Pip's Hellsborough Diary
This is third part of a journal entry in which I talk about my interests in folklore (read part one and part two)
In order to do some proper research on The Legend of Van Hallam and the Loxley Kraken of Hellsborough Hole, I had to get my hands dirty, and get myself down to the places that might be mentioned in the legend and see for myself whatever there was to see after all this time. As somewhere that was instrumental in the industrial revolution, and various earth works will have been undertaken, I wasn't expecting much, but field work is part of the job.
There are several goals of active folklore research. The first objective is to identify traditions within a social group and to collect their lore, preferably in situ. There are many old boys and gals that remember this legend, but details are so generic these days, that anything specific is just too long gone.
There are many other tools I have at my disposal as a folklorist to do my research, but front and centre, is getting down and dirty at the site in question. Which meant really immersing myself into The Masons Arms (properly, The Freemasons), and understanding any shared vocabulary, which could vary by sometimes somewhat divergent shades of meaning; this I needed to use thoughtfully and consistently. I know, a terrible hardship, I'm sure you'll agree.
As a folklorist I also tend to rub shoulders with other researchers, we share tools and inquiries in neighbouring fields. No-one was particularly looking at my Kraken research, but I spoke to many other folks interested and researching the literature, anthropology, cultural history, linguistics, geography, musicology, sociology, and psychology of the Hallamshire region.
As the pub mentioned in the legend still stands, it was at the invitation of the current tenants, that I ventured into its vast underground catacombs. Those tunnels stretch deep, long and fetid beneath that most liminal of junctions above at the crossroads. Those dark archways and blind passageways take you way, way beneath the Loxley river, the red brick channels oozing the dampness and silt of the river. It is like going back in time a thousand years or more. Dark, dank and oppressive with fumes of wet sulphur, mist and murk saturating the ether, clogging your lungs, making you cough heavy phlegm with every forward step.
It was stumbling through this vile snoughing damp, with just the beer light to guide me, that I happened upon a small sarcophagus.
Buried behind a lifetimes collection of brick-a-brack, rubble and detritus, lodged in a tiny hole which could have been made to home it, possibly washed there from Dale Dyke when the reservoir collapsed and caused the Great Floods of 1864 -- but likely not -- in all likelihood, that parcel had survived in its hiding place for generation after generation, going back all the way to shortly after 66 Ma. That package had lain there all along, since it was originally deposited. Lain to rest there by Milting, guardians of The Hinge.
Opening that sarcophagus was nothing if not an anti-climax, I have to admit.
A few pumice blocks, if it wasn't for their uniform shape, and rubbing them with my fingertips -- noticing they were carved rather than formed, I'd probably have discarded them there and then as unimportant shards of worthless rock.
Luckily, those slight indentations sparked my interest.
The smallest of scratches -- but to the untold experience of all those professionals, all those discussions, all those inebriated chats with anthropologists, cultural historians, linguists, musicians, sociologists, psychologists, and the rest, they paid their price in gold. My fingertips recognised something, something of significance. Small, insignificant, tiny scratches on rough stone.
Maybe the most important indentations ever realised? I don't like to blow my own trumpet, but, it's significant, I know.
Lucky they were noticed. Had I not, those semagrams contained in the pumice, the liminal importance of the junction, and ultimately, Hellsborough and The Dark Peak wouldn't have been discovered.