Spirit
Old Crockern
Leave the moor as you found it.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Granite tor with scattered rocks
- Legend from
- Baring-Gould (1899)
- Tone
- Eerie
Scratch the moor's back and it will tear out your pocket.
Crockern Tor was where the Stannary Parliament of Devon tinners met. Wikipedia says Old Crockern, its spirit, is described as a spectral rider on a skeleton horse with his hounds stabled at Wistman's Wood, or as an old moor god. Baring-Gould tells of a man who dozed on the tor and met 'old Crockern himself, grey as granite', who sent a warning to a farmer improving the moor: 'if he scratches my back, I'll tear out his pocket.' The farmer was ruined.