Cambridgeshire Folk Tales E-Book

Maureen James

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

Seitenzahl: 285

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Modern-day Cambridgeshire is a county of diverse landscapes: from the elegance of the university city and the rural delights of the old county of Huntingdonshire Isle of Ely, each district has its own identity and its own stories. Explore the antics of the inhabitants of the past, including Hereward the Saxon hero; the Fenland giant Tom Hickathrift; the pious Bricstan of Chatteris; the raconteur and skater Chaffe Legge; and Mr Leech, who was carried off by the Devil. You will also discover the hidden history of the area, including how the secret Brotherhood of the Grey Goose Feather helped King Charles I, and what really happened to King John's treasure. These entertaining tales will delight readers both within Cambridgeshire and elsewhere.

Leseprobe

For all the Fen Tigers, who I hope will appreciate and enjoy this book.And to Aunty Joan and Uncle Tom, whose love and inspiration stay with me always.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book follows on from my other volume in the same series, namely Lincolnshire Folk Tales. For both I have drawn on research carried out on the folklore and folk tales of the flatlands for my PhD. However, it would not have been possible without the initial inspirations provided by Barbara Johnson and Heather Falvey that revived my passion for history back in 1985. I am also indebted to Liz Wright for persuading me that I could write professionally, Paul Jackson for showing me the power of the spoken story, and Del Reid for being a tower of strength for so many storytellers. I also would like to thank the late Doug Stone of Chatteris and Peter Hewitt of March, for sharing not just with me, but with many, many others, their love of local history. Similarly, I owe a debt of gratitude to the folklorists of the past, especially Enid Porter and the late W.H. Barrett (and his informants). Numerous other storytellers and historians have also inspired me on my journey, but with regards to Cambridgeshire and the Fens, these include Hugh Lupton, Malcolm Busby, Polly Howat, Mike Petty, Celia and Geoff Taylor, Judith Legge, Gordon Phillips, Nicky Stockman, Alan Lamb, Ernie Hall and the late Arthur Dunham. Finally, I need to thank my husband Stuart for helping with the illustrations, and he and the rest of my family for their patience and understanding.

Maiden’s garter, fenman’s charter,

Neighbours brats, fishermans floats,

fire a’ glowing, reaper mowing,

are things never interfered with.

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Map of Cambridgeshire

Introduction

1 Of the Fens and Farming

Tom Hickathrift – Legendary Giant

The Ely and Littleport Riots

Elijah’s Ghost (A Tale of a Toadman)

