1 00:00:01,710 --> 00:00:07,530 If this is your land, where are your stories? 2 00:00:10,670 --> 00:00:18,740 With these words. A tribal elder defended his people against the grasp of state officials in British Columbia. 3 00:00:20,450 --> 00:00:23,750 He invoked a uniquely human quality. 4 00:00:25,010 --> 00:00:30,980 Our ability to derive a sense of belonging through oral tradition. 5 00:00:32,500 --> 00:00:37,300 To create relationships with police through story. 6 00:00:40,590 --> 00:00:53,370 My grandfather told me a story. He told it in the dock of his forge and beside his hearth and in his garden as we pulled rhubarb. 7 00:00:54,600 --> 00:01:00,060 It was his truth. A part of him which he passed on. 8 00:01:04,250 --> 00:01:08,840 There's a farmer living down Moberly and he has him a white mare. 9 00:01:10,510 --> 00:01:13,630 And you must go take this mare and seller at Macclesfield Market. 10 00:01:15,580 --> 00:01:23,260 So Officer, it's one day at the back end of October and he gets the thieves howl just as it's coming light. 11 00:01:25,470 --> 00:01:29,440 The mayor stops. And will she shift herself? 12 00:01:29,460 --> 00:01:36,870 She will not choose what he does. And they're against the side of the road. 13 00:01:38,300 --> 00:01:45,860 He sees a tall, old chap, thin as a Russia wind, and he's got a proper sort of a stick in his hand. 14 00:01:47,900 --> 00:01:51,740 Oh, he says this chap. That's just the mayor I'm after. 15 00:01:51,770 --> 00:01:57,400 How much do you want for it? I'm not selling to the likes of you, says Farmer. 16 00:01:57,850 --> 00:02:02,920 I'll get more at market. You go your ways, says the old chap. 17 00:02:03,790 --> 00:02:07,090 You'll not sell. And I'll be waiting for you tonight. 18 00:02:09,710 --> 00:02:19,340 So off Rod's farm at the market, and he stands market all day long, though everybody says she's a grand beast. 19 00:02:20,320 --> 00:02:25,350 No one offers to buy that mare. And at finish. 20 00:02:26,200 --> 00:02:34,160 Yes. To get him back to Moberly with a. When it comes to these old it's fetching night. 21 00:02:35,670 --> 00:02:42,330 And there's the old chap waiting for him. Now in your cell, he says. 22 00:02:43,650 --> 00:02:53,670 I'm actually a good sized farmer. You know, if he says you come with me and if he tramps, we've fallen behind him. 23 00:02:55,910 --> 00:03:06,440 They go from thieves hole by seven furs and gold and stone to stormy point and subtle bow. 24 00:03:08,210 --> 00:03:19,520 And on saddle ball they come to a rock because our house nearly on the old shack touches the rock with his stick and the rock splits open clatter. 25 00:03:21,540 --> 00:03:27,490 And behind the rockers Simon Gates, he tortures them with his stick and they open. 26 00:03:27,780 --> 00:03:36,450 And there's a sort of a hole into the hill. This time, Farmer is asking the old chap to let him go and keep the mare. 27 00:03:36,450 --> 00:03:42,540 He wants the money for her. But the old chap tells him you'll not come to know, Army says. 28 00:03:44,310 --> 00:03:47,820 So Farmer takes them down into the hill after him. 29 00:03:50,720 --> 00:03:58,760 They come to a cave and it's full of knights in armour snoring and a king with them. 30 00:03:59,720 --> 00:04:05,510 And their heads against a white horse, each except one. 31 00:04:08,110 --> 00:04:15,760 All this is, as the old chap is asleep in army with the top man waiting on the last battle of the world. 32 00:04:16,570 --> 00:04:19,570 And whenever that day is, I must wake them. 33 00:04:20,890 --> 00:04:24,610 But I'm one no short. And you also do nicely. 34 00:04:25,480 --> 00:04:30,300 Oh, you come with me. And it takes Farmer to another cave. 35 00:04:30,310 --> 00:04:34,230 And this one is full of gold and silver and all sorts. 36 00:04:36,180 --> 00:04:39,610 I have as much as you can carry, he says. And we'll call that payment. 37 00:04:40,450 --> 00:04:51,040 Well, Farmer, he sets to and he his boots in his pockets, his britches and his shirts with treasure and his hat on when he can hold them all. 38 00:04:51,940 --> 00:04:56,410 The old chap takes him back to the iron gates and shoves him through. 39 00:04:57,660 --> 00:05:01,920 Another clattering, abandoned farmer turns him round. Just the wrong. 40 00:05:03,480 --> 00:05:10,870 And it's black as a black outside. Well, Farmer He gets home as best he may and tells his tale. 41 00:05:11,920 --> 00:05:18,880 And the next morning, him and his neighbours, they go back to fetch more treasure. 42 00:05:20,830 --> 00:05:25,930 But neither they nor any sense have seen the iron gates again. 43 00:05:29,090 --> 00:05:32,240 That's the story my grandfather told. 44 00:05:32,990 --> 00:05:36,050 And it's the legend of Alderley. 45 00:05:41,970 --> 00:05:47,549 Alderley edge in geological terms is a Pomo, Triassic, Galena, 46 00:05:47,550 --> 00:05:58,710 Calico Pyrite and Barite Mineralised multi fault at host rising from the eastern aspect of the Cheshire Plain, which is spectacular. 47 00:06:00,210 --> 00:06:04,170 But today we're in search of a different spectacle. 48 00:06:05,120 --> 00:06:13,330 Story. My grandfather did not know and would not have cared if he had known. 49 00:06:14,590 --> 00:06:24,190 The legend is a version of the myth of the Sleeping Hero, which is distributed widely in space and time. 50 00:06:26,030 --> 00:06:31,040 Incidents differ, but at their most simple and comprehensive. 