Chanctonbury Ring
“I wonder, as I lie peaceful on the rabbit-cropped turf,
looking at the wreckage of implanted trees
that never should have been there,
how anyone could think that a hill was haunted,
inhabited by demons or that it hated anyone.
There are stories of the devil stealing souls here,...”
About the poem
Chantonbury Ring was published on The Wild Word online journal in November 2019.
The poem was inspired by the many local legends surrounding Chanctonbury Ring in West Sussex. It’s a beautiful spot with a long and often dark history, and I was fascinated by the fact that it had so many legends attached from different eras. In addition, several nature writers had written about the eerie and haunted feel of a place that I associate generally with fresh air and beautiful walks.
As I worked through the various legends looking for common threads, it struck me as a particularly masculine construct to recast a wild place as a dark one. Perhaps the vulnerability we all have to the natural world is more exposed when you stand at the top of Chanctonbury Ring, but women in general are perhaps more accepting of their vulnerability in the world. I don’t know whether that’s really true, or what the legends really mean but I know that there is solace and beauty to be found in wild places, whatever the legends may say.