VERBEIA’S COURT

 VERBEIA’S COURT

Hawthonn

(Layla & Phil Legard)

Originally published in Reliquiae Journal Volume 10, no. 2

“That the second Cohort of the Lingones abode heere, an Altar beareth witnesse, which I saw there, upholding now the staires of an house, and having this Inscripti∣on set upon it by the Captaine of the second Cohort of the Lingones, to VERBEIA, haply the Nymph or Goddesse of Wherf…” - William Camden, Britain (1637)

Goddess

The river Wharfe is a meandering waterway, flowing for 65 miles from Beckermonds in the Yorkshire dales to Cawood, south of York. Although we live in Leeds, where the Aire runs in the culverted depth beneath the city streets, it is the Wharfe, marking the West Yorkshire boundary north of Leeds that has been the major riverine presence in our lives. We call the waters Verbeia more often than ‘Wharfe’: Verbeia being the name inscribed on a Romano-Celtic altar stone at Ilkley Church, and long identified as being the name of the goddess of the river.

The altar, erected in the second century AD by Clodius Fronto, commander of the second cohort of Lingones (Gaulish soldiers), depicts a goddess in pleated robes, grasping two snakes - their heads pointing downward, their bodies zig-zagging like lightning-bolts or the winding of the river itself. The etymological derivation of the name ‘Wharfe’ from the Old English weorpan, to twist, has cemented the Verbeia-Wharfe connection.

Much of our spare time is spent wandering one length or another of Verbeia’s twisting body. Downstream towards Tadcaster, you can follow the Rudgate pre-roman road north. Starting from the now lost holy well of St. Helen at the banks of the Wharfe, several miles walk brings you to the ancient church of St Helen’s at Bilton-in-Ainsty. The church has two impressive corbel tables, now inside the church after centuries of alterations but originally these were external features, typical of the local style of Romanesque architecture. On the river-facing side of the church, opposite the Sheela na Gig, is a Mermaid or Melusine corbel, complete with two snaking coils of hair, which she holds in a way that strikingly mirrors the stance of Verbeia on the Ilkley altar. You can always find some manifestation of the Goddess along the Wharf, and here the medusa-like gaze of the water spirit beckons us back towards the river. 

Upstream, from Harewood to Wharfedale proper, we swim. We’ve regularly dipped into Verbeia’s waters for about five years now, having spent many hours at her riverbanks in the half-decade before that: first paddling to cool our feet after long walks down from Ilkley moor, later swimming at Barden, Appletreewick, Ilkley, Burley in Wharfedale, Arthington and Netherby. These waters are never predictable and never safe. It has been said that Verbeia is a life-demanding river. While the moors that surround her, dotted with stone circles and carved stones were in prehistory the high places of the dead, Verbeia also has a reputation for gathering her own ghostly court.

Lammas

On the 1st of August, the wheat looks dry and ghost-like in the fields as we walk across them. The river swells and irrigates the fields, although it has not done so in these weeks of summer drought. We are walking from Harewood Bridge to a stony bank at the Wharfe’s edge nearby. The abandoned facade of Harewood Castle glares in the sun from the hills beyond the water.

We baked bread – an ornate harvest loaf – and picked flowers from our gardens to offer to the river, and to celebrate our dearest friend Em, whose ashes were given to Verbeia at Kettlewell several months before. The sacred river, flowing through the valleys we walk and worship now holds Em. Like the river, she was - and is - a constant presence in our lives. The Wharfe, her banks, the water itself, and the sunlight seen upon her from afar, all present spaces of interaction with the honoured dead. Every polished river stone along Verbeia’s course is part of a great serpentine cairn. Every subaqueous chasm is the vault of an inverted shrine. We paint red ochre serpents across our chests and enter the waters.

The bread floats down the stream on a raft of flowers, out of sight. Into Verbeia’s realm.

Depth

 

We swim most at Netherby Deep - a spot we call the ‘Secret Beach’, which was a solitary haven of kingfishers, otters, damselflies and tiny fish when we first started visiting some six years ago. A large metal sign on the bank above puts off most swimmers, describing the tragic loss of two children who drowned there in the sixties: “If you care for your children please take them away. Avoid this place as you would a plague.”

 

The water there is deep, dropping sharply from the sandy shore into a void of over nine meters depth. At this place, the character of the river changes daily. Several people have described it as “hungry” to me. On hot, still August days it has the laziness of a lake, with pond weed growing occasionally on the surface. I swim to the middle through the red, peat-stained waters and feel the abyss beneath me, large fish brushing past my legs and dragonflies catching mosquitoes in front of my face. 

Only a few meters upstream from here is a stretch where the current changes: becoming strong, pushing against the swimmer and holding them in place. When the river is high these waters create a whirlpool: potentially deadly to the weaker swimmer: the fatal gate of Verbeia’s domain. On the morning of the day that we laid our offering to Em in the river a man, around our age, appears to have vanished along this stretch. It is haunting. We had seen him swimming here with friends in earlier days. We visit the river by compulsion over the coming weeks, walking up and down either side as far down as East Keswick, pitted against Verbeia’s mercurial waters in the futile attempt to solve a mystery. As fat dragonflies swoop along the banks, police divers are painstakingly surveying the depths of Netherby Deep, foot by sunken foot.

