Journal of Geomancy vol. 4 no. 2, January 1980

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LETTERS

From John Billingsley, Hebden Bridge:

Speaking as a Pagan, myself, I note a very real distinction between an emphasis on Paganism, and the emphasis on earth mysteries, despite the close interactive relationship of the two, and sometimes I wonder if that distinction may be being lost in certain sectors of the Pagan movement particularly?  When it comes down to it, earth mysteries do not require necessarily and specifically a Pagan outlook, and should be allowed to proceed on its course without confusion from belief systems.  Alliance with an ideology/belief/whatever can only harm any study unfortunate enough to catch such restrictive attentions.  Paganism is a matter of individual choice; earth mysteries, a matter of world relevance.  This should really not be confused!  What brings this up is the recent Leeds Earth Mysteries Conference.  Some of us up here were quite amazed that the ‘first such conference in the North of England’ could be convened without communication with any of the published – admittedly an arbitrary category – northern researchers, and in fact the first we heard of it was via the Society for Promoting Pagan Knowledge.  I myself saw no information or publicity anywhere else.  In fact, I felt personally, and gathered from the report in the Northern Newsletter, that it was more a Pagan conference than an earth mysteries one, unless one spreads the earth mysteries net unnecessarily and bewilderingly wide.  As such therefore it didn’t describe itself well at all.  I’m running an evening class in earth mysteries at present, but I do not feel justified in expressing paganism to a local audience who are mostly there in response to an interest in the local landscape.  It is not a chance to make converts; and if I looked at it that way, or tried to lay my beliefs on them, I would be no better than a politician or priest of a compulsory religion, both of which, as a Pagan and a spiritual anarchist, I must despise.  I hope we don’t see the repeat of misnomer activities, which are no credit to either context, but I guess that depends on the attitudes and motives of the appropriate organizers. 

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Editor’s note: I agree entirely with John Billingsley.  When the organizers asked me to speak at this spurious conference, I agreed thinking that there would be a real earth mysteries event.  As it turned out, I was the only speaker on the subject and the rest was folklore, magic and paganism, fine in its place, but certainly not earth mysteries.  The unfortunate incidents which occurred before and after this ‘conference’ and the consequences to the SPPK and Albion magazine must wait to be told.  Albion is now no more, and the direct result of this event was the expulsion of your editor, a founder member, from the SPPK. 
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From Simon Crook, Southampton:

I am making enquiries on a possible terrestrial horse head figure around the village of Owslebury, near Winchester.  I have corresponded with Mike Collier about his Sussex horse head and he has pointed out that the Owslebury figure may bear the same relationship to the Alton Zodiac as the Sussex head has to the Stonegate Zodiac.  You may like to hear details of the Owslebury horse head.  It is mainly delineated by roads and tracks and is roughly two square miles in area.  The figure looks like the classic profile representation of a horse’s head on horse brasses.  The figure is also on the fringe of the Hampshire chalk region, before it meets the clay, for what that is worth.  As for ‘anatomical’ details, the ‘muzzle’ of the horse tapers sharply, whilst a quarry marks the ‘nostril’ and the ‘eye’ is marked by a copse.  {25} A Roman Road also passes through the horse head from the north west, and it appears, from archaeological evidence, that Owslebury is the centre of a complex of prehistoric and Roman tracks.  Evidently, the area was important from early times. 

The main evidence for support of the existence of the horse head is linguistic.  On the muzzle is the hamlet of Hensting which I take to mean ‘folk of the stallion’.  By the mouth of the figure is Horsham Copse, which seems fairly obvious.  About a mile south is Marwell which is supposed to mean ‘boundary stream’ (OE meare is boundary), a derivation guessed from an 1194 reading of Merewelle.  Marwell could just as easily mean ‘horse’ or ‘mare’ stream (mearh means horse and its feminine is mere).  Three miles south of the Owslebury figure and marked on the 1810 Ordnance map of the Southampton area is a Mareshill Farm. 

Another place name that was marked on the 1810 map was Rosehill Park, about two miles north-east of the figure.  This did not mean much until I saw that on the perimeter of Mike Collier’s Sussex horse head was a village called Rose Hill.  As I did not have the means to check the meanings of these names I looked up the meanings of similar place names.  Rosedale in Yorkshire means ‘horse valley’, derived from the Norse ‘hross’.  Rosley in Cumberland is of old English derivation and means ‘horse clearing’, so Rose Hill may mean ‘horse hill’. 

A mile from the horse’s head and within the bounds of the former Rosehill Park is a site called Pilgrims Ash, reached by an overgrown hollow track.  The ash, more than any other tree, is connected with horses.  As the Ash Yggdrasil it was Odin’s steed in Norse Mythology, and, according to Robert Graves the tree was sacred to Poseidon, who had patronage of horses.  Also, rods for urging Horses were made of ash. 
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From John Dewey, Wareham.

I have noted that some of the leys that I have investigated seem to be constructed using the proportion phi or the Golden Mean.  On one there appears to be extensive use of the Fibonacci series 1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55, 89,144… (measuring in quarter geodetic miles or Behrend’s Y units).  It would be interesting if this were to be confirmed, for it would show that whoever designed or surveyed the leys knew not only pi, as Mr Behrend has demonstrated, but also phi, the basis of the Golden Mean used widely in art and architecture of the ancient world. 

