Buckinghamshire Folk Tales E-Book

Terrie Howey

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 306

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Once upon a Milton Keynes … Buckinghamshire is an ancient county of Roman forts and highwaymen, motorways and urban myth. These are the Buckinghamshire folk tales of past, present and future: old tales in new towns, and new stories from old legends. Look out for witches and dragons, mind all those roundabouts, and whatever you do – don't eat the stew.

Leseprobe

For Michael Ridley.

Your journey was too short but filled with stories.

It was an honour to know you, and your love of literature.

The Shakespeare story is for you.

First published 2019

The History Press

97 St George’s Place

Cheltenham, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Terrie Howey, 2019

The right of Terrie Howey to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9282 4

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements & Illustrations

Foreword

Introduction

Map of Buckinghamshire

1. STORIES FROM SOUTH BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

Ghosties Don’t Like Iron

The Vampire of Buckinghamshire

The Poacher

Witch’s Stone Treasure

Nanny Cooper

The Highwayman

…And More Highwaymen

The Water’s Warning

Dragon’s Pond

The Green Man of Fingest

The Church Mystery

Mad Monks of Medmenham

Sukie’s Love

The Amersham Martyrs

Denizens of Another World

Bull Riders

Don’t Eat the Stew!

The Raven’s Curse

2. STORIES FROM NORTH BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

Dr Allen’s Familiar

The Earl’s Fox

Wingrave Witches

The Witch’s Hurdle

A Stare as Hard as Stone

The Little Witches

Wendover Witches

Stowe-away Church

The Quainton Thorn

Sir John Schorne

The Bard in Bernwood

Niel Shortshirt

The Soulbury Stone

A Ghostly Guard Dog

The Black Dog

St Rumbold

The Centaur

The Last Message

3. STORIES FROM MILTON KEYNES

From-Crete Cows and Roundabouts

The Guardian

Heart of Treason!

The Stony Gunpowder Plot

Mischievous Monks

The Devil’s House

A Cock and Bull Story

Bread, Beer and Beef!

The Grave Robbers

The Witch of Horsefair Green

Polly Parrot

Dick Turpin

Tally Ho! Hanmer

Penny a Peek

The Tallest Spire in Bucks

Madame Bennett

The Fenny Forger

The Shooting Party

4. STORIES FROM THE STONY STORYTELLERS

A Lacemaker or Lucky Gemma

Curly Kale and Quinoa

Jim and Mabel

Once Upon a Milton Keynes

Notes on Stories

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & ILLUSTRATIONS

In the writing of this book, and the fashioning of my livelihood as a storyteller, there are several people who I need to acknowledge. To the mentors who have given their time, energy and expertise to guide me, I thank you one and all: Andrew Charles, Ksenija Horvat, Robert Howat, Janet Dowling, Shonaleigh Cumbers, Taffy Thomas, Mike Wilson, Antonia Liguori, Kevin Cordi, Joseph Sobol, and Kerry Pace. To friends and fellow storytellers who have walked part of the journey with me and whose inspiration has lighted dark times: Debs Williamson, Juliette Diagre, Belinda McKenna, Kristina Gavran, Theresa Wedderburn (and all of the Order of the Teapot), and to my fellow storytellers at Stony Storytellers and Feast of Fools. To my family, who have had to put up with long hours of research and writing, and the evenings and weekends when I’m never around because I’m off performing: Lynda and Richard Howey, Rooh Moore, Boris and Merlin.

I would also like to offer my most grateful thanks to Katherine Soutar for the lovely cover illustration enticing readers to explore this volume of stories.

However, there is one person to whom I owe a great debt of gratitude, because without his persistent optimism in this, my first writing endeavour, I doubt I would have ever completed this book. I thank Stephen Hobbs for ferrying me to archives when I was ill, being my fellow story-hunting super sleuth, and for being a soundboard for stories that I was not so sure about but sensed had a glimmer of something special about them. He also painstakingly read through the various versions, editing out my dyslexic moments to form the book you read today.

Thank you all, you are all heroes in my story.

