Tag Archives: english folklore

Stonehenge energy

Text:

Informant: When I visited Stonehenge, I very much felt that there was something about that place that was charged with energy- it just felt different- more than any other place I had been to before. Unfortunately I was with a tour group so I couldn’t hang out. I would’ve loved to have been able to, y’know, hang out and feet that feeling.

…

Interviewer: Do you remember anything else that happened around the time you went to stonehenge? Like how the trip was, when you were going up there and when you were coming back and stuff like that?

Informant: We were on a tour group, I was in high school, so it was just a bus ride in, y’know, a walk around a little bit, and then a bus ride out. There was no dramatic lead up to it.


Interviewer: Do you still remember feeling that energy?

Informant: Yeah, I still remember feeling that there was something about the place, I would have loved to get closer, and like I said it just felt charged with energy. And when I asked the people around me, they didn’t necessarily agree. It was me picking up on that.

Interviewer: Do you think there’s any particular reason for that?

Informant: I don’t know, I can’t think of anything, it’s never happened to me in any other place. I don’t know if it was- what do you call it- a family memory? Genetic memory?

Context:

This account takes place during a time when the informant was in high school. They grew up in the United States, but note that they have Scottish, English, Germanic, and Norwegian ancestry.

Analysis:

As mentioned in the interview, there isn’t too much out of the ordinary regarding the lead up to the visit to Stonehenge, with it just being a school trip. This could very well explain the more nonchalant reaction to the site for the other students visiting, compared to the informant, as it may be harder to connect with a historical site personally when the reasons for doing so are more institutional. The informant themself mentions having some Scottish ancestry, so there is a chance that they were aware of such a connection before the trip. The “energy” which they felt could very well be the result of the informant being one of the few people there with an ancestry that connected them to this particular place.

The Tale of Lady Godiva

Nationality: British European
Age: 79
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Sherman Oaks, California
Performance Date: April 27, 2020
Primary Language: English

Informant: My parents used to tell me the story of Lady Godiva. She rode a horse naked through Coventry in I believe some time around 1066. They told me she did it because her husband was over taxing the peasants of Coventry and she begged her husband to lower the rents and the taxes. He said he would grant her request if she was willing to strip naked and ride through the town on a horse. Which of course, she did. I always thought he must have felt right silly about agreeing to that. When he realized she was going to do it, he ordered all the towns people to go inside and to not look. That’s where a Peeping Tom comes from. This chap Tom peeked out his window and saw her and was struck blind and later died.

Background: My informant heard this story from her mother when she was a child growing up in Birmingham, 20 Miles from Coventry.

Context: My informant started sharing the information while I was finishing up collecting another piece of information regarding The Beast of Bodmin Moor.

Thoughts: An interesting short story to be sure, and I suppose it can be considered female empowerment through using one’s body to send a message. However, I don’t know if a child would get that idea unless explained thoroughly to them.