A further interesting point is that a ‘geodetic mile’ made up of 4 of Mr Behrend’s Y units is equal to 2,239 Megalithic Yards of 0·829 metres as discovered by Professor Thom.  When I calculated this from my own “quarter geodetic mile” it meant nothing to me, until one day I stumbled upon a reference to the old Irish mile, which was 2,240 yards long, based on the Irish rod, pole or perch of 7 yards (instead of the standard Imperial 5½ yards).  Did the Irish at some point standardize their yard (or have it imposed on them from Britain), while retaining in their itinerary measurement the older Megalithic figure of 2,240 which in terms of the older Megalithic Yard proves to be a geodetic measurement?  I am trying to research further into this, but have found very little on Irish metrology.  Another factor which may be of significance is that 2.24 is quite a good approximation to root 5, so that a square geodetic mile would contain approximately 5,000,000 square megalithic yards (close enough for practical reckoning). 
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From Michael W. Burgess, Lowestoft.

Michael Behrend’s article on The Dragon as Crocodile in JOG 4/1 I enjoyed greatly, and found very interesting.  In regard to the legend of the dragon at Ludham in Norfolk, the Norfolk Chronicle of September 28th, 1782, reports an item that may be of some relevance: {26}

“On Monday the 14th inst. a snake of enormous size was destroyed at Ludham in this county by Jasper Andrews of that place.  It measured 5 feet 8 inches long, was almost 3 feet in circumference and had a very long snout.  What is remarkable there were two excrescences on the forepart of the head which very much resembled horns.  The creature seldom made its appearance in the day time but kept concealed in subterranean retreats several of which have been discovered in the town, one near the bake-office and another on the premises of the Revd. N.V. Jeffrey and another in the land occupied by Mr Popple at the Hall.  The skin of the above surprising reptile is now in the possession of Mr J. Garrod, a wealthy farmer in the neighbourhood.”

No date for the dragon legend is given in the original account (the W.H. Cooke Mss. in the Norfolk and Norwich Record Office), so I suppose it is possible that the above event may have given rise to it.  Like the ‘snake’ the dragon dug a warren of passages under the village (between the corner of the churchyard, the main street and the Carpenters’ Arms), and both were rather nocturnal creatures.  The legendary serpent though was said to be between 12 and 15 feet long, and was not slain but driven away. 

Michael Behrend says that the Wormingford Dragon is “no doubt … identical with the one that appeared in 1405 at Bures, a couple of miles upstream”, but I wonder.  Winifred Beaumont, referring to the Wormingford beast, gives either Sir Bertram de Haye or Sir George Marney as its slayer, whilst another account seems to combine the two into Sir George de la Haye.  The original chronicler of the Bures legend however (Johannes de Trokelowe, not de Hokelowe as I and others have stated in the past) names the hero as Sir Richard de Waldegrave.  In 1953 a Dr S. Slade, then resident in Jamaica, claimed to have seen a manuscript some years previously in the vestry of Nayland church which gave the tale, and he recalled it thus: “Some men working in water meadows at Wiston (now Wissington) saw a monstrous dragon on the river bank.  So frightened were they that they called in some soldiers from Colchester, who brought cannon with them.  But when they fired at the beast they were amazed to see the balls glance of the scaly back.” I can understand a crocodile’s skin repelling arrows, but cannonballs?!  Slade goes on to suggest though that the beast was an alligator or crocodile which had escaped from a ship at the mouth of the River Stour and made its way upstream.  F.W. Holiday in his The Dragon and the Disc claims to have got the story from a Col. G.O. Probert, whose father had written an unpublished history of Bures The father would have been Col. William Godfrey Probert (born 1864) of Bevill’s Court at Bures, who, in 1914, related the legend to members of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, and suggested that the dragon was in fact a crocodile. 

The mere into which the dragon fled still exists, surrounded by trees, on the opposite side of the river from Smallbridge Hall, which was built by the Waldegrave family before or c. 1572 (according to Pevsner). 

Two more dragons are alleged to have appeared in the same area, which I note Michael does not mention.  The story is supposedly contained in a book now in Canterbury Cathedral: Memorandum: that on Friday the 26th of September in the year of our Lord 1449, about the hour of Vespers, two terrible dragons were seen fighting for about the space of one hour, on two hills, of which one in Suffolk, is called KYDYNDON HYL and the other in Essex BLACDON HILL.  One was black in colour and the other reddish and spotted.  After a long conflict the reddish one obtained the victory over the black, which done, both returned to the hills above named whence they had come, that is to say, each to his own place to the admiration of many beholding them.” The hills are now named Kedington or Killingdown Hill, in Little Cornard parish, and Ballingdon Hill, in that parish just over the Essex border.  The scene of the fight is called Sharpfight Meadow, between the two.  But at Killingdown Hill, the Meadow, and another nearby spot called Dane’s Hole, ancient arms and armour have been {27} found in the past, and tradition says that these places are the site of a grim battle between the Saxons and the Danes.  Which leads me to wonder whether or not the dragon legend is allegorical; that is to say, the Essex beast symbolizing the Saxons, and the Suffolk creature the invading Danes.  There is nothing of course to suggest that either of these dragons could have been a crocodile, but I thought I would throw it in for good measure!