
Mars Cocidius and the Redcaps in Lancashire
I come from one of the old Lancashire families who for many centuries served as retainers of the Stanley Earls of Derby, Kings of Mann & the Isles. My mother’s family came from Westmorland and as Hall’s were members of the notorious reiving family that for centuries cut a bloody swathe through the borders. The Halls passed on a tradition of folk worship and witchcraft to myself and my cousins, and during the early 1980’s I learned a form of “Spae” from my Aunt (my mothers elder sister). Who had learned it from her grandfather Tom Hall of Winton a Westmorland horsebreaker (on Stainmoor where Eric Bloodaxe Last Pagan King of York died in battle in 954).