The motif of ‘barrow as fairy dwelling’, is common in recent folklore. Unfortunately the prevalence of sites which are not gravemounds tends to diminish the significance of those which are, and this eclecticism becomes even more apparent when we include others which are not prehistoric at all into the reckoning. The Fairy Hill at Bishopston was due to be levelled, when the pick and shovel men heard a voice from within say, ‘Is all well?’. ‘Yes’, they stammered. ‘Then keep well when you are well’, bellowed the voice, ‘and leave the Fairy Hill alone’. Thanks to this intervention it still stands, making it possible for field investigators to identify it as a twelfth-century castle motte. In fact many of the most celebrated fairy mounds are not archaeological at all.
Any attempt to connect fairy hills with haunted gravemounds must meet the objection that, in historic times at least, people did not know that barrows were gravemounds; the process of association must therefore be a very early one. If this were so one would expect barrows to predominate in the earliest literature, hills in the later stories. The reverse is true. Although barrows are common in recent oral tradition, seven out of the eight accounts gathered from the witchcraft era relate to hills; and when, in the same generation, Aubrey has a tale of entry into Faerie, it involves a cave such as that at Borough hill in Frensham, or a natural rise such as Hackpen Hill at Avebury.
A cluster of stories from twelfth-century chroniclers tell of people who enter a mysterious Otherworld: they adventure through, respectively, a cave, a tunnel, a cave, a barrow and a hill. The story of the barrow is told by William of Newborough, about Willy Howe, a massive Neolithic mound within the ‘Great Wolds sacred landscape’. Here a rustic was wobbling his way back home from a party c.1150 when he heard the sound of singing and dancing coming from within. ‘Perceiving in the side of the hill an open door, he approached, and, looking in, he beheld the house, spacious and lighted up, filled with men and women, who were seated, as it were, at a solemn banquet’. One of the attendants brought him a cup which he stole.
There are Scandinavian versions in which the sacramental implications of the cup are developed for the story is one about the transference of magical power, not food and drink. But as far as locale is concerned, hollow barrows occur as only one among many entries to the world of Faerie.
Here, then (slightly abridged) is more evidence that the ‘supernatural’ properties of hills and barrows are in many ways interchangeable. And within the article are some snatches of story, some themes, that I may be able to incorporate into my own explorations, which is why I’ve retained them. In particular, I’m interested in the transference of magical power through the stealing of an otherworldly vessel or other artefact.
The conclusion that natural hills and barrows are equally likely to be ‘hollow’ and to have stories attached to them, is very welcome, as it really opens up the possibilities in Norfolk! Unlike other parts of the UK there is no building stone here and therefore no stone circles or other prehistoric monuments. Instead, we have barrows, many of them flattened and known only through cropmarks, discovered via aerial photography. This in itself may be something to think about. Is a hill still ‘hollow’ when it has been entirely flattened through ploughing? Its location still exists and there may be burials within the ‘magic circle’ of the ring-ditch.
While thinking about entry ‘into’ hills, I mustn’t forget the properties of hill tops. I think I am tending to muddle the two, but then perhaps what I’ve been reading shows that there is no clear division. If a hill is special because it can be seen from a distance, or because you can see a long way from the top of it, or even because it’s invisible until you are almost on top of it, how that hill is experienced from the outside must be significant too.
