Folklore of Yorkshire (6 page)

In another example, in the late nineteenth century, Lord Halifax placed three skulls – believed to be former medical specimens – in a glass case beside the lych-gate at St Wilfrid’s Church in Hickleton, South Yorkshire. He intended them to serve as a
memento mori
and reinforced this function by having the legend ‘Today For Me, Tomorrow For Thee’ inscribed beneath. Yet a hundred years later, their original purpose had been forgotten in the village and local tradition now associated them with three highwaymen who had been gibbeted at a nearby crossroads. When the glass case was smashed and one of the skulls stolen in 1996, even the vicar of St Wilfrid’s gave voice to the local feeling that the skulls were cursed and misfortune would befall anybody who removed them from their rightful position at the church.

An archaic stone head at Coley Hall near Halifax. (Kai Roberts)

The apotropaic role of the human skull also has echoes in one of the most individual features of Yorkshire folk art: the archaic stone head. These carvings of human heads are referred to as ‘archaic’ as they appear to have been deliberately carved in a crude, almost primitive style, even where the mason was clearly capable of more sophisticated work. The face is typically flat and almost two-dimensional: the eyes are round or oval and often bulging; the nose is little more than a triangle in relief; and the mouth a mere hole or groove. Other features such as ears and hair occasionally appear, but always rendered in the same rudimentary style. As such, these carvings seem intended to represent not any historical individual, or mythological figure, but a universal archetype of the human head.

It is similarly evident that they were not designed as decorative motifs. Often the appearance of these carvings is quite disconcerting and they are frequently found in locations where they are impossible to see without great effort. Furthermore, they are almost exclusively positioned at ‘liminal’ points. Liminality describes locations which are betwixt and between, neither one place nor the other, the point where a defined space is divided from the next – boundaries, thresholds, margins, borders and so forth. But to a holistic worldview, which perceives the material and non-material realm as intrinsically entangled, liminal places are not just boundaries and thresholds in the physical world alone. They are also places where our world presses close against the Other and as such, are especially vulnerable to incursions from beyond.

In the household, doors, windows, chimneys, roofs, gables and gateways are classic liminal points; whilst outdoors, field boundaries, water-crossings and wells are regarded similarly. Clearly such vulnerable spots required magical protection against malevolent supernatural intrusion and the fact that archaic stone heads are found exclusively in these places indicates that their purpose was primarily apotropaic. Although no study of such features was made until the mid-twentieth century, this hypothesis was confirmed by what few narrative traditions remained connected with the carvings. Where local people did hold an opinion on the function of an archaic stone head in their neighbourhood, they were most often believed to protect the structure against misfortune and malign influences.

Archaic stone heads were also sometimes believed to commemorate an individual who died during construction work or nearby, despite the carvings having few distinguishing features. It is possible that this belief may be a corrupted remembrance of the apotropaic function of foundation sacrifices, of which the stone head has become a symbolic representation. A classic example is carved on an aqueduct constructed in 1795, which carries the Rochdale Canal over the River Calder at Hebden Bridge. Local tradition claims it is a memorial to somebody who drowned in the river below whilst trying to rescue a child. However, it is almost impossible to see the carving from any vantage point other than the river itself – hardly a fitting monument. As the folklorist John Billingsley comments, the head ‘appears to be directed at a supernatural rather than a human audience.’

Although archaic stone heads are found throughout the South Pennines, the greatest concentration of such features in vernacular architecture is found around the Aire and Calder valleys. Indeed, their significance was first noticed by Sidney Jackson, a curator working for Bradford Museums Service. Impressed by the contemporary work of Professor Anne Ross on the religious beliefs of Celtic Britain, Jackson grew convinced that many archaic stone heads were actually Celtic in origin, or at least represented an unbroken tradition of such carvings in the region since the Iron Age. Considering that West Yorkshire was the last independent Celtic territory in England – surviving until at least the seventh century before it was subsumed by the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria – such speculation did not seem entirely improbable.

