The Spectres of Souther Fell 1: The Sources August 3, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Beach is usually bored by phantom armies. But the Souter Fell spectres of the mid-eighteenth-century have several interesting features. First, the sources are of an unusually high quality. Second, the number of witnesses was allegedly high. Third, there are some interesting links with the folklore of the region. So let’s get on with the details of the case.
Souter is a large and striking mount in Cumbria (UK), about forty miles from the Scottish border. The picture above shows you the Souter Fell (also written Souther Fell, and Soutra Fell): the witnesses were in the green land to the right of the picture. Put in the most dramatic terms possible in 1744 some twenty six persons saw, for as much as two and a half hours, a series of horsemen marching across the top of the mount, at a place where it was simply impossible for cavalry to go. The number of persons, the length of the ‘display’ all make the Souter Fell army a particularly puzzling case.
There are dozens of book with references to this case. But only two surviving sources have any importance. In 1747 a writer to the Gentleman’s Magazine, visited the area spoke to several witnesses there and alleged that there had been three spectral sightings on the mountain side. The second account was written, instead, by James Clarke in 1789 in his A Survey of the Lakes of Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire. The sources are full of discrepancies and also a good deal of agreed material. In the next two days, both sources will be offered up for examination: they are not easy to find online, at least not complete.
Crudely speaking the anonymous 1747 author had the advantage of proximity to the events but distance from the region: he seems to have been an outsider who had decided to wade into a Cumberland matter. James Clarke, meanwhile, was a Cumberland man who knew the area well, but who was laboring under the very great disadvantage of writing almost half a century after the events described, albeit with contact with one witness.
Beach also wants to note that there are two ‘lost’ sources, that might realistically have some bearing on the case.
In 1765 The Wonderful Magazine (the Fortean Times of its day?) advertised in the Newcastle Chronicle (12 Jan, p. 2). As well as ‘the Salamander Man’ and ‘[p]resentement gained by a blunder’ there was a piece on the ‘Strange Phaenomenon of Souter Fell’. This might have been just an excerpt of the Gentleman’s Magazine, but it might have been something new.
Another interesting source is legal. In 1885, Clarke reports that two of the witnesses had gone before a judge to swear to the sighting. Beach suspects that most of that material is in Clarke’s account, but if it were possible to recover the records of the witness reports these would be interesting.
Can anyone find these missing sources: drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com
30 Aug 2016: Weso writes in with a new source (for me) from Tales and Legends of the English Lakes by Wilson Armistead
Souter Fell or Soutra Fell as it is sometimes called, is a considerable mountain situated to the eastward of Skiddaw and Blencathara. The west and north sides are barricaded with steep rocks, apparently 900 yards in height, and everywhere difficult of access.
A very remarkable phenomenon has exhibited itself on this mountain, which, though difficult to account for satisfactorily, is too well authenticated by numerous spectators to be discredited. We allude to the appearance of troops of visionary horsemen, crossing the mountains, advancing, retreating, and performing different military evolutions—an optical delusion which has been observed in this vicinity, to the great astonishment of the rustics of the vale.
Thomson.
The following account of this singular appearance, which is scarcely paralleled in history, is contained in Hutchison’s History of Cumberland, the particulars being collected by Mr. Smith, who observes that he went himself to examine the spectators, who asserted the facts very positively. “On midsummer eve, 1735, a servant in the employ of William[Pg 161] Lancaster, of Blakehills, about half a mile from Souterfell, related that he saw the east side of the mountain, towards the summit, covered with a regular marching army for above an hour together. They consisted of distinct bodies of troops, which appeared to proceed from an eminence in the north end, and marched over a niche in the top, marked A and B in the sketch given in the above work; but as no other person in the neighbourhood had seen a similar appearance, he was discredited and laughed at.
“Two years after, on midsummer eve also, between the hours of eight and nine, William Lancaster himself imagined that several gentlemen were following their horses at a distance, as if they had been hunting; and taking them for such, paid no regard to it, till about ten minutes after, again turning his head towards the place, they appeared to be mounted, and a vast army following, five in rank, crowding over at the same place, where the servant said he saw them two years before. He then called his family, who all agreed in the same opinion; and what was most extraordinary, he frequently observed that some one of the five would quit the ranks, and seem to stand in a fronting posture, as if he was observing and regulating the order of their march, or taking account of the numbers, and after some time appeared to return full-gallop to the station he had left, which they never failed to do as often as they quitted their lines, and the figure that did so was generally one of the middlemost men in the rank. As it grew later, they seemed more regardless of discipline, and rather had the appearance of people riding from a market, than an army, though they continued crowding on, and marching off, as long as there was light to see them.”
