Please head over to my new(/very old – you’ll see what I mean when you get there) blog, The Bierwayfarer. I’ve started to add GIS data on corpse roads there, and this is highlighting some of the problems with mapping fuzzy historical data in GIS. There’s a new post there highlighting some of these, and GIS data for the first three corpse roads.
This is my latest paper on the subject, which discusses in detail the Swaledale Corpse Path (see map below). It seems to me that that corpse path folklore can be tied directly to traditions such as the “Lyke Wake Dirge”, as recorded by John Aubrey; and is often seen through the lens of later writers who were deeply suspicious of papist superstition, which was linked to moral and spiritual degeneracy.
More soon anyway.
Stuart Dunn 