51 00:06:31,880 --> 00:06:40,370 The stories involve the encounter of a mortal with an immortal, a sleep under the ground. 52 00:06:43,390 --> 00:06:46,960 Here, I should say, what is meant by legend. 53 00:06:48,520 --> 00:07:00,640 The technical definition of a legend is a fanciful story associated with the place and believed to be true by the people that lived there. 54 00:07:02,660 --> 00:07:13,330 I remember as a child during World War two, listening to adults joking, yet only half joking that if the Knights were ever going to wake. 55 00:07:13,520 --> 00:07:19,520 Now was the time, they would need white tanks of white horses. 56 00:07:20,540 --> 00:07:23,990 The story fulfilled the definition of a legend. 57 00:07:26,740 --> 00:07:34,630 Legend is oral. When it's hijacked by those that do not believe it. 58 00:07:36,020 --> 00:07:41,390 And make the vernacular polite, quaint, romantic and trivial. 59 00:07:42,480 --> 00:07:49,950 Then the importance, the memory and the truth are lost as a printed example of 1820 shows. 60 00:07:52,120 --> 00:08:04,660 The introduction declares its hand. This tradition was long held in high estimation and credence by the peasantry of Alderley. 61 00:08:05,830 --> 00:08:14,170 And although the belief in enchantment is extinguished by the gentle but sure flow of religious instruction, 62 00:08:15,010 --> 00:08:25,900 yet there are many who would take pleasure in reading the tale of the powerful wizard who once held sway in the very place they now inhabit. 63 00:08:27,590 --> 00:08:31,169 The former. Nay. 64 00:08:31,170 --> 00:08:36,690 Tell me more. The session cried. Why are these steeds in order tide? 65 00:08:36,900 --> 00:08:41,710 Why all those men all bright in arms? And why prepared for wars alone? 66 00:08:42,150 --> 00:08:48,690 Say, are they doomed to mortal toil or destined to on earthly broil? 67 00:08:50,650 --> 00:09:03,010 On this. The Wizards changed his face, assumed mild and brighter greys, and a two to his tone was something given as from a messenger from heaven. 68 00:09:05,020 --> 00:09:10,630 These are the Cavan troops by fate for doomed guardians of our state. 69 00:09:11,110 --> 00:09:17,320 England's good genius here detains the armed defenders of her planes, 70 00:09:17,800 --> 00:09:31,150 doomed to remain till that failed day when Foreman marshalled an array and feuds in test time shall combine to seal the ruin of our line. 71 00:09:34,560 --> 00:09:43,980 Against this. John Ruskin stands by my grandfather with his essay Listening to the printed text. 72 00:09:46,970 --> 00:09:51,170 It is in the speech of Carter's and Housewives. 73 00:09:52,220 --> 00:09:55,550 In the speech of blacksmiths on the old women. 74 00:09:57,010 --> 00:10:02,020 That one discovers the magic that sings the claim of the voice in the shadow. 75 00:10:03,520 --> 00:10:07,270 All that chance. The rhyme of the fish in the well. 76 00:10:11,320 --> 00:10:22,210 Plutarch in his book Concerning the Failure of Oracles written in the first century A.D. quotes the report of Dimitrios, 77 00:10:22,360 --> 00:10:27,820 who had been sent from Rome to gather information about the islands of Britain. 78 00:10:30,650 --> 00:10:43,430 There is, man said, an island in which Cronos is imprisoned with grey areas, keeping guard over him as he sleeps for, as they put it. 79 00:10:44,180 --> 00:10:47,360 Sleep is the bond forged for Kronos. 80 00:10:48,840 --> 00:10:52,290 They add that around him? How many divine beings? 81 00:10:52,770 --> 00:11:01,300 His knights and his soldiers. Now, I'm not suggesting that Plutarch is referring to Alderney. 82 00:11:03,010 --> 00:11:09,400 What I am saying is that the story existed in this part of Europe in the Iron Age. 83 00:11:10,880 --> 00:11:14,000 And the question is. Why? 84 00:11:14,010 --> 00:11:17,760 When and how did the legend begin its journey to me? 85 00:11:18,940 --> 00:11:22,570 Through my grandfather's mouth and that the edge. 86 00:11:25,700 --> 00:11:35,720 Legend I found can be, in its origins, an attempt to retain, perhaps to explain a reality. 87 00:11:37,580 --> 00:11:47,390 News that time has walked. A game of Chinese whispers passed from generation to generation until the meaning may be lost. 88 00:11:48,290 --> 00:11:57,940 But the elements remain. So how may we find them without floundering in subjectivity? 89 00:12:01,090 --> 00:12:05,080 By the time I was 18, I'd learnt an important rule of research. 90 00:12:05,830 --> 00:12:11,890 Pursue the anomaly. If something doesn't make sense, what is it saying? 91 00:12:13,520 --> 00:12:19,100 Anomalies are in the truth. My grandfather told me about the land he knew best. 92 00:12:20,980 --> 00:12:26,590 The first, which should have been obvious to my grandfather who was brought up to work with horses, 93 00:12:27,820 --> 00:12:41,380 is that it's irrational for a farmer wishing to show off his mare to lead her more than 12 miles over bad terrain involving a climb of 400 feet. 94 00:12:43,010 --> 00:12:51,710 When by waiting a week he could have sold out at not knutsford horse fur less than three miles away on level ground. 95 00:12:54,770 --> 00:13:06,780 The next anomaly is the start of the quest. The old man stops the farmer at a place on the edge called Thieves Hole. 96 00:13:09,060 --> 00:13:14,900 To get to where the old man opens the way to the cavern at a rock known as the Iron Gates. 