FOREWORD

Once upon a time, a storyteller moved to Stony Stratford with a head full of stories (500 and counting) and a heart full of the joys of storytelling. She formed the Stony Storytellers so that folk might learn the basics of storytelling, create their own stories and then share them with others. Terrie Howey (for it was she, known then as Red Phoenix) provided a safe but challenging environment. People dropped in and out of the group; trips were arranged to see other mighty storytellers, and small rooms were booked for us to fill with our own stories. We were invited to attend Red Phoenix storytelling gigs and asked to critique her performance (we knew the mantra: ‘What worked well?’ ‘Even better if?’) only to be told 10 miles out that we had each been given 10 minute open mic slots in the first half of the evening! The journey home was filled with euphoria and endless tales of Nasruddin from driver Phoenix.

My favourite monthly pilgrimage was to ‘Storytelling at The Feast of Fools’ in Northampton, where Red Phoenix was the inaugural headliner. There we were introduced to magnificent professional tellers, and on alternate months we had our storytelling open mic opportunities. Such events send you scurrying to increase your own repertoire and you begin to wonder about the stories in your own neighbourhood; so, when you have the chance of being involved in that quest you reach out and grab it with both hands.

As a professional librarian of thirty years, surely this would be an easy task for me? A few clicks on the Buckinghamshire County Library catalogue and the British Library catalogue would certainly reveal a treasure trove? Amazon came up with Buckinghamshire Folk Tales by Terrie Howey (published by the History Press) with an unspecified publication date. It sounded perfect! If only one had a time machine! But alas, there seemed to be nothing. Buckinghamshire was just another of those counties whose rich seam of folk tales went unmined by Victorian folklorists. So, we had to set out and pan for our own nuggets.

The public library, of course, is a wonderful institution packed with staff who love their services and care deeply about their subjects; especially local interest and local history. But nine years of austerity and relentless cuts to local government budgets have savaged these services. These days, professional library staff are an endangered species and their numbers are so diminished that no one has the time to develop the levels of expertise and background knowledge that were taken for granted a decade ago. It’s a rare library, for example, that’s able to maintain its local cuttings files and you can no longer talk to X, ‘Who knows everything about Y,’ because they’ve gone!

So, the short cuts have almost disappeared, and you have to discover the dead ends for yourself. I had thought the stories might want to be found and they might even be labelled, ‘A Story’, but what we found were fragments: bits from here and there, stories within stories, a vast jigsaw of stories that had been scattered everywhere. But it takes a storyteller to find these precious fragments and it took a Red Phoenix to point out that they were there, and here, and over there; under my nose all the time. And here they are: a wonderful breathing collection of the most glorious stories. A tapestry of stories! Some I can barely recognise from the original two-line reference or that insignificant newspaper cutting. I had seen them as street names or wall plaques, when they were really the cold trails of long-lost stories.

Although these Buckinghamshire folk tales have been collected together, they are each in need of a new hearth: a place where they can thrive and be shared. This is where you come in.

By Stephen Hobbs, Seventh Bard of Stony Stratford.

INTRODUCTION

As a storyteller, I have always believed that stories hold within them truths about who we are as people; and they are much more important than mere entertainments to while away a few hours. However, it should be said that whiling away a few hours with stories is time well spent.

In this collection you will find stories from throughout Buckinghamshire: an ancient county with flowing rivers, Iron Age track ways, Roman roads, and the Chiltern Hills cutting their path across it. Where its woods once hid outlaws and highwaymen and its proximity to London made it popular with royalty, now busy motorways and new towns allow new residents to settle and make the stories of the future. Talking of new towns, I hope you will discover how Milton Keynes, far from being filled with the rhetoric of newness, is also home to many an old tale.

