page_title: Tunnels in popular culture
section_title: Smugglers' tunnels
hierarchical_section_title: Tunnels in popular culture / Subterranean passages / Smugglers' tunnels
caption_attribution_description: English: Taken by Katrina Cox October 2001
context_page_description: Mysterious tunnels or "secret passages" are a common element of the local folklore tradition in Europe. In Norwegian a secret tunnel-like passage is called a lønngang and in Swedish a lönngång. Such tunnels are said to physically link prominent places such as country houses, castles, churches, ancient monuments and other, often medieval, buildings.
  Legends about the existence of secret tunnels usually involve improbably long subterranean passages, sometimes running under major obstacles such as rivers and lakes to reach their destinations. Religious buildings, monks and the landed gentry are particularly common elements in many tunnel stories.
  It is unlikely that many of the recorded tunnels exist physically, for this is a characteristic of their very nature; their significance lies in the number of similar legends of tunnels that have arisen and in connection with the more esoteric notions of channels or paths of earth energy, and such.
context_section_description: Many villages on the southern coast of England have a local legend of a smugglers' tunnel; the entrances to most of the actual smuggler's tunnels have been lost or bricked up.
  Some tunnel stories turn out to be very plausible, such as the tunnel at Hayle in Cornwall which really does seem to have been built specifically for smuggling. More modern tunnels can be found along New England's coast. In other instances the tunnel either doubles as a storm drain or some other functional channel, or else is an extension of a natural fissure in the rock, as at Methleigh and Porthcothan.
  Beith in North Ayrshire was a notorious haunt of smugglers at one time, and legend has it that a tunnel ran from the town centre down to Kilbirnie Loch.
caption: Porthcothan Bay
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