Diary of Pip Rippon

Up on Wadsley common, there is a hidden glade. Its location shifts readily in time and space, so unless you are there at the correct time (of the year, or of the day, I currently have no idea) and in the correct place -- from what I have discovered, in relation to the white obelisk atop Loxley Edge, then you are likely to never find it. If you do, however -- as I did today, then you will see the Sentinel stone (worshipped by some, notably the Moor and Ley clans, as the Shaman stone, see humans in the nether lands -- the nethermen). From what I have been told, that is where you are supposed to feel closest to Dunlockslyn, and who am I to deny that feeling, having now visited that hallowed earth. The strange thing was though, once I had seen this mystical thing, as if shattered, I wandered the common aimlessly and without direction, my only solace the view of distant Wilkin hill, to which my gaze kept returning. Despite knowing the place like the back of my hand, I experienced places never before seen and through tears of sweat, had an otherworldly experience. Maybe I grazed my shin and took in some rockcrust or some spore, since like the shifting of the bracken dunes up there, the paths suddenly unfolded before my eyes, my buddy Shad and an ever present redfront my only guides.

I was in the shower this morning and thought of someone who I haven't thought of in my waking thoughts for at least 20 years, probably nearer 30. I wonder what that means? Either they just died and it was some sort of psychic message from the murk, or the hive mind is injecting thoughts into my head?

Up to the top and out the back of Stannington, on the look-out for The Xin, but no sightings, as per usual. The Head stone was my target and what a fine thing it is. According to local lore The Head Stone is also known as Stump John, the Priestley Stone or the Cock Crowing Stone, and I found it this time at the head of the Rivelin Valley -- it is said to move depending upon the migration of curlbeak. The murk was particularly heavy for the time of year, especially of the descent back through some sort of stickle wood, and I lost my way for quite some time; luckily, as always Shad was with me, so despite not knowing where I was, I didn't ever feel like I wasn't safe.

Out for a proper yomp along the Loxley valley, then up to Stopes by the track, and then joining up the dots over the back of Stannington to finally head back down to the Rivelin valley and back into Hellsborough; a good outing. No significant sighting of anything especially interesting, but Van was in the bar afterwards, and he had this to say, whatever this is: "I sees the dulolyn and the dulolyn won, I sees the dulolyn and the dulolyn won, squawkwings and things, batten 'em up, batten 'em up, batten up them squawkwings, they ain't no good to us or them, they ain't no good. Batten 'em up."

Met with Van this evening in one of our favourite bars on the Middle wood road to finalise some details of his early life that I felt I didn't have enough detail on. As usually is the case with these meetings, we ended up consuming our fair share of ales and Van, as is also usual on these occasions, had to smoke and slurp his way through numerous narcotic substances. Yet, it has to be said, that this is when he is at his most lucid and then I am able to glean those little nuggets of information which would otherwise become lost in the ether of time. Being an offworlder, I am not always tuned into the subtleties and nuances that to a native can mean something entirely different, so on evenings like these, one word said in a different way can make all the difference to my understanding and subsequent transliteration, that makes it available to you, dear reader. Tonight's word: Mardy. Said in context: Thas reyt mardy, as a scratcher, which basically translates to: You bad tempered cat.

This is second part of a journal entry in which I talk about my interests in folklore (read part one)

All cultures have their own unique folklore -- it is all around us, all of the time, it doesn't have to be about old or antiquated tales. Folklore is natural and necessary, it continues to be created, transmitted and perpetuated anywhere where people need to differentiate between "us" and "them".

It is the lore bit of folklore that interests me the most, since lore I believe follows some law of self-correction -- a feedback mechanism which keeps variations closer to their original form, and therefore closer to what was once the truth.

Although I study folklore, my vocation is (or was) the study of systems, so I likely have more in common with the STEMs than they know. A lot of my interest investigates the functions and processes of systems. My goals are to identify and understand a system's closed signalling loop, in which an action by the system generates a change in the environment, which in turn triggers feedback to the system and initiates a new action.

This approach was first used with mechanistic and biological systems, but is now applied to many cultural and societal systems, I use this approach with folklore. Once you start to look at things this way, you start to move away from seeing things on a traditional linear time scale, and you start to see how folklore maintains itself over many generations and over the eons.

The oral tradition of poems is found across all cultures, and the form of the poem remains remarkably consistent. According to systemic theories, this can be attributed to a closed loop auto-correction built into the system maintenance of oral folklore.

The supernatural is only super to nature because we struggle to observe and form natural theories about it. In searching for the truth in lore, I want to observe the unobservable and find the truth of the supernatural.

My travels have led me far and wide, but eventually this place where I sit now, this liminal heatsink that is Hallamshire, drew me in until I was transfixed. I had come across several legends in this area. One of the most famous is that of the Wantley Dragon.

That story recounts a long drawn out fight between a barbaric and blood thirsty knights templar known as Moore of Moore's Hall. It was said that a crazed Moore, unhappy with the performance of his trusted steed after one battle, did swing his onetoe by the tail and mane until dead, before roasting the poor beast over an open fire and devouring its carcass.

The Dragon meanwhile, is living in a cave up on Wharncliffe crags and terrorising the locals by preying upon their children and livestock, as well as devouring whole trees,
 pillaging forests, and desecrating churches in its endless search to satiate its bottomless hunger.

Desperate to distraction, the Wharncliffe locals seek out the heinous knight Moore and pay him to kill the dragon. The dragon is said to resemble a monstrous winged venomtooth and to kill by squeezing the life from its victims. To this end, Moore has the little mesters of the Dun valley fashion him a suit of armour covered in steel spikes as sharp as razor blades.

The devious knight then waits in a pond for the dragon to come and drink, and when it does, starts a fight with it, dealing it a terrific blow to its undercarriage and then grappling with it until they came to wrestle and the dragon began to squeeze the knight, impaling itself on the sharp spikes of Moore's suit of armour.

Another interesting Hallamshire legend concerns a mythical river beast known as the Loxley Kraken.

This many tentacled beast was believed to live in a place called Hellsborough hole, which according to the legend was at the confluence of the rivers Loxley and Dun, which would place it around the Owlerton area.

My research, and the name Hellsborough hole, cast some doubt on this being the location of the legend, but it is not unusual for such legends to migrate over short distances, and bare in mind that when these stories were first being verbally passed on: First just through chats and whispers and then later through rhymes and songs, the folk who were doing the telling didn't always travel that far.

Consider that the confluence of rivers Loxley and Rivelin, is no more than a mile upstream, and that the name that stuck was the Loxley kraken and not the Dun kraken or the Rivelin kraken. In all likelihood then, the Hellsborough "hole" was the expanse of the river Loxley betwixt its confluences with the Dun and Rivelin, the central point of which more or less, is Hellsborough corner.

You can read a version of the legend here: The Legend of Van Hallam and the Loxley Kraken of Hellsborough Hole

(You'll notice that the hero in this legend is Van Hallam. Obviously if you have visited many other pages on this site, or read any of the Hellsborough Chronicles, you will have come across many encounters between myself and Van Hallam in the present day, which may be confusing. I agree that it is, so I offer these explanations: Van Hallam is a generic term meaning Man of Hallam, or local hero, alternatively, Van Hallam is of a great age, and so it actually is him -- although I have asked on numerous previous occasions and he denies his involvement. Although, he hasn't ever categorically denied it, since he says his memory is sometimes vague. A third explanation would be that someone -- Van or someone else calling themselves Van Hallam travelled a great distance back in time using rockcrust. There are several other explanations, so you'll probably just be better off accepting your confusion).