Finding the stories for this collection has been, at times, a difficult task. Being such a big county, one might naturally assume that there would be an abundance of stories to draw from, especially considering its diverse landscape that has inspired awe, romance and heroism over the years. Yet unlike its neighbouring counties, Buckinghamshire did not draw the attention of folklorists who scoured the countryside for fables, fairy and folk tales. Collectors of songs and stories, such as Cecil Sharp, Ruth Tongue, and Katherine Briggs, seemed to bypass this large county, with only three stories apiece directly connected to Buckinghamshire appearing in the well-sourced collections of Tongue (Forgotten Folktales of the English Counties) and Briggs (Dictionary of British Folk-Tales).

John Houghton’s collection of books recounting past events and notable persons were very useful in signposting where stories might lie hidden but, whilst his coverage of the county (and its neighbours) was wide, his descriptions were sensible, brief and omitted the magic and mystery of the stories. So, I turned to the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies in Aylesbury with its extensive collections and its knowledgeable and supportive staff. It was there, whilst digging through faded old article clippings and books, whose heady aroma held the centuries in their pages, that I unearthed the majority of the treasures reworked in this book.

I am always interested in finding more stories, so if you possess a tale or two from this fair county that is not held within these pages do please get in touch, and you never know – one day there may be enough for an additional collection. I found a great many more stories besides, and then faced the hard task of deciding which to include and which to leave out. I felt a certain responsibility to include as many as possible to address the absence of interest in this county’s stories for so long, and to present them for future story-hunters or national collections. It is my hope that, whether you are native to the county or an interested outsider, you will know this enchanting county all the better for knowing its stories.

I have not always lived in Buckinghamshire, and in fact only arrived in the area in 2013. Prior to that I had lived in Edinburgh (where I received the nickname Red Phoenix as a street teller, entertaining the tourists with the dark tales of ‘Auld Reekie’s’ heritage, the name sticking throughout my career), Hampshire, and the back of my van, as I travelled round the country listening to and telling stories. It was thanks to fellow storyteller Shonaleigh Cumbers that I arrived in Milton Keynes, but that, as she would tell you, ‘is another story’. When I arrive in a new place as a storyteller it’s important to me to find out its stories because this will tell you a lot about what, or maybe even who, a place is.

To those of you reading this who believe that Milton Keynes lacks stories, I shall point out the last section of this collection and ask you to reconsider. I discovered a wealth of stories within the new town and instantly became entranced, and a little confused that others didn’t also see them. So, I set about sharing them whenever I could, and this led to various storytelling opportunities, including: as a living history actress at Bletchley Park; as the education officer at the Milton Keynes City Discovery Centre, tasked with telling the story of the area to local schools, colleges and businesses from around the world; and being involved with the Living Archive and its heritage projects.

Stories have been part of my life since before I can remember and were always more than a bedtime activity enjoyed as a child. Being dyslexic, I found stories were the way in which I could frame information and memorise it, so I could avoid reading and writing. As a result, I started storytelling young, without releasing what it was I was doing, holding court at the edge of the playground telling tales in infant school. The wanderlust of stories never left me.

In my undergraduate dissertation I focused on storytelling. However, my road to becoming a storyteller was difficult. There weren’t any academic courses when I started, and only a few storytellers ran short courses where it was great to learn and get to know people. I went and sat at the knee of those who inspired me, and little by little I developed my craft. The generosity of those who mentored me ensured that I too wanted to pass stories on and help smooth the way for the storytellers who came after me.

This led me to provide story coaching classes, workshops, apprenticeships, and to visit Canada and the USA as part of a Winston Churchill Fellowship to explore how new and young tellers were supported so that I too could support new and young UK tellers. In my local town of Stony Stratford, I run the Stony Storytellers, a storytelling coaching group for adults. I am the Chair of the Bardic Council of Stony Stratford and each year we welcome in a new Bard (as well as a youth and junior Bard) to become the voice of the people, using the power of words to celebrate our little corner of Buckinghamshire. In the last few years I have been doing a PhD in applied storytelling, looking at its effect on communities, and teaching a storytelling class at Loughborough University. In all these ways I am hoping to make the way for other storytellers easier and increase the understanding of just how important stories are in our everyday life.

