North Yorkshire Folk Tales (26 page)

In the early years of our glorious Queen Victoria’s reign, I was on a visit to York Minster. I was accompanied by a numerous party, amongst whom were a gentleman and his two daughters. I was with the eldest of these ladies, exploring the curiosities of the building at some distance from the rest of our companions, when, on turning from the monument to which our attention had been directed, we observed an officer in a naval uniform advancing towards us. It was rather an unusual circumstance to encounter a person dressed thus in a place so far distant from the sea. I was on the point of making some trivial observation on the subject to my companion, when, turning my eyes towards her I saw a deathly pallor spread over her face. Surely some powerful and contending emotions had suddenly been excited by the presence of the stranger.

As the officer drew nearer, and his figure and features gradually became more distinctly visible through the evening gloom and the dim religious light of the cathedral, the lady’s distress increased: she leant heavily upon my arm appearing painfully afflicted. Shocked at the change I had witnessed, but wholly ignorant of the cause and supposing her to be suffering from some violent and sudden indisposition, I called to entreat the assistance of her sister. The figure in the naval uniform was now immediately before us, and the eyes of the lady fixed upon him with a gaze of silent surprise and a painful intensity of feeling. Her half-opened lips were colourless and she drew her breath heavily as though from a full and overburdened heart. The form was close upon us (it approached her side), then it paused but for an instant. As quick as thought, a low and scarcely audible voice whispered in her ear, ‘There is a future state,’ and the figure moved onward, towards the door of the minster.

The father of the lady arrived to help his daughter, and I, consigning her to his protection, hastened in pursuit of the mysterious visitor. No sound of retreating footsteps was to be heard on the echoing pavements of the cathedral and though I quickly left the building and searched on every side, no man in naval uniform was to be seen among flocks of the summer visitors who thronged the streets.

Baffled in my attempt find the mysterious cause of such distress, I returned in some concern to my friends. The lady was weeping on the shoulder of her father but she avoided every inquiry about the nature of her illness.

‘It was slight; it was transient; it would immediately be over.’ She entreated the party to continue their examination of the building, and to leave her again in my protection. The request was granted. No sooner had she thus possessed herself of an opportunity to speak in private than she implored me, with a quick and agitated voice, to conceal for a little while the occurrence of which I had been a witness.‘We shall never be believed. Besides, it is only right that my poor dear father should gradually be prepared for the misery that he is destined to undergo. I have seen the spirit, and I have heard the voice of a brother, who exists no longer; he has perished at sea. We had agreed that the one who died the first should reappear to the survivor, if it were possible, to clear up or to confirm the religious doubts which existed in both our minds.’

In due time her fears were realised: the brother was indeed no more. His death had happened on the very day and hour in which his form was seen by his sister and myself, in the north aisle of York Minster.

The story exists in several versions, he most famous being the Pedlar of Swaffham. Similar legends can be found throughout Europe and the Middle East. The earliest version is one of the poems of the
Mathanawi
titled ‘In Baghdad, Dreaming of Cairo: In Cairo, Dreaming of Baghdad’, by thirteenth-century Persian poet Jalal al-Din Rumi. This poem was turned into a story in the tale from
The One Thousand and One Nights: The man who became rich through a dream
.

The provenance of the writing on the pot varies; in some versions it is an old gypsy who translates gypsy writing, in others a Quaker.

I struggled with this story. Its only folk tale element is the white doe which appears at the church. It was Wordsworth who linked the doe’s appearance with Emily Norton in his romantic ballad ‘The White Doe of Rylstone’. Local people seem to have had all sorts of rival ghostly candidates!

Victorian invention or not, the story, with its merry inattention to dates, is now an accepted North Yorkshire tale, which is why I’ve included it. It also gave me the chance to tell a little of the story of the Pilgrimage of Grace, an event that was extremely important across Yorkshire but, like the much earlier Harrying of the North, little known.

I must admit to playing about with the history a little. The Pilgrimage of Grace took place in 1536, but the Rising of the North, after which Richard Norton and his eldest son were executed, was not until 1569, thirty years later. The white dear would have been very elderly by then.

A couple of the sons really did go abroad, ending up in America.

There are many stories of the man who stumbles into King Arthur’s Cave (located in various places around the country). Should the day ever come when we require that king’s services it will be interesting to see where he emerges …

The theme of the mysterious disappearance of someone who has set off underground playing a musical instrument of some sort is fairly common. Folk music people will know the song ‘Fiddler’s Hill’ with its ‘dark way, the deep way, the way beneath the ground’.

The Gold Hole tower’s supposed treasure is a misunderstanding of a medieval joke: it was the tower where all the toilets were.

The tale of a secret tunnel between monasteries, big houses and churches is to be found in every county (and, as I can attest, is one of the banes of parents’ lives!). In Sheffield, one is supposed to have been found as recently as the 1960s. What no one can ever explain is
why
anyone would want to go to the bother …

Alas, history does not bear out this story! The park, which is just outside Harrogate and well worth a visit, did and does indeed belong to the Duchy of Lancaster. There is a John O’Gaunt’s tower there, but the name Haverah is thought to come not from a personal name but from the old words for Roe (deer) Hedge. The park was once a royal chase used sometimes for deer and sometimes for raising horses for the king. More recently it was used as the site for air shower arrays, tracking cosmic rays.

I do not know why Friar Tuck was at Fountains Abbey, which was not a friary but a monastery. Friars belonged to begging orders. Unlike monks, who were supposed to stay for life in one particular monastery, friars worked among lay people and were supported by the community. The country was divided into areas called provinces, to one of which each friar was attached. There were various friary houses in their province where they could stay, but travelling, begging and preaching were supposedly their main occupations. Friar Tuck could thus join up with Robin’s band from time to time while still theoretically doing his friarly duty.

