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The Ancestors - Wayland’s Smithy
Identifier
021841
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Prehistoric Britain – Dr Christopher and Jacquetta Hawkes
Wayland’s Smithy lies beautifully on the Berkshire Downs about a mile’s walk along te Ridgeway from the equally famous White Horse of Ufington. The popularity of this site is due more to the romantic name of Wayland than to its inherent interest; strange that a figure so essentialy Iron Age as this legendary blacksmith, who would shoe your horse for a groat left on the roof of the smithy, should become attached to this ‘tomb’.
A description of the experience
from The World Guide to Gnomes, Fairies, Elves and Other Little People compiled by Thomas Keightley
“The following legend is related in Denmark:
On the lands of Nyegaard lie three large hills one of which is the abode of a Dwarf, who is by trade a blacksmith. If anyone is passing that hill by night, he will see the fire issuing from the top and going in again at the side. Should you wish to have any piece of iron work executed in a masterly manner, you have only to go to the hill and saying aloud what you want to have made, leave there the iron and a silver shilling. On revisiting the hill next morning, you will find the shilling gone and the required piece of work lying there finished
from The World Guide to Gnomes, Fairies, Elves and Other Little People compiled by Thomas Keightley
“the Black Dwarfs wear black jackets and caps and are not handsome. They are most expert workmen especially in steel to which they can give a degree at once of hardness and flexibility, which no human can imitate; for the swords they make will bend like rushes and are as hard as diamonds. In the old times arms and armour made by them were in great request; shirts of mail manufactured by them were as fine as cobwebs and yet no bullet would penetrate them and no helm or corslet could resist the swords they fashioned”