The Blowing Stone

 

 

In the previous post, I discussed my liking for ‘books of old journeys and obscure byways’. I often find curious incidental details in their author’s descriptions of their wanderings. Two of them I have chanced upon both give a brief account of their visit to an unusual monolith.

Land’s End to John O’Groats by W B Dawson (1934) is about a journey by bike along the well-known route stretching the length of Britain. It was issued by a local printer-publisher in Todmorden, the Pennine mill town which straddles Yorkshire and Lancashire: the locals will tell you the border goes through the middle of the town hall. There had recently been a celebrated record-breaking achievement of the Anglo-Scottish journey by a British speed cyclist, and Dawson alludes to this throughout his book, though his own approach is more leisurely, with diversions to places of interest.

I found the volume at a village hall book sale and, opening it at random, found a passage about The Blowing Stone, a holed boulder (‘perforated sarsen’, technically, I gather) at Kingston Lisle in the White Horse country, which emits a deep moaning when blown into in the right way. One legend has it that the booming produced by the stone was used by Alfred to summon his army against the Danes.

I had encountered this monument before in another travel book, We Wander in Wessex (1947) by Jane Herbert. This had endeared me to it with a pleasing anecdote early on. The author tells of a Somerset parson who was also a prolific poet, and generous in giving away autographed copies of his volumes of verse. On one occasion, called upon to bestow a Bible upon a parishioner, he absently-minded signed it ‘With the Author’s Compliments’.

Jane Herbert quotes from Tom Brown’s Schooldays about the Blowing Stone, where it is evoked as ghostly. In her book, there is a photograph of a boy addressing the Stone. A sign attached to a nearby tree elicits sixpence for the privilege of viewing it, though you do also get a pamphlet. Needless to say, I at once wanted a copy of this piece of ephemera. I wondered whether it gave instructions on how to get the best results, and what happens if you blow the wrong note. It scarcely bears thinking about.

Dawson gives a bit more information about the Stone, explaining how he called at a nearby cottage and was taken to the stone by a boy, who thoughtfully wiped the mouthpiece with a dingy towel so his visitor could have a go. The author was unsuccessful in raising a note from the hollows within, but the boy had the knack and demonstrated it to him.

This was not the only interesting passage about ancient sites in his book. On page 100, Dawson casually mentions, when he is in the neighbourhood of Bodmin, Cornwall, ‘the old palace of King Arthur, named Caradigan’. What could this be? Not Tintagel, much further north. A little research led me to little-known Bury Castle, an Iron Age hillfort near Cardinham village.

The Victorian antiquarian Egerton Phillimore explained that the Caradigan named in some Arthurian legends was not (as it sounds) Cardigan, the county town on the Welsh coast, and proposed instead this Cornish site. How had Dawson heard of it? He doesn’t say, but probably from the popular Studies in the Arthurian Legend (1891) by John Rhys, which cites the theory. Dawson also visited Dozmary Pool, one of the places thought of as the lake where Excalibur emerged.

Dawson is a lively, breezy, characterful writer and his book gives brief but interesting insights into the social history of the time, during the Depression. I have not found much information about him. He is listed as Willie B Dawson by the British Library, with one other title, Rambles in and around Todmorden [1932]. However, the Land’s End book refers also to another title, Pennine Paths.

To judge from his narrative, he was a young-ish married man, who had experienced hard times and difficulty in finding work, and was hoping to sell his book to raise money: there was a vogue for tramping, rambling, cycling and youth-hostelling books at that time. He does not seem to have published anything else after his cycling book, and I do not know what became of him.

I have also not been able to find any catalogued copy of the booklet issued to visitors at the Blowing Stone: one to look out for in my rummaging among boxes of monographs and ephemera. The stone is still in situ: I wonder what would happen if one of my favourite electronic or experimental musicians recorded the groans from the stone, treated and changed them, and turned them into an eerie composition? Alfred, a far-seeing and innovative king, would I feel have no difficulty in responding to their soundwaves through the mystic aether.

(Mark Valentine)