The good friar does not appear in the very earliest recorded tales of Robin Hood. The ballad of this particular story is found in the seventeenth-century manuscript called the
Percy Folio
and is dated to the mid-fifteenth century, but his prior existence is known from a dramatic fragment from the beginning of the fifteenth century. He later became a popular figure in the May Games (the only place where Maid Marion appears).

In the original ballad, he and Robin fight with swords but I have given them quarterstaves, not just because those in holy orders were forbidden edged weapons, but also because they seem rather more suitable to the combatants’ stations. (J.C. Holt’s
Robin Hood
offers further debate.)

A Yorkshire reworking of the Ulysses story.

The story of Wade’s Causeway confuses two – or maybe three – people: the demi-god Wade, the historical Wada and, just possibly, General Wade, the great eighteenth-century road builder.

The obscure Germanic god Wade was much better known in the Middle Ages than he is now. Chaucer refers to him twice but as no one wrote down the popular stories in which Wade appeared, we do not know what they were. We know that he was connected with the sea and was the father of the more famous Weyland Smith, but little more. His presence in Yorkshire probably is due to the Scandinavian influence there, but any road-building credentials are missing.

The historical Wada was an ealdorman involved in the murder of King Aethelred of Northumbria in 794. He seems to have been remembered as a local hero who may actually have lived at Mulgrave.

General Wade (1673–1748) was a soldier and a road builder. He was connected with the subduing of the Highlands. As chief of the army in North Britain (as Scotland was renamed after the Act of Union) he built 240 miles of military roads.

If you had seen this road before it was made

You would lift up your hands and bless General Wade.

His fame as a road-builder was very widespread and I believe it is possible that it filtered through to Yorkshire folk (who had no cause to love the Scots), becoming entangled with and enhancing their own local story.

The road is, of course, Roman. Probably built to join the Roman camp at Malton with Whitby. It is one of the best preserved examples in the country.

Retold somewhere in nearly every book on Yorkshire! I’m afraid I do not know the origin of the story; there is a very different one in Robert Mortimer’s
The Great Monoliths of Boroughbridge
(London: ‘The Geologist’, 1860).

The best-known version of this story is found in R. and J. Fairfax-Blakeborough’s
Grandfather’s Tales
. In the original, the old man who appears to help the people is a hermit, but this did not ring true to me, which is why I have taken one possible origin of Wensleydale’s name – Woden’s Wood Dale – literally and turned him into the Scandinavian version, Odin. His ravens were already there in the story as well as his fellow god Thor. There are plenty of Norse connections in the Dales (the very word ‘dale’ is Norse), so it is not too farfetched, though the animals connected with Thor were goats, not pigs, which were sacred to the god Freyr.

Those keen on earth mysteries may be interested in the following. Ian Taylor’s
The Giant of Penhill
(Northern Lights, 1987) believes that the slopes of Penhill reveal an ancient hill figure, forgotten in all but local folklore. There is a Neolithic burial mound at the top of Pen Hill and many named springs around it, making it, possibly, an ancient ritual place. There may also be a connection with nearby West Witton and its ‘Burning of the Bartle’ ceremony. I couldn’t possibly comment.

All Saints Nunnington does indeed have an effigy of a knight, though the animal at his feet is a stylised lion, not a dog. The knight is actually not Peter Loschy, but Sir Walter de Teyes, Lord of Stonegrave Manor. He was buried in the church in 1325.

The dragon’s ability to renew itself is a theme that probably comes from Greek mythology where the Titan Alcyoneus cannot be killed as long as he falls on the earth of his own land. Athene tells Heracles to take him to another land where he cannot be renewed and so he is killed.

William Hone (1780–1842) was a rather rackety writer and political journalist who was a friend of many of the great radical figures of his day. He survived numerous failed financial ventures – and debtors’ prison – caused as much by his outspoken political views as by bad management. One of his numerous literary creations was
The Table Book
, a collection of odds and ends, factual, poetic and descriptive from which two of the most famous Dales’ stories come; The Barguest of Trollers’ Gill and the Wise Woman of Littondale. There is another barguest story in the book, apparently told by a man who had seen the creature with his own eyes. It only ran away when it saw his wife!

The barguest is one of the types of death dog found across the country.

Rokeby is now just over the border in County Durham, but it was part of Yorkshire for centuries so I think the story belongs here. The poem first appears in print in Whitaker’s
History of Craven
, but it was written in the fifteenth century, possibly in Richmond. Its mock-heroic style pokes fun at friars, common butts for humour at the time. ‘Felon’ here means ‘evil’.

Goathland, near Whitby, is probably the most visited place on the North York Moors, partly because of the steam railway nearby, partly because of the TV series ‘Heartbeat’, which was filmed there. Tourists visiting the Mallyon Spout waterfall or avoiding the aggressive sheep (which will get into your car uninvited if there’s a sandwich to be had) have no idea of the dark story connected with the village,

Gytrashes are usually dogs, or occasionally horses. They are mentioned by Charlotte Bronte in
Jane Eyre
:

As this horse approached, and as I watched for it to appear through the dusk, I remembered certain of Bessie’s tales, wherein figured a North-of-England spirit called a ‘Gytrash,’ which, in the form of horse, mule, or large dog, haunted solitary ways, and sometimes came upon belated travellers, as this horse was now coming upon me.

Why this one happens to be a goat is unexplained; it may be because the name Goathland was popularly thought to have something to do with goats.

Richard Blakeborough’s
Wit, Character, Folklore and Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire
contains much more information on different hobs in the area. They were very widely believed in. The Farndale hob story is the most commonly told and variants appear in different districts. Hob also appears in many names: Hob Cross, Hob Green, Hob Moor etc. They seem to have got everywhere!