97 00:13:15,420 --> 00:13:24,930 The farm is led from thieves hole by seven furs and golden stone to stormy point and saddle blue. 98 00:13:26,310 --> 00:13:35,930 That is impractical. We work from the bottom until the 18th century. 99 00:13:36,470 --> 00:13:43,840 The edge was an open heath. The wounds that we see now are the result of landscaping. 100 00:13:45,460 --> 00:13:55,270 Why then did the old man traipse the farmer across the heath in a zigzag? 101 00:13:56,260 --> 00:14:04,330 Which increased the journey by more than 20%. What truth was my grandfather telling about the land he knew best? 102 00:14:06,300 --> 00:14:14,720 I went to look for the why in the what? And in trying to answer these questions, I set out on a journey. 103 00:14:15,750 --> 00:14:19,740 A journey no less mysterious than the farmers. 104 00:14:21,570 --> 00:14:24,810 It was a journey into the land. 105 00:14:26,050 --> 00:14:30,400 And the land was itself the telling of a story, 106 00:14:30,610 --> 00:14:38,200 the narration of a tale that followed a path and took its line from William Arthur's, as the legend does. 107 00:14:40,390 --> 00:14:45,910 At each of the named places on the route from fields home to the iron gates. 108 00:14:46,810 --> 00:14:58,300 I came upon peculiarities in the forms of mounds, big stones and above all boundaries. 109 00:14:59,970 --> 00:15:03,210 I was confronted by something old. 110 00:15:05,260 --> 00:15:16,360 The places mattered to my grandfather. And since place names in England tend to be early when names described what was then seen as fact. 111 00:15:17,720 --> 00:15:22,700 Here was where to start to look. I began to question the names. 112 00:15:25,090 --> 00:15:28,569 The old man stops the farmer at thieves. 113 00:15:28,570 --> 00:15:33,870 Who? Old English thief is thief. 114 00:15:35,300 --> 00:15:41,690 Old English Hall means valley depression or hollow way. 115 00:15:45,410 --> 00:15:49,250 Thieves hole is just such a hollow way. 116 00:15:50,090 --> 00:15:54,470 Not a hole in the modern sense, but a linear earthwork. 117 00:15:56,270 --> 00:16:00,800 It could be both way and boundary that are often one and the same. 118 00:16:01,340 --> 00:16:04,700 It's not a border of any existing land division now. 119 00:16:05,820 --> 00:16:14,550 But it could have been used as such, whatever its original purpose in the Middle Ages for a state now lost. 120 00:16:16,790 --> 00:16:26,870 A charter of 108 from Rolleston, Staffordshire, describes one of the Millers or mark points of a boundary. 121 00:16:27,940 --> 00:16:31,110 As one for another. 122 00:16:31,120 --> 00:16:35,090 The three of us, Liska. To The Thorn. 123 00:16:36,100 --> 00:16:47,900 Where the thieves lie. And at Witney, Oxfordshire in 1044 that occurs of Aquinas felt that the commuters discussed. 124 00:16:49,870 --> 00:16:52,990 From Atkins field where the lines lie. 125 00:16:54,890 --> 00:17:01,460 The old English verb lich means to lie not in weight, but as a corpse. 126 00:17:02,940 --> 00:17:07,110 It indicates a place of execution and or burial. 127 00:17:08,590 --> 00:17:14,470 And for this purpose the Anglo-Saxons came to favour boundaries. 128 00:17:16,140 --> 00:17:22,570 It wasn't always so. Anglo-Saxon initial attitudes to boundaries. 129 00:17:23,610 --> 00:17:27,390 Showed more a sense of the divine than of dread. 130 00:17:29,200 --> 00:17:35,200 But with the introduction of Christianity, there was a movement from pagan respect. 131 00:17:36,280 --> 00:17:49,520 To God goaded fear. From Thieves Hole by seven furs and Golden Stone to Stormy Pointe and Saddle Bow. 132 00:17:53,410 --> 00:18:00,940 One of the enigmas of the edge is the occurrence of six flat top mounds of no known age, all purpose. 133 00:18:02,320 --> 00:18:12,010 They could be prehistoric burials. They could be romantic additions by the aristocratic standards for the new planted woodland. 134 00:18:12,250 --> 00:18:18,880 They could be both or almost anything, with one exception. 135 00:18:19,120 --> 00:18:32,680 They have no name. But the route from Thieves Hole to Saddle Bowl takes in three of them, including the exception which is called seven fors. 136 00:18:34,210 --> 00:18:43,120 A geophysical survey here has recorded seven discrete signals, which could be the remains of tree roots. 137 00:18:46,150 --> 00:18:50,470 Only excavation would answer the question of what the circular features are. 138 00:18:50,650 --> 00:19:01,300 But it was common in the 18th century for landscapes to be improved by the planting of clumps on old bumps. 139 00:19:04,390 --> 00:19:08,980 From thieves who buy certain furs and golden stone to Stony Point and saddle bow. 140 00:19:10,700 --> 00:19:23,090 The earliest surviving mention of Golden Stone is in a poor ambulation of the boundaries of overall elderly and in nether alderley in 1598. 141 00:19:24,440 --> 00:19:29,220 And so to a great stone called the Golden Stone. 142 00:19:29,750 --> 00:19:42,130 On the north side of the way. In a way. Golden Stone is a freestanding block of conglomerate sandstone. 143 00:19:44,530 --> 00:19:48,070 Notable for its content of white quartz pebbles. 144 00:19:49,420 --> 00:19:54,160 It seems to have been shaped by battering. That is not with metal tools. 145 00:19:56,050 --> 00:20:07,630 And it's not golden. It's grey. It weighs about 12 tons and was brought from a distance when there was plenty of other stuff nearby. 146 00:20:09,500 --> 00:20:17,360 This, together with the nature of its tooling, is consistent with a prehistoric origin for its placement. 