Stories can be a tool for learning, for living, for a safe haven to escape to, or a promise of dreams to chase; they can change your mood, your mind, and maybe even change the world (but for more on that you will have to wait until I publish my PhD thesis). We are all storytellers and affect the world around us by the stories we tell of ourselves, others, and the places we inhabit.

Over the years I have lived in numerous places around the UK and even spent periods of time living abroad in Australia, Italy, and Canada. No matter where I have lived, I have always been a storyteller and my way of understanding my new surroundings and finding my way about has been through stories. I believe the folk tales of a place are much more than charming vignettes of a bygone age, but stories that can connect us to both a space and a past, giving us a sense of place and heritage.

Folk tales are the stories of people, everyday people like you and me, whilst the stories that happen to us may one day become the folk tales of the future. It is because of this that folk tales are important to tell, and listen to, and rediscover, since they share the experiences of what is to be human. Telling folk tales can prepare you for an encounter you have never experienced before; they can remind you that other people have shared similar experiences, or they can even help us process an experience that we may find difficult to deal with. In this sense, folk tales are not stale mementos of the nostalgic past, but an important part of our cognitive and emotional development in the quest to become better people. Folk tales of place have yet another role, and this is to give a voice to the places that we live in, to make it a home we can connect to and give us a sense of shared experience within the communities we live in. They also challenge us and help us to re-evaluate our preconceptions, because stories do have a habit of making the ordinary into the extraordinary and making the fantastical familiar.

The oral tradition of storytelling allows the story to evolve and develop to suit the societies and cultures that need them, and by this process remain relevant. It is my firm belief, therefore, that although books and the internet allow us to engage with a wider selection of stories than ever before, I do urge you not to leave tales hidden in the confines of pages, but to tell them over and over until they evolve and change and become your own.

My belief in the power of stories is so strong that in 2016 I began a PhD, researching how stories as a form of heritage and as a method with which to share heritage can build and strengthen a sense of place, especially in the ‘new town’ residents of Milton Keynes.

Therefore, over the past few years I’ve been intensively rooting out and discovering stories that connect not only to Milton Keynes but also to the rest of Buckinghamshire. It has been my delight to find stories of witches and highwaymen in an area that is deemed to be too new to have any cultural heritage. Throughout Buckinghamshire I have discovered stories of miraculous trees, moving boulders, ghosts, fairies and dragons. Each of these stories, whether they are about an old village or a new town, tell us something about the area, giving it a voice to speak through the many years and the many generations that have settled and lived here. These stories give a space a personality, and an emotional presence with which we can connect and gain a sense of place for the home we live in, and a sense of ourselves as we too create stories and future heritage.

I hope, in my small way, that this book of folk tales will add to the pantheon of stories that abound in Buckinghamshire; to give those who live here a sense of pride in their area, and for those who don’t, an insight into this old county, with its quaint old villages and large new town.

Terrie Howey

1

STORIES FROM SOUTH BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

GHOSTIES DON’T LIKE IRON

This story was collected by Ruth Tongue from a member of the Women’s Land Army working in Prestwood in 1938. In days gone by it was a common practice to hammer iron nails into the leather soles of shoes to improve their grip. This gave us the term ‘hobnail boot’.

Once there was a dairymaid called Fat Dolly, a pretty lass who had an eye for the boys. She loved nothing better than to frolic in the hay when she could. Perhaps to curb her licentious ways, she was sent to work on a small farm that had no other maids, so she would be kept busy, and only one farm hand, a lad named Joseph.

Well, as it turns out, busy or not, Dolly’s mind soon turned to Joseph, a shy lad a year or so older than herself. She knew that if she were to suggest anything outright poor Joseph would be so abashed, they would get nowhere, so she took to making a plan.

It was that Halloween time of year, when people turn their thoughts to things that go bump in the night, and this gave Dolly an idea.

A night or so after All Hallows’ Eve, the evenings were drawing in, and Dolly had rushed to finish her work because she planned to meet up with Joseph just as he was passing the old barn. As he passed her, he saw she was looking nervous and asked what the matter was.

