Forgotten Folk-tales of the English Counties Pbdirect

Ruth Tongue

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781138842953
• eBook ISBN: 9781000155983
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Social Sciences

In this book, first published in 1970, Ruth L. Tongue has collected a number of county folk tales recorded by her from childhood onwards, from old people, village children and farm round-the-fire sessions. Many of the beliefs embodied in the gipsy and witchcraft tales are still in practice today among the travelling people and locally 'gifted' healers. The tales reveal a good deal of fairy lore, some tree lore, including ghostly trees like Crooker, and the 'uncanny' Black Dog makes his appearance in more than one tale. The collection includes several of the long fireside tales which would be told on succeeding evenings on winter nights round the kitchen fire, and rhozzums from various localities.

Part One

One Dragon-lore
1 The Solway Worm 2 The Dene Hole Dragon 3 The Winged Dragon of the North 4 Billy Biter and the Round Parkin 5 Winlatter Rock (Matlock version)	Cumberland Kent/Sussex Yorkshire Yorkshire Derbyshire
Two Uncanny Folk
6 Tom Tiddler's Ground 7 The White Hart of Kilmersdon 8 The Vixen and the Oakmen 9 The Travelling Tree 10 The Hyter Sprites	Westmorland/Somerset Somerset (Mendip) Cumberland Kent Essex
Three Rivers and Trees
11 The Asrai (two versions) 12 The Sea-morgan's Baby 13 The Man who went Fishing on Sunday 14 Silvertoes and Timbertoes 15 The Wonderful Wood	Cheshire/Shropshire Somerset (Severn Estuary) Shropshire Shropshire (Welsh Border) Warwickshire
Four Witches and a Saint
16 The Elder Tree Witch 17 The Three Pigs 18 Jakey Bascombe and the Cob 19 The Little Wee Tyke 20 Counting the Cabbages	Somerset (Severn Coast) Dorset (Wiltshire Border) Gloucestershire Northumberland (Scots Border) Bedfordshire
Five Ghosts and Evil Spirits
21 The Collingbourne Kingston Black Dog 22 The Claverton Books 23 The Hob who was a Watchman 24 Heme's Horn 25 The Noontide Ghost	Wiltshire Somerset (Wiltshire Border) Somerset (Sedgemoor) Berkshire Somerset (Exmoor)
Six Rhozzums and a Liddlin
26a The Long Ladder b The Men in the Turnip Field 27 No One Living 28 The Sign 29 Grandad's Dog 30 Two Waff Tales	Herefordshire Somerset (Taunton Vale) Somerset Cambridgeshire Buckinghamshire Yorkshire (Scots Border)

One

Dragon-lore

1 The Solway Worm

2 The Dene Hole Dragon

3 The Winged Dragon of the North

4 Billy Biter and the Round Parkin

5 Winlatter Rock (Matlock version)

The Solway Worm

Cumberland

A great sea-snake or worm used to come up the Solway Firth and eat all the fish and the fishermen and fowlers too, that’s what my uncles at Workington used to tell me. So people starved and it would snatch any cattle come down to graze on the sea weed. Then they made a hundred stakes sharpened at each end and at low tide they went out in their coracles—Yes, tarred basket boats they said, and they drove one end of every stake in the Solway Firth where the sharp end was just nicely covered when the tide came in. Then they all ran home to be safe and the tide came in and the worm came too and he got stuck with a hundred sharp stakes through him, my uncles said.

So they left him there to die for three days. And he bellowed till he died and the gulls and the fishes had a grand feed.

Told by James Metcalfe, a student groom of Workington, Cumberland, about 1947.

NOTES This is a version of the world-wide tale among all primitive tribes. It can be found in Polynesia, Greenland, and the Far East, as well as our own islands. The villainous enemy appears as a shark, a killer whale, a crocodile and so on. That this version is very old, the weaponless state of the people indicates—their craft being coracles, and the sharpened stakes being burnt-down trees with points carefully charred, as in African jungles many years

Variants of this tale occur among the Maori, South American Indian, and Alaskan Indian tales.

2

The Dene Hole Dragon

Kent/Sussex

There was a dragon in a Dene Hole deep down in the rocks and no one could reach him. He used to come out at night and attack travellers and eat them up and their bell-horses, then he carried all their treasure down to the Dene Hole and lay on it. Men knew he was there but no one dare venture near when he was about and they couldn’t get at him and they had no weapons but flint ones.

So he stayed there until his treasure-heap grew so big the breath of his nostrils came in sight and one brave cunning man looked in the pit and saw it. He crept away up hill and thought hard and sat by the stream all day.

Then he went back to his tribe on the hill. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘we must dig a new bed for our stream so that it runs downhill from our own dewpond and goes into the Dene Hole. That way we’ll drown the dragon and let the water out through the rocks below. Then we’ll get the treasure and be a rich powerful tribe.’

So that is what they did.

The dragon was drowned and when they moved some rocks below and the water rushed out his body floated away, and the birds had it. But the tribe found a great heap of silver and grew rich and powerful.

Told by a Scouter at Gilwell Camp, about 1932.

NOTES The silver was probably tin and the travellers Phoenician traders.

A very early tale, later given a Norse setting.

3

The Winged Dragon of the North

Yorkshire

They say that a fiery winged dragon came out of the north and made his den high up in the cliffside.

He used to wait till a treasure-train came along the Kings Highway below and then he would swoop down upon it. Men and pack-train ran in terror when the great fiery dragon came down at them with his wings flapping. None ever escaped and his cave grew so full of treasure that as he lay on it his head could be seen out.

No one ever went along the road but some brave men quietly rolled some great rocks above his den, and gave them a push right down onto his cruel head and that settled him.

Miss Lily Kingston, Langtoft, Lowthorpe, Yorkshire, 1915.

NOTES There is an echo of a Norse saga in this depleted legend.

4

Billy Biter and the Round Parkin

Yorkshire

Here be a tale young Charley, the Yorkshire undergroom, used to tell. There was a dragon who lived in a deep gully and no one else cared about living near him except old Mrs Greenaway, in a cottage in the woods above and she were a ‘gifted’ woman as had a way with warts and suchlike so maybe she had a way with a dragon—anyway up there she stayed safe and sound, and down there he stayed too, getting hungrier and hungrier. The farmers had moved back along over the hill to the village with all their stock. The hill grazing was rich but no one with their full senses let good beasts fatten to feed a dragon. For that matter an farmer could come a snack like.

On t’other zide of gully right atop the hill were Bill Biter, the travelling tailor, and folks kept a-telling Billy ‘twere real dangerous to live there. They all had a liking for Billy Biter and not one a good word for Hepzibah, his wife, and her girt black-jack. Billy’s cottage had been the most welcoming in the parish while his old mother lived. All the folks found some excuse to go a-visiting up the hill. There were always a kettle ready to boil hanging on the crook, and a good back-log burning in hearth and old Tom Puss a-washing himself in the chimbley corner. They brought in the logs and carried fresh water in for her when Billy was away on his tailoring and ‘twas believed old Mrs Greenaway kept an eye on the dear soul too. Anyways the cottage were a picture while she lived, but when she died was different.

A man needs a home to come back to after his day’s labour, so poor Billy he went and married Hepzibah and everyone said she proper terrified him into it. He were only a little fellow, kind as they come, and she were six foot high and so thin as a yard of pumpwater—but ‘twasn’t pumpwater as Hepzibah were always a-pouring down her gullet from her black-jack. The folk reckoned she only married ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Index to Tables
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Bibliography