The Witch and the Rollright Stones





Magic, ritual, myth, and mystery – there’s a lot to love about the Rollright Stones, located on the border between Oxfordshire and Warwickshire in England. And although this isn’t the only prehistoric stone circle in Great Britain, it does have one attraction the others don’t – a witch legend.  

According to the story, once upon a time a king, his army, and his knights were marching through the ancient Cotswold Hills when they encountered a witch. This witch told the king that he could become the king of all England if after taking seven long strides he could take see the town of Long Compton.

The King Stone
The king followed her instructions, but after taking seven steps his view of the town was blocked by a mound. So, the witch, no doubt with an evil cackle, turned the king and his followers to stone. And they remain petrified to this day - the king’s men, the huddled knights, and the solitary king. 

The legend doesn’t end there. The witch herself became an elder tree, supposedly still nearby. If you can find the tree and cut it down, the story goes, you’ll release the king and his men from their prisons of stone.

It makes a great tale, but there’s one problem. The Rollright Stones date back to the Neolithic and Bronze Ages – approximately 2800-1800 BCE. The legend doesn't go back nearly as far. In fact, it was first documented by William Camden in 1610, only 400 years ago.

The Whispering Knights
No doubt the odd grouping of stones inspired the legend. At Rollright there sits a large circle of stones (108 feet in diameter) which is named for the King’s Men. 

About 83 yards north of the King's Men is the King Stone, the resting place of the unlucky king according to the myth.

East of the stone circle about 400 yards is a small group of four standing stones (there used to be more) known as the Whispering Knights. 

But the Rollright Stones and Stonehenge aren’t the only prehistoric stone circles around. There’s an even older and bigger complex of stones at the Avebury monument site in Wiltshire, about 17 miles north of Stonehenge. 


And I was amazed to learn that even though many ancient megaliths have been demolished, there are still over 1,000 stone circles that exist in the UK and neighboring areas.

Most of these circles are in Scotland (508), with an additional 187 in Ireland and 156 in Northern Ireland. There are also 81 stone circles in Wales, 56 in Brittany and 6 in the Channel Islands. 

If you want to go further afield, you can find similar stone circles in countries like Australia, Senegal, Gambia, Israel, and Hong Kong. Our prehistoric ancestors must have loved creating these massive circles of stone!  

Part of the King's Men circle of stones

How does all this relate to the Regency period? Well, even though Jane Austen never wrote about the Rollright Stones in any of her novels, people during that era certainly knew about them and other stone circles in their country. Their knowledge was mainly due to the work of four Englishmen who lived during the 16th and 17th centuries.  

The first of these was John Leland, an early 16th-century poet and student of antiquities who came across the stones in his travels across England. William Camden, another antiquarian who lived later in that century, went into topographical detail about the stones in his 1586 book Britannia.

John Aubrey
But it wasn’t until much later that John Aubrey and William Stukeley took a more scholarly approach to the topic of Neolithic stone circles, and they pioneered the field of archaeology in the process.

Aubrey (1626-1697) wrote many first accounts of the megalithic stone monuments he saw in the fields of southern England. He made significant discoveries at the Avebury and Stonehenge sites, and created maps and records that have preserved his findings. The Aubrey holes at Stonehenge are named in his honor. 

William Stukeley’s long life ended almost a decade before Jane Austen was born, but while he lived he advanced the study of stone circles even further. Besides being a scholar and one of the first archaeologists, Stukeley (1687-1785) was also a clergyman and physician, and a friend of Isaac Newton. 

William Stukeley
Like Aubury, Stukeley was fascinated by the stone circles at Stonehenge and Avebury and visited the two sites often, taking careful measurements. He was appalled when he saw people chipping pieces of stone off the megaliths. Though he couldn’t stop all of the destruction, the drawings he made have given future generations an accurate image of what the circles used to look like. 

Though we know a lot about the stones, there’s still plenty of unanswered questions regarding who placed them where they are and why.

Were stone circles used as a site for religious ceremonies? Were they carefully positioned as a way to read the stars? Or were they perhaps a monument to the dead? Modern scientists have detected human remains in a burial chamber beneath the Whispering Knights, making it credible that those stones were installed to mark a grave. 

In addition to those mysteries, the Rollright Stones are also associated with some intriguing phenomenon. Experiments suggest that the stones may possess unusual magnetic energy. People who have explored the area with dowsing rods have reported strong reactions – one dowser said that at one point his rods spun like helicopter rotors.

Other investigators hypothesize that the stones could be part of a network of ancient ley lines that connect them to other megaliths or sites sacred to ancient pagan religions. If this theory is accurate, these lines would have functioned like a track or roadmap for prehistoric pilgrims.