147 00:20:19,090 --> 00:20:23,380 But. Why is a grey stone called Golden? 148 00:20:24,980 --> 00:20:28,730 We need to look at language again in place. 149 00:20:28,730 --> 00:20:34,160 Names Old English Golden can mean several things. 150 00:20:34,880 --> 00:20:38,990 Gold coloured. Plainly not the case here. Sacrifice. 151 00:20:38,990 --> 00:20:48,260 Tribute. Tax treasure. Wealth is splendid. I intuitively reject sacrifice and tend towards tribute. 152 00:20:51,160 --> 00:20:58,840 A boundary is neutral. A symbolic place for the transfer of wealth. 153 00:20:59,290 --> 00:21:05,140 Since when? It's at the boundary, the tribute is nowhere. 154 00:21:06,050 --> 00:21:14,240 And can belong to no one. Behind Golden Stone is the second flat topped mountain. 155 00:21:16,260 --> 00:21:29,220 From Thieves hole by 7000 gold and stone to stony point and saddle bowl the route from Golden Stone to Stony Point parts over and never alderley. 156 00:21:30,520 --> 00:21:36,010 As it reaches stormy point, it touches the third flat top demand. 157 00:21:38,910 --> 00:21:47,490 Old English. Stormy is stormy. Middle English from old French Point is a place, a spot. 158 00:21:49,200 --> 00:21:57,410 There's a lot going on here. There's the devil's grave. 159 00:21:58,950 --> 00:22:03,480 An artificial chamber entered by a trench that runs down one side. 160 00:22:04,830 --> 00:22:11,990 It's unique on the edge. And as Guildenstern, there's no signs of metal tooling. 161 00:22:14,510 --> 00:22:21,740 Devil is used frequently in the naming of strangeness, especially of early works in the landscape. 162 00:22:23,240 --> 00:22:33,770 The sense is that they are other unsafe things from long ago and a different kind of time. 163 00:22:35,740 --> 00:22:45,820 Also naming and renaming matters where places of things are already recognised, have meaning and need to be dealt with, 164 00:22:47,080 --> 00:22:56,320 which is often done by demonisation of prehistoric remains at the time of conversion from paganism to Christianity. 165 00:23:00,010 --> 00:23:07,390 Old English graph is essentially something dug a cave or a trench. 166 00:23:08,730 --> 00:23:12,570 Again, the description is apt. The tricky trench. 167 00:23:17,560 --> 00:23:22,360 Close to the devil's grave. Is a circular mound popular? 168 00:23:24,520 --> 00:23:36,310 Old English pictured pointed and old English floral mound and well attested is the most common meaning artificial mound. 169 00:23:37,210 --> 00:23:51,450 Burial mound barrow. What makes Piccolo significant beyond its appearance is that three parishes and four townships meet at its centre. 170 00:23:54,420 --> 00:24:03,330 Boundaries when first defined often used visible well-known aspects of the landscape for reference. 171 00:24:05,160 --> 00:24:10,230 Natural features are common, as are pre-existing artificial ones. 172 00:24:11,460 --> 00:24:17,760 It's likely that Golden Stone was used because it was already there. 173 00:24:19,300 --> 00:24:28,900 Similarly, Pi Clu was not built as a marker, but was chosen because it was important and beyond dispute. 174 00:24:29,950 --> 00:24:32,980 The line was strung between. 175 00:24:34,170 --> 00:24:40,590 From Thief Hole by Seven Ferns and Golden Stone to Stony Point and Subtle Blue. 176 00:24:43,060 --> 00:24:50,290 We and the farmer are on the last leg of the journey and it's the most intriguing one. 177 00:24:53,910 --> 00:25:05,310 Saddle bow. b0le is a spur from story point with a dip, the shape of a saddle about halfway along its length. 178 00:25:06,570 --> 00:25:18,420 The ridge ends in a convict slope. Old English saddle, old English bone, a smooth, rounded hill. 179 00:25:19,950 --> 00:25:25,050 But another etymology for bowl may be better applied to this part of the edge 180 00:25:25,770 --> 00:25:31,379 where copper and led have been worked from early periods and amounts of iron, 181 00:25:31,380 --> 00:25:35,760 cobalt, antimony. Arsenic. Manganese, sulphur, silver. 182 00:25:36,030 --> 00:25:44,900 Mercury and tin occur. Old English bolla is a round hollow. 183 00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:59,420 A bowl. A crucible. Boule as a mining term is first found in print in four deny regardless all 184 00:25:59,420 --> 00:26:04,729 the history laws and places of the Chief Mines and Mineral Works in England, 185 00:26:04,730 --> 00:26:10,460 Wales and the Irish pale. And also of mint and of money. 186 00:26:12,340 --> 00:26:16,600 With a Clovis explaining some difficult words relating to minds, etc. 187 00:26:16,600 --> 00:26:29,200 By Sir John Pettus Night 1670. Sir John was deputy governor of the Royal Mines, and his book was The Standard Treatise of the 17th Century. 188 00:26:30,770 --> 00:26:43,100 In the this there is the entry bowls or bowls students are places were in ancient time before smelting mills were invented. 189 00:26:43,850 --> 00:26:57,770 The miners did fine. They're led. An investigation on Saddle Bowl in 2007 produced led Scottish and other smelting waste 190 00:26:58,460 --> 00:27:06,800 together with broken unburned led all future work will show whether or not bowls are present. 191 00:27:11,320 --> 00:27:19,870 This part of Saddle Bowl would suggest that they are the concentration of metals in the soil here. 192 00:27:20,290 --> 00:27:30,440 Prohibits any kind of vegetation. The Hill may have had an importance that anachronistic modern thought would miss. 193 00:27:31,970 --> 00:27:39,470 The four deny of the galas is concerned not only with metallurgy, but also with alchemy. 