1973/09/01 by Jacqueline Simpson · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies #Cultural History and Identity Formation
paper · doi:10.1080/0015587x.1973.9716515
openalex publication_date 1973/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03
folklore; indeed, only two of its legends, that of the Devil and St Dunstan and that of the Devil's Dyke, are at all widely known. However, the field is far richer than it seems at first sight; if one looks through the various descriptive books about the county, the village and town histories, the memoirs of nineteenth-century clergymen, and the issues of the Sussex County Magazine (19261956), one finds quite enough local legends to warrant a folklorist's attention. I have recently completed an examination of the printed sources, supplemented by inquiries among friends and acquaintances, but not by systematic fieldwork.' Here I would like to discuss some of the legends I found, in relation to their local settings. The Sussex landscape is not dramatic. The coastal plain was almost featureless even before modern towns spread all over it; along the South Downs each gentle hill looks at first sight much like its neighbour; the valleys are smooth and broad, the rivers placid; north of the Downs stretch the woods and farmlands of the Weald. But even this quiet landscape has local features with a touch of oddity or eeriness about them, to serve as focus for a legend. To begin with the Downs themselves, 'there is gold in them there hills', or at any rate in some of them. On the Trundle, near Goodwood, Aaron's Golden Calf lies buried, and local people in the I870's claimed to know the very spot only no one could dig it up, because whenever anyone tried, the Devil came and moved it away.2 The same was said of Clayton Hill; on Mount Caburn there is a silver coffin, some say, or else, say others, a knight in golden armour; on Firle Beacon, another silver coffin; on Windover