English: Village sign, Widecombe-in-the-Moor The obligatory image of Widecombe for the tripper, on the green by the church. Tim Sandles provides an excellent analysis of the famous song at http://www.legendarydartmoor.co.uk/widde2-fair.htm , from which the following is taken: "the noted folklorist Theo Brown ... contended that the concept of a spectral grey/white horse came from mainland Europe. It is suggested that the motif of the song was brought over to Dartmoor by German tinners who came across to work in the mines during the Elizabethan period. Some of these miners came from the Harz mountain region where there (along with many other European regions) was a tradition of der Schimmelreiter or the rider on a grey/white horse, the idea being that the grey horse was a guide to the Otherworld which would lead the souls of the departed into the venerated realms of the dead. Therefore in the contexts of Tom Pearce's grey mare, the reason he "sat down on a stone, and he cried" was because he realised that the grey horse's death meant all future spirits were condemned to oblivion as they would have no spirit guide to take them to the Otherworld. The whole concept of the belief was that the grey mare represented an entity which hovered between life and death and acted as a "boundary figure" without which no human soul can be led into the life-after."