194 00:27:41,130 --> 00:27:46,260 And the division between the two was once more permeable than it is today. 195 00:27:48,120 --> 00:27:55,080 Subtle bow may have been associated with a perception of science amounting to a mystery. 196 00:27:56,140 --> 00:27:59,620 To add to its other ancient otherness. 197 00:28:05,220 --> 00:28:15,090 At the side of the track along side elbow, which again is a multiple boundary between Stony Point and the saddle. 198 00:28:16,110 --> 00:28:20,220 There stands the rock of the iron gates. 199 00:28:22,410 --> 00:28:30,510 Now I have not seen the name identified as being that rock in any written or printed form. 200 00:28:31,230 --> 00:28:36,390 How then, do I know that it is the iron gates of the legend? 201 00:28:36,570 --> 00:28:41,970 The way to the sleeping hero. My grandfather told me. 202 00:28:44,010 --> 00:28:48,280 And how did he know? Somebody told him. 203 00:28:50,730 --> 00:28:58,740 As they too had been told. We are dealing with the legend, and legend is belief of truth. 204 00:28:59,760 --> 00:29:03,420 It is not fiction. It is not imagination. It is not invention. 205 00:29:04,350 --> 00:29:10,520 It is reportage. But why the iron gates? 206 00:29:11,990 --> 00:29:15,680 A solid rock should not need iron gates. 207 00:29:17,330 --> 00:29:22,310 Gate is clear. Old North Dakota road all way. 208 00:29:24,200 --> 00:29:33,080 I'm old English. Iran is less obvious, but the Peterborough lapidary of about 1500 has the entry. 209 00:29:33,800 --> 00:29:47,220 Iron is a stone. There was an archaeological excavation of parts of the Boundary Ridge in 1999. 210 00:29:49,780 --> 00:29:54,580 The Excavation Lowe Ltd revealed beneath the bank. 211 00:29:55,840 --> 00:30:05,950 What seems to be an earlier structure consisting of a wall of rubble and masonry cut stone. 212 00:30:08,110 --> 00:30:11,260 And the wall appears to have run as far as Stony Point. 213 00:30:12,100 --> 00:30:16,720 If that was so. It would have been impressive. 214 00:30:17,670 --> 00:30:27,640 Well, well-deserving, the name of Stone Way. If legend is news that time has changed, it could explain why. 215 00:30:28,090 --> 00:30:34,300 After the wall was covered with turf and earth, the name was applied to the rock next to it. 216 00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:38,440 The significance of Iran and Gaza lost. 217 00:30:40,850 --> 00:30:46,610 What has not been lost is the importance of the special places. 218 00:30:47,520 --> 00:30:51,900 The memory in the markers of the zigzag journey. 219 00:30:54,270 --> 00:31:01,620 Yet. There are questions to be asked of the legend from the start, which take us beyond physical topography. 220 00:31:03,210 --> 00:31:13,250 To the numinous. Why was it that the old man stopped the farmer on thieves whole? 221 00:31:15,140 --> 00:31:20,300 And what was a farmer travelling from Moberly doing there in the first place. 222 00:31:21,110 --> 00:31:25,820 He could not have been on any modern road. No road remains today. 223 00:31:26,510 --> 00:31:39,650 Yet he was not lost. Recent archaeology has interpreted the ditch as a prehistoric route along the crest of the edge. 224 00:31:41,180 --> 00:31:46,970 In the right conditions, the track may be seen as a crop mark heading towards Macclesfield. 225 00:31:48,570 --> 00:32:01,560 In the other direction. The track continues past Beacon Mound, the highest point of the edge across fields, later through grandiose gardens, 226 00:32:02,040 --> 00:32:10,829 then as an unbroken series of paths and waves over the fine spot of a middle Bronze Age pole. 227 00:32:10,830 --> 00:32:24,380 Steve at a boundary broke. By the fringe of the waters of Lindow Moss with its bog bodies of Iron Age Lindo men to mobility village. 228 00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:30,150 But we still have to cope with the old man of thieves hole. 229 00:32:30,330 --> 00:32:43,210 Why did he stop the mayor here? Today, a farm tract crosses the ditch at right angles, filling in the Depression and in the legend. 230 00:32:43,540 --> 00:32:47,470 It's here that the old man and the farmer engage. 231 00:32:49,980 --> 00:32:57,060 If the track does indeed pass over thieves home, it should be the later feature. 232 00:32:57,540 --> 00:33:06,320 But roads are deceptive. In that their function alters through time, which causes changes in size and surface. 233 00:33:08,070 --> 00:33:19,469 Should there be a true relationship and intersection then Thieves Hole would have formed a crossroad here and a crossroads. 234 00:33:19,470 --> 00:33:25,260 Share the uncertainty and the uncanny with boundaries for the same reason. 235 00:33:26,840 --> 00:33:32,690 They are ambivalent. The centre of a crossroad. 236 00:33:34,190 --> 00:33:43,080 It's going nowhere. Just as a centre of pi clue with its seven join ings occupies nowhere. 237 00:33:45,280 --> 00:33:55,480 Such liminal places are worse, space and time are weakened and other dimensions may break through. 238 00:33:56,050 --> 00:34:01,480 That is why I suggest boundaries play so great a part in the legend. 239 00:34:03,110 --> 00:34:09,170 I'll go further and say that if a crossroad did not exist on Thieves Hole. 240 00:34:10,490 --> 00:34:15,680 The old man would not and could not have met the farmer there. 241 00:34:18,540 --> 00:34:26,820 In the legend. We're dealing not only with a physical, but also with a spiritual topography. 