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Yithian

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I watched this wide-ranging and very interesting lecture as it was broadcast live last night:

This lecture explores how digital landscape modelling can help unlock the secrets of Britain’s ancient pathways. Focusing on “corpse roads”, pathways taken by coffin bearers over the countryside before the Enclosures, it discusses the significance of such routes, and how a mapped understanding of factors such as slope, elevation and distance can shed light on the stories behind them.


The topic is intimately linked with the topic of 'Corpse Candles', those candles being originally carried by the coffin bearers as they traced the aforementioned routes. These lights later took on a supernatural aspect and several beliefs and traditions arose about them:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/corpse-candles.47320/#post-1783505

There's much on graveyards, lay-lines, yew trees, lychgates, archaeology, cartography and traditional beliefs surrounding life and death.

The lecturer, Dr Stuart Dunn (KCL), is, alas, of the modern 'read aloud' school, but I can't fault either his research or his material.

Strongly recommended to those interested in British folklore.
 
We walked a corpse road on Lewis a few years ago. It was very rough and boggy and that was with improvements done to it. It must have been very difficult carrying coffins along it but I suppose people were much tougher in those days.
 
Just to add, one of my favourite parts mentioned in that lecture is the myth that the roots of the yew tree in the graveyard radiate beneath the ground and grow into the mouths of all the bodies buried there.

The idea, I presume, is that death nourishes new life and all those who have left this mortal coil are, in a sense, united in communion and promised rebirth.

This page suggests that it was a Breton belief:

This capacity for age is given the Yew by its peculiar form of growth. Its branches grow down into the ground to form new stems, which grow to become trunks of separate but linked growth. In time, the central trunk becomes old and the insides decay, but a new tree grows within the spongy mass of the original. So the Yew represents great age, rebirth and reincarnation. The Yew is the fountainhead of youth in age and of age in youth, the new year that is born from the old, the new soul sprung from ancient roots in a seemingly fresh new body. In Breton Legend, the tree is said to grow a root into the open mouth of each corpse buried in the graveyard. This root is a symbol of rebirth with the spirit reborn in much the same way as the tree itself is reborn (Murray).
Source:
https://yewtreeblog.wordpress.com/2016/01/07/3-yew-trees-in-graveyards/amp/

More on this diverting subject in this book extract:

It is “beneath the yew-tree’s shade” that “heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,” as Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” puts it. Taxus baccata almost invariably casts its shadow where the dead are, on the south and west sides of the church. Like the bodies it watches over, it is rarely found on the north side, and then only in exceptional circumstances.
Some believe, suggested Robert Turner, the strange, learned, and prodigious seventeenth-century translator of many mystical and medico-chemical texts, that this is because yews’ branches would “draw and imbibe” the “gross and oleaginous Vapours exhaled out of the graves by the setting Sun.” They also might prevent the appearance of ghosts or apparitions. Unabsorbed gases produced the ignes fatui, the “foolish fire” like that which travelers saw over bogs and marshes, and these, in the context of churchyards, could be mistaken for dead bodies walking. Superstitious monks, he continues, believed that the yew could drive away devils. Its roots, he thought, were poisonous because they will “run and suck nourishment” from the dead, whose flesh is “the rankest poison that could be.”

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/10/31/beneath-the-yew-trees-shade/
 
Just to add, one of my favourite parts mentioned in that lecture is the myth that the roots of the yew tree in the graveyard radiate beneath the ground and grow into the mouths of all the bodies buried there

"A tree root that grew into a person's skull in a graveyard" : I did wonder if this was genuine, or indeed common

A tree root that grew into a person's skull in a graveyard.jpg
 
Really enjoyed that. There's a good selection of other lectures on Gresham's Youtube channel too. Thanks @Yithian for the pointer!
 
Really enjoyed that. There's a good selection of other lectures on Gresham's Youtube channel too. Thanks @Yithian for the pointer!

They're superb. I've seen dozens of the history and politics ones.

I've been watching them for a couple of years now, but when broadcast live they typically only have a couple of hundred viewers worldwide and they rarely achieve that many views in the long run.
 
