This book was written in 1911. At the time, many people still lived in ancient cave dwellings throughout Europe. Castles were built entirely inside of caves on cliff faces; Robbers hid in secret cave forts; The desperately poor took shelter in caves, and made them homes; monasteries and temples of forbidden religions were dug into the stone. People would find their well water going bad, go down to explore, and find the way into vast underground catacombs. Hermits built homes in remote mountains. Refugees hiding from raiders camped in dug out caves beneath their homes. The cave plans in the book are indistinguishable from those found in D&D modules, and the illustrations look like scenes from Skyrim. Certainly some of this influenced the invention of Hobbiton (e.g. Kinver Edge in Staffordshire) and Moria.

The attitude of the author towards the lower classes who made their home in the caves is appalling to the point of being funny. For example, describing the Tinkers (who worked as itinerant tinsmiths when not in their cave homes) he mentions one attractive young man and young woman, and assumes that, being more highly evolved than their relatives, they will probably manage to get a job and escape the culture of poverty. He points out to one poor Irish woman that the workhouses are really quite comfortable these days, and she shouts at him that if she can manage to find one crust of bread a day she'll never go there. So, yeah, pretty culturally insensitive.

There's a lot of discussion of the caves in Nottingham in particular, which have always fascinated me. Even during Napoleon's time, young men who would otherwise be drafted would disappear into caves in the forests. Several cave castles built by the English army in France are wonderfully depicted as well. It's a fascinating read, but bittersweet, since so much of this had recently been destroyed or was about to be destroyed to make way for railroads and so forth. (Douglas Summers-Stay)

About the author

The Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould (28 January 1834 - 2 January 1924) of Lew Trenchard in Devon, England, was an Anglican priest, hagiographer, antiquarian, novelist, folk song collector and eclectic scholar. His bibliography consists of more than 1240 publications, though this list continues to grow. His family home, the manor house of Lew Trenchard, near Okehampton, Devon, has been preserved as he had it rebuilt and is now a hotel. He is remembered particularly as a writer of hymns, the best-known being "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and "Now the Day Is Over". He also translated the carol "Gabriel's Message" from the Basque language to English.

Baring-Gould wrote many novels, including The Broom-Squire set in the Devil's Punch Bowl (1896), Mehalah: a story of the salt marshes (1880), Guavas the Tinner (1897), the 16-volume The Lives of the Saints, and the biography of the eccentric poet-vicar of Morwenstow, Robert Stephen Hawker. He also published nearly 200 short stories in assorted magazines and periodicals. Many of these short stories were collected together and republished as anthologies, such as his Book of Ghosts (1904), Dartmoor Idyllys (1896), and In a Quiet Village (1900). His folkloric studies resulted in The Book of Were-Wolves (1865), one of the most frequently cited studies of lycanthropy. He habitually wrote while standing, and his desk can be seen in the manor.

One of his most enduringly popular works was Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, first published in two parts during 1866 and 1868, and republished in many other editions since then. "Each of the book's twenty-four chapters deals with a particular medieval superstition and its variants and antecedents," writes critic Steven J. Mariconda. H. P. Lovecraft termed it "that curious body of medieval lore which the late Mr. Baring-Gould so effectively assembled in book form." ... (wikipedia.org)