• Summer Expeditions - would you like some free rope from UKC??

    To apply post on the 'expeditions' board giving some history, details, hopes and objectives for your trip. Those who have applied before are very welcome to apply again.

    Closing date is 10pm Monday 18th May!!

    Click here for details

Subterranean Folk Tales

If legends abroad are ok, it is said that beneath the Untersberg, a whale-shaped mountain ringed by huge cliffs between Berchtesgaden in Germany and Salzburg in Austria, lies a secret vault where the twelfth century Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa waits on his throne, surrounded by ghostly warriors. One day they will re-emerge, an event that will herald the apocalypse.

The Untersberg is a major cave-bearing massif, whose systems include Riesending, which at 1,149 metres depth and c.25 km length is the deepest cave in Germany, and Kolowräthöhle on the Austrian side, which is almost as deep and more than twice the length. Both caves resurge in the woods above Salzburg, and local cavers hope one day to connect them.

I've been on two multi-day trips in the Riesending, a truly magnificent cave. So far, the emperor has not been found.
 
snebbit said:
Rumbling Hole is also known as the Faeries' Workshop, apparently because they can be heard working their tools in the depths. But I can't find any source for this other than caving club trip reports, so perhaps it's just modern cavers retro-embellishing things. Unless there's something in Balderstone's Ingleton: Bygone and Present
Click to expand...
Wainwright mentions this in walk 2 of his Walks in Limestone Country (published in 1970)
1000001023.jpg
 
There is also the interesting story of Pen Park Hole in Bristol. It was first descended by Samuel Sturmy, a merchant vessel captain used to crossing the Atlantic, who went down it on July 2, 1669. Its entrance, which nowadays lies next to a golf course in Southmead, had apparently been revealed by limestone quarrymen. Beyond the first chamber, the cave passage lowers to a squeeze, then leads to a horizontal platform overlooking a considerable void. There is a copious quantity of mud. For a seventeenth century caver, it presented a formidable challenge: an exposed descent into darkness, its depth uncertain, with no way of knowing what might lie at the bottom, which in the light of Sturmy’s candles would have been invisible from the top.

Sturmy and a local miner descended by ropes fixed at the top of the vault, paid out by a team of supporters. They stuck lighted candles into the mud that clung to the walls as they were lowered down, and finally reached ‘a very large place indeed’ – a cavern containing ‘a River or great Water which I found to be twenty fathoms broad and eight fathoms deep’.*

On the shore of the underground lake, Sturmy and the miner spotted an opening in the wall ten metres above them – the start of what is now known as West Passage. They had a ladder sent down by the party they had left at the top of the ropes, ‘and the Mine-man went up the ladder to that place, and walk’d into it about three score and ten paces, till he just lost sight of me.’ At first, Sturmy goes on, the miner seemed quite happy, but shortly afterwards ‘his joy was changed into amazement, and he returned affrighted by the sight of an evil Spirit, which we cannot perswade him but he saw.’

Alas, four days after his return to the surface, Sturmy was troubled by ‘an unusual and violent Headache, which I impute to being in that Vault.’ He had contracted a fever, and it shortly led to his death at the age of 36, four days after his descent, so his account was published posthumously.

In 1911, a Bristol newspaper reported that Sturmy’s misadventure had been immortalised as a ballad, which suggested that his death followed his underground encounter with ‘the Goblin of the Hole’, who conveyed the unwelcome tidings that he was not long for this world. Graham Mullan wrote an account of all this some time ago, I think in an UBSS journal.


* A fathom equates to six feet, or approximately two metres.
 
Well, I don't think that you need to worry about it as the presenter Chris Searle passed away 18 months ago, shortly preceded by Tony Boycott who features in the film (made about 20 years ago).
 
Last edited:
I used to live quite close to Crank Caverns near St Helens. I had a look not long after I'd started 'proper' caving in my teens. I wasn't aware at the time of all the local legends and lore attached to them. If I'd known about the vicious cannibal dwarves I might have stayed away?
en.wikipedia.org

Crank Caverns - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
The itinerant flute tooting/bugle blowing pig castrator who disappeared near OFD resurgence. Digging revealed a skeleton although it's believed to have been Bronze Age..
 
