Straight lines do not occur in nature. Beaches curve, roots twist. Ever put a spirit level on a cow? It’s a bad idea, take it from me.
So when Germanic settlers arrived on the shores of modern day Northumberland, they were confused to find an 8ft wide band of ribbed stone running 55 miles from the Tyne to the Tweed. They assumed it was the work of otherworldly creatures – fairies and/or demons, as those were the days when Christian and Pagan mythology was still mixed together in a fun folkloric jambalaya – and avoided it like the plague, despite the myriad benefits of an all-weather highway. With fear and suspicion came a suitably sinister name: The Devil’s Causeway.
You can’t really blame the settlers. They were forest-dwelling, wood-carving, lumberjacking people, who thought about building out of stone like we might think about building out of cloud. They couldn’t conceive of a civilisation that would do such a thing. And hey, it pays to be cautious! Remember the Citadel from Mass Effect? Sentient races discover a colossal space station floating at the center of the galaxy and move in, never suspecting that the whole thing is an ancient trap designed to ping its gormless occupants out into deep space. The Anglo-Saxons would have never fallen for that.
