Wild Edric, Lady Goda & the Stiperstones - Howard

WILD EDRIC, LADY GODA & THE STIPERSTONES

Michael Howard

  In this article I would like to discuss the Stiperstones in Shropshire and their attendant lore.

Shropshire is on the Welsh Border with England and its largely unspoilt landscape includes hills, moorland and woods and forests. The prominent hills include Wenlock Edge, the Stretton, Long Mynd, the Clee and the Stiperstones. Because of its rock formations the county has become a favoured hunting-ground for geologists, especially because of the fault line that runs in the Earth’s crust west of Craven Arms, past Church Stretton to Cressage on the River Severn. The rocks in Shropshire are said to be some of the oldest in the British Isles, dating as they do from the pre-Cambrian period, and include volcanic lava, slate, flagstone, limestone and red sandstone.

   Historically there is little evidence for human habitation in what is now Shropshire before the Iron Age. This is possibly due to the fact that the terrain is so hilly and was covered in prehistoric times in thick forest and swamps. However the Iron Age people did manage to clear the woodland enough to build hill forts and settlements. During the Roman period the occupiers also built forts and towns in the area and opened up lead mines in the vicinity of the Stiperstones. When the legions departed at the beginning of the fifth-century CE Welsh tribes moved east to loot and destroy Roman towns like Viroconium near the modern Shrewsbury.

  In the eight-century King Offa of Mercia extended his realm westwards and constructed his famous dyke to keep the Welsh hordes at bay. It is possible this impressive defensive earthwork had already been in existence and was only refortified by the king whose name it now bears. With the Norman Conquest in the late eleventh-century the Welsh Border became a flashpoint for English resistance against the invaders, as we shall see later in the story of Wild Edric.

  During the civil war in the twelfth century between King Stephen and his rival for the throne, his sister the self-styled Empress Matilda, the Shropshire town of Ludlow with its castle was the site of a major battle when one hundred rebels were captured and executed. Four hundred years later Ludlow Castle featured in another civil war when it was the last royalist stronghold in the county to surrender to the dictator Oliver Cromwell. Two hundred years ago Shropshire was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution with its pioneering factories around Ironbridge and the Severn Gorge area.

  The Stiperstones near Pontesbury are a ridge of stony outcrops some 1700 feet above sea level. It consists of serrated ridges and ledges of rock that have been eroded and broken up by the weather over thousands if not millions of years. The highest point of the hill is a large crag popularly called the Devil’s Chair because of its shape. According to a legend it was created by the Old One when he travelled from Ireland. For some unknown reason he was carrying several large stones around his waist in an apron. He sat down on the Stiperstones to rest and when he got up the apron strings broke and the stones were scattered on the ground. Where he rested became known as the Devil’s Chair. The story is a classic example of how natural features in the landscape where often named after the activities of Old Hornie.

   Near to the Stiperstones is the village of Pontesbury. It is in the shadow of Pontesford Hill and Earl’s Hill (possibly named after Edric) and each has the remains of fortified earthworks or hill forts. These are probably of Iron Age origin, although the hills were also the site of a seventh-century battle recorded in the famous Anglo-Saxon Chronicle between the Mercians and the West Saxons. On Palm Sunday local people used to climb up Pontesford Hill to look for the so-called ‘golden arrow’. This magical object was supposed to have once belonged to a faery or an ancient king and had been lost for centuries. The legend said that it could only be found by the rightful heir of the king or by a virgin seventh daughter of a seventh son.

  Following the Norman invasion William the Conqueror consolidated his power and authority by seizing land from the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy and landowners and handing it out as gifts to his own nobles. Most of Shropshire fell into the hands of William’s kinsman and friend Roger de Montgomery. He set up his county headquarters in Shrewsbury and ordered the building of a castle to both intimidate and subdue the natives and use as his main residence. Roger was described by friend and foe alike as ‘a just man but severe.’

  His forced requisition of land in Shropshire did not go down well and resistance to Norman rule on the Welsh Border came from a band of Welsh and Anglo-Saxon rebels led by a local earl, popularly known as Edric Sylvaticus or Edric the Wild. Whether this nickname came from his temperament or his love of the outdoors and hunting is not known. He had been robbed of his ancestral lands by the incoming Norman lord and wanted them back.

   Although Edric and his rebel army managed successfully to besiege Shrewsbury and burnt  down Roger de Montgomery’s half finished fortifications, his campaign against the Normans eventually ended in failure. In fact the earl was forced to sue for peace with King William. As a result he was denounced by his fellow freedom fighters as a traitor who had betrayed their cause. It was said that Edric even fought alongside the king against the Scots. In later life Edric apparently made the mistake of supporting the Mortimer rebellion and ended his days in prison.

   These are the historical facts about Wild Edric but in 1180 the historian Walter Map wrote a life of the earl containing a story that transformed him into almost a mythological figure. Map says that Earl Edric frequently went hunting in the Forest of Clun near his home. In medieval times this was a wild, heavily wooded area in the south-west of Shropshire between Montgomeryshire (evidently named after the Norman lord) and Radnorshire. Its few inhabitants were a mixture of Anglo-Saxons and Welsh peasants and in the early days of the Norman occupation it was a semi-independent and lawless area. The forest was renowned for its herds of red deer and was an ideal hunting ground.

