Local myths and legends - tell us yours

One of the men suspected of being Jack The Ripper taught there.

Matt, was it Montague John Druitt?

That's the fella.

He's innocent! And has an awesome moustache.

(had)

he committed suicide:(

there's a spot in the hills about a mile from where I grew up called 'gravity point' where you park your car on (what looks like?) a downhill slope, put it in neutral and it drifts backwards up the hill a bit. good times

!!!

Tremendoid, that's awesome! YOU're awesome. I'ma go take a drive this weekend.

Like the electric brae?
But that's in the middle of the road - you can't go make out there or anything, I think.

slightly off-topic, perhaps, but last night i was at this bar and people were rehashing one of those gerbil urban legends and relating it to a local personality, and i wanted to be like, "um, that's a ridiculous urban legend", but i didn't and humanity is possibly the poorer for it.

it's kind of like when i was volunteering at the soup kitchen and arguing over the virtues of port vs stouts

Tremendoid, that's awesome! YOU're awesome. I'ma go take a drive this weekend.

i know you're being an asshole but anyway, mine is the 'pasadena, california' one

Leprechauns/Stereotypes

Partholón was the son of Sera, son of Sru, a descendant of Magog, son of Japheth, son of Noah. He came to Ireland from the Middle East through Anatolia, Greece, Sicily and Iberia, and arrived 300 or 312 years after the flood, on 14 May, a Tuesday, landing at Inber Scéne (Kenmare in South Kerry)

This weirdo artist made a totem pole for a public park. City workers cut off a few feet of it at the bottom (to make it fit or somethng). The artist got hella pissed and cursed the town's sewer system. The curse gets brought up whenever the town has sewer problems.

woah, just how pissed did he get

pissed meaning angry lol

Lugh joins the Tuatha Dé Danann

As a young man Lugh travels to Tara to join the court of king Nuada of the Tuatha Dé Danann. The doorkeeper will not let him in unless he has a skill with which to serve the king. He offers his services as a wright, a smith, a champion, a swordsman, a harpist, a hero, a poet and historian, a sorcerer, and a craftsman, but each time is rejected as the Tuatha Dé Danann already have someone with that skill. But when Lugh asks if they have anyone with all those skills simultaneously, the doorkeeper has to admit defeat, and Lugh joins the court and is appointed Chief Ollam of Ireland. He wins a flagstone-throwing contest against Ogma, the champion, and entertains the court with his harp. The Tuatha Dé Danann are at that time oppressed by the Fomorians, and Lugh is amazed how meekly they accept this. Nuada wonders if this young man could lead them to freedom. Lugh is given command over the Tuatha Dé Danann, and he begins making preparations for war.[

i have got to get a good collection of this stuff, it's astonishing

the Kirtland, Ohio Melon Heads

my synagogue: http://www.weirdus.com/states/pennsylvania/ghosts/general_wayne/index.php

Prince Georges County, MD, is said to be home to the Goatman. In some versions of the story, he is said to have been a scientist at a USDA facility, who was doing some sort of genetic engineering involving goats.

― j.lu (j.lu), Monday, September 5, 2005 7:21 AM (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This was really close to the house I lived in until I was 6. Car rides at night got real intense after my mom told me about it.

One day at Emain Macha, Cú Chulainn overhears Cathbad teaching his pupils. One asks him what that day is auspicious for, and Cathbad replies that any warrior who takes arms that day will have everlasting fame. Cú Chulainn, though only seven years old, goes to Conchobar and asks for arms. None of the weapons given to him withstand his strength, until Conchobar gives him his own weapons. But when Cathbad sees this he grieves, because he had not finished his prophecy—the warrior who took arms that day would be famous, but his life would be short. Soon afterwards, in response to a similar prophecy by Cathbad, Cú Chulainn demands a chariot from Conchobar, and only the king's own chariot withstands him. He sets off on a foray and kills the three sons of Nechtan Scéne, who had boasted they had killed more Ulstermen than there were Ulstermen still living. He returns to Emain Macha in his battle frenzy, and the Ulstermen are afraid he will slaughter them all. Conchobar's wife Mugain leads out the women of Emain, and they bare their breasts to him. He averts his eyes, and the Ulstermen wrestle him into a barrel of cold water, which explodes from the heat of his body. They put him in a second barrel, which boils, and a third, which warms to a pleasant temperature

rumours of a fassbender movie, ah jaysus

After one particularly arduous combat Cú Chulainn lies severely wounded, but is visited by Lug, who tells him he is his father and heals his wounds. When Cú Chulainn wakes up and sees that the boy-troop of Emain Macha have attacked the Connacht army and been slaughtered, he has his most spectacular ríastrad yet:

“ The first warp-spasm seized Cúchulainn, and made him into a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, unheard of. His shanks and his joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot, shook like a tree in the flood or a reed in the stream. His body made a furious twist inside his skin, so that his feet and shins switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front... On his head the temple-sinews stretched to the nape of his neck, each mighty, immense, measureless knob as big as the head of a month-old child... he sucked one eye so deep into his head that a wild crane couldn't probe it onto his cheek out of the depths of his skull; the other eye fell out along his cheek. His mouth weirdly distorted: his cheek peeled back from his jaws until the gullet appeared, his lungs and his liver flapped in his mouth and throat, his lower jaw struck the upper a lion-killing blow, and fiery flakes large as a ram's fleece reached his mouth from his throat... The hair of his head twisted like the tange of a red thornbush stuck in a gap; if a royal apple tree with all its kingly fruit were shaken above him, scarce an apple would reach the ground but each would be spiked on a bristle of his hair as it stood up on his scalp with rage. ”

—Thomas Kinsella (translator), The Táin, Oxford University Press, 1969, pp. 150–153

how can I get lj on dis ting /\

my aunt danced with one up beyond the horseshoe bridge one night and when he took the hat off it was the devil himself she says, and she swears left hoofprints on the rocks that are there yet as he ran away from her (she never said what it was made him take off in the interim but i know the woman with years and can offer a few suggestions) and when we said (round eyed, cos the devil was the only man that could friken you when you were seven out wesht, him and the banshee from darby o'gill) could we go and see the rocks and the prints she snorted and said 'the rocks will be long gone you eejits but i know for a fact the prints are still on them'- this is the kind of rearing we got

years later we got our own back when we slipped an unsuspecting cousin the wrong lotto results and sent him up to the kitchen (we were never let near the kitchen) with what we knew to be her numbers and i know for a fact her handprints are still on my arse