I’ve spent most of my adult life in her vicinity, and I still find Verbeia’s ambivalence terrifying. The whole landscape seems to tumble down, toward the hungry river; a black hole stretched out, incising itself into the land. At Netherby Deep, as at the swirling Strid forty-five miles North-East, the sense of standing on the edge of the veil is profound. I find entering the waters an existential drama. As the sand turns into the pebbly river bed, Layla laughs at how nesh I am, urging me to go deeper. With the waters at shoulder-height I feel the pebbles below skittering down into the depth every time my feet shift. The fear is primal, as if all I know could be snatched away in an airless instant. In shallower waters I try to float, but it feels in my case that the goddess wants all or nothing. I shudder as my son blithely splashes along this liminal edge with little sense of his mortality or how precious he is to me.

Light

The river comes alive in the moonlight. Rippling waves cluster into the simulacrae of living creatures, dancing and leaping together in playful races of the current. Verbeia’s court frolics on the surface of the water. 

Wild-camping upstream from Netherby Deep, our tent screened behind the Himalayan Balsam on the banks, gives the perfect vantage point for this uncanny display. In one place, the moonlight, filtering through the trees and catching upon wavelets resembles a spinning, dancing figure. We both see this spectral form and comment upon it. I see it as Em: a dancer in an endless spin of reverie. Beyond the figure, flashes of silver occasionally glint beneath the overhanging trees on the bank, suggesting lights flickering in some faraway abode beneath the bank itself. I ache to swim across: they feel like the distant lights of a forgotten home. There are a thousand voices in the babble of water over rock, amplified by the still darkness. I listen carefully for a familiar voice as I fall asleep.

Flow

For us, Verbeia and her domain are the Wharf. Verbeia is not some abstract intelligence that hangs above the waters: she is the whorl and water itself. Verbeia is not a transcendent being, but is as alive as we are. She may demand life, but she also sustains it: without these waters the fields, the fish, the mice, rats, otters, caddisflies, dragonflies, kingfishers, and ourselves would evaporate. To draw close to the goddess is to engage in some form of gnosis: whether divining her voice while encamped on the riverbank, pecking out geomantic divinations on the sandy banks of Netherby Deep, or entering the waters to be shocked into life by a sense of one’s own mortality, there is always a sense of touching upon some mystery.

On the high moors the cup-marked rocks and their rippling rings evoke Verbeia’s body: raindrops falling on the surface of the waters below. Springs issue forth becks and rivulets, which flow down the moors, through the fields to her. All along her meandering course, Verbeia is inescapable: all waters run to her, even her tributaries command tribute.

Hartshead Church, the Walton Cross and Robin Hood's Grave

I always enjoy plotting walks on maps, connecting old monuments and interesting places, and the Kirklees area seems to have lots of curious things worth exploring. Phil wanted to test the Angelystor mobile app that he has been making recently in a churchyard with a yew, and I found a reference to the graveyard of St Peter's in Hartshead having a similar mythology to the Llangernyw recording angel on Kai Roberts' Lower Calder Legends blog.

The Walton cross is across the road from Second Avenue, Hightown, set a little way off the road on a footpath. It's nice to see monuments provided with suitable access and still set in the location it was intended to rather than relocated to a museum, especially when it is an object of such immense beauty like this one. I don't think I've seen a roadside cross with such intricate carvings round these parts, you see them fairly frequently around cornwall  but this is a rarity here. I also haven't seen a Saxon cross with this kind of Tree of Life design before.

 The WYAS dates it to the 10th or 11th C and says it would have been taller and brightly painted, making it a prominent landmark for miles around. Even in it's slightly depleted state it is lovely to see, and the socket at the top which, presumably, would have held the missing top part, was filled with rainwater like a little wart well and had a few coins deposited inside.

Following Windy Bank Lane down the hill, we turned at Ladywell Lane towards the church. I wish I'd done a bit more research before we came out because apparently the Lady Well is an ancient well in the vicinity of the church and is still visible under a hawthorn tree. One for a return trip I think. The church itself dates back to the Normans with it's carved chancel arch and doorway similar to Adel church, but most of the building is of a later date.

 The churchyard holds the remains of a yew tree, even in death there are beautiful, gnarled patterns and twists to it's shape. Local legend has it that Robin Hood cut his last arrow (which he fired from his death bed to mark where he should be buried) from this tree. 

The churchyard also has numerous 17th century gravestones, and some possibly earlier. One medieval slab resembles early drawings of Robin Hood's grave, the gravestone of which has been replaced several times.

Compared with Stukeley's drawing of the original slab, the stepped cross of this stone does bear some similarities:

Aside from RH there are lots of old and beautiful monuments, including some Spiritus carvings, a favorite funereal motif of mine. 

