate’s Team, a book about the tradition of witches by folklorist Katharine Briggs – and there was a connection between witches and the fairies, and also because I grew up in the South and lived most of my life there before moving to the West Country. Indeed, the initial research that led me to write a book about England’s fairy legends was to try to find out why Midsummer’s Eve was so significant to the fairies of Sussex – even though it’s not mentioned in the fairy lore of any of the neighbouring counties.

Then, about a decade ago, I began searching for ‘new’ old Sussex fairy legends, hoping to find any which hadn’t already been described in the various books that cover its folklore. It seemed likely that all of the county’s published local legends and tales of fairies had already been ‘archived’ (i.e. noted in books about its folklore) – yet there was at least the slim possibility that one or two may have been missed. Back then it was known that Sussex had six places which either have local fairy legends associated with them or are places where the fairies were said to gather – but now it has twenty, and this book also includes previously unarchived local fairy legends from other counties too.

The first one I found was the siting legend concerning the church at Milland. However, none of the books about fairies I had back then, or those I subsequently read, have anything much to say about siting legends – and it may be that the reason for this is that church siting legends where the fairies were blamed do not appear to be as common in Celtic areas as they are in the rest of the country.

1

‘The fanciful, the fairy crew’

Fairies in Church Siting Legends

They do say as they began to build the old church in the dingle up nigh your place, but every morning when the workmen went back to work they found the fairies had carried up all the tools and things and the gurt stones up to the top of the hill, and this went on for years, so then they give it up and built the church top of the hill where the fairies wanted it.

THIS is a siting legend about how the church at Milland in West Sussex came to be built on top of the hill. The extract is from Some People of Hogg’s Hollow by Eleanor Boniface, published in 1924. Interestingly, the dingle where the church was to have been built is locally known as The Fairies’ Dell.

Siting legends arose at many places all over the country and their purpose, in each case, was to explain why a certain building (usually the church) was built in an odd place, often just beyond the village. The basic plot-line of the Milland one is pretty much the same as it is in other places that have siting legends about their churches – but siting legends where the fairies are blamed are rare. The book The Secret Country (1976) details a hundred siting legends from all over Britain, but only five claim the fairies were the culprits and these all come from places in England. The vast majority of siting legends name the Devil as the culprit for moving the stones or lay the blame at some vague unknown supernatural force, sometimes described as a big black pig.

Conversely, in England, church siting legends are one of the most common types of local legends concerning fairies, and there are at least twenty-two places that have legends of the fairies moving church foundation stones to a different site. Many church siting legends are quite short, though, regardless of whether the fairies or something else was held responsible. One of the legends about the old church of Dowlish West, destroyed in the 16th century, just tells that after it was burnt down what they built during the day was carried back to Dowlish each night by the fairies.

Church siting legends in which fairies were blamed have also been recorded in Scandinavia where, for example, trolls were said to have moved foundation stones in Sweden and Denmark. However, in some cases there was, understandably, a little doubt as to the exact identity of the culprit or culprits of any such supernatural incidents – as shown by the siting legend of the church at West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire.

There is a local tradition that the edifice was originally intended to stand at the foot of the hill: but as fast as a portion of the building was erected it was removed during the night by some invisible agency, which undid all the work of the day and deposited the materials at the top of the hill. The priest came with bell, book, and candle, and began an exorcism, when a weird, unearthly voice promised to abstain from further annoyance if the church was erected upon the spot to which the materials had been removed. This nocturnal diversion is asserted by some to have been the work of the fairies: others vary the story by ascribing it to the Prince of Darkness.

This tale comes from an article in a Bucks newspaper of 1882 about churches, in which it states the Lord le Despencer rebuilt the church. The same article includes the next item, which tells why the little church of Wendover was about a quarter of a mile from the village.

The church was to be built in: An adjoining field nearer the houses, but the materials were all carried away during the night, by witches, or according to other accounts by fairies, and deposited where the church now stands. The field where it was intended to be erected is still called Witchall Meadow.

Although church siting legends where the fairies were said to have been the culprits are rare, Somerset has at least four places that have them – at Broadway, Holcombe, Dowlish West, and Curry Mallet. Staffordshire has at least three: Walsall, Handchurch, and Wednesfield. Cheshire has at least two: at Ince, and Stock. Warwickshire also has at least two: at Warrington, and Knowle. Holme-on-the-Wolds in Humberside has one, and so does Quy, near Cambridge, and Burnley in Lancashire. Hertfordshire has two, including one about the old church of the deserted village of Layston. Presumably, other counties had legends of the fairies re-siting churches too. Some of these legends are quite short in the telling, though – a good example being the one about the church of Lynmouth in north Devon: The church was to have been built at Kibsworthy, on the Barnstaple road, but as the workmen brought the materials by day the ‘Pixies’ carried them away by night to where the church now stands.

A curious example of the basic fairies church siting legend concerns one in Furneux Pelham, Hertfordshire. In the dell in the Old Church Field: There once stood an old church. All efforts to rebuild on the old site of the church, which had been destroyed by the Danes, were frustrated by the fairies, who night after night removed the stones to where the church now stands!

The siting legend about the church of Broadway in Somerset is combined with another popular type of fairy tale, that of the Sweating Fairies. It tells how when the church was being built, in John Baker’s yard, the stones were moved away every night so one of the men decided to stay up to see what happened. That night he saw some fairies come into the yard and begin taking the stones away. One said I twit, and the old man cried: Ah, the Devil twit the twitting of thee!

