Cloven Country: The Devil and the English Landscape

Cloven Country examines how English folk legends have attached the Devil to hills, valleys, roads, rocks and other features of the landscape. Jeremy Harte traces stories of infernal labour, from stones hurled into place and valleys gouged out to roads supposedly built in a single night, while considering why such tales became attached to particular places and names.

The book also gathers accounts of churches targeted by the Devil, risky bargains, storm-born apparitions and the black huntsman pursuing sinners with fiery-eyed hounds. Its Devil belongs chiefly to popular tradition: a powerful but frequently bungling figure, vulnerable to human cleverness. Maidens, mothers, cobblers and other ordinary people sometimes escape his clutches or turn his schemes against him.