Considering how strong roots can get, I find it unlikely they would conform to the shape of a skull if growing into it.
Likely they would just split the skull apart.
 
Sadly it was one of many peculiar images I pick up from the internet over the years and if I had provenance I would have quoted it.
However have just tracked the image one degree of separation back to reddit four years ago - I don't know if it is a genuine skull root ball, but heck why not ! (apart from the skull splitting as @Xanatic* said).

Ah but what happens when the tree root finds its way into the skull of a living person?
 
Ah but what happens when the tree root finds its way into the skull of a living person?
One of my old neighbours had a friend that kept birds and used to blow on the food bowls to get rid of the chaff. One day a small seed landed in his eye and lodged behind his eye. Roll on a few weeks and the seed sprouted - he didn't tell me exactly happened to his friend but he said it 'weren't nice' in his thick Yorkshire accent.
 
I'm a little circumspect regarding the supposed skull rootball. The growth looks to be very regular diameter for a tree root of that length, and there isn't much evidence of root hairs - looks more like a lliana, or some other sort of vine, to me.
 
This from today's way-to-work read supplied food for thought, I thought.

I seem to recall reading about specific examples of corpse roads (coffin roads, lych ways, etc.) laid out to cross running water so as to prevent the conveyed spirit from backtracking to the world of the living.

They also prefer to follow straight lines and travel direct. Example from Feckenham, Worcestershire.

20231003_121313.jpg
20231003_121320.jpg
20231003_121333.jpg
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Source: Leys by Danny Sullivan (Wooden Books, 2000).
 
Just to add, one of my favourite parts mentioned in that lecture is the myth that the roots of the yew tree in the graveyard radiate beneath the ground and grow into the mouths of all the bodies buried there.

There is a mirroring belief that a Forbidden Apple was planted in Adam's grave and it sprouted, becoming the tree from which the Cross was created.

It has been suggested that this is an explanation for the Green Man artworks - vegetation coming forth. I like the idea but... wouldn't that mean they'd put the apple into Adam's skull? In which case, did he choke while eating it (poetic justice!) or did they de-brain him? or...?
 
The extract above led me (indirectly) to the following text.

SmartSelect_20231020_125959_Samsung Notes.jpg

I've extracted Chapters 6 & 7 to post here, as they pertain to our interest in Corpse Roads and Spirit Paths and are generally very good.

.pdf File Attached

Edit: this is the second mention I have read of a spectral horse at Bedminster Down. Does anyone know more? I'm intrigued.

SmartSelect_20231020_132031_Samsung Notes.jpg
 

Attachments

  • Ley Lines - Ch 6 and 7.pdf
    1.3 MB · Views: 14
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The extract above led me (indirectly) to the following text.

View attachment 70638

I've extracted Chapters 6 & 7 to post here, as they pertain to our interest in Corpse Roads and Spirit Paths and are generally very good.

.pdf File Attached

Edit: this is the second mention I have read of a spectral horse at Bedminster Down. Does anyone know more? I'm intrigued.

View attachment 70640
Molly's horse sounds a lot like a Scottish Kelpie. She is lucky she got tossed off (ooh er) before it reached the water.
 
The extract above led me (indirectly) to the following text.

View attachment 70638

I've extracted Chapters 6 & 7 to post here, as they pertain to our interest in Corpse Roads and Spirit Paths and are generally very good.

.pdf File Attached

Edit: this is the second mention I have read of a spectral horse at Bedminster Down. Does anyone know more? I'm intrigued.

View attachment 70640

Here is The Ley Hunter, Issue No. 126 giving the tale of Molly's ride.

From the above source:

a) Their map of Molly's journey:

Screen-Hunter-461-Oct-20-09-07.jpg


b) Some relevant grid references:

Screen-Hunter-462-Oct-20-09-08.jpg


c) The precise spot (blue pinpointer) where Molly N. was thrown from the demonic horse (where the corpse road crosses the Molly Brook):

Screen-Hunter-463-Oct-20-09-12.jpg


(Modern aerial image superimposed 50:50 on 25"/1 mile Victorian OS map.)

d) The modern 1:63,360 OS map. (Locus is in upper left quadrant, near left edge of map.)

maximus otter
 
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