The Wansdyke & District Forums

I have been collecting the Devil-stories of our monuments, because there are a great many and they all say the same thing in different words. The Devil's Den, the dolmen out towards Clatford, is the obvious one: the story is that the Devil set it up, that no horses can pull the capstone down, and that at midnight he sits on it. There is a version where water poured into a hollow on the stone is gone by morning, drunk by the Devil. You find the same at Adam's Grave, at the Sanctuary, at half the barrows on the downs. What strikes me, walking these places, is that the Devil-naming always lands on the oldest things, the prehistoric things, the ones the Church could not explain or absorb. The old gods become the Devil. The places that were holy before become places of dread.

The folklorists would agree with you, Bran, on the mechanism at least, even those of us who keep the rods and robes at arm's length. When the new religion cannot account for an old monument it brands it the Devil's work; it is a way of forbidding the old reverence without quite denying the power of the place. I would only add the practical layer: a barrow with a Devil on it is a barrow nobody robs for building stone. The dread preserved more monuments than the antiquarians ever did. Fear is a better fence than a law.

https://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=1497

That is a generous and true thing to say, Trevor, and I take the gentle dig in good part. You are right that the fear protected them. I would only say it differently: the old places kept a little of their power by frightening the people who had been taught to forget why they mattered. The dread is the memory of the holiness, wearing the only coat the new age would let it wear.

Beautifully put, both of you. We feel it still at the festivals, that the old places hold something the Devil-stories were trying to name and to cage at the same time. Name a thing the Devil and you can fear it safely. But some of us go up to the Den at the turning of the year anyway, and pour the water, and find it gone by morning. Make of that what you will.