The Legend of Whittlesey Mere

2 Of Strange Phenomena

Mr Leech and the Devil

Robin Good-fellow

Black Dogs, Will o’ the Wykes and Lantern Men

The Legend of Bulldog Bridge

3 Of Rumour, Gossip and Tall Stories

Mark Twain and Tall Stories of the Fens

Two Fat Geese

The Fearless Girl

The Clerk’s Revenge

4 Of Witchcraft and Murder

The Witches of Warboys

The Witch-finders in Cambridgeshire

Matcham and the Drummer Boy

The Gruesome History of Caxton Gibbet

The Beastly Butcher of St Neots

5 Of People and Places

Gog Magog and the Land of the Giants

PC Peak of Wicken Fen

The French Prisoners at Norman Cross

The Sufferings of Elizabeth Woodcock

6 Of Churches, Parsons and Saints

Etheldreda – Princess, Abbess and Saint

Bricstan of Chatteris

The Devil, the Church and the Stone Cross

The Mystery of the Whirlin’ Cakes

7 Of Kings and Castles

King Canute and the Fens

The Prowess of Osbert Fitz Hugh

Hereward the Saxon

King John and Wisbech

Legends of the English Civil War

Bibliography and Sources

About the Author

Copyright

MAPOF CAMBRIDGESHIRE

PLACES INCLUDEDINTHIS BOOK

1 Alconbury

2 Aldreth

3 Balsham

4 Bodsey

5 Bottisham

6 Bourn

7 Brampton

8 Brandon Creek

9 Burwell

10 Cambridge

11 Caxton Gibbet

12 Chatteris

13 Cherry Hinton

14 Coates

15 Coppingford

16 Cottenham

17 Diddington

18 Doddington

19 Easton

20 Eldernell

21 Elsworth

22 Ely

23 Grantchester

24 —

25 Gt Abington

26 Gunwade Ferry

27 Hemingford Grey

28 Huntingdon

29 Impington

30 Keyston

31 Leverington

32 Litlington

33 Littleport

34 March

35 Molesworth

36 Norman Cross

37 Parson Drove

38 Peterborough

39 Prickwillow

40 Quanea

41 Ramsey

42 Raveley

43 Snailwell

44 Soham

45 St Ives

46 St Neots

47 Stilton

48 Stretham

49 Stuntney

50 Sutton

51 Trumpington

52 Upware

53 Waldersea

54 Wandlebury

55 Wansford

56 Warboys

57 West Wratting

58 Whittlesey

59 Whittlesey/Mere

60 Wicken Fen

61 Wimblington

62 Wisbech

63 Witchford

64 Woodcroft

INTRODUCTION

On its borders Hickathrifts castle once stood, and in its mazes Hereward sought shelter during his long struggle for independence.

Jonathan Peckover, 1868

Like the other books within this History Press series, this volume is a collection of folk tales linked to the landscape and to a specific county. The county in this case is Cambridgeshire, formed in 1965 by the joining of the historic county of Cambridgeshire with the Isle of Ely and, in 1974, with the addition of Huntingdonshire and the Soke of Peterborough (part of the unitary authority).

THE LANDSCAPE: THENAND NOW

The present county of Cambridgeshire is bordered on the north by Lincolnshire, on the east by Norfolk and Suffolk, on the south by Essex and Hertfordshire and on the west by Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire.

A glance at an Ordnance Survey map will show that much of the northern part of the county consists mostly of very low-lying land, the silt and peat fenland, interspersed with similarly low-lying islands.

Daniel Defoe, in his Tour Through the Eastern Counties of England (1722), noted that the Fens were the ‘sink of no less than thirteen counties’ being subject regularly to inundation by the rivers ‘Cam or Grant, the Great Ouse and Little Ouse, the Nene, the Welland, and the Lark’.

The situation is still the same today, and the area still carries the run-off water from Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Huntingdonshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Rutland, Suffolk and Warwickshire. However, there is now an elaborate system of moving the flood waters out to the Wash.

With the shrinkage of the peat, almost all of the Fenland rivers are now above the level of the land, some many feet higher, making a strange sight with the river banks rising high above the roads that run beside them. There are also numerous drainage dykes crossing the Fens, into which the Fenland waters are pumped on their way to the sea. It has been estimated that when all the pumping stations in the Fens are busy they can move a total of ten million gallons of water per minute.

But what of the landscape before all the pumps and drains?

In 1868 Jonathan Peckover of Wisbech described the county before the extensive drainage of the seventeenth century:

the inland water extended as far south as Cambridge, and touched on the east, Downham, Brandon and Mildenhall; Soham being upon a lengthy neck of land which stretched out into the morass. On the west side were St Ives, Somersham, Ramsey, Peterborough and Peakirk. The sea entered at three outlets from the north, the widest of which passed by Wisbech, another at Spalding and a third at Lynn, the sea coast from Lynn running northward and passing a short distance from Castle Rising. There was thus between Wisbech and Lynn, a large oblong island of ‘marshland’, upon the upper part of which was Walpole, and on the lower side Hickathrifts castle at Emneth … There was also another larger island called Holland between Wisbech and Spalding, which with the one just mentioned formed the northern border of the great inland swamp of waters called the Fens. Upon the southern borders of Holland were Crowland and Guyhirn. In the waters of the Fens were scattered a great number of islands, upon some of the principal of which were situated Thorney, Whittlesey, March, Chatteris and Littleport. The largest island was a straggling piece of ground which was called the Isle of Ely, near the north of which was Ely and the south, Haddenham.