This phenomenon was no more observed till the remarkably serene midsummer evening which preceded the last Scotch rebellion. The parties who had witnessed it on the previous occasion, having been much ridiculed for their[Pg 162] report, were determined to call a greater number of witnesses of this strange phenomenon; and having first observed it rigidly, and with great caution themselves, and being fully assured they were not deceived as to the actual appearances, they convened about twenty-six persons from different places in the neighbourhood to bear testimony to the existence of the fact. These all affirmed, and attested before a magistrate, that they saw a similar appearance to that just described, but not conducted with the same regularity, having also the appearance of carriages interspersed. The numbers of the troops were incredible, for they filled lengthways nearly half a mile, and continued so in a brisk march for above an hour, and would probably have done so much longer had not the darkness of approaching night intervened.
Wordsworth.
The horse and man, upon strict looking at, appeared to be but one being, rather than two distinct ones, but they did not at all resemble clouds or vapours of any kind.
William Lancaster observed that he never considered these aerial images to be real beings, because of the impracticability of a march over the precipices they seemed to traverse, where horses’ hoofs had never trod before. They did not, however, appear to be any less real than on the former occasion; for so convinced were the spectators[Pg 163] of the reality of what they had seen, that, as soon as the sun had dawned next morning, several of them climbed the mountain, through an idle expectation of finding the marks of horses’ feet, after so numerous an army; but when they arrived at the supposed scene of action, not the mark of a single hoof was discernible, nor have any tidings been received of troops being in the neighbourhood up to this time.[6]
Though this part of the country, like every other, where cultivation has been lately introduced, abounds in all the aniles fabellæ of fairies, ghosts, and apparitions, these are never even fabled to have been seen by more than one or two persons at a time, and the view is always said to be momentary. But in this case the twenty-six spectators saw all alike the same changes, and at the same time, as they discovered by asking each other questions as any change took place. Nor was this wonderful phenomenon observed by these individuals only; it was seen by every person, at every cottage, for a mile round; neither was it confined to a momentary view; for, from the time it was first observed, the appearance must have lasted at least two hours and a half, viz., from half-past seven, till the night coming on prevented the further view; nor yet was the distance such as could impose rude resemblances on the eyes of credulity. The whole story has certainly much of the air of a romance, and it may appear to some fittest for Amadis de Gaul, or Glenville’s System of Witches, than for insertion here as a fact. But although it may be difficult to reconcile its probability, and beyond even philosophy to explain, yet such is the evidence we have of its occurrence, that I do not myself entertain the slightest doubt of its having actually taken place as here related. The whole, however, was unquestionably an optical delusion.
As instances have frequently occurred in which the forms and action of human beings have been pictured in the clouds, or in vapour, it seems highly probable, on a consideration of all the circumstances of the case, that certain vapours must have hovered round the mountain when these appearances were observed. It is also possible that these vapours may have been impressed with the shadowy forms which seemed to “imitate humanity,” by a particular operation of the sun’s rays, united with some singular, but unknown, refractive combination then taking place in the atmosphere.
It has been remarked that these appearances were observed most particularly on the eve of the last Scotch Rebellion, when troops of horsemen might be privately exercising at no great distance. Indeed, the Editor of the Lonsdale Magazine, without giving his authority, observes, that it was afterwards actually discovered “to have been the rebels exercising on the western coast of Scotland, whose movements had been reflected by some fine transparent vapour similar to the Fata Morgana.”
Instances are recorded of the phenomena of spectral armies having been occasionally witnessed in other localities. It has been stated that a troop of phantom horsemen was seen coursing over the heights of Helvellyn the day before the battle of Marston Moor. Hutchinson, in his History of Cumberland, relates the following as a parallel instance with that of Soutra Fell. In the spring of 1707, early in a serene morning, was observed by two persons in Leicestershire an appearance of an army marching along, till going behind a great hill it disappeared. The forms of pikes, and carbines were distinguishable; the march was not entirely in one direction, but was at the first like the junction of two armies, and the meeting of generals. There is also [Pg 165] well-authenticated statement of a similar phenomenon, witnessed not long ago, on the Mendip Hills, in Somersetshire; and Speed tells us of something of a like nature as preceding a dreadful intestine war.Something of this kind may have given rise to Ossian’s grand and awful mythology.
These optical illusions, occurring on Soutra Fell, form a subject peculiarly adapted for “the poet’s pen,” and are finely illustrated in the following poem, written in conformity with the popular belief of the lake villagers, that it really was a presentiment of the Scotch Rebellion, and that the horrors of the final battle were depicted in a prophetic manner. There can be no impiety in supposing, as this happened immediately before that rebellion which was intended to subvert the liberty, the law, and the religion of England, that though immediate prophecies may have ceased, these visionary beings might be directed to warn mankind of approaching tumults.
