The folklore for the Cheshire book is feeling a bit sparse. Leigh Egerton’s Ballads & Legends of Cheshire from 1867 claims that Cheshire lacks folklore because it has no mountains. Cornwall had enough folklore for a book, so I thought this was silliness. That being said, the richest folklore I’ve found has been in Longdendale, which is a mountain pass into the Peak District, so he may have a point.

The following pieces come from Traditions and Customs of Cheshire by Christina Hole. Note that even short pieces can be suitable for gaming, because we need colour for our Virtues, Flaws, Boons, and Hooks. So, if I say “In Cheshire people think pigs can see the wind”, as an example, that’s a hint that a magus with an Auram specialty might have a boar as a familiar.

Vis source / plot hook: Alabaster is used as a panacea for sickness in sheep. The easiest way to get it is to steal it from the tombs of rich people. They use it as a cheaper substitute than for marble. It seems an odd choice to steal tomb decorations, powder them, and then stuff them in sheep. At the least this may annoy ghosts, but it could also tainjt the wool, milk and meat of these sheep.

Background / plot hook: Servants in Cheshire are hired at annual fairs. By tradition a servant who changes employers departs their old job on December 26 and begins the new one on January 2. Covenants seeking servants may be drawn into this system.

Bells are rung at at 8 pm. From Michaelmas to Lady-Day the bells also rings the date, as well as the hours.

The pancake bell begins the feast of Shrove Tuesday. Shrove games include football, footraces, a ball of silk thrown into the crowd for people to scrimmage over, and an archery competition with a silver arrow as a prize. They also play tip cat and prison bars, which are cricketish wide games.

Minor magical item / Curse? : When the wheat is almost harvested, the final little piece is twisted into a sheaf and tied with a ribbon. People pitch sickles at it to “cut the neck”. The person who hits it gets a small prize from the landowner, and keeps it as a luck charm for the next year. After the neck is cut the farmhands go to a high point and make a loud declaration “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! This is to gie notice that Mr X has gin the seck a turn, and sent the t’owd hare into Mr Y’s standing corn. Wow! Wow! Wow!” Note that “corn” in this sense is the main grain crop of the farm, not maize. The last person to cut their crop has the old hare for the year, which seems unlucky or shameful.

Marler rituals: Marl is a mix of clay and lime that is used as fertilizer. It is dug out of pits. The marlers only dig marl for the part of the year when spreading it is useful, so they have an annual celebration as they close the pit. They bull-bait in the pit itself and beg money. They sing the praises of their benefactors The traditional cry is led by their festival captain, the Lord of the Soil: “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! This is to give notice that Mr X has given us marlers part of 100 pounds and to whomever will do the same we will give thanks and praise!” His retinue then yell “Largesse! Largesse! Largesse!” Note that if they are given a sixpence or more, they say “part of 1000 pounds” Note that’s a story, so a faerie might steal their thousand pounds, even though it doesn’t really exist. Sacrificing bulls in pits seems ritualistic.

Flaw: Looking into an owl’s nest causes lifelong melancholia.

Familiar / vis source: At Urkinton Hall is a walled garden filled with blackbirds. The ancestor of these was a blackbird into which a group of priests had forced a ghost. This makes some of them oddly tied to the art of Mentem and to necromancy. Exorcising ghosts into animals, even dead animals, is common in Cheshire. These exorcisms are usually performed in teams that make the ghost smaller and smaller until it can be shoved into an animal or, in one case, a bottle.

Creature: The Gabrel Ratchets are flying hounds that haunt the night. “Gabrel” in this case is a dialectic word for “corpse” not a reference to the archangel Gabriel, although I’ve seen that link made in some other areas. They are led or followed by a flying hunter who is variously stated to be the Devil, a local squire of great wickedness, or Odin (according to Hole but I’m not sure where she gets that last one from). You’ll be left unmolested if you lie face down in the road until they are gone.

Plot hook: “Chowlering” is the local name for the Autumn custom of boys roaming the fields with stones to throw at birds, scaring them off newly planted seeds. They hit something odd.

Dragonflies dislike snakes and hover over them to warn people.
Cats can sense the coming weather.

