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Abstract
Penistone Crags in Wuthering Heights (1847) has long and, I argue, correctly been identified with Ponden Kirk on Haworth Moor. This article compares the folklore of Ponden Kirk with the fictional folklore associated with Penistone Crags, looking at the real-world and literary traditions in relation to beliefs surrounding the South Pennines. It suggests that some details of fairylore in Wuthering Heights—both the fairies in the ‘Fairy Cave’ and Catherine’s elf-bolts—are based on early to mid-nineteenth-century Haworth folklore. The article finishes with an appendix on the Gytrash (a legendary being familiar from Jane Eyre).
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Notes
1 All references to Wuthering Heights are to Christopher Heywood’s edition. I thank the peer reviewers, the editors and Chris Woodyard for advice with this article and my daughter Lisi for rereading Wuthering Heights with me.
2 ‘Penistow’ could easily have been a misreading on the part of the typesetter: ‘stone’ with a trailing or poorly articulated ‘e’ could have been understood as ‘stow’.
3 For this and other objections, see Chitham (Citation2010, 117–120). As to the general setting of Wuthering Heights, I agree with Flintoff: ‘the material has been meticulously collected from a wide range of models across a large area of country[,] they have then been reassembled carefully to form a totally different landscape from any actual one, as likely to surprise as to be familiar to those of us who know the South Pennines’ (Citation2006, 49).
4 See, for example, Alexander and Smith (Citation2018, 393). A notable dissenter has been Heywood (Citation1993, 827) favouring instead, Huntsman Crag in Lunesdale; but see, too, his Wuthering Heights edition ([1847] 2004, 217). ‘Penistone’ was probably taken from Haworth’s Penistone Hill. ‘Penistone Slack’, ‘Penistone Quarry’ and ‘Penistone Hill’ are to the south-west of Haworth (6” OS Y200, 1852, surveyed 1847–1848).
5 See Turner (1879): ‘Ponden Kirk consists of a ledge of high rocks, dry in summer, but forming a stupendous cataract after heavy rain. It was here that Mrs. Nicholls (Currer Bell) caught a severe cold shortly before her death. The place is now frequently called “Wuthering Heights”’ (154). Gaskell establishes that Charlotte caught her last cold after visiting a ‘waterfall’ on the moor (1857, II:263). This may have been the so-called Brontë waterfall and Turner (or local tradition) may have become confused.
6 Ponden Hall is about a mile, as the crow flies, from the Kirk; however, it is just out of sight, nestled down behind a small hill. From the front door of the Hall, it takes about five minutes to get a sight of the Kirk. The Kirk faces east so one would expect the sun to be brightest on it in the morning. However, in the later summer the sun would shine low from the west-north-west as it went down. That would leave the clough in shadow while the Kirk caught the last strong rays of sun. I thank Cristiano Cosentino, Carl Langendoen, Stefan Paske, Lawrie Robertson, Stu Spencer and Droo Ray for help with this issue.
7 Heather Hole, best seen on the OS map 6” OS Y199, 1851, surveyed 1848. Whether or not snow lasts in Heather Hole longer than elsewhere on Haworth Moor I cannot say, but this seems credible given its position in a dip in the narrow clough below the Kirk. For snow lasting into the summer below the Crags, see Brontë ([Citation1847] 2004, 284).
8 For example, the hole is named ‘Fairy Cave’ on Google Maps. This is an example of the Brontës influencing local topography; ‘the Brontë Waterfall’ running into Lower Laithe Reservoir is one of many others.
9 The most important work on folklore remains, fifty years on, Simpson’s article from 1974. It was not written with special reference to the South Pennines. Campbell’s (Citation2001) book is interested in Haworth traditions, and these are scattered through her work. See also Heiniger (Citation2016), 22–26. Many earlier nineteenth-century writers found inspiration in folklore traditions and literature, as indicated by Harris (Citation2008).
10 I was initially sceptical about this form for ‘fairy’: see Wright (Citation1898–1905, II:284–86) for the complicated situation in dialect. However, it is attested in one other source and that by Charlotte Brontë: Martha’s mother was ‘fleyed out of her wits, saying, she had seen a fairish (fairy) in Fieldhead Hollow; and that was the last fairish that ever was seen on this countryside (though they’ve been heard within these forty years)’ (1849, III: 317).