‘Oh Joseph, ’tis terrible dark these Halloween nights. I’m frit of ghosties.’

Before the lad knew what was happening, Dolly had clung to him – a feeling that was not so unpleasant. To comfort her, he slid his arm around her, and she nuzzled into him and clung even harder saying she thought she had heard something. This poor damsel in distress started to make Joseph feel most protective and there they stood in the gloom holding one another, with Dolly hiding a sly smile.

‘They say a man killed himself up there in the barn. It makes me tremble to think of it, but if we were to go look and find nothing, I am sure I would feel much better.’

Joseph, who now felt quite brave, agreed and they were about to set off on their investigations when the straw rustled and moved. Now truly frightened, for she had managed to scare herself with her own story, Dolly held so tight to Joseph he found it most difficult to breathe. Yet these new feelings of love’s ardour stirred in him a latent hero, so wriggling free from her tight grip he pulled off his hobnail boots declaring, ‘Ghosties don’t like iron and there’s plenty in my boots.’

Now frightened out of her wits, Dolly clung on to the brave young lad as Joseph readied himself to launch the boots into the haunted haystack. But with the ample girl cleaving herself, body and soul to him, Joseph’s swing went astray and as he launched the boots they flung around and caught the wayward lovers in the head, the left boot for Dolly, and the right for Joseph. The blows knocked the pair flat out, and they collapsed upon the ground.

When all had fallen silent, the old tramp who had nestled himself down in the warm hay for the night crawled out and decided to try the farm further on, for this one was far too noisy.

When the pair recovered, they had a matching set of black eyes, which took some explaining to the farmer and his wife.

THE VAMPIRE OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

This story was told by Stephen, the Archdeacon of the diocese of Buckinghamshire, to the Augustinian Canon William Parves or William of Newbury as he was known. It is a very unusual story, which takes place in an unnamed place in Buckinghamshire in the year 1192.

When the man died in the year of our Lord 1192, his wife set about organising a proper funeral for him and for his body to be placed in the family tomb on the eve of the Day of Ascension. All this was done with proper and solemn respect and after the funeral the wife returned home. Following such an emotionally exhausting day, the wife set about her meagre meal and prepared herself for bed. But, in the middle of the night she was awoken as she heard movement in the room. Opening her eyes, she turned to see her husband risen from the grave and back in their bedroom, making his way onto the bed and then pressing his full weight down on top of her as though to crush the life from her and perhaps take it for himself to live once more. She tried to fight him off, but his strength was immense and as the air was being squeezed from her lungs by the pressure of his cold body pressing upon hers, she let out a terrible scream, which seemed to startle the vampire. So, the woman yelled and screamed further, and the terrible creature left the house and returned unto his grave.

Quite unsure what to do the next night, the woman went to bed with trepidation filling her heart. Again, her husband came creeping in, in the middle of the night, and pressing his terrible weight upon her body. His breath was foul and foetid. She fought and struggled to fend him off to no avail, until like the previous night her screams and yells seem to become too much for the vampire who retreated into the darkness.

The poor woman was now beside herself as to what to do, and so she confided in a few friends, who out of concern or sheer curiosity agreed that they would sit in vigil that night.

And so, as the sun set on the third night after the funeral the woman prepared herself for bed whilst her friends gathered in the corner of the room, silent, watching, waiting. Just like the two previous nights, the husband came again, silent but moving with terrible force onto the bed, onto his wife, pressing down harder and harder. Warned by the wife, the friends knew that the creature seemed to find noise unpleasurable and so they screamed and shouted, fought and kicked until the vampire left that house. However, it seems that whatever dark forces motivated the man to rise from his grave had not been satisfied on that night for he attacked the houses of his brothers who lived on the same street as his wife. There he tormented them in the same manner, trying to press the life out of them. They had heard what they had thought were the wild tales of a grief-stricken wife but, confronted now with the terrible truth, they knew to shout and yell until the creature finally withdrew and the night grew quiet once more.