  One day Wild Edric was out hunting in the forest and it became late. As the daylight was fading fast the earl ordered his hunting companions to return home. He told them he would tarry a little longer in the hope of killing more game. As he rode through the trees, at the magically liminal time of dusk when the veil between the worlds is thin, Edric heard the sound of strange music in the distance. He came to a large clearing and in the middle of it was a thatched cottage with bright lights shining from its windows.

  Perhaps hoping he could obtain shelter for the night, Edric got off his horse and approached the dwelling. Looking through one of the windows he saw six of the most beautiful women he had ever encountered dancing to the sound of invisible musicians. In their centre stood a seventh woman who was even more beautiful then the dancers. She quite literally took the nobleman’s breath away.

  As far as Edric was concerned it was lust at first sight and in true aristocratic fashion he decided he must have the woman. Blinded by desire the earl smashed down the door of the cottage and seized her. It was then he realised something was not quite right as the dancing women immediately shapeshifted into wolves and attacked him. Edric managed to keep them at bay with his broadsword while he threw his captive over his saddle and galloped back at high speed to his manor house with his prize.

  At first the mysterious woman would not speak to Edric and she ignored him. She also refused to eat and drink what was offered to her by his servants. After several days had passed and the earl was beginning to despair the woman finally spoke. She said she had been watching and observing Edric carefully. As a result she had concluded he was a worthy man despite his violent action in kidnapping her. Because of this she would agree to marry him. However she had a secret to tell the earl and that secret was that her name was Godda and she was the queen of the faeries. She further told the astonished Edric that she would share his bed and pretend to be his human wife providing he allowed her to occasionally visit her sisters in the forest and never spoke of her elven origins. Edric was so besotted with Godda that he happily agreed to her conditions.

  The couple were duly married and lived happily together, even producing a halfling son who was both human and faery. Earl Edric made his peace with Edric and the couple attended court as husband and wife without anyone realising their secret, although people did comment on Lady Godda’s unearthly beauty and unnatural charm. All was going well when one morning Godda was late for breakfast. When she eventually turned up Edric said sarcastically: “Where have you been my wife? Was it your faery sisters who kept you from me?” Almost as soon as the fateful words had left his mouth Edric regretted them for he realised he had broken the taboo. Godda turned on her heel and left the room without speaking and returned to her faery kin in the wildwood.

  Edric was heartbroken at his loss and pined for his faery lover. He spent days searching for the cottage in the Clun forest but never found it again. According to the legend, even after his death Wild Edric had no peace as he was doomed to ride the Shropshire hills for eternity because he had betrayed his people by submitting to the Norman king. His only consolation was that after death he was reconciled with his faery bride and they rode together as the local leaders of the Wild Hunt.

  In common with another Wild Hunter, Herne, who haunts Windsor Forest (now the Royal Windsor Park), Wild Edric is often seen at times of national crisis or disaster. A local story says that just before the Crimean War in the 1850s a man and his daughter out walking near Minsterley encountered the Wild Host. The father told his daughter to cover her face with her hands as it went by or they would take her away to join them. As she was a naughty and curious girl she disobeyed and peeped through her fingers as the faery riders went by.

  The girl saw that the elven company was led by a tall man riding a white horse. He had short, dark and curly hair and “very bright black eyes”. He was wearing a green cap with a white feather tucked in its brim, a green medieval-type tunic and a long green cloak. From the rider’s belt hung a sword and a hunting horn. By his side rode a very beautiful woman with long golden hair that fell to her waist. Around her forehead was bound a band of white linen with a gold ornament attached to it. She was wearing a long green dress and had a small dagger tucked into her golden belt. The father later told his daughter he had seen Lord Edric and Lady Godda when he was a child. That was fifty years before at the start of the Napoleonic Wars.

  Godda or Goda is one of the names associated with the ancient Germanic goddess of winter, darkness and death Dame Holda. A sixteenth-century manuscript describes Holda as the female leader of the Wild Hunt and says: ’The Wild Host, very strange figures, horned, beaked, tailed, roaring and shouting, behind, on a black wild steed, Frau Hold, blowing into the hunting horn, swinging the cracking whip, her head-hair shaking about wildly, like a true wonder-outrage.’.

  The Central European goddess who leads the Wild Hunt traditionally stole the souls of unbaptized children and forced them to join her nocturnal ride. During the liminal Twelve Days of Yule around the winter solstice Holda also punished naughty children and anyone who neglected to leave out gifts or offerings for her. Any woman who dared spin or weave during this transitional period at the turning of the year also incurred the goddess’ wrath. This connects Holda with the traditional witch-goddess Fate who spins and weaves the Web of Wyrd or human destiny.

  In the last fifty years the Stiperstones in Shropshire have been used by two modern groups associated with traditional witchcraft. One of these was Robert Cochrane’s covine in the 1960s and its more popularised offshoot The Regency. Cochrane clearly had a psychic and spiritual link with the site and its legend of the Wild Hunt. In one of his letters to his American correspondent Joe Wilson Cochrane clearly said that ‘the People [traditional witches] are formed in Clans and families and they describe themselves by the local name of the Deity. I am a member of the People of Goda – of the Clan of Tubal Cain’. In this declaration there is no ambiguity that Cochrane is referring to the goddess Goda/Holda and his spiritual kinship to her. This also explains why Cochrane and the two members of his covine who founded The Regency, Ronald ‘Chalky’ White and George Stannard Winter, used the Stiperstones. In fact White and Winter both retired from London to Shropshire and they died there not that far from their famous working site.