This low-lying land, despite the regular winter flooding was not uninhabited. The silt fens in the northern part of the county, a remnant of the ancient and frequent inundations of the sea, were once the least populated. The fertile band of sandy, brownish-grey soil that stretches from Holland in Lincolnshire in the north and west, to the Norfolk marshlands in the east, with its southern boundary following a line from Littleport to Thorney via Guyhirn, was later to prove ideal for the planting of apple orchards, which were once a major feature of the area.

Further south, on the islands and fen edges, the people were engaged in agriculture, whilst in the areas of bog, marsh and fen, the inhabitants lived off the abundant fish and fowl. Many of the former islands can be recognised by the names that end in the Saxon ‘ea’ or ‘ey’ such as Manea, Thorney and Ramsey, meaning island.

A medieval description records that around the Isle of Ely:

In the eddies at the sluices … are netted innumerable eels, large water-wolves, with pickerels, perches, roaches, burbots, and lampreys … It is indeed said by many that sometimes salmon are taken there, together with the royal fish, the sturgeon … There you find geese, teal, coot, didappers, water-crows, herons and ducks, more than man can number, especially in winter or at moulting time. I have seen a hundred — nay, even three hundred — taken at once; sometimes by bird-lime, sometimes in nets or snares.

It is the eels that were most profitable, and they became almost a currency, and were used to pay tithes. It has been calculated that in the twelfth century the villages of Littleport, Stuntney and Doddington contributed 68,000 eels to the Abbot of Ely.

In the seventeenth century the whole of the landscape of this Great Level began to be transformed, as drainage turned it into a vast plane, intersected by a huge network of drainage ditches, ‘dykes’ or ‘lodes’ of various sizes, but all interconnected and all involved in carrying excess water to be pumped out to the sea.

But in the seventeenth century, successful campaigns resulted in permission to drain the whole area, to stop the flooding and to turn the land over to year-round pasture or agricultural land.

The 750,000 acres became known as the Bedford Level after the Earl of Bedford, who led the team of fourteen adventurers who invested in the undertaking. In return for their investment, carried out under the instructions of the Dutch drainage engineer Cornelius Vermuyden, the gentlemen were granted ownership of the drained land. For administrative purposes the fen was divided into three parts, the North Level, South Level and Middle Level.

Not everyone supported the drainage, which changed the wetland to rich brownish-black peaty fenland soil. There were riots in a number of places, including Whelpmore Fen in 1638 when a crowd, supposedly playing football, levelled the ditches. ‘Fen football’, in which the residents of two or more villages would meet at some open-air spot, was one of the more common means of attacking both drainage works and enclosures.

Other methods were also used by these ‘Fen Tigers’ including threats to workmen, masked attacks and direct sabotage. In 1641 a boat packed with burning hassocks (bundles of straw) was directed down a channel into Littleport sluice gate.

And so, despite the opposition, the peat bogs, silt fens and marshes were drained, with varying degrees of success, and the people were enabled not only just to grow useful crops, but also to raise cattle and sheep on summer pastures. The place names indicate some of the former uses, such as the Fodder, Mow, Turf and Sedge Fens and the woodland terms such as stocking and hurst.

The initial drainage of the Fens only took the water down to a certain level and, as a consequence, a number of deep lakes, or meres, were left. These included Whittlesey Mere, Ramsey Mere, Benwick Mere, Ugg Mere and Trundle Mere, all of which remained until the nineteenth century when pumping engines enabled them to be drained. By 1850, Whittlesey Mere was so shallow as to be no longer navigable and it was emptied as a private enterprise to change over 3,000 acres of peat-covered swamp into rich agricultural land.

It was not until the nineteenth century, and the introduction of steam-powered pumps, that the land could be kept reliably drained all year round – and for decades this land has provided rich flat farmland. Today, the Great Level, though relatively treeless, has its own kind of beauty, with extended views, magnificent sunsets and ‘big’ skies. The straight-edged fields are extensive and the soil – fine black peat virtually free from stones – enables the growing of crops in abundant harvests, particularly sugar beet, root vegetables and potatoes.

With regards to the rest of the county, low chalk uplands extend over much of the southern half, and include the East Anglian Heights. This chalk ridge straddles England from the Yorkshire coast, across the Home Counties and down to the coast of Devon. The mean height of this range is 400–500 feet. However, in Cambridgeshire, the highest point is at Great Chishill (at just under 480 feet).