242 00:34:28,690 --> 00:34:32,590 Centres and boundaries are a large part of the structure. 243 00:34:33,820 --> 00:34:40,240 They are midpoints or midway lines between opposites. 244 00:34:41,860 --> 00:34:45,250 These divisions without dimension. 245 00:34:46,380 --> 00:34:50,520 Symbolise the supernatural in space. 246 00:34:53,900 --> 00:34:58,790 The same phenomenon. Is represented in time. 247 00:34:59,890 --> 00:35:12,400 As the juncture between years, seasons, days, each kind of division is occupied by a power which notably when applied to time, 248 00:35:13,270 --> 00:35:18,490 breaks through on November eve and a may Eve in Celtic. 249 00:35:18,730 --> 00:35:25,810 That is Iron Age culture. They are the hinges of the two great seasons. 250 00:35:28,600 --> 00:35:35,920 November eve, the start of winter and of the year was a solemn and a weird festival. 251 00:35:37,150 --> 00:35:40,480 The mounds were open and their inhabitants were abroad. 252 00:35:40,660 --> 00:35:44,230 The barrier separating the living and the dead was breached. 253 00:35:46,220 --> 00:35:56,030 And which temporal boundary is the back end of October when the farmer goes out of his world to the sleeping hero. 254 00:35:58,120 --> 00:36:05,650 Consider also how the first meeting with the old man is at the crack of night and day. 255 00:36:06,220 --> 00:36:10,660 Dawn. On the second dusk. 256 00:36:11,680 --> 00:36:16,240 The moment was called into cannon at Lupo. 257 00:36:17,170 --> 00:36:19,330 Between the dog and the wolf. 258 00:36:22,380 --> 00:36:32,160 Boundaries of territory as with boundaries of time, all where the supernatural intrudes through the surface of existence. 259 00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:39,550 It is why the old man has to meet the farmer at a crossroad. 260 00:36:40,690 --> 00:36:43,690 A road without direction or commitment. 261 00:36:44,500 --> 00:36:48,370 At a time when time is stopped. 262 00:36:50,430 --> 00:36:58,140 Once the farmer turns from his way home, he is entering another reality. 263 00:36:59,730 --> 00:37:12,360 The approach to the Sleeping Hero begins on Thieves Hole, and with each step he moves out of his reality into that other. 264 00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:20,480 That other may be remembered in the earliest account of the edge. 265 00:37:22,020 --> 00:37:24,990 It's a grant of land dating from the 13th century, 266 00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:33,630 which uses the stone or earthen ridge on settlement as the boundary from the content of this document. 267 00:37:34,140 --> 00:37:38,430 I see the legend active 800 years ago. 268 00:37:40,340 --> 00:37:44,660 All the way, Marcus noted, are interesting, but one is more. 269 00:37:46,400 --> 00:37:51,170 And from the pick ID law to avowed this dispatcher. 270 00:37:53,180 --> 00:38:00,080 Old English personal name. Alward Old English hatch gate. 271 00:38:02,470 --> 00:38:06,400 Outward is a personal name yet, I wonder. 272 00:38:07,600 --> 00:38:11,740 It consists of two elements of self. 273 00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:17,110 And in the Middle Ages, ELF was no whimsy but a force. 274 00:38:18,550 --> 00:38:24,720 And. Ward. I felt that this was too important to risk. 275 00:38:24,720 --> 00:38:33,870 So I wrote to one of the most respected of English language scholars, Professor R W.V. Elliott of the Australian National University. 276 00:38:34,920 --> 00:38:39,610 Here's his reply. Virus Hatch. 277 00:38:41,070 --> 00:38:51,600 Your suggestion. This is not Alfred's gate, but the Elf Guards gate is perfectly possible. 278 00:38:53,250 --> 00:38:58,110 In the West Midlands, the word elf elves are recorded as Alva Alvin. 279 00:38:58,500 --> 00:39:02,880 These words occur several times in LeMond's boots, circa A.D. 1200. 280 00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:09,960 Thus the Gate of the Elf God is a good West Midland reading and perfect for Alderley. 281 00:39:12,560 --> 00:39:19,670 The Sleeping Hero would correctly be called Elf in this context. 282 00:39:20,870 --> 00:39:31,430 And the old man, his ward. And the gate from gate and gate from hatch may be no more than a happy fluke of convergence. 283 00:39:35,110 --> 00:39:46,840 Boundaries can echo Saxon State's Roman and Iron Age foundations, Bronze Age Feel systems, even the Neolithic and some combine all. 284 00:39:48,310 --> 00:39:51,670 They are among the longest surviving of all monuments. 285 00:39:52,240 --> 00:39:59,800 Whether they use artificial structures or natural features as here a Mesolithic site 286 00:40:00,670 --> 00:40:07,480 and way marker beyond of out of this hatch where the lip of the rock is in one parish. 287 00:40:08,290 --> 00:40:14,000 The path below in another. And the vertical face nowhere. 288 00:40:15,510 --> 00:40:18,210 So where does this take us? 289 00:40:20,650 --> 00:40:35,080 The Anglo-Saxons developed an ambivalent attitude towards the space, less spaces they feared them and yet employed them because of the mentality. 290 00:40:36,180 --> 00:40:43,590 For such purposes as execution. These negative associations came with Christianity. 291 00:40:46,360 --> 00:40:55,600 At first, the Anglo-Saxons were in awe of monuments, especially of early Bronze Age round barrows, 292 00:40:56,800 --> 00:41:04,900 which they adopted as marker points for the boundaries of their land divisions, intensifying that liminal power. 