The Lake District has a substantial body of folklore — stories, legends and traditions attached to specific places in the landscape that have been told and retold for centuries. Some of them are demonstrably old; some may be recent inventions dressed in the language of antiquity. All of them tell you something about how the people who lived in this landscape understood it, feared it and made sense of it.
One of the most enduring Lake District legends centres on Blencathra — the sharp, multi-summited fell north of the A66, one of the most impressive profiles in the Lake District when seen from the east. On certain nights, so the tradition goes, the Wild Hunt rides across the summit ridge — a spectral cavalcade of horses, hounds and riders, led by a shadowy figure whose identity varies between tellings.
The Wild Hunt tradition is not specific to the Lake District — it appears across northern Europe, from Scandinavia through Germany to the English uplands — but its particular form here reflects the Norse heritage of the region. The Cumbrian version typically features Odin or a Odin-figure as the hunt leader, riding with the souls of the dead across the winter fells.
The practical origin is probably the sound of strong wind across the summit ridges in November and December — a sound that can, in the right conditions, resemble the baying of hounds and the thunder of hooves. The Norse settlers, for whom Odin and the Wild Hunt were active religious concepts, would have given this sound an explanation that has persisted long after the belief itself faded.
Near Beetham, on the limestone edge above the Kent estuary at the southern gateway to the Lake District, a narrow cleft in the limestone known as Fairy Steps has long been associated with the fairy tradition. The legend — one of many versions — holds that if you can descend the steps without touching either side, you will have a wish granted. The steps are genuinely narrow and the descent genuinely awkward; succeeding requires concentration and a certain composure.
The fairy tradition in the Lake District and Cumbria is not the lightweight Victorian version of tiny wings and flower cups. The earlier tradition — the one that feeds into the fairy steps legend and dozens of similar stories across the region — describes beings that are powerful, unpredictable and dangerous. You propitiated them, you did not sentimentalise them.
On the Cumbrian coast, accessible from the western fringes of the Lake District, is the old harbour town of Maryport, where a mermaid tradition has been associated with the harbour area for several centuries. Mermaids appearing in harbours are a common maritime folklore motif — the sightings typically cluster around periods of bad weather and maritime disaster — but the Maryport version has enough specific detail in the older accounts to suggest something more than a simple transplant of a generic tradition.
At Seathwaite in the Duddon Valley in the southern Lakes, a yew tree of great antiquity stands in the churchyard. Yew trees in churchyards are associated throughout northern and western Britain with pre-Christian sacred sites — the yew was a sacred tree in Celtic and Norse tradition, associated with both death and regeneration, and the Christianisation of sacred sites often preserved the trees. The Seathwaite yew is thought to be over 1500 years old.
The tradition attached to very old yew trees in this part of the world is consistent: they mark places that have been sacred to successive cultures, each of which has left a layer of meaning attached to the tree. The churchyard yew at Seathwaite is a living record of two thousand years of human presence at a single spot.
In the Eden Valley east of the Lake District, Edenhall near Penrith was the seat of the Musgrave family for centuries. The Luck of Edenhall — a 13th-century enamelled glass beaker of Syrian origin, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum — was traditionally said to have been left by fairies at a well near the hall. The Musgrave family were cautioned by the fairies that if the glass broke, their luck would break with it. The glass survived until the 19th century and is now in the V&A; the Musgraves eventually declined and the hall was demolished. The post hoc confirmation of the prophecy was noted.
The beaker is genuine and extraordinary. The Syrian glass of the 13th century found its way to a Cumbrian estate. How, exactly, is a genuinely interesting historical question.
On our bespoke history and heritage tours, the folklore of the Lake District and its borderlands is part of the story of the landscape — the layers of belief, superstition and storytelling that have accumulated over millennia in a landscape that has always had the capacity to produce strong reactions in the people who live in it.
Interested in the folklore and history of the Lake District? Contact us about a bespoke tour.