And now, before we move on, I would like to say a few words about the former administrative districts:

The Old Shire of Cambridge

The old county of Cambridgeshire was formed at the junction of the old kingdoms of Mercia and East Anglia, with the rivers Cam and Ouse providing the natural boundary markers. The rivers Cam and Granta and their various tributaries have eroded broad valleys out of the low chalky uplands of the shire. The Cam, also called the Rhee, has its source in the springs that can be found across the county boundary at Ashwell, Hertfordshire. The Granta rises similarly near Saffron Walden, Essex.

The Old Shire of Huntingdon

The old county (now district) of Huntingdonshire lies in the west of Cambridgeshire and, as such, contains in the south and west many hills and valleys, none of which are particularly deep but each containing a stream that flows into the Ouse or the Nene rivers. Both rivers rise in Northamptonshire and make their way leisurely to the sea at the Wash. In the north and east of old Huntingdonshire lies a level plain of fenland; indeed the lowest physical point in the UK, namely Holme Fen at 9ft below sea level, is within this district.

The Isle of Ely

The former administrative area that includes the island on which the city of Ely is situated was once under the jurisdiction of the Bishops of Ely. Formerly an impenetrable waste of reedy meres and trackless bogs, for it is well below sea level, the area was interspersed with islands, the largest of which contained the cathedral, affectionately known as the ‘Ship of the Fens’, as it is clearly visible from many miles away and seems to float over the landscape.

The Soke of Peterborough

The historic region surrounding the town of Peterborough was known as the Soke, or the Liberty, of Peterborough, as it used to be under the jurisdiction of the abbot of the monastery and independent of lay authority. The Soke has been part of the county of Northamptonshire but is now a unitary authority. In view of its position, I have included it within this book.

BUTWHATOFTHEPEOPLEWHOTOLDTHESESTORIESINTHEPAST, ANDTHEPEOPLEWHOCOLLECTEDTHEM?

In the days before the invention of modern lighting, and when the working day was dependent on the availability of natural light or candlelight, life was much different to today. Long winter evenings meant that people gathered together, talked, sang, played music and told stories to each other.

Before the introduction of compulsory education, lessons would be taught, reminiscences shared and news would also be spread by word of mouth. As the historian Ekirch noted, ‘legends, fables and tales of evils spirits, eternal stories recounted again and again by seasoned narrators with well trained memories’ filled the time, and whilst the people gathered around the fire, they would carry out indoor tasks such as knitting, weaving, carding wool and basket making.

But perhaps one of the most popular places for the telling of tales was in the public houses, such as The Ship at Brandon Creek. This pub played host, particularly on Saturday nights, to a number of wonderful storytellers who entertained the young Walter Henry Barrett (1891–1974) who would sit quietly in the corner with his friend, the landlord’s son. Nicknamed ‘Jack’ because when he was young he resembled an uncle by that name, Barrett eventually had to stop his weekly visits to The Ship, when his father, a lay preacher ‘inflicted such punishment’ on him that he realised that if he continued with his pursuit of learning about the past of Fenland and old Fen Lore it was ‘going to be a painful one’.

But Barrett could not easily forget the tales he had heard from those old men, who he described as ‘past masters in the art of storytelling’. He also saw each of the old men as ‘a storehouse of folklore stories, many of which had been handed down from generation to generation, told and retold in the days when listeners sat enthralled by what was, more or less, their only means of recreation’.

In later life, Barrett was prompted by Alan Bloom, author of several books on the Fens, to write down on paper the stories he recalled. Bloom suggested that the Cambridge Folk Museum contact Barrett and, as a result of this, Enid Porter established a friendship with Barrett and included some of his recollections in Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore. The stories were also edited as Tales from the Fens and More Tales From the Fens. Barrett also recalled a number of tall tales, and a visit to the Fens by Mark Twain, which are included in this book.