293 00:41:06,580 --> 00:41:11,020 And they reused the barrows, inserting their dead. 294 00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:25,250 Into the realm of the more ancient. Yet these places dangerous because of their lack of contact with the world, while yet defining it. 295 00:41:26,370 --> 00:41:34,110 And unknown to God, were chosen as meeting places for assemblies, both political and social, 296 00:41:34,830 --> 00:41:42,420 perhaps for that very neutrality where arguments of this world held no sway. 297 00:41:45,170 --> 00:41:59,460 Moberly. Which means the mound of the assembly has its church sited on an artificial circular earthwork, which may be the eponymous mound. 298 00:42:00,900 --> 00:42:04,020 The change in level of the graves helps delineated. 299 00:42:06,120 --> 00:42:09,479 From here. Beacon Mound on the edge. 300 00:42:09,480 --> 00:42:19,770 Skirted by the line of thieves. Hole is visible. If there was a connection between the edge and the mound of Moberly. 301 00:42:21,530 --> 00:42:25,550 Has it been preserved as the route taken by the farmer? 302 00:42:27,390 --> 00:42:40,410 And what connection could there have been? I suggest that the links between Mons, Lindo, Moss and Hill together with the zigzag journey. 303 00:42:41,600 --> 00:42:49,340 Point to a landscape of the sacred. And that the legend records it in memory. 304 00:42:51,840 --> 00:42:54,840 It is a memory that covers more than one era. 305 00:42:56,480 --> 00:43:02,960 The swing of belief increased the Association of Ancient Burials and boundaries with the uncanny. 306 00:43:04,500 --> 00:43:09,360 The new places became synonymous with the supernatural. 307 00:43:10,790 --> 00:43:16,250 Their evil was confined until into 10 a.m. at LuPone. 308 00:43:17,030 --> 00:43:20,090 Darkness dissolves the barriers from view. 309 00:43:22,070 --> 00:43:27,710 It is clear in bills which dates from possibly the seventh or eighth centuries. 310 00:43:29,160 --> 00:43:34,470 The viewpoint of the poem is Christian, but its material is pagan. 311 00:43:36,690 --> 00:43:40,590 Beowulf is a tale bracketed by boundary and barrow. 312 00:43:41,910 --> 00:43:47,670 It contains a spatial topography understood by an eighth century mind. 313 00:43:48,990 --> 00:43:58,440 Bear Wolf's first hero. Victory is the killing of Grendel, whose epithet is mere stop a boundary walker. 314 00:43:59,790 --> 00:44:06,630 And his last is in battle with a dragon guarding a treasure in a barrel. 315 00:44:08,520 --> 00:44:11,640 Steig on the lie alone. 316 00:44:12,090 --> 00:44:18,550 Uncouth. Men did not know the way to it under the ground. 317 00:44:21,250 --> 00:44:36,420 Nor did the farmer from Moberly. Burrows in tradition and in reality could whole treasure now called grave goods, 318 00:44:38,070 --> 00:44:48,510 and the findings of them during secondary use of the burrow would give an extra bond with the past and add to the otherworldliness of the site. 319 00:44:50,730 --> 00:44:54,480 Piccolo may be such. One. 320 00:44:54,480 --> 00:44:58,440 I was taking photographs to illustrate today's entertainment. 321 00:44:59,490 --> 00:45:09,780 My wife mooching about. Picked up a Flint arrowhead from the out wash at the base of the mound. 322 00:45:13,770 --> 00:45:18,200 Pikachu is almost certain of the Bronze Age. This. 323 00:45:18,200 --> 00:45:23,630 Flint is the first proven evidence of the Neolithic on the edge. 324 00:45:24,780 --> 00:45:33,420 Up to 2000 or years earlier, as opposed to the established Mesolithic spanning five millennia before that. 325 00:45:36,230 --> 00:45:41,390 The importance of place may reach further than we can ever know. 326 00:45:44,930 --> 00:45:48,860 Accounting for that deeper nature of the edge is not easy. 327 00:45:50,810 --> 00:46:03,770 The hill has been used since the end of the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago worked imported flint and chert, mainly from the Yorkshire Wolds. 328 00:46:03,920 --> 00:46:08,720 100 miles to the north east is found here from that time. 329 00:46:10,390 --> 00:46:18,250 But the cultures of the Mesolithic and the Neolithic could not be expected to leave much beyond Flint and Chert. 330 00:46:19,660 --> 00:46:23,050 However, by the age of 21. 331 00:46:24,270 --> 00:46:29,520 I felt that the legend of Alderley as told by my grandfather. 332 00:46:31,110 --> 00:46:39,540 Contained, as it were, a guide to an unrecognised Bronze Age 4000 years ago. 333 00:46:41,400 --> 00:46:47,400 I was nearly 60 before persistence won and made the archaeologists look. 334 00:46:49,730 --> 00:46:54,470 Which justified both grandfather and legend. 335 00:46:56,300 --> 00:47:02,150 The Edge is the earliest dated site of metalworking in England. 336 00:47:03,260 --> 00:47:07,730 And the radiocarbon figure is 4000 years. 337 00:47:10,340 --> 00:47:19,010 Yet. Why should archaeology appropriate an almost universal myth? 338 00:47:20,290 --> 00:47:25,500 And vice versa. I can only proffer cause and reason. 339 00:47:29,540 --> 00:47:40,160 The Edge is a remarkable thing, which stands out when seen both from the plane and from the Pennines to the east. 340 00:47:41,090 --> 00:47:45,320 I would say that it is of itself liminal. 341 00:47:46,420 --> 00:47:55,510 A Temenos especial a holy or a haunted place, provocative of archetypes. 342 00:47:56,600 --> 00:48:03,740 Dependent on the historical view of the observer and the colours of its formation are striking. 