The natural acoustic phenomenon behind Carn Kenidjack's name, real wind noise generated by air moving through its rock formations, gives this cluster of legends an unusually clear and identifiable physical trigger compared with most folklore sites in this register, the carn's own genuinely strange, wordless hooting sound a plausible enough starting point for a landscape that came to be associated so heavily with the Devil and the supernatural more generally.
The sheer density of distinct supernatural claims attached to one fairly small area, a Devil on horseback, dancing lights on the neighbouring common, a witnessed demonic wrestling match, and a separately named witch haunting a hollow underneath, suggests Carn Kenidjack functioned historically as a kind of general local focus for uncanny stories rather than any single coherent legend, each element likely arising somewhat independently before being recorded together by Hunt in the nineteenth century.
Old Moll's specific association with the Gump beneath the carn gives the witchcraft strand of the tradition its own named, individual figure distinct from the more generic Devil stories above ground, and this register records both layers honestly as a genuinely combined local tradition rather than separating them into artificially distinct entries.
Comments