Over the centuries other legends about the stones have developed. A popular one is that no one can count the stones the same way three times and get the same number. And surprisingly, from the accounts I’ve read, it is unexpectedly difficult to get a repeatable count of the number of stones at Rollright.


A 1645 illustration of the King's Men at the Rollright Stones,
showing how the circle looked several centuries ago


Colorful stories swirled around the Rollright stone circle in the 18th and 19th centuries, folklore that included not only fairies and witches but also supernatural events and fertility rituals.

For example, some people believed that the king trapped in the King Stone could come to life briefly every night when the church clock of the nearby village chimed the midnight hour. A similar story is that the king and his men could reanimate on holy days.  

And, according to some fables, if a young unmarried woman ran naked around the circle of stones at midnight on Midsummer’s Eve, she could catch a mystical glimpse of the man she was destined to marry or overhear the king and his men (who'd magically come to life) drop the name of her future husband.

A similar ritual involved barren wives, who hoped that by rubbing their bare breasts on the King's Stone, also at midnight on Midsummer's Eve, they'd be able to conceive a child. 


The cast of Father Brown, starring Mark Williams

Today the stones still work plenty of magic on people’s imaginations, as they’ve done for centuries. 

In the 20th century, ancient stone circles became a magnet for contemporary pagans, Wiccans and others, who use the site for their own magical or religious ceremonies. 

There was even a coven known as the Regency which used to meet at the Rollright stone circle during the revival of paganism in the 1960s and 70s. The founders of the coven didn't have the Prince Regent in mind when they chose their name, but you have to admit it's a nice coincidence for this blog. 

Witchcraft aside, the Rollright Stones are a popular tourist attraction and continue to inspire stories and songs.                             

The stones played a prominent role in a 2015 episode of the British TV series Father Brown, which is set in the Cotswolds in the early 1950s. In “The Standing Stones” superstitious villagers enact a pagan ritual within the stone circle to end a polio epidemic in their village.  

In 1978 the long-running British serial Doctor Who featured the Rollright Stones in an episode titled "The Stone of Blood." 
  
Also in the 1970s, Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi of the English rock band Traffic wrote and recorded “The Roll Right Stones” on their album Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory. (You can hear the song on YouTube here.)

Today the stones are protected by the Rollright Trust and private individuals. You see the stones at Fairs (or “fayres”) and other events hosted at the site. Or you can just hike there and walk around to take in their atmosphere on your own.

No need to hurry. One thing is for certain: those ancient stones aren’t going anywhere. 

Happy Halloween!



For more information on the Rollright Stones visit the official website.

You can read more stories about fables and rituals in Great Stone Circles by Aubrey Burl, Yale University, 1999.

Finally, for other tales of witches see this episode of Mystic Britain, "The Rollright Witch," on the Smithsonian Channel.

~~
Images courtesy of Pixabay and Wikimedia Commons 
(Photos of the Rollright Stones were taken by Midnightblueowl for English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons license CC BY-SA 3.0)



Perdita: Then and Now



The original Perdita, a character in The Winter's Tale,
imagined by artist Frederick Sandys in 1866

I’m beginning to think there's a link to the Regency period in just about any aspect of our popular culture. Today's case in point involves a current television show set in Hawaii, Magnum PI.

One of the actors in this reboot of the popular 1980s series is Perdita Weeks, a Welsh woman who stars in the show as Juliet Higgins. (Yes, in this Magnum PI version Higgins is a young woman instead of a middle-aged man). 

And wouldn’t you know it, there was a famous “Perdita” in the Prince Regent’s life as well.

As a side note, if like me you’re a fan of British TV shows Perdita Weeks may look familiar to you. She's the younger sister of Honeysuckle Weeks, who starred in Foyle’s War. And she’s just as talented and fun to watch.

Perdita Weeks as Higgins in Magnum PI  (CC-by-2.0)

But what really struck me is her name – Perdita. It’s the Latin word for “lost” and isn’t a very common moniker. (Neither is Honeysuckle, for that matter.) 

I did a little research and found a few other applications of this unusual name. There was a racehorse in the 19th century named Perdita, and it's also the name of one of the moons of Uranus.

The only other Perdita I can think of is a character in Disney’s 1961 animated movie, One Hundred and One Dalmatians. That heroic dog, you may recall, is Pongo's mate and the mother of 15 of the 101 titular puppies.


But the name Perdita during the Regency era would've most likely evoked one of two images: a character in William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, and the nickname a young Prince of Wales gave to his first mistress. 

Prinny's "Perdita" didn't come directly from Shakespeare. Much the same way Shakespeare's plays get adapted today (the many different movie versions of Romeo and Juliet come to mind) The Winter’s Tale got adapted, too, in 1753 by David Garrick, an actor who wore many hats (producer, playwright, and theater manager) in the London theater of the 18th century. 