It is true that skulls and other representations of the human head were widely used as cultic objects by the Celts, and a number of the carved heads found in West Yorkshire do have an Iron Age or Romano-British provenance. Equally, many of the later examples bear a striking stylistic resemblance to the authentically Celtic specimens. Anne Ross herself noted when she surveyed a collection put together by Jackson, ‘What strikes me as above all significant is not so much whether this head or that is genuinely Celtic or not, but the extraordinary continuity of culture shown by this collection. Presumably without knowing it, there are local craftsmen of this very century in these Yorkshire industrial valleys, carving heads with specific characteristics such as the “Celtic eye” … It is a treasure house of continuity.’

An archaic stone head on Agden Bridge in South Yorkshire. (Kai Roberts)

However, firm evidence of a continuing tradition is impossible to establish. The vast majority of heads seem to have been carved between the sixteenth and nineteenth century, whilst many others were not found in datable contexts. There are certainly no obvious examples from the early Middle Ages which could bolster the notion of an unbroken lineage and stylistic evidence alone is not sufficient to establish survival over a thousand years from the Dark Ages into the early modern period. As a result, the term ‘archaic stone head’ is now favoured over ‘Celtic stone head’ and most are regarded as the indigenous product of Yorkshire craftsmen during the period following the Reformation until the end of the Industrial Revolution.

Nonetheless, isolated instances of head carving for apotropaic purposes endured in West Yorkshire well into the twentieth century. In 1971, when the landlord and regulars of the Old Sun Inn at Haworth complained that their pub was being haunted by a disembodied voice, a local advised them to have a head carved and place it above the threshold. The landlord acted on this recommendation and an archaic stone head was fitted above the porch. Sure enough, the supernatural disturbances ceased and the head remains in place today. Even where the apotropaic function of such carvings has been forgotten, there is evidence that they are still being fashioned as part of a self-conscious revival of the vernacular architectural traditions of the region. Thus, however old the tradition may be, it may thrive for many years yet.

T
oday, we tend to think of dragons as mythical creatures that belong to the same category as demons, fairies and other such impossible entities. Their legends seem equally fanciful and their natures similarly super-natural. However, it is clear that our ancestors lacked any such association. As veteran folklorist Jacqueline Simpson notes in her study of the subject, ‘There is no connection between dragons and those sites which are traditionally regarded as haunted, sinister or demonic, such as graveyards, gallows and gibbets, places where murders and suicides have occurred and so forth … Dragons were not categorised as part of the eerie world of supernatural spirits and demons that lurk in haunted, evil places.’

Whilst they may have thought dragons to be extinct in our own country, previous generations seemed to have had no doubt that such flesh-and-blood creatures had once infested the land and perhaps endured in certain remote parts of the globe. Nor was this belief confined to the uneducated classes; even scholarly commentators affirmed the existence of such beasts, as evinced by Edmund Topsell in his 1608 work,
The Historie of Serpents
,
or Ulisse Aldrovandi’s
Serpentum et Draconum
of 1640. Prior to the greater understanding of natural history which developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this is not entirely surprising. Dragons are referred to in both Biblical and Classical sources, and such textual authority was once sufficient to endorse the truth of a matter.

Similarly, until palaeontology developed as a scientific discipline, the bones and fossilised prints of dinosaurs seemed to provide material evidence for the former existence of dragons. Indeed, until the fossil sequence was properly delineated and it became clear that dinosaurs were not contemporaneous with early humans, some writers wondered if dragons might not have been a race memory of those great reptiles. The issue was further compounded by the numerous fakes which were once displayed by travelling fairs and the like. Known as Jenny Hanivers, these specimens were actually dried sea creatures modified to resemble all manner of fantastical creatures, including dragons, but also mermaids, angels and devils.

Castle Hill above Huddersfield, once home to a treasure-guarding dragon? (Kai Roberts)

Of course, tales of dragons have a long and illustrious pedigree in Britain. Known to the Anglo-Saxons as ‘wyrms’, dragons seem to have been a significant motif in their culture and an important portion of the eighth-century epic poem
Beowulf
revolves around an archetypal example of the beast. This treasure-guarding dragon has become the dominant image of the dragon in Western culture, probably through its use by J.R.R. Tolkien and subsequent assimilation into fantasy fiction. However, the dragons of English local legend rarely conform to this treasure-guardian type and beyond a few hints here and there, it seems as if the Anglo-Saxon tradition did not survive in the popular consciousness much beyond the Norman Conquest.