Secrets and Legends of Old Westmorland Find!
This book tells many stories; stories which were never written down but survived for over a thousand years passed from one generation to the next by word of mouth. Each story is illustrated with wonderful and very atmospheric black and white photographs which capture the haunting mood of the tales perfectly. The book was written by Dawn Robertson and Peter Koronka and was jointly published by Pagan Press and Cumbria County Council Library Service in 1992.
The book does not simply tell the dramatic facts of a tale but seeks to explore the origins of Westmorland's folklore. In doing so it evokes the days when candles flickered in draughty houses and people amused themselves around the fireside with stories of witches, devils and ghosts. It brings back an age when rational explanations included fairies and spirits, and when strange prehistoric beliefs such as the "need fire" were still thought to cure all ailments.
A century age almost everyone believed in the existence of dobbies who were a sort of naughty spirit and boggles who were a type of ghost. Dobbies were particularly associated with the business of the dairy. A neglected dobbie could ruin the cheese, sour the milk and stop the cream from turning to butter. If properly cared for a dobbie would make everything run smoothly so every night people would leave out an offering of milk and oaten cake or some curds and cream. One of the more well known dobbies was the Dobbie of Kirkby Stephen New Bridge, who was called Jingling Annas or Jingling Nannie. Apparently Jingling Annas caused travellers a great deal of trouble and eventually had to be dealt with. The story goes that the spirit of Jingling Annas was finally put to sleep under a rock, near the bridge, by the Wise Man of Stainmore.
There are stories of giants and fairies, witches and ghosts, standing stones and castles, murderous tales and devilish deeds. And there are the stories of legendary love including those of Michael the Shepherd of Grasmere, Yewdale and Girt Will and Emma and Sir Eglamore of Aira Force. This last legend was well known and both Wordsworth and deQuincey wrote about Emma and her lost love Sir Eglamore. One of the poems describes Sir Eglamore's cave at Aira Force in the following verse:
The light ash that pendant from the brow
Of yon dim cave, in seeming silence makes
A soft eye-music of slow waving boughs
Powerful almost as vocal harmony
To stay the wanderer's steps and sooth his thoughts.
The physical landscape that we see today is brought to life by these stories from the past. The sense of place in this oral history is very powerful and preserving this human heritage for future generations is really important.
http://www.grasmerecumbria.co.uk/pages/lake-district-ghosts-and- legends.html
4 October 2009 from Mary Rossall
Finds
- Grange-over-Sands: The Story of a Gentle Township
- The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland
- Red Ike
- Cumbrian Privies
- Ethel Fisher's West Cumbrian Dialect titles
- The Embalmer's Book of Recipes by Ann Lingard
- Nella Last's Peace
- Riding the Stang by Dawn Robertson
- Life on the Fell - a pictorial chronicle of a Lakeland community
- About Scout Scar
- William Wilberforce - A Summer Diary 1779
- Beatrix Potter - the unknown years
- Smoke over Shap by Margaret Potter
- Songs of a Cragsman by George Basterfield
- The Grasmere Dialect Plays
- The Grizedale Experience: Sculpture, Art & Theatre in a Lakeland Forest
- An Atlas of The English Lakes
- How Hall. Poetry and Memories. A Passion for Ennerdale by Tom Rawling
- Stumpy, Hero of the Lakes
- The High Places by A. Harry Griffin
- The Highest House in Wathendale
- Kendal by Roger Bingham
- Secrets and Legends of Old Westmorland
- Reminiscences of Wordsworth Among the Peasantry of Westmorland by Canon Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley
- Little Gods by Jacob Polley
- A Lakeland Summer
- Hunter of Harter Fell by Joseph E Chipperfield
- And Nobody Woke Up Dead
- An accessible paradise
- The Fleming Family novels and Graham Sutton
- Excursion to Loweswater. A Lakeland Visit 1865
- Writing on the Wall
- Beyond Scafell by Alan Robinson
- Rogue Herries by Hugh Walpole
- Kendal In The Nineteenth Century by A Wainwright
- In There Somewhere
- The Bondwomen by W G Collingwood
- "Ah'd Gaa Back Tomorra!"
- A Cumbrian Copper by Ray Huddart
- The Arsenic Labyrinth by Martin Edwards
- Old Will Stories by Dudley Hoys
- The Shield Ring by Rosemary Sutcliff
- T'Bacca Queen by Theodora Wilson Wilson
- Furness and the Industrial Revolution
- The Shadow of Black Combe
- The Painted Letters of Percy Kelly
- Ivver Sen
- Lakeland in the 1830s
- Wasdale Climbing Book By Michael Cocker
- Riding High by Barbara Sneyd
- Deborah in Langdale
- Early Recollections of Grange
- Hazard's Way by Roger Hubank
- Yan, Tan, Tethera
- Talk of the Town
- Capturing the Mountains
- Hope On, Hope Ever
- Mildred Edwards: Our City Our People 1889 - 1978 Memories
- Lakeland Limericks
- Surrounding loveliness
- Haweswater by Sarah Hall
- Coast to Coast by Jan Minshull
- Sunshine To The Sunless
- Geese, cattle wallopers and secret Irish paths
- Anarchists, Angels and wet Bank Holiday Mondays
- A more unconventional kind of find...?
- Skiddaw Summit by Kathleen Jones
- Thorstein of the Mere: A Saga of the Northmen in Lakeland
- Wednesday Early Closing
- Smoke Across The Fell
- The Sand Pilot of Morecambe Bay
- The Chronicles of Boggerthwaite
- Carrock Fell
- Feet in the Clouds
- Hercules and the Farmer's Wife
- Shepherd's Warning
- The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
- I've been so busy reading I haven't had time to blog!
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