From the church we walked down Church Lane, continuing into the footpath through Hollin Wood off Hartshead Lane. The footpath continued through the fields towards the Nun Brook, and the ground seemed extraordinarily full of bits of broken pots and little broken bits of clay tobacco pipes. My guess is that a Victorian rubbish dump lies somewhere underneath, but perhaps there is some other explanation.

Once we reached Leeds Road we walked up towards Robin Hood's grave, I understand now that the site is on private land and access can be arranged, the whole Kirklees hall estate is in the process of being sold so it may be some time before permission can be sought. However in my experience, generally speaking, most landowners do not begrudge discrete and unobtrusive entrance on to their land.

It seems a shame that, although access to this site should have been made public long ago, the interference of numerous societies and individuals has halted the progress of such a move by the previous landowners. It stands to reason that even the most open minded individual would object to an ancient relic under their care being advertised as some kind of supernatural theme park on the internet and it is sad that this has prevented more people from visiting such an atmospheric place. Mistakes are made with the best intentions though, and the new owners will hopefully have a greater desire to share the history of the place.



The grave is situated high on the rise of a hill, tucked under a grove of yews near the edge of a strip of woodland.

One side of the monument is falling down, dragging the cage of ironwork with it (supposedly erected in the 19th C to prevent Navvies from chipping away the stone which they used as a cure for toothache). The grave inside consists of a small, low boulder and a memorial slab built into the side of the stonework.

Walking northwards along the ridge you can also find the remains of a shooting tower, built to resemble a roman tower but now an unrecognisable mass of ivy and crumbling stonework.

Here is a photo of it from 1910, it's slightly hard to believe that it's decayed so much!

Undercliffe Cemetary

It feels like I've been hibernating this winter, usually the cold air and darkening nights are enticing for a wyrd Englander like myself but even in this relatively mild weather I have not felt up to much exploring. I didn't expect the end of the world but it did happen in a small way. On the low turn of the seasons we feel the grind of the wheel but it is good to know the wheel still turns and midsummer shall hopefully bring new joy.

However things have improved and I ventured out to Bradford a week ago to explore Undercliffe again, as Briony had recalled the inscription of an unusual grave we saw there some years ago. We walked along the promenade of the necropolis first though, as who can resist a look at the elaborate grandeur, graves such as the famous Illingworth columbarium:

Several people have noticed the resemblance to the Temple works in Leeds, both Illingworth and Marshall (who built the temple works) owned flax mills. Egyptology was in vogue through the 1800s, Marshall was a member of the Leeds Philosophical society who recovered Nesyamun, the mummy on display today at the Leeds Museum, and the depiction of flax spinning on the ancient Egyptian tombs inspired the mill owners to weave the stylistic influences of pagan times into their lives.

It is unsurprising that this Victorian spectacle of wealth is full of masonic imagery, it seems that every other monument has some nod to an alliance.

The grave we were seeking is a Celtic cross, low compared to all the others around it. It bears the remains of an inscription:

"Out of shadows and phantasms into the truth"

The search for truth has yet to bring us out of the cave, for the grave has no name but bears unusual symbols, a pentagram, a star of david, a swastika and the last symbol, at the foot of the monument, which we were unable to identify.

If any one has any information about the symbol at the foot of the grave, I would greatly appreciate some enlightenment!

The Sorcerers Apprentice, Leeds

It seems that Frater Marabas/Chris Bray has had some subtle but important effects on my life, despite my initial doubts about his authenticity. I had been fascinated by the burnt studded doors of the Sorcerers Apprentice shop since my arrival in Leeds some ten years ago. I chanced upon it on a midnight walk and didn't notice the faint lettering on the now defunct signage.

Four years or so on, my best friend at the time who I had just met, lived on Burley Lodge Road in Leeds just a few hundred yards away Marabas's residence. Googling the street name one day revealed to us that the sinister exterior was far more interesting than we imagined.

We pondered his existence, whether he lived there with tattered cardboard blacking out the windows, light occasionally gleaming from cracks in the upstairs window, and a padlock on the heavy doors. We debated the ethics of selling rocks collected on Ilkley moor. We eventually ordered some small items from him by mail order, and marveled at the doors whenever we passed by.

Some research revealed his previous shop had existed at Hyde Park corner, but had been firebombed by Christian extremists during the Satanic ritual abuse craze of the 80's. Chris Bray spoke openly about his beliefs and opposition to the unfounded prejudice directed towards magical beliefs at the time, which I felt was a brave and unselfish thing to do regardless of whatever stance you took on his rock-peddling. Further research revealed that he published the Lamp of Thoth magazine in the 80's, a delightfully anachronistic revival of a magazine published by the Society of Dew and Light, who operated in Keighley at the turn of the last century. One of the members of this group was Daniel Murgatroyd, whose grimoire and magical equipment were recently up for sale.

Two years ago I was introduced to the love of my life when a mutual friend was sick of listening to me talk nonsense about magic and thought it would be better directed at him. The first thing we spoke about was Chris Bray and the Leeds chaos magic scene.

Much has happened in between then and now, but we often speak of the shop and its owner. I wish it wasn't mail order only so we could visit and pay homage to the true magic of Frater Marabas, whose thread has been weaving a beautiful pattern through our now interconnected lives.