BeastHidden
The Inland Mermaid
Miles from the sea, a mermaid waited in the pits.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Village near the River Lark
- Legend from
- Recorded 1822
- Tone
- Light-hearted
Fornham All Saints: a love-sick maid perished at the pits here, and the millers said they heard spirits every night.
In his 1822 history of Hengrave, John Gage noted that Fornham All Saints, once home to Babwell Priory and four ancient mills, had a place called the Mermaid Pits. He wrote that the name came from the story of a love-sick maid who perished there, and he linked it with lines about pits haunted every night by a rout of spirits that the miller and his neighbours often heard. Lady Gurdon reprinted the note in 1893. Elsewhere in the same book she records that Suffolk mothers used mermaids in ponds as bugbears to keep children away from water. The pits themselves have not been identified
One sourceOnly one written account of this legend has been found so far.