Folklore & legend

The Fairy Piper of Cave Hill

Cave Hill, Belfast

Poem published 1740

The Belfast Entries article on Cave Hill describes a poem of 1740 by James Kirkpatrick that tells of a supernatural musician. His enchanting melodies lured people into a magical cavern in the hill, and the mountain is described as yawning wide to take them in, and then closing over them. In the poem the victims are shut in an underground tomb and do not return.

This is a poem, written for readers in the eighteenth century, so it should be handled as literature that borrows the fairy-piper idea and sets it on a Belfast hill. Pied-piper stories of this kind are told in many places. It is included here as an early printed link between Cave Hill and fairy belief, along with other lore of the hill that the same article mentions, such as lost underground passages and fairy stones.

Evidence
Dubious
Access
Open ground
Location
54.647, -5.951 (Parish-level only, treat as an area)

Sources: Belfast Entries, "The Cave Hill, McArt's Fort, Games & Thrones, the Sleeping Giant and more" [other]

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