I can’t quite remember now how I came to stumble across it, I guess having been to and through Devon several times quite recently I have been looking up information about our neighbouring county. I’m always interested in old stories, myths, legends, folk tales, half-remembered yarns – I guess it’s having grown up in the times of Children’s Hour on the radio, of junior school teachers who read us all sorts of different books which they thought might interest, engage and inspire us, and parents who told us stories before we went to sleep each night. Whenever I visit anywhere, I’m always curious about the history of the place and the stories connected to it and I’m forever buying booklets and leaflets in places we’ve been.
However, a ghostly and ghastly creature which roams the moors and terrifies the folk of Devon is something I only found a couple of days ago. When I say found thankfully I didn’t actually find it, and even more thank goodness it didn’t find me, but I came across its name somewhere. I read a story about Old Crockern. Crockern Tor is described as ‘This somewhat insignificant rock pile when viewed from the south,’ but it is of quite a historical significance. It was once the site of the Stannary Court – Stannary law governs and regulated tin mining in Devon and Cornwall and it is incredibly ancient, possibly going back as far as September 1494 – two years after Christophorus Columbus did something which changed the world!
Back to Crockern Tor. The Tor is supposedly the home of Old Crockern which is what I stumbled across and was surprised not to have heard of before. I will leave it to Wikipedia to describe it in case I accidentally summon it even though I live in Somerset not Devon:
Crockern Tor is said to be the home of the mythical Old Crockern, variously described as a spectral figure on horseback, galloping across the moor on a skeleton horse with his phantom hounds which were stabled at nearby Wistman’s Wood; or as a local god of the moor in pre-Christian times:
the gurt old sperit of the moors, Old Crockern himself, grey as granite, and his eyebrows hanging down over his glimmering eyes like sedge, and his eyes as deep as peat water pools.
Lois Elsden 