11 The (blind) vicar in the Haworth area is not named, but he is described as follows: ‘Soon after I came to that church … I lost my dear wife, and in a few years I was deprived again of a lovely daughter; and then, in course of time, of another beloved child, and one after another I lost, as years rolled away’ (Whalley Citation1869, 71). Turner confirms that this is Haworth (1879, 129).
12 The church is not named but the reference is clearly to Haworth.
13 The earliest reference is from Sutcliffe (Citation1899, 53–54). For more on this ‘Gytrash’, see the appendix.
14 There are suspiciously similar views in Shirley (Brontë, Citation1849, III:317).
15 We read in a piece entitled ‘Ponden Kirk’ in the Leeds Mercury from 8 May 1906 that at Ponden Kirk, ‘there is a narrow cleft, and if a girl can squeeze through it is believed that she will be married in a twelvemonth. If she should attempt it and fail, she is doomed to perpetual spinsterhood’ (4). This looks as if it is a rewriting of Sutcliffe (Citation1899).
16 Note that fairies were called ‘elves’ into the nineteenth century in parts of the north of England and the Scottish Lowlands (Harte Citation2018, 68–69).
17 See also ‘to hurt our heifers’ (Brontë [Citation1847] 2004, 217).
18 See Henderson (Citation1879, 148); Blakeborough (Citation1911, 150). In fact, these sources are so close, with water spirits producing elf-bolts, that I wonder whether there is some form of contamination between the two; perhaps Blakeborough had copied Henderson or Henderson’s source, although Blakeborough claims otherwise.
19 Sheep, of course, appear in the novel. Lockwood meets them on his first visit to Wuthering Heights (Brontë [Citation1847] 2004, 105) and sheep are also associated with his final visit (398, 430).
20 Scott’s influence on the Brontës is widely documented; see especially Butcher (Citation2019, 49–57).
21 There has long been speculation that the Brontës had access to the Ponden library, although as Duckett notes: ‘There is no documentary evidence that any of the Brontë family used the library at Ponden Hall’ (Citation2015, 119). Of the books in the reconstructed catalogue, it may be possible that some of the ballad collections have references to elf-bolts or shots (particularly those from Scotland) (148). I have been unable to find any.
22 Smith also notes the existence of a class of linked ‘kirk’ rocks in the area.
23 For the site in Gloucestershire that appears as ‘Pucheleschurche’, ‘Pucelancyrcean’ or ‘Pucelancyrcan’, see charter 553 (Electronic Sawyer, Citationn.d.). Note that there is some question about the authenticity of this (Glastonbury) charter; however, even if it is a forgery, it does seem to be based on tenth-century material. For other southern English examples of Pucklechurch, a Fiend’s Church and a Dwarf’s church, see Harte (Citation2024).
24 ‘Then he bowes to the berwe, aboute hit he walkes, / Debatande with himself what hit be myght. / Hit had a hole on the ende and on ayther side, / And overgrowen with gres in glodes aywhere, / And all was holw inwith, nobot an olde cave / Or a crevisse of an olde cragge, he couth hit noght deme / With spelle’ (ll. 2178–2183; Battles Citation2012).
25 I have seen pre-Great-war postcards of this site. It was just to the north of Half Moon Bay.
26 Is ‘guytrash’ used in Shackleton’s unpublished history of the Heatons of Ponden Hall in 1921, Four Hundred Years of a West Yorkshire Moorland Family: A Brief Account of the History of the Heatons of Ponden House? See further Butterfield and Duckett (Citation1988, 47–48) and Gérin (Citation1961, 136).
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Simon Young
Simon Young is a British historian based in Italy. He is the editor (with Davide Ermacora) of University of Exeter Press’s ‘Exeter New Approaches to Legend, Folklore and Popular Belief’. Recent books include The Boggart: Folklore, History, Place-Names and Dialect and Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends. He teaches at the Florence campus of the University of California.