Sacred England: Fabulous Beings of the English Counties

Do you remember when we went on a witch-hunt? I spoke of folklore being a huge sub-section of English myth – at least when comparing our tales with different, perhaps more prevalent, mythologies. 

We learnt that each county has various versions of the same type of magical being. In that case, it was a human figure with magical associations: the witch. Now, however, it's time to seek out the non-human. Often – but not always – found out in the wilds, we're in for a trek across the elemental English landscape through earth, water, and air.

Moorland Mysteries

Beware of the beast! In the south west, one of the most famous folkloric creatures is a cat. It could just be a large domestic cat, but most word-of-mouth accounts seem to describe a Big Cat: a leopard- or puma-sized feline.

According to Exmoor Zoo, the puma is officially a Small Cat rather than a Big Cat. Despite this, it is a similar size to a leopard. Exmoor itself straddles the boundary between Somerset and Devon; Bodmin Moor is fully in Cornwall. Their respective beasts have been spotted since around the 1970s, prompting much speculation and even a government investigation in the mid- and late-1990s.

Results were inconclusive. Despite an apparent Exmoor sighting as recently as 2021, every image I've found in my research for this article is grainy and unclear or obviously doctored. So, what types of cat are they? Smuggled, illegal imports? Liberated circus performers? The ghost of a long-dead local species? We may never know.

Supernatural dog tales are just as prominent as those about cats, perhaps because of humanity's long history of keeping each species as a pet. Almost every English county has at least one story about either or both.

Dogs range from ghostly death omens to hell hounds to anthropomorphic personifications of depressive illness. Nothing, however, is always as it seems. One Yorkshire version, the Gytrash, features famously in Jane Eyre:

'I remembered certain of Bessie's tales, wherein figured a North-of-England spirit, called a "Gytrash"; which, in the form of horse, mule, or large dog, haunted solitary ways, and sometimes came upon belated travellers [...] [Pilot] was exactly one mask of Bessie's Gytrash – a lion-like creature with long hair and a huge head[.]'

Here, we see the oral tradition in action: Jane remembers the story from childhood bedtimes. Charlotte Brontë's first-person narration makes us feel like Jane is passing on the folklore to us.

Similarly, I recently talked to someone who told me that they had once met someone who knew the real-life Baskervilles behind the famous Sherlock Holmes story. Apparently, a fear of dogs – cynophobia – ran through the family. Finding a confirmatory source for this article has proven difficult, but the original setting seems to be inspired by Clyro, Wales – rather than Dartmoor – where Arthur Conan Doyle placed his novel. It’s another instance of English culture merging with what remains of the Celts.

 

Ladies in the Lakes…

…or rivers, and various bodies of water. All are liminal spaces, marking the crossing between this world and another; they simultaneously belong to both identities and neither. They’re life-giving and death-bringing.

The beings we find in them reflect this dual nature. In Herefordshire – another ‘border’ place – there’s the story of a mermaid living in the River Lugg. One day, the village of Marden’s church bell fell into the water, but the locals couldn’t get it out because the resident mermaid was refusing to let go. She loved her new-found peace and quiet! Eventually a solution was found where the bell would go back to the surface in silence – but at the last Orpheus-like moment, the plan fell through. The mermaid kept the bell to herself, possibly until Victorian times.

Such watery folklore teaches us to respect the world around us. A more malevolent figure is the hag – which often serves the same story role as the witch and the crone, but they are more likely to be human. Hags can be such wise women, but they may be supernatural figures, too. The ‘loathly lady’ trope, most famously chosen by Geoffrey Chaucer for The Canterbury Tales, challenges humanity to grow in some way.

Everyday folklore finds cautionary tales of a different kind. Go into bodies of water too quickly and cold-water shock will take over. Most adults know this, so we tell children not to get wet. But, even if kids follow the rules, they may still walk too close to the edge for a parent’s comfort. What if they lose their footing and splash in? What if there’s a landslip?

This is where the water-hags come in. In Yorkshire and the River Tees, respectively, Nelly Longarms and Peg Powler have the power to grab children, pulling them down into their watery home, never to be seen again. The north-west Midlands’ Jenny Greenteeth – Tiffany Aching’s memorable first antagonist in Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men – represents the dangerous entangling nature of weeds.

 

High on a Hill

Since elevations are the closest we can get to the sky, their native mythical beings are often equally tall – or, even, able to fly.

We’re talking giants and dragons, here. In Shropshire, a hill called the Wrekin is said to be the work of the former. Tricked into making it by a quick-thinking human, this giant originally intended to drown Shrewsbury.

Most have heard of the Uffington White Horse, the prehistoric chalk drawing placed towards the top of a hill in what is now Oxfordshire. Just below it, however, there’s another mound. Called Dragon Hill, it’s said to be the site of St. George’s famous battle. The dragon’s blood marked the soil forever, so that no grass can grow there. Instead, the chalk shines through.

George is the patron saint of England, so this creature is hugely important, especially in the south of the country. With the landscape there ranging from wet, marshy fenland – perfect snake habitat – to the fossil-filled Jurassic coast, it’s speculated that dragons were historical reminders of the dangers of adders or miasmic disease, as well as historical explanations for dinosaurs.

Thus danger holds power, but powerful beings can also be protective. The two-legged wyvern was chosen for the flag of Wessex, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom that directly evolved into the first version of England. In the capital, a four-legged dragon stands on the Temple Bar monument, marking the old boundary into the City of London.

There, high up inside the Guildhall are two frequently-replaced statues of the giants, Gog and Magog. They guard the city, now, but originally did so as prisoners of the mythical founder of Britain. Called Brute (or Brutus), he and the giants were said to be descended from figures of Ancient Greece and Rome. Here, our folklore – English cultural identity – gains legitimacy. It’s forever linked to those prestigious mythologies of mainland Europe.

 

Sources Consulted:

Written by E.A. Colquitt

E.A. (Eleanor Anne) Colquitt is an emerging writer. She is currently working on her first novel, with shorter pieces most recently published by Lucent Dreaming and Reflex Fiction.

One of the first contributors to The Everyday Magazine, her latest project here is 'Sacred England': a series on English places and their corresponding mythologies.

Find her blog here: eacolquitt.wordpress.com

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