The Eager River takes three lives per year. Hole says it is named after the Aegir, the Norse gods. That seems a stretch. The Dee River is, in contrast, holy, and creates lights to aid the recovery of corpses.

If you find a drowned corpse you will be haunted if you do not bury the person in the proper fashion. This is an oddity: elsewhere there’s a feeling that stealing corpses from the sea might be unlucky. It’s also odd given that there are wreckers active on the Wirral: why they aren’t haunted is not all that clear. Perhaps they bury corpses properly after stealing their goods?

Favours source: the Lady of Reedsmere is accused of being unfaithful, and her husband says he won’t believe her innocence unless the island floated around the lake. Fortunately for her, the island was mass of peat and a storm broke it off from the floor of the lake. It moved about the lake randomly for the next few decades. The weather and severing of the peat island’s link to the lakebed are relatively simple with Hermetic magic.

There are a lot of saint’s wells in Cheshire, including the well used for water by Cheshire monastery. Many are also wishing wells. These oddly don’t need coins: many accept pins, rags or stones thrown in special ways. Well dressing is a common practice, generally annually.

Nantwhich’s brine wells, which are used in salt-making, are blessed annually. They are freezingly cold: the pits in which the wells are found are so cold many women can only stay in them for half an hour at a time. These women, wych-wallers, are known for their swearing, and perhaps cursing in the mystical sense.

In Neston, each Easter Monday, there’s a festival called the Riding of the Lord. A man rides along the main street on a donkey. He is jeered at and pelted with rotten food. He is paid for this, but why no-one seems to know what the point of it is beyond custom. Is he a scapegoat? Does this give a Tormenting supernatural being as a flaw?

There’s a May Queen or Queen of Roses in many areas.

In Cheshire the spirits of the dead were expected to be more present for the two days of All Souls and All Saints. Children go souling, which is going from house to house singing a traditional song, and being given small spiced cakes or coins in exchange. In Ars Magica terms this is a Feast of the Dead, but it is gathered by children…or things pretending to be children. THey are folllowed by the hoddening horse, which is a huge, simple puppet with a horse’s skull. Mummers also do plays on these days, which are called “soul-caking plays”.Apple bobbing, apples on string and bonfires all occur.

Mistletoe is called “all heal” and thought broadly curative. People don’t kiss under it: instead they use “kissing bushes”. These are iron rings threaded with evergreens and ribbons, with apples and candle hanging underneath. If they are not taken down they turn into goblins on Candlemas Day.

People stage fake funerals in the Wirral to carry coffins full of salt past customs collectors.

In Tabley Old Hall there was a dinner of local magnates where one man though another was being too familiar with his wife. They fought, and the husband was killed before his wife, who then committed suicide on the spot. The host, who must have had ice in their viens, swore everyone to secrecy and sealed the bodies in a windowless room. The ghosts of the couple are often seen.

A ghostly procession bring home a dead crusader. It is followed by a weeping woman, who might be either his wife or mistress. Why they do this repeatedly is not clear.

There’s a haunted sand-hole in Knutsford. A tax collector was murdered by his inn’s landlord, who stole the money that had been collected and buried the body in the sand. He saw a corps walking toward him whenever he passed the sand hole.

Around Knutsford, on special occasions, they use pale sand to draw patterns in the streets, which are beautiful and used for festivals, and may have reog vis in them.

The bridge at Faradon has two child ghosts, of boys thrown over the side by their uncle to claim their property.

In Brereton all of the ghosts of the area come once a year to process to the churchyard, filling the streets. They seem to treat this as a festive event, but the humans stay away.

There’s a knightly crusader who promises to come back dead or alive, and returns to terrify his wife with his retinue of skull-faced cavalry.

The Wiirral: one day there’s a huge spinning pillar of smoke, twenty yards cross and high as a church steeple. It makes a terrible noise. Is this a Fury?

St Werburgh caused magical sleep to allow her relics to be taken from the people at the [lace where she died.

There’s a monk whop sells his soul to the devil for three wishes. These as much pork as he can eat, as much wine as he can drink, and ten bales of hay from a particular place. The place is a beach, so the Devil can’t deliver, and the tenants of the monastery plow the beach each year in commemoration.