Arthur Randell (1901–88) similarly recalled many humorous stories. Brought up in the village of Magadalen, Norfolk, near Wisbech and by the River Great Ouse, he spent much of his working life as a signalman at Waldersea siding, and on retirement he returned to his father’s profession of mole catching, covering 4,000 acres of the Fens. His memories of Fen people, their beliefs, lives and ways were edited by Enid Porter and recorded in the books Sixty years a Fenman (1966) and Fenland Memories (1969). Randell, who told Polly Howat that she ‘shouldn’t believe everything he told her’, noted that:

Like a good many others Fen people can tell some very ‘tall’ tales when they like; they look on them as a good joke and don’t really expect them to be believed. Perhaps it is round the taproom fire in some pub on a winter’s evening that such stories are most often heard, the tellers good-naturedly trying to out-do one another in relating the most outlandish yarns they know, all the time swearing that what they say is ‘Gospel truth’. I remember, as a young man, being one day in the company of three old Magdalen people, two men and a woman, and the talk got round to the strong winds we had been having recently. One of the old chaps said they were nothing to those he remembered as a boy when there had been such a gale blowing over the Fens one day that when twilight came the crows had to walk home.

Enid Porter (1909–84) found that the telling of tall tales was frequently rewarded within the county:

It was customary to reward the narrators [of tales] with some token of the listeners’ appreciation. The award usually took the form of free beer, but there were other prizes – a ‘silver’ cup … a ribbon rosette, or a medal. These were usually kept in the public house and solemnly handed to the teller of the story which was judged to be the ‘tallest’ of the evening.

In the Cambridge Museum there is a rudely crafted, iron ‘medal’ bearing the words ‘THE NOTED LIAR’. Found in the garden of The Pike and Eel pub at Chesterton, near Cambridge, the 1.5-inch diameter disc is likely to have been a medal given to a good storyteller. Porter noted that the inn was a popular meeting place of not just local people, but also watermen on the lighters and barges that carried goods between the city and King’s Lynn.

One of the storytellers who inspired Barrett, and whose tales are not just included in his books but also inspired some within this volume, is William ‘Chafer’ Legge (1838–1909). One of ten children born to William Legge, a carpenter and wheelwright in Southery, Chafer never learnt to read and write but knew all about fishing and fowling, which supplemented his income as an agricultural labourer. In his younger days, Chafer also gained a reputation as a skater and bare-fist fighter. When he was 21 he married Susan Porter and they lived in a small wooden shack on the Fens. Chafer was described as a striking character wearing an otterskin cape, moleskin trousers and waistcoat. He and his wife had eight children, a number of whom were also good skaters. Barrett described how Chafer’s daughter Susan was taking part in the women’s skating championships as the ‘favourite’: ‘Suddenly she began to slow down. Some of her undies were slipping. Her father seeing what was happening and having a lot of money on his daughter, cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Keep going Susan, you never wore none till you went to service.” A kick and a shake and Susan won.’

James Wentworth Day (1899–1983), another writer and collector of stories, who inspired a number of the tales within this book, is of a completely different social class from Legge. Born at Exning, Suffolk, Day was a writer and broadcaster, firmly of the Agrarian Right school and essentially a High Tory, who at one time owned Adventurers’ Fen, a piece of marshland in Cambridgeshire. Day was closely associated with the East Anglian Magazine and was editor of East Anglia Life from 1962 until 1966. However, as is noted later in this book, it appears that Day ‘never let the truth get in the way of a good story’.

Of the stories from Huntingdonshire, one of the main sources is W.H. Bernard Saunders (1839–1913). Saunders was not just the compiler of Legends and Traditions of Huntingdonshire but also the editor of Fenland Notes & Queries from 1891 to 1897. Yet at the time of writing, despite much searching, I have been unable to find out any more about Saunders.

Arthur Dunham, who died in 2013 at the age of 84, provided the substance of at least two of the tall stories. A tall, lanky fen farmer, he and his wife Margaret attended a number of meetings of the Fenland-based storytelling group Fables, Tales and Folklore, where Arthur generously shared his stories. Arthur and his wife also planted their own broadleaved woodland between 1985 and 1991. Known as Dunham’s Wood it was open to the public on a number of weekends each summer, and was a wonderful attraction for families for many years. Sadly, the wood – which is two miles east of March, just off the March to Downham Market road (B1099) – is now closed to the public.