For nights on end this terrible ordeal continued, first at the wife’s house then at the brothers, and when the vampire could find no satisfaction, he started visiting other neighbours in the street until every house had to sit in vigil, night after night, to scare the terrible creature off. Yet still this did not stop the vampire from coming; perhaps he sought to catch people unawares or in a moment of drowsiness, or perhaps it was just his instinct that even he himself could not fight. When he failed to find fulfilment upon the people, he turned his riotous attention to beasts both wild and tame, in field or stable, until they too caused such a ruckus that the vampire had no other course but to return to his tomb.

Soon people were not even safe during the day, for the vampire was now able to walk in daylight. As he wandered the streets, he was seen by only a few; even if groups of people were walking together (as was now their habit) it was not unusual that only one or two would see the terrible creature. To the others he seemed invisible, and yet his presence was felt by all.

With no end in sight to this terrible torment, the people ‘alarmed beyond measure’, sought the counsel of the Church, appealing to Stephen, the Archdeacon of Buckinghamshire and a gathering of the clergy. ‘They detailed the whole affair, with tearful lamentation…’ Upon hearing this dreadful story, Stephen wrote a letter to the venerable St Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, who was residing at the time in London, to tell him of the horrifying things that had been happening in the small Buckinghamshire town.

When the bishop heard the frightful account, he was indeed shocked, and called upon his advisors, the priests and theologians. They alarmed him even more by saying that this was not an isolated event, and that other stories such as this had been heard all over England; in their wisdom and experience, the only way to deal with the creature was to dig up the body and burn the corpse.

Upon hearing this, St Hugh thought that this was an unchristian way to behave: ‘indecent and improper to the last degree’. The bishop decided instead that he would write a letter of Absolution of Sin.

Once written, the bishop travelled to the troubled town and insisted that the tomb be opened so that he may inspect the state of the man’s body. When the tomb was opened, the cadaver inside showed no signs of decay. The bishop needed no further proof, and so he laid the letter of absolution on the man’s chest and commanded that the tomb be closed once more, for now the vampire would not be permitted to inflict any more harm upon the persons of the town. Henceforth the vampire was never seen or heard of again.

THE POACHER

During the late 1600–1800s something changed all across England; under the Enclosures, the landlords started putting fences around the borders of their land. These places went from being common land, where people could graze their cattle, go foraging for nuts and mushrooms, or hunt, to being out of bounds. Now, suddenly the poor were restricted as to where they could go, and wealthy landowners employed gamekeepers to keep a tight watch on the plants and animals of their woodlands and meadows. The poor became even poorer because now, if they had no money, they couldn’t go out to nature’s bounty to fill their larder either. So, the practice of poaching became common amongst those with little means to feed their families.

The woodlands once covered a much wider area than it does now, and it stretched right across the county. All around, poor folk could see the abundance of food, which they knew they dared not take. It made their bellies ache and their heads throb. And so it was, that two farmworkers, Bill and Nell, faced the winter months with little work to do and food scarce upon the table. They watched each day as their two boys William and Jack grew thinner and the hunger gnawed at their very bones. Bill decided that he was going to do something about it, and the only thing he could think of was a spot of poaching.

So, Bill called up his brother Ned and with some friends they made their plans. Bill decided that his own boys, William (seventeen) and Jack (fourteen), were old enough to join them so that they could learn the ways of the land. It was a cold, crisp evening and the moon was shining bright when they all set off, much to Nell’s annoyance because she had heard about the local gamekeeper. So too had Ned, because the gamekeeper was said to be a vicious one, and they would be lucky to get out alive if he caught them. Sometimes when you’re hungry you don’t think straight, and Ned was already so nervous that they really should never have given him the gun. All Ned wanted to do was bag the first thing he could and then get out of that wretched place before they got caught. He saw that the hill was covered with rabbits; in a moment, Ned had the gun to his shoulder and fired – completely missing.

‘What have you done?’ hissed Bill. ‘That shot will be heard across the woods, and that devil of a gamekeeper will be coming this way.’ He was right. The gamekeeper was the other side of the hill; he had heard the shot and began to make his way towards the sound.