Garrick's adaptation of The Winter's Tale focused on the romance between two of the play's characters. He titled it Florizel and Perdita, and it was a hit. As a result of the show's success, Mary Robinson, who took the role of Perdita in a 1779 performance, became a London sensation.

Thomas Gainsborough's 1781 portrait of Robinson
But there was more to Mary beside her acting ability. She was a poet and writer, married to Thomas Robinson, a man whose unpaid debts led to his young wife and their infant daughter being imprisoned for nine months in the King's Bench Prison.

Mary didn't just languish in jail; she used her time to write she proved to be quite good at it. Her book of poems was well-reviewed and she attracted a noble patron, Georgiana Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire.

It was after her husband was released from prison that Mary made it onto the London stage and into Regency history. 

Her starring role in Garrick's play earned her the nickname "Perdita" Robinson. In addition to her literary and acting talents, Mary was also quite beautiful and loved fashion, which made her a style icon and trendsetter. 

Mary is also known as one of the first feminists in English literature. In her works (poetry and novels) she promoted the idea of women's rights, including their right to education. She was a fan of other feminist writers of her day, especially the unconventional Mary Wollstonecraft, who is perhaps better known as the mother of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein

But back to 1779. The Prince of Wales was a mere teenager, only about 17 years old when the lovely Mrs. Robinson caught his eye. He saw her on the stage and became infatuated with her. It didn’t matter that she was married and almost five years older than he was. He wanted her and was determined to have her. 

Coincidentally, in the 20th century, there was another well-known Mrs. Robinson, a character in the movie The Graduate. She, too, was famously older than her young lover, which was more shocking in 1967 then it is now. However, in real life, stars of the film Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman had nearly the same actual age difference between them as Mary Robinson and the Prince of Wales

Prinny besieged his Mrs. Robinson, showering her with jewels and attention, claiming he was the Florizel to her Perdita. Their romance was furthered by exciting, and secret, meetings. He offered to provide her with a luxurious London pad and 20,000 pounds if she'd agree to leave her husband.  

Mary finally gave in and consented to be Prinny's mistress. It was the Prince of Wales first, though certainly not his last, public love affair. 

But in 1781, after only two years, Prinny abruptly and coldly ended his relationship with Mary. And he never did pay her the 20,000 pounds he promised.

Miniature of a teenaged Prince of Wales, pictured
 at about the time of his affair with Mrs. Robinson
According to J.B. Priestly, author of the Prince of Pleasure and his Regency, this first romantic and sexual entanglement of the future George IV set a pattern for the rest of the royal’s life. Priestley argues that Prinny dumped Mary simply because he grew bored with her.

The future king then went on to have numerous affairs with women who were also several years older his senior.

The list includes Maria Fitzherbert (a Catholic he secretly married, even though he knew their marriage was invalid), Frances Villiers, the Countess of Jersey (who was the mother of ten children and a grandmother when she began an affair with the Prince), and the Marchioness of Hertford.   

Ironically, Prinny couldn’t stand his one lawful wife who was six years younger than he was, Caroline of Brunswick. In fact, he could barely bring himself to conceive a child with her. Their marriage didn't end well.

So, that’s why a bell rang in my head when I saw the name “Perdita” in the credits of the current Magnum PI television series. It just bolsters my theory that if you look hard enough, you can find traces of the Regency almost everywhere, even in Hawaii.





Marie Antoinette Gets a Makeover





Marie Antoinette


What a difference time can make.


At the end of the 18th century Marie Antoinette was perhaps the most hated woman in France. She went from living the high life as Queen Consort to King Louis XVI to a lonely prison cell, and ultimately, the guillotine.

During the French Revolution the unfortunate queen was the target of the mob’s hatred, which rose to a fever pitch during the Terror. To the blood-thirsty revolutionaries, Marie Antoinette and her extravagant lifestyle represented the excesses of the old way of government, the “Ancien RĂ©gime," and a despised symbol of the monarchial system they were determined to destroy. 

Her insensitivity became a legend. Just about anyone who’s heard of the French Revolution has also heard the phrase attributed to Marie Antoinette, something she supposedly said upon hearing the starving poor had no bread to eat. “Then let them eat cake,” was her haughty reply. 

That sure sounded like her, or so her subjects thought. The only problem is there's zero evidence she ever actually uttered those words.

Sketch of Marie Antoinette on her way to
the guillotine  by Jacques-Louis David,
probably an eye-witness
It took a couple of centuries, but time has softened the harshness of the way the queen was once viewed. There's no question that in recent years Marie Antoinette's reputation has begun to undergo a remarkable rehabilitation. 

