The tale is in John Nicholson's Folk Lore of East Yorkshire (1890). Near Flamborough, he says, is a circular hole resembling a dry pond, in which a Flamborough girl committed suicide. It was believed that anyone bold enough to run nine times round the place would see Jenny's spirit come out, dressed in white. But no one had yet been bold enough to go more than eight times, because at that point Jenny called out a dialect rhyme in which she threatened to tie on her bonnet, put on her shoe, and soon catch whoever had not run off.
The story continues with a farmer who, some years before, galloped round the hole on horseback. Jenny did come out, to the great terror of the farmer, who spurred off with the spirit after him. At the edge of the village the spirit, for some reason unknown, declined to go further, but not before biting a piece from the horse's flank. The old mare had a white patch there for the rest of her life.
The nine-circuits rite is the same kind of folk ritual as the seven turns round the pit at Skipsea Castle, and in both cases the figure in white is a woman who died violently. The hollow could be a collapsed pit or a natural sink in the chalk, but Nicholson does not locate it more precisely than "near Flambrough", so the pin is approximate. The story is a pure tradition with one printed source.
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