At Inkberrow in Worcestershire, though, the fairies were not at all successful in their nocturnal endeavours to get the church to be built somewhere else.

You know Inkberrow Church. Well, it is said that the old church was pulled down and rebuilt on a fresh site where it is to-day. This happened to be a favourite haunt of the Little People. Taking offence, they tried in every way to obstruct the building of it, largely by carrying back the material during the night and other ways now forgotten. I have never been told how the builders overcame the opposition, but in the end the new church was built and the bells hung. For a long time afterward on quiet nights little mournful voices could be heard lamenting:

"Neither sleep, neither lie,

For Inkbro’s ting-tang hangs so high."

In some versions of this legend it is said that after the church was built the fairies left the area entirely. Another tale about the fairies being thwarted in their attempts to move a building comes from Gavinton in southern Scotland. This is not strictly a siting legend though because the building was an old house, which the fairies decided to move because they had a grudge against the family who lived there. The foundation stones were loosed one night but, as the fairies lifted the house, a man inside awakened and, when he peered out and saw what the fairies were doing, he said: Lord keep me and this house together, what’s going on? At the sound of his prayer, the fairies dropped the house and fled.

In Scotland there is also a siting legend about a castle. The building of Craignethan Castle originally started on the Braes of Trows, by the river Nethan, but one of the foundation trenches broke into a fairy ring so all the work accomplished each day was demolished during the night, and the trenches filled in. After this continued for some time a man named Hamilton decided to watch over the site one night to see what was going on. At midnight, lots of fairies came out of a small knoll, marched widdershins three times around the building site, and then began shooting arrows at the walls, which all then crumbled. After that it was decided to build the castle at Craignethan. In this tale, the fairies took back the stones but did not move them to a new site, and this element is similar to that in a tale from Shetland. It was decided to build a church beside Strom Loch but the masons used some stones from a nearby mound where trows lived. So every morning it was found the walls that had been put up the day before had been knocked down. A priest was then brought to consecrate the site and discharge an anathema at the trows, who fled.

The church at Godshill on the Isle of Wight is at the top of a steep incline, but the original site was to have been down on the level just to the south-west of the hill. However, on the third night after the building work had begun, a couple of the workmen witnessed many fairies taking the stones up the hill so it was decided to build the church there instead.

This tale is unusual because in most siting legends the builders never actually saw the stones being removed. The basic story of other siting legends is much the same wherever they’ve been recorded: the church was set to be built in a certain place but, when the building began, all the foundation stones were mysteriously moved every night to the place where it now stands. However, there are odd variations on this theme such as the siting legend of Chalton in Hampshire, where the church is the oldest building in the village.

The village was originally to have been built on a hill called Church Hill and the workmen began and were digging the foundations of the church and manse when they left work on Saturday morning. They returned on Monday morning but to their astonishment the workmen found the stones removed, the foundations filled in, and the ground as smooth and the grass as green as the day they began their labour.

They went to work again and by another week’s labour restored their former work. Returning on the Monday morning they were amazed to find no vestige of last week’s work remaining. The legend states those persevering craftsmen continued to toil for one whole year, yet every week their work was destroyed.

At last they determined to watch. Accordingly they camped close to an enormous old oak tree intended for the centre of the village. But they all soon fell asleep and, when they awoke, which they did on Monday morning, they discovered that not only the works but their implements and themselves had been transported from the hill and deposited on a lovely spot of tableland, two miles distant from Church Hill.

Their work was in the same stage as when they fell asleep on the hill and the plan of the village laid out in the same manner. As the men rose bewildered at the strange event, instead of preparing for work they sat down again to consider the cause of all that had befallen them and were not long in deciding it was the work of fairies.

But why the fairies should have acted thus was a question that ought to be solved, so they sought out a wise-man who, after examining the scene of all their toil, returned them this graphic answer: The fairies have chosen the site for their revels – because there is no water. The rustics saw wisdom in the reply – so set to work and sunk two wells and built the village where it now stands.

So this legend is actually about the siting of the whole village and only centres on the building of the church. Notice how the fairies kept moving the stones for a year and that, in the tale from Milland, this was said to have gone on for years: this theme of the trouble going on for a year or more occurs in some other siting legends involving the fairies.

Another peculiar siting legend involving fairies is about building the church of St Brelade on the coast of Jersey. The church was to be built on the east side of the bay, but this spot was where the fairies liked to dance.

The fairies did not protest against the appropriation of the ground during the first day’s labour, but they took their revenge at night by filling up the trenches and carrying away the tools to the site occupied by the present church. This conduct was renewed more than once. One evening, the overseer stayed watch to see what would happen. Then a dwarf addressed him by name and then angrily remonstrated with him about the proposed site of the church.

There was an article about fairies in church siting legends in a St Neots newspaper in 1881 that mentions building the Church of Ste Marie du Castel in Guernsey, and describes that of Godshill on the Isle of Wight. In the Jersey tale, as in the ones about Chalton and Milland, the site where the church was to be built was, whether by chance or design, also the place where the fairies held their revels, which is why they moved all the stones and equipment every night. Such tales have similarities with reports from Ireland of how houses built over ‘fairy paths’ become beset by supernatural problems. These fairy paths are said to be invisible but mainly run in straight