Now, Marie Antoinette is the most famous woman in French history. She’s being hailed as a global icon, and her name and pre-Revolution glamorous image are popping up all over the country that once loathed her.

Excuse me?? This is the same woman who was ignominiously shoved into a tumbrel and spat upon as she was driven to the guillotine, where she was decapitated in front of a jeering mob?

But it seems that history has revised its opinion. Modern Frenchmen are proving to be kinder to Marie Antoinette than her contemporaries were during the French Revolution. 

And an exhibit opening in Paris this week just confirms this changing outlook.

That the show opens this month is not a random coincidence. The opening marks a grim anniversary. Marie Antoinette was executed 226 years ago this week, on October 16, 1793. And it’s also no coincidence that the exhibit is being held at the Conciergerie, the former prison along the River Seine where Marie Antoinette spent the final days of her life.

What prompted this sea change in how France is presenting its last queen? Could it be guilt over the inhumane treatment Marie Antoinette was forced to endure? Or, in a more cynical view, has she just become too valuable as a tourist attraction and advertising logo to ignore?

Princess Diana
Surprisingly, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times the curator of the exhibit, historian Antoine DeBaecque, suggests that the death of Princess Diana, who died in a 1997 car crash in Paris, is one of the factors that's prompting the French to reconsider Marie Antoinette's legacy. 

The historian argues that like the Princess of Wales, Marie Antoinette was a fashion leader and "emancipated woman" struggling to free herself from the traditions that bound her in her royal role. 

According to this line of thought, both women may have made mistakes, but were really just victims, naive young women caught up in events beyond their control. 

Whatever. Perhaps the French feel remorse over the tremendous suffering the revolutionary leaders and the mob imposed on their once-frivolous and beautiful queen. 

Before her death, Marie Antoinette was accused, often falsely, of every sort of crime her adversaries could imagine, including incest with her son. She endured the execution of her husband and separation from her children, who in turn were forced to denounce their mother. 

Portrait of Marie Antoinette in 1792
when she was imprisoned in the
Temple Tower
Looking at portraits made at the end of her life, It’s hard to believe Marie Antoinette was only 37 when she died. (In another coincidence, Princess Diana died at 36, about the same age as the doomed queen.) 

Though she was still a young woman when she died, Marie Antoinette looked decades older. According to folklore, acute stress and suffering caused her blonde hair to turn prematurely white during her captivity, in what’s become known as the Marie Antoinette Syndrome.

You get the feeling that when death came for the queen on that autumn day, it was a welcome end to her misery. 

There was no public mourning following her execution. Her head was displayed on a pike like a trophy. But, 23 years later in 1815 when the Bourbon monarchy was briefly restored to the French throne, the bodies of Marie Antoinette and her husband King Louis XVI were exhumed and reburied in at a church, the Basilica of St. Denis, north of Paris, where they remain.

Today, there's an ever-increasing amount of media and literature about Marie Antoinette, including manga. She's often shown as either a teenage rebel (after all, she was only 15 when she left her Austrian home to marry the future King of France) or a tragic heroine. 

A good example of this new perspective is Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film, Marie Antoinette, a quasi-modern take on the queen's life starring Kirsten Dunst.

Kirsten Dunst as a young Marie Antoinette
No doubt the new Paris exhibit will burnish Marie’s Antoinette’s image even further. 

The exhibit includes some 200 works of art, along with letters and other personal effects. As befits a fashion icon, even some of Marie Antoinette's gorgeous clothes are on display.

On your way out of the Conciergerie, you can stop by the gift shop, where all sorts of Marie Antoinette souvenirs are for sale - everything from glittery snow globes to chocolates bars and mugs. You may even find a Marie Antoinette Barbie doll. 

Of course, the exhibit does have its critics. There are those who see the exhibit and other efforts to rehabilitate Marie Antoinette's reputation as "royalist propaganda" and a history-ignoring attempt to make a martyr out of a royal whose outrageous spending and disdain for the lower classes made the Revolution all but inevitable.  

"The Metamorphosis of Marie Antoinette Exhibition" at the Conciergerie in Paris opens October 16 and runs through January 26, 2020. But if you can’t make it to Paris here’s a brief video graphically showing the major events in Marie Antoinette’s life. The video is in French, but the pictures need no translation. 






 Sources for this post include:

 “The Marie Antoinette you never knew: a ‘modern icon’ and ‘emancipated woman’,” by Kim Willsher, The Los Angeles Times, October 15, 2019. 


And also by Kim Willsher, Oct. 15, 2019: “From hated queen to21st-century icon: Paris exhibition celebrates life of Marie-Antoinette,” The Guardian.


Images courtesy of Pixabay and Wikimedia Commons

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