I have also referred to some storytellers who are still practising the art today, one of the most notable of whom is Polly Howat. A published author of six books of folklore and legends, Howat has also released an audio tape of Tales from the Misty Fen. She has been a professional storyteller for many years and in 1979 she led an oral history project in the Cambridgeshire, West Norfolk and Lincolnshire Fens.

Another inspiration is Alan Lamb, a very unassuming gentleman from Farcet who regularly entertains local groups with mostly humorous tales from the Fens, some true and some not so …

Similarly Malcolm Busby, one of the Cambridge Storytellers, has been telling many local stories to community groups for many years and, whilst doing so, has been given a few more for his repertoire!

It is interesting to note from local informants that there were other local people (aside from those who Barrett listened to at Brandon Creek) who were known as good storytellers. One was the elderly landlord of The Fisherman’s Rest at Purl’s Bridge, Manea, who entertained his customers about fifty years ago; another was the Great Eastern Railway guard who spent his childhood in Cambridgeshire, and who told the Two Fat Geese story to Mr Paddick from Hoddesdon (included in Chapter 3). Malcolm Busby also recently met a woman in Orton Waterville whose grandfather, Frank Jeeves, was a former soldier who used to tell stories in pubs in Peterborough and south Lincolnshire, in exchange for beer.

However, generally across the county (and elsewhere), as literacy took hold people began to regard the traditional popular pastimes, particularly storytelling, as belonging to a different world to their own. The school inspectors, schoolmasters and the clergy who preached in the pulpits and ran the Sunday schools openly discouraged superstitious beliefs.

As L.F. Newman, the Cambridge-based president of the short-lived Eastern Counties Folklore Society noted:

Only tantalising fragments … [of stories, beliefs and customs] … have survived and from them the folklorist has to build up the main structure of his science. The spread of education led to a wilful and deliberate attempt to stamp out the old rural culture …

Thankfully, people like those mentioned above recognised that these influences were in danger of resulting in the loss of an important part of the cultural history of this land and they diligently recorded (and also transformed or even suppressed) the old stories ‘according to personal tastes and circumstances’.

However, as these collectors of folklore and stories carried out their important work, the competition from books and newspapers that provided informative accounts of current affairs began to be viewed in many places as more important than listening to the old storytellers. Such entertainment was considered only to be suitable for the very young, or very old, but at what loss?

In 1934 John Beverley Nichols noted in his Book of Old Ballads, that ‘the mysteries have gone. We know … what lies on the other side of the hill. The scientists have long ago puffed out, scornfully, the golden lamp of the night … leaving us in the utmost darkness.’

We are very fortunate that the stories of Cambridge were preserved, mostly in print, but some in the oral tradition, so that we can continue to hear them. Within this county a small group of friends from the Ouse Washes Molly Dancers have also been spreading the tales, as part of a number of major schools projects. Their latest, the Enid Porter Project, is also increasing awareness of the county folklore collection. I hope that this book will complement such initiatives.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

I am very grateful to The History Press for assisting in the rekindling of interest in the art of oral storytelling. They purposefully chose people who actually tell stories (rather than read them) and who live in, or have a deep interest in, their respective counties to be the authors.

I have aimed within this volume to provide a mix of stories that I tell, stories I have heard, stories in their original form and stories that contain a mix of all of these. I would also like to add that I should not be given all the credit for passing on these tales. I would like to acknowledge the tellers of the past and the people who told the stories to them, in an unbroken chain back to the original observer or creator of the tale.

I have tried, where possible, to acknowledge the individual tellers or recorders of the folk tales, where such information is available, and have also included historical notes, some location details and other snippets of relevant information or summaries of similar, or related tales. All these, I hope, will help the future tellers, or readers of the stories, to put the narratives into context and within the Cambridgeshire landscape.

