Elf Furrows (Durham)

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On Tweedside (North Durham), in some old pasture fields, there still remain the twisted ridges, like ever so many repetitions of the letter S, cast up by the plough, when oxen formed the draught. The flexure was to enable the oxen to wind out the furrows at the land’s end without trampling on them; but the story is that it was a precaution against the malevolence of the fairies, who took a malicious pleasure in shooting their fatal bolts at the patient beasts of burden who tore up their grassy hillocks and recreation grounds, and that they aimed their arrows along the furrows, imagining them to be straight, but they were baffled by their being drawn crooked, and thereby fell wide of the mark. They were therefore called elf-furrows. (Denham 146)

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