Bill and Ned were so busy arguing, the way that only brothers can argue, that they didn’t notice the gamekeeper creeping towards them. Even as the keeper was raising his pistol to fire a warning shot so that the poachers would turn around and he could get a good look at their faces in the moonlight, they continued their squabble.

But young Jack saw the moonlight glinting on the gunmetal and dashed forward thinking that someone was going to shoot his father. As he leapt up, the gun fired, young Jack fell to the ground a bloody hole in his chest.

Bill lunged at the gamekeeper, who pushed him away shouting,‘I didn’t mean to do it!’

‘Da!’ cried William. ‘We’ve got to get him help.’ So, the unsuccessful poachers grabbed the injured boy and disappeared into the darkness, leaving the gamekeeper to tend his bruises.

Before they were even halfway home, Jack breathed his last, and all they could do was let a grieving mother prepare her youngest son for a cold grave.

Yet before they had time to mourn, Bill, William, Ned and the others were arrested for poaching and put in gaol to await the assizes. Three weeks passed until a makeshift courtroom could be assembled in the back room of a local public house.

The judge sat and listened as the gamekeeper gave his evidence before the local lord of the manor, who nodded solemnly in his finery, whilst the gaunt and sparsely clad poor folk began to mumble. A great cry of ‘Injustice!’ was called out, and the judge threatened to clear the room when a pale thin hand rose above the crowd. It was Nell. The judge nodded to her to come forward.

‘What is it you want to say?’

She stood there looking at her husband and son, and then she spoke: ‘It seems to me that often no one speaks on behalf of us poor, and the law most times is against those who need protecting the most. I may not have the knowing of a judge, or the money of a lord, but I am a mother who has just lost her son, and that brings a knowing of another kind. I see there the man who killed my boy, standing free and doing his upmost to bereft me of my other son and husband. Here stands the accused, who to my mind, not having succeeded in taking even a single rabbit, did no further crime than walk in the woods wanting a full belly. Ask yourself why a man would risk so much for so little? We are starving, and if you take my men then I will surely starve and that will also be on your judgement. So, I beg to you, Sir, let my menfolk go. Let my one remaining son come home to me. For if you will not judge a killer, how can you judge a poacher? Let the keeper be judged in heaven for surely he will pay a higher punishment in the end.’

Upon hearing that, the judge acquitted the would-be poachers. Whilst by law the gamekeeper was not tried, for he was protecting his master’s lands, he was driven far from that place, and in time he faced the everlasting judgement beyond the grave. And what happened then, who can say? But by Nell’s words, I’m sure he paid.

WITCH’S STONE TREASURE

On the boundaries of the village of Speen, look carefully in the bushes and you will find two large stones. These are ancient standing stones. Both stones are said to mark a grave containing treasure and haunted by the occupant, but don’t go grabbing your spade just yet. The first stone is said to be Nanny Cooper’s grave, and the second tucked just behind is cited as John Cooper’s grave. Any relationship between these two Coopers was never found, but it more than likely as both were reputed to live in the cottages that stand close to the site of the stones.

Nanny Cooper

Once there was a little old woman who lived in one of the tiny cottages on the edge of Speen village. Some say she might’ve been a witch, others say she was just a little eccentric, but whatever you think, she was a kindly old woman who went about her day helping others. It has been lost to memory exactly why she did her daily routine, but she was often seen going down to the pond where a tall tree grew with branches reaching out over the body of water. Here she would attach a basket by a rope to one of the branches of the tree, clamber inside and swing herself across to the other side of the pond. Maybe this was a quicker route than walking around the pond or she had a rather strange way of fishing, but whatever the reason, one day she clambered into the basket and, as it swung out across the pond, the branch broke. Nanny Cooper and the basket tumbled down into the water, which quickly filled up and began to sink, sucking poor old Nanny Cooper down with it. Her drowned body was recovered and was buried with the large stone placed on top of her, because they say she found treasure in that there pond, which was also placed in her grave with her. But should you go looking for it, her ghost will rise up and stop you!

The Highwayman