The Devil’s craftsmanship, so horribly casual in its immensity, of such enormity that it breaks open the mundane, is also bested, diverted, and limited in mirthful ways – and for all that his power is immense, he can be undermined by ordinary, salt-of-the-earth folks. Harte neatly brings in the suggestion that this may mirror actual class-dynamics – the fairly obvious idea that the stories which told are affected by such dynamics brings us to some interesting conclusions:

Cloven Country: The Devil and the English Landscape - Goodreads Cloven Country: The Devil and the English Landscape - Goodreads

Thematically he moves us from tales of a stupid and outwitted Devil which are just recastings of much older giant or fairy lore through increasing fear and anxiety to culminate in the sinister Hounds of Hell motif which appears to be drawn from German romanticism.In the interview I begin by talking with Jeremy about what inspired the idea for the book and then look at the history of the Devil's appearances in English folklore, and some of the themes and motifs that are most common there. We also talk about the relationship between this kind of folklore and peoples personal experience of the supernatural, and how the latter has become much more prevalent in modern times, to the extent that presence of the 'landscape devil' in recent storytelling is hard to discern. Many Devil place names are of surprisingly recent origin, the creation of entrepreneurial indigenes exploiting the narrative desires of midle class tourists and re-arranging existing non-devilish local stories to appeal to their audience's sense of the horrible or simply to entertain for a penny. At one of its finest moments, and towards the end of the book he discusses how historically it was frowned upon to do pretty much anything on a Sunday, and how in various parts of the country stories of the Devil taking punitive measures against those intent of enjoying themselves, were common.

Cloven Country: The Devil and the English Landscape

The most significant for me, is Hell Gill and Devil’s Bridge in the Dales, leading into Wensleydale - and the Devil's Bridge in Kirby Lonsdale. There's a spectrum to the stories, though. While most have a relatively happy ending, some are chilling, even as we know better. Cloven Country is several things at once; a travelogue of Devilish spoor, a meditation on the way landscape affects the human imagination; a historical feeling-out of folk-religiosity, word of mouth – and the way human changes in society and culture are reflected in the stories we tell ourselves. It regales us with the shifting forms of the folk-Devil and highlights the distinction between the eternal Adversary of the pulpit and the stubborn, often lazy, figure that stands as an inhuman encounter. In many cases, this Devil is, if not easy to best, nonetheless beatable. With a little bit of cunning, a smidge of nous (pronounced nowse in many British dialects) one may best the dark figure who comes upon us.Scratch can be bested, yes, but slip up, and you and yours are deeply in trouble. Harte makes the point early on that this story-Devil is a latecomer to these interactions with landscape – and even those things like bridges, which humans make. Popular tales, Harte suggests, might imply something off about the conjurer-parson, but certainly there are tales of these same individuals advising and aiding Cornish wrestlers in their very physical confrontations with the Devil – providing prayers, papers and materials to enable victory over him.

Cloven Country’ by Jeremy Harte — Paralibrum. ‘Cloven Country’ by Jeremy Harte — Paralibrum.

My guest for this episode is folklorist and author Jeremy Harte, who joined me to talk about his new book Cloven Country: The Devil in the English Landscape. That was Jeremy Harte just then speaking in italics. He's written this wonderful book, a collective of folklore about how the Devil is responsible for things we see in the English landscape. You can tell these places by their names: The Devil's Chapel, The Devil's Elbow, The Devil's Arrow, The Devil's Dyke, The Devil's Jumps, The Devil's Chair. Folklore is intimately connected to trade and travel. The Netflix of the early modern period was the chapbook. These could spread memes widely and feed off each other. Heroes of Devil tales were often from the partially itinerant class that could spread stories in a community, men such as cobblers.By 1700, Harte argues, landscape stories were being reworked to include the Devil to “replace older heroes” as “part of a structured forgetting” (p. 52f.). The point is well made that “magic in folk stories is always something physical and local, a lore of crossroads and thresholds, rings and staffs and bottles.” (p. 155) However, while he is correct that the grimoires are often in love with language and literacy, the reality is that this so-called high magic contained just as many rings, staffs, bottles, crossroads, and thresholds, even in England. One only has to look at John Dee’s shewstone or his alchemical obsessions and productions of minerals whilst seeking the Philosopher’s stone, or the continuance of particular virtues in certain materials as part and parcel of a whole worldview. At Crawshawbooth near Burnley, there was a football match on a Sunday when an unexpectedly powerful player joined the game as replacement for an injured player. One shot at the ball and it disappeared into the sky in a flash of fire, along with the strange player, and that was the end of the game. Perhaps the most unnerving tales are not those of Hell's Hounds chasing men across Bodmin Moor (bad and selfish gentry are also targets of devil tales which, like fairy tales, can have 'moral purpose) but the use of the Devil to re-envision those lightning strikes on churches that kill the faithful. When speaking about the thaumaturge– the wonder-worker – we must remember that this was applied to magical practitioners and saints. Persons, latterly, so holy in many cases, that their merest presence induced miraculous events. That these saints chased up and down the country, cast out demons, blessed areas, and gave their names to holy wells is well known. But, with the Protestant Reformation, the notion of the saints as miraculous figures and thaumaturges began to dwindle.