JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post Series on the Unintentionally Absurd
This unusual image, published in Francis Grose's The Antiquities of England and Wales in 1785, depicts a cave--and a witch's cave at that--but taken slightly out of context and with it looks for all the world that there is a tree with roots floating in the air with an upside-down tree floating to its left. They're not floating, of course--they're just trees with roots growing across sandstone with the cave beneath. Without the story of the cave the floating trees make more interesting thinking--with the story, and the title, the story rules.
"Mother Ludlam's Hole" is the cave of a friendly "White Witch". It is set into a sandstone cliff in the Wey Valley, Moor Park, near "Farnham" (Frensham), in Surrey. A brief introduction to the story is that Mother Ludlam would grant loans of things to people so long as they returned them in two days. To one person she loaned her cauldron; unfortunately the person never returned it and hid it in a church. That church is said to be St. Mary's, and there is a cauldron there to this day that has evidently been there for centuries, a product of the action of the witch's borrower, or fairies. It is said that the cauldron was used to brew ale. In any event, there is a cauldron in the 13th century St. Mary's.
I think I like the Floating Trees possibilities a little more.
According to English Fairy and Other Folk Tales (1890) by Edwin Sidney Hartland,‘IN the vestry of Frensham Church, in Surrey, on the north side of the chancel, is an extraordinary great kettle or caldron, which the inhabitants say, by tradition, was brought hither by the fairies, time out of mind, from Borough-hill about a mile hence. To this place, if any one went to borrow a yoke of oxen, money, etc., he might have it for a year or longer, so be kept his word to return it. There is a cave where some have fancied to hear music. In this Borough-hill is a great stone lying along of the length of about six feet. They went to this stone and knocked at it, and declared what they would borrow, and when they would repay, and a voice would answer when they should come, and that they should find what they desired to borrow at that stone. This caldron, with the trivet, was borrowed here after the manner aforesaid, and not returned according to promise; and though the caldron was afterwards carried to the stone, it could not be received, and ever since that time no borrowing there.’ [Quote source: Mysterious Britain, http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/england/surrey/folklore/church-of-saint-mary-the-virgin-frensham.html]
Comments