Folklore & legend

The Witches' Seats of the Longfrie

Also known as: Les pierres des sorcières

The Longfrie, St Pierre du Bois

Traditional; houses 17th to 19th century

Guernsey witches flew. MacCulloch recorded the belief that they had inherited wings from their fairy ancestors and so never needed broomsticks, and that on stormy nights their cry of "Qué-hou-hou" could be heard overhead on the way to the Catioroc or Rocquaine. Anyone with a hearth and a chimney had reason to fear a witch coming down it, as the witch of Caûbo was said to do in a cloud of soot.

The witches' seat was a polite answer to the problem. A ledge high on the chimney gave a travelling witch somewhere to perch. Offended witches were dangerous, so it was better to be courteous. Architectural historians would add that the stones may once have had a practical job, for example as weatherings over a thatch line. The folk explanation is the one people remember.

Channel Eye's modern list of Guernsey supernatural sites names the Longfrie and Les Eturs crossroads as further meeting places of the island's witches, alongside the Catioroc. The Longfrie is a pub and restaurant on the Route du Longfrie. The map point marks the Longfrie area, and the stones can be seen from the road.

The chimney stones can be seen from the public road; the Longfrie is a working pub.
Evidence
Long-standing local tradition
Access
Open ground
Location
49.438, -2.627 (Parish-level only, treat as an area)

Sources: Island Families, "Guernsey's Ghosts & Legends" [other]; Channel Eye, "11 supernatural hotspots in the Channel Islands" [other]; Isle of Sark, "Monks, Pirates & Folklore" [other]; Edgar MacCulloch, ed. Edith F. Carey, "Guernsey Folk Lore" (1903), Project Gutenberg [public-domain]

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