Folklore of Yorkshire (15 page)

It is perhaps incongruous that the fallen angel, Lucifer, should become the agent of God’s judgement when in all other matters he opposes divine will, but this was a paradox of orthodox theology as much as folk belief, and fear that the Devil would claim the soul of wrongdoers extended well into the nineteenth century in Yorkshire. Indeed, it was responsible for a quite an extraordinary episode at Wilsden in West Yorkshire, sometime in the mid-1800s, when following a series of petty thefts in the village – including a pair of scissors from one house – the local worthies summoned a man named Professor Bombost from Huddersfield; who proclaimed he would invoke the Devil to root the miscreant out.

A crowd gathered to watch Bombost chalk a circle on the ground, in the centre of which he placed some smouldering substance and proceeded to recite an incantation. Suddenly, from the opposite end of the square, a luminous figure emerged with fire issuing from his hands and mouth. This fearsome vision declared, in a suspiciously local accent: ‘If them as stolen t’scissors doesn’t bring ‘em back to t’woman ‘at belongs ‘em before a fortnight’s gone by, when they comes to die I’ll make their bones roll about in their graves for evermore, and their souls shall know no peace!’ With a terrible shriek, the figure then disappeared into the darkness and the terrified villagers fled to their homes. A few days later, the scissors were returned to their owner in the night.

Of course, even as an agent of retribution, the Devil is frequently shown to be impotent and, as with many folk narratives, the fiend is outwitted by an ordinary man. A story from the North York Moors tells how the Devil tried to take refuge from a storm one night at the Saltersgate Inn, which stands beside a stretch of road known as the Devil’s Elbow, not far from the Hole of Horcum. However, a priest was already a guest at the hostelry and tried to banish the interloper with a rite of exorcism. This had little effect but to drive the Devil into the kitchen, from where he could not be removed, and he threatened to inflict all manner of misfortune upon the inn and its tenants for their lack of courtesy.

But the landlord of the Saltersgate Inn succeeded where the priest had failed; he managed to impede the baleful influence by lighting a peat fire, which trapped the Prince of Darkness in its smoke and prevented him carrying out any mischief. It was said that if the peat fire should ever be extinguished, the Devil would be free to bring ruin on the building and by the end of the twentieth century, that fire was believed to have burned continuously for at least 200 years. Unfortunately, like so many pubs in the last decade, the Saltersgate Inn recently went out of business and its ever-burning flame was finally quenched. At the time of writing, the Devil’s judgement has come to pass and the once-thriving coaching inn is reduced to a derelict shell.

The most common stories of native wit triumphing over the Devil’s wiles can be found attached to a number of bridges across the country. Indeed, tales of bridges constructed by the Devil are a classic example of a migratory legend, and so many such sites exist that it is now impossible to say which location provided the original model for this narrative, although the most famous examples are found just over the Cumbrian border at Kirkby Lonsdale and in Ceredigion in Wales. In Yorkshire, a story corresponding almost exactly to these legends is found associated with Kilgram Bridge, which crosses the River Ure near Masham, and was probably constructed by the Cistercian monks of Jervaulx Abbey during the twelfth century.

The bridge replaced an earlier ford over the river but one that was particularly vulnerable to flooding, much to the inconvenience of the local inhabitants. One day, as they were bemoaning this state of affairs, the Devil sauntered along and promised to construct a bridge for them, on the condition that he could claim the soul of the first living thing to cross it. The country folk accepted his bargain but spent many long hours debating who should be their sacrifice to Satan, until a cunning old shepherd spoke up with a solution. The shepherd owned a dog called Grim and once the Devil had completed his work, the old man swam to the far side of the river and whistled for his dog to follow. Grim obediently trotted across the bridge and the poor hound was claimed by the Devil for his prize. The bridge has been known as ‘Kill Grim Bridge’ ever since.

That the Devil should be associated with so many bridges in Britain suggests this narrative must have encoded a once-relevant message, yet it is now unclear why His Satanic Majesty should so often be credited with building these structures. Indeed, such legends seem to represent a counter-example to Jacqueline Simpson’s contention that features associated with the Devil tend to be unproductive; for whilst the terrain crossed by these bridges often fits that description, the bridges themselves are anything but. The theme of duping the Devil is doubtless important – as getting one over on a seemingly invincible adversary is a common trope in folklore and seems to have acted as an expression of local community pride – but why one of the favourite vehicles for such narratives should be the ‘Devil’s bridge’ legend remains an open question.

Moreover, in the legend’s basic form, there is not even any element of trickery: the Devil is simply credited with building the bridge during the night, before he is interrupted by the dawn and leaves the edifices in a shabby state. This tale is told of two sites in North Yorkshire: Butterton Bridge near Sawley, built in the thirteenth century by the monks of Fountains Abbey; and the original Hell Gill Bridge, which crosses a tributary of the River Ure as it plunges through a treacherous ravine on the flanks of High Abbotside. The antiquity of these structures suggests the legend may simply have arisen as a result of later generations’ incredulity that their ancestors could have been responsible for such feats of engineering. This echoes the attribution of prehistoric megaliths to giants, but perhaps they believed bridges required the Devil’s more powerful intellect.