Mrs Trellis said:
The itinerant flute tooting/bugle blowing pig castrator who disappeared near OFD resurgence. Digging revealed a skeleton although it's believed to have been Bronze Age..
Click to expand...
Your post probably makes perfect sense *after* you understand it, but is there a link you could point me to please to give context to the missing person? Thanks
 
There's two caves in the Peak, Thors Cave near Wetton and Thirst House Cave near King Sterndale whose names derive from the old English "Thurse", which gets translated into modern English as "giant" or "ogre" (I prefer the latter interpretation) - either could be the basis for a supernatural tale, and Thors Cave starred as the "Lair of the White Worm" in the film of the same name.
 
Mrs Trellis said:
Apparently the skeleton was named Smith hence Smithy's Armoury etc. Imho the bones need dating if they can be found. Where's Prof. Alice Roberts when you need her? Probably on a jolly by train somewhere sunny.

Old thread here:- https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?threads/human-remains-in-ofd.2906/#post-35620
Click to expand...
The bones are in the Welsh national museum collection,
Smith was the fictional character who kept throwing rocks at the explorers as they found various bits of the caves
 
From Tarquin's cavinguk website, with reference to Mel Davies' 1995 article about skeleton at end:
The hole drops into the ceiling of a short, blind passage, where Pete is standing. However, in the choke behind the camera, some distance away from the hole, explorers found the skeleton of a man. The second hole on the right is climbable, but cavers needed to build a pile of rocks to make access easier. An injury from falling down a hole, and a failed torch would have proven too much even for an experienced caver, let alone an inexperienced explorer. However, it is indeed just a story; there was a skeleton of a 20-25 year old person (possibly male) found here in 1946, but it was extremely old - Bronze Age or Neolithic - and seemed to have been deliberately buried here, via a route through the choke which is no longer open. This passage is named Skeleton Chamber (or Skeleton Pit) in the dubious honour of this event. (The tide line is historical, and the chamber would not have been full of water when the skeleton was placed here.) If you would like further information about the skeleton, see "A Fresh Examination of the Ogof Ffynnon Ddu Bones", by Mel Davies, published in the SWCC newsletter 115, in 1995.
Click to expand...
Links to Newsletter (you want 115):

Newsletter

www.swcc.org.uk www.swcc.org.uk
 
Last edited:
In "The Death of Kings" book 6 of his Saxon chronicles Bernard Cornwell has Uhtred travel to Chester , but en route he calls at "Buchestanes" (Buxton) to consult with sorceress/prophetess/witch Ælfadell who inhabits Poole's Cavern.
 
Babyhagrid said:
The bones are in the Welsh national museum collection,
Smith was the fictional character who kept throwing rocks at the explorers as they found various bits of the caves
Click to expand...
Traditionally linked, I think (at least by some people):
graham

Thread 'What's in a name? Smith's Armoury OFD'

I have just been asked a question to which I think I know the answer, but would appreciate it being confirmed. So, without prompting as to what I think:

What is the derivation of the name "Smith's Armoury" in OFD?
Although I have 'also heard' (that least reliable of information sources) that the skeleton may have been female.
 
Some spooky tales concerning Cymmy (Eli Simpson):- if you drink the water in the eponymous cave his ghost appears and advises you strongly to join the BSA (as was). Also I was told by a member of strange happenings at Brackenbottom when only one person was sleeping there (or trying to). Plates flying off shelves etc. Woooooooo
 
andrewmcleod said:
Traditionally linked, I think (at least by some people):
graham

Thread 'What's in a name? Smith's Armoury OFD'

I have just been asked a question to which I think I know the answer, but would appreciate it being confirmed. So, without prompting as to what I think:

What is the derivation of the name "Smith's Armoury" in OFD?
Although I have 'also heard' (that least reliable of information sources) that the skeleton may have been female.
Click to expand...
Mel Davies said there wasn't enough pelvis left to be sure either way.

& Tarquin had this to say:
Smith's Armoury, named after the fictional cave character Smith, who was responsible for throwing rocks at cavers. Presumably his other name is "Gravity". This is quite an anticlimactic end to the cave.
Click to expand...
 
I'm guessing that The Smithy is so named from the sound of falling rocks being likened to striking an anvil, when was that discovered...?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

rhychydwr1
Another Spring Clean - more caving books for sale
Replies
0
Views
1K
rhychydwr1
rhychydwr1
Back
Top