See elf barrow on Wiktionary
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"ref": "1851, Benjamin Thorpe, Northern Mythology, volume II, London: Edward Lumley, page 117:",
"text": "The peasant may, however, provide against the evils above-mentioned, if, before he lets his cattle loose, he goes to the Elf-barrow and says; “Thou little Troll! may I graze my cows on thy mount?” If he gets no refusal, he may feel easy.",
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"ref": "1992, Johannes Møllehave, A Folk Legend, Copenhagen: Sesam, page 32:",
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"ref": "2013, Helen Foxhall Forbes, Heaven and Earth in Anglo-Saxon England: Theology and Society in an Age of Faith, Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, page 93:",
"text": "Similar references to these spirits are also found in connection with mounds and barrows (hlæw or beorh), such as Shuckburgh (Warwickshire), which probably incorporates scucca and means something like ‘goblin hill’ or ‘demon hill’, or Shucklow (Buckinghamshire); Ailcy Hill (North Yorkshire) may refer to an elf barrow, since the first recorded reference to the mound in 1228 is ‘elueshou’, although how much earlier this name was coined is unclear.",
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"text": "Neolithic burial mounds were commonly referred to as “elf barrows” or “goblin hills,” while megalithic standing stones—typified by the famous Stonehenge—were said to be trolls who had been turned to stone after being exposed to sunlight.",
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Download raw JSONL data for elf barrow meaning in All languages combined (2.5kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-02-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-01-01 using wiktextract (f492ef9 and 9905b1f). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
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