343 00:48:07,340 --> 00:48:12,260 Such details are important at many levels of consciousness. 344 00:48:14,150 --> 00:48:18,940 Metallurgy is a magical and dangerous art. 345 00:48:20,140 --> 00:48:24,130 Its practitioners are magical and dangerous men. 346 00:48:26,040 --> 00:48:32,820 Who else but the rightful king can draw the sword from the stone. 347 00:48:35,880 --> 00:48:41,550 Yet. It may be that the edge was important before copper was worked or alchemy was born. 348 00:48:42,000 --> 00:48:46,290 The edge could have been valued and even revered. 349 00:48:47,990 --> 00:49:01,510 As a source of pigment. Pigments were traded over distance and their source was considered to be a place of power, a seat of spirituality. 350 00:49:02,440 --> 00:49:06,700 We, as children of the Age knew where to find our body. 351 00:49:06,700 --> 00:49:11,170 Paint the green, the red, the blue, the yellow, the white, the black. 352 00:49:11,590 --> 00:49:21,270 And how to mix it, though. Who taught us? In a post of Precious Lord or dripping stolen from our mother's jars in World War Two. 353 00:49:22,740 --> 00:49:29,610 John Houghton, the mildest of boys when daubed became a god. 354 00:49:32,730 --> 00:49:35,730 There's more in the legend when we listen. But I'll end at the start. 355 00:49:41,250 --> 00:49:51,480 If some supernatural agency has gone to the trouble of creating a cavern beneath the edge, 356 00:49:51,870 --> 00:50:01,260 this one is manmade from the 19th century to how's an enchanted army against the day of ultimate trial. 357 00:50:03,120 --> 00:50:10,950 Why is the the logistical error, the cock up of being one horse short. 358 00:50:14,490 --> 00:50:19,950 Did no one count. And why is that required? 359 00:50:19,950 --> 00:50:26,350 Horse a mare. What is it the sleeping hero needs? 360 00:50:28,900 --> 00:50:33,030 Mars weren't used in battle. Stallions were. 361 00:50:34,750 --> 00:50:38,290 Why is there a white mare on the edge? 362 00:50:38,500 --> 00:50:42,340 What is it this hero lacks? I knew that. 363 00:50:42,340 --> 00:50:48,490 I knew. But what? And then, of course, I remembered Gibraltar's, Cameron says. 364 00:50:51,550 --> 00:51:02,320 Gerald wrote In the late 12th century, he starts Chapter 525 of the third part of his topography of Ireland with these words. 365 00:51:04,950 --> 00:51:13,320 There are some things that if the urgent demands of my account did not require it, shame would prevent their being described. 366 00:51:14,750 --> 00:51:18,680 But the severe discipline of history spares neither truth nor modesty. 367 00:51:20,230 --> 00:51:25,120 He then relates a ritual alleged to be used when a king assumes power. 368 00:51:27,960 --> 00:51:35,910 At the inauguration. The king before witness of the people copulate. 369 00:51:37,000 --> 00:51:42,580 With a white mayor. The measure is then killed. 370 00:51:46,430 --> 00:51:53,000 The measure is butchered and boiled. A bath is made for the king from the broth. 371 00:51:54,290 --> 00:52:01,279 He sits in the bath and partakes of the meat and his immediate companions, his knights. 372 00:52:01,280 --> 00:52:07,580 If you like it also, then and only then he enters into the kingship. 373 00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:13,740 The merger is the complement of his strength. 374 00:52:15,260 --> 00:52:22,670 The receptacle of his palm. The act is a new creation, a cleansing. 375 00:52:24,220 --> 00:52:32,360 The sacrament. Yet. Can the ceremony be a survival spanning three millennia to your elders? 376 00:52:34,010 --> 00:52:40,650 I see no reason to reject the thought. As the tribal elders stood his ground in British Columbia. 377 00:52:40,980 --> 00:52:49,620 So Australian law has been forced to allow the validity of an Aboriginal oral memory beyond historical time. 378 00:52:52,730 --> 00:53:00,110 It is our ability to read. That inhibits our capacity for retention. 379 00:53:02,920 --> 00:53:10,360 Support for a Bronze Age survival in Ireland and by implication in the legend comes from Scandinavia. 380 00:53:12,030 --> 00:53:17,160 At Boston. In Sweden, there is Bronze Age rock art. 381 00:53:18,290 --> 00:53:29,330 That depicts the copulation that Gerald US describes and resolves the anomaly of all the lives missing horse with vigour. 382 00:53:47,030 --> 00:53:54,800 I set out on a journey to find why my grandfather told me a story. 383 00:53:55,610 --> 00:54:01,099 And I've told that journey as a story. With the former. 384 00:54:01,100 --> 00:54:15,770 It has been a long way to market. I found my answer in the land because the land itself is a narrative path and way markers its stories. 385 00:54:17,500 --> 00:54:25,390 The reworking of oral tradition and the reworking of landscape go hand in hand. 386 00:54:26,630 --> 00:54:30,050 And the mayor and the man are one. 387 00:54:33,130 --> 00:54:37,810 Is it coincidence? I think not. 388 00:54:43,240 --> 00:54:49,410 The length of the legend. Is a story told to a child. 389 00:54:51,260 --> 00:54:58,760 Fragments of timelessness. Embodying archaeological and spiritual truths. 390 00:55:00,180 --> 00:55:03,960 Passed down in the memories of unlettered minds. 391 00:55:05,230 --> 00:55:10,610 The importance, if not the meaning and understanding retained. 392 00:55:11,660 --> 00:55:15,440 Faithfully over 4000 years. 393 00:55:16,250 --> 00:55:20,380 To me. And. 394 00:55:21,340 --> 00:55:25,990 To my people. Thank you.