likened Walden Pond to an eye of the earth. And this is another. On the south the plantation forms a bushy eyebrow, whilst the belt of rush and sedge bordering the water's edge forms the eyelashes, reflected likewise in the liquid depths.
Ringmere is a circular, crater-shaped hollow, and is the smallest save one of the meres on the heath, the Punch Bowl being more diminutive. The word mere is Anglo-Saxon, signifying a piece of water, a lake, a pool. Lakes, however, are generally long and narrow; meres are round or oval. Ringmere is in the form of an amphitheatre. Blomefield says of it: "It is a very old mere or large water, as the Saxon name which it still bears tells, Ringmere being no other than the Round Mere or Water." All the meres are situated on the upper boulder clays, and occupy higher levels than the broads. They were probably formed by glacial action wearing away the beds above the chalk. Tradition says, with every degree of probability, that a battle was fought on the surrounding heathland. John Brame, a monk of Thetford, assigned it to a semi-mythical Arthurian period; but history records it as being fought in the middle of May, 1010. In King Olaf's Saga, the 'Heimskringla,' mention is made of this great fight in the following passage:—
"From Hringmar field |
The living fly, |
And in mentioning many of high degree who here met their doom, the Saga goes on to say—
"Hringmare Heath
Was a bed of death;
Harfager's heir
Dealt slaughter there."
It was likewise held by the late Mr. Mark Knights, in his 'Peeps at the Past,' that a Ketel's Bridge at Wretham (? where) was a surviving relic of the name of the East Anglian ealdorman, Ulfketel, who led the Saxon forces in this battle against the Danes. It is not so very many years ago that pilgrimages were paid to Ringmere at harvest time. If it was full of water, the
