ANDREW HOPCROFT: Bo(w)ne Head

I once happened upon the simulacrum of a hag amongst the tussocks of Hags Glen beneath the summit of Carrauntoohill; principle peak of MacGillycuddys Reeks and the highest mountain in all of Ireland. I once searched long an hard for a wriggly, wiggly serpentine simulacrum on the banks of Loch Ness, wherein whose cold brackish waters supposedly swims a great wriggly, wiggly wyrm, but to no avail. However, I stumbled upon this stone 'bone head' halfway up Bow Fell in the Lake District of northern England.

Charles Fort [Wild Talents Chapter 18] was greatly intrigued by the appearance of forms and images produced by nature, especially so when people attributed them with significance. Fort's world is an organic entity of which we are very much a part, a world shaped by our desires and imagination - reality conditioned by the human will!

I held a notion that this jumble rocks upon Bow Fell formed a resemblance to the skull of the Bowhead Whale, but alas, I can not make comfortable the comparison with this grinning stone saurian! Mountains, including those of the Lake District, are often described as similar to the dark hull of an upturned boat or akin to the back of a whale - 'whaleback.' Deep in the depths of nearby Windemere dwells the whale sized Bownessie, named for the village Bowness-on-Windemere, (note: there is a 'ness' in that name!) This creator of bow waves is said to be eel-like and up to 70ft in length, I think perhaps, a few years ago, I met its skeletal likeness on the slopes of Bow Fell.