Perhaps the most unique example of such a legend in Yorkshire concerns Dibble’s Bridge above Appletreewick in Wharfedale, in which the ‘Father of Lies’ behaves entirely honourably. The story relates that a cobbler from Thorpe, by the name of Ralph Calvert, was returning from Fountains Abbey, where he had been to sell his wares. His route home took him across Appletreewick Moor and forced him to cross a dismal ravine cut by the River Dibb, as it flowed down to join the Wharfe in the valley below. Ralph found the atmosphere of this gorge so ominous that he was forced to strike up a song to fortify himself as he went. The tune he selected was a popular one at the time describing the meeting between a miller and the Devil. But his courage soon dwindled when he heard another voice join him on the final couplet.

Ralph was soon heartened again when he saw that his fellow traveller was a distinguished looking gentlemen, and they soon struck up a lively conversation in that gloomy place. At length, the cobbler even offered to share some of his lunch and whisky with his new companion. Once they had both finished their repast, the stranger said that he must introduce himself and all of Ralph’s terror returned when the name he gave was ‘Satan’. However, the Devil told him that he had nothing to fear; indeed he was now in the cobbler’s debt for the hospitality he had been shown and wondered how he might repay the favour. Ralph answered that he would quite like a bridge built across the ravine which they had both just crossed. The Devil agreed and told him that the task would be completed in four days time.

Upon arriving home, Ralph told his wife all about the encounter and soon the tale was all around the village, prompting a great deal of ridicule. Thus, when the fourth day arrived, a sizeable party of local folk accompanied Ralph back to the ravine to see if the Devil had been true to his word. And sure enough, they discovered a new bridge, one which all those assembled agreed was as fine a specimen as they had ever seen. The village priest even agreed that it could be crossed without fear of diabolic molestation, although he sprinkled a little holy water and erected a cross at each end, just to be on the safe side. A Puritan minister pulled down the crosses during the Commonwealth, but the name remains as a testament to the structure’s creation. Originally it was called Devil’s Bridge, but over the years that title has been corrupted and now it is known just as Dibble’s Bridge.

It may be that the Devil has become attached to these bridges through folk etymology alone. Needless to say, Dibble is not a corruption of Devil at all, but comes from the Old English ‘dybbel’, meaning ‘bridge over the pool’. Similarly, Kilgram Bridge is actually derived from the Old Norse ‘Kelgrim haugr’ meaning ‘Kelgrim’s mound’. Even Hell Gill, which seems a natural association for such a Stygian abyss, is more likely to be an Old Norse appellation meaning ‘flat-stoned ravine’. As such, these stories (with the exception of Butterton) are all back-formations to account for curious names; the true meaning of which have long since been forgotten.

Dibble Bridge in Wharfedale, constructed by the Devil. (Kai Roberts)

However, this still does not explain why they were associated with the Devil specifically; after all, ‘Kilgram’ or even ‘Kill Grim’ does not necessarily lend itself to such a connection. In this regard, a common feature which might be relevant is their association with monasteries. Kilgram and Butterton Bridges were constructed under the aegis of Jervaulx and Fountains Abbey respectively, and may have been associated with monastic traffic for many centuries thereafter. Similarly, Fountains Abbey is mentioned in the legend of Dibble’s Bridge and crosses were supposed to have stood at each end, until they were pulled down by a Puritan cleric in the seventeenth century. Could the connection with the Devil have arisen from a post-Reformation inclination to demonise the relics of their Popish forebears?

Yet, it seems the impulse may go deeper than this. Increasingly, folklorists have recognised that ‘liminal’ spaces were regarded as especially spiritually dangerous by the pre-modern mind. Such places were seen as thresholds which Otherworldy visitors could cross as easily as ourselves, and water-crossings were an archetypally liminal location. Indeed, bridges were doubly perilous as not only were they thresholds, they crossed water, itself a supernatural medium. Folklore records bridges as a particularly common location for uncanny encounters: ghosts, boggarts and barguests all frequented water-crossings, and apotropaic measures were often taken by locals to counteract their influence – from foundation sacrifices to carved heads (
See
Chapter Two).

Hence, it is perhaps not surprising that the Devil is so frequently connected with bridges. Such crossing-places are associated with malign influences in countless cultures and evidently folk-Christianity was no different in this respect. However useful the bridge may be, it was a significantly liminal space where the soul was always at risk. Suggesting that these structures were built by Satan ably expresses such anxiety; perhaps more instructively, those stories in which the Devil is tricked out of his due or builds the bridge honourably, represent a way of assuaging those anxieties. They communicate that whilst the fiend once tried to claim a named bridge for his dominion, he had been thwarted and it was now safe for good Christian souls to cross for evermore.

O
ne of the most familiar tropes of British folklore, examples of the ‘phantom hound’ that portends misfortune, can be found in numerous counties across the United Kingdom. The phenomenon is perhaps most familiar by its East Anglian name ‘Black Shuck’ and as the motif which inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic novel,
The Hound of the Baskervilles
, or the ‘Grim’ in J.K. Rowling’s popular Harry Potter series. In Yorkshire, however, it is primarily known by the names barguest (sometimes spelled barghest), padfoot, guytrash and skriker. There does not seem to be any geographical pattern determining use of the names, and indeed, they are sometimes used interchangeably to refer to the same example.

This chapter will employ the generic term ‘phantom hound’ or whichever name was used in the original record on the grounds that they all broadly belong to the same category, although even this statement is controversial. Nearly everything about the phantom hound is ambiguous and liminal, forever slipping through attempts to define or classify it. It is perhaps best to consider the motif in terms of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ‘family resemblance’ theory, whereby each instantiation of a phenomenon draws its characteristics from a common pool, but whilst many examples will overlap in the features they exhibit, very few will be identical.