I have arranged the tales into seven chapters – Of the Fens and Farming; Of Strange Phenomena; Of Rumour, Gossip and Tall Stories; Of Witchcraft and Murder; Of People and Places; Of Churches, Parsons and Saints, and Of Kings and Castles. At the end of the book I have also included a list of the sources consulted.

Fur, feather and fish piled up on a dish,

A man in a boat without a coat,

a bitch of a witch and a winding ditch,

And flickering lights are some of the sights

one sees when down in the fen.

1

OFTHE FENSAND FARMING

In this section I have included a number of tales connected to the rural landscape and the plight of people living within such an environment. The first concerns the legendary, and nationally known character of Thomas Hickathrift. Whilst this story is also seen as a Norfolk tale, I have used the inclusion of the detail that he was born and raised in the Isle of Ely and that he also frequently visited Wisbech, a town where his reputation continued through the centuries, as justification for including the tale within this book. This tale is followed by the poignant account of the Ely and Littleport Riots of 1816, compiled from contemporary and historical accounts; and an exploration of the toadmen, who could control horses, along with a tale of one such a man who came to a particularly gruesome end. The section concludes with tales of people being lost in the landscape, including the tale of a boy who became stuck in the newly drained Whittlesey Mere.

TOM HICKATHRIFT – LEGENDARY GIANT

Here Lubin listened with awestruck surprise.

When Hickathrift’s great strength has met his ear;

How he killed giants as they were but flies,

And lifted trees as one would a spear,

Though not much bigger than his fellows were;

He knew no troubles waggoner’s have known,

Of getting stalled and such disasters drear;

Up he’d chuck sacks as we would hurl a stone,

And draw whole loads of grain unaided and alone.

John Clare, ‘The Village Minstrel XLIV’

In the time before William the Conqueror there dwelt a poor, but hard-working labouring man in the marsh of the Isle of Ely, whose name was Thomas Hickathrift. This man had one son called by his own name and he had worked hard to buy him an education but the younger Tom would have none of it.

When the old man passed from this world, young Tom’s mother worked hard to look after her son as best she could. But young Tom was a lazy fellow, who liked nothing better than sitting in the chimney corner, warming his toes and dreaming of his next meal.

For Tom was a big lad, and when he was only 10 years old he was eight feet high, and five feet wide, with hands like shoulders of mutton, and he could eat as much as four or five ordinary men. From top to toe he looked like a giant, but no one knew if he had the strength to match.

One day Tom’s mother came home from a hard day’s work with her back aching. She had slept badly the night before on her straw mattress, which needed refilling. She told her son that the farmer down the lane had said that they could have a couple of bundles of straw if they could carry them home themselves. She asked her son if he would get this for her, and help her to fill her mattress.

Young Tom swore that he would not go, but his mother begged him, and eventually he agreed, if she could get him something to carry it with.

The old woman came back with some stout cord, but Tom said, ‘But Mother, that’s no use, I must have a wagon rope.’

She fetched him a cart rope and Tom went on his way to the farmer’s house where the man and his workers were busy in the barn. He said to the farmer, ‘I am here for a bundle of straw’, and the man replied, ‘Tom, take as much as you can carry.’

Tom laid down his rope and began to make up the bundle, picking up handful after handful of straw until he had gathered some 20cwt (hundredweight) or as much as a cartload. The farmer watched in amazement as Tom wrapped the rope around the straw and then flung it over his shoulder as if it were a small sack.

The farmer, amazed at what he had seen, decided, while Tom was taking the first load home, to put some stones each weighing a hundredweight into the next load.

Tom didn’t notice and one stone dropped out. ‘How badly they have cleaned this straw,’ he cried. ‘There’s some of the corn dropping out.’ Further on, the other stone dropped out. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘there’s some more corn dropping,’ but then he took no further notice.

Word of Tom’s strength soon spread and he found that instead of sitting by the fire in the chimney corner, he was being paid to do work lifting and carrying. One day a woodsman asked for his help to clear a tree that was blocking a path. Tom arrived at the place and found four men trying to lift the trunk onto a cart with pulleys. ‘Stand away, you fools,’ said Tom as he put his foot near the roots, levered the tree onto one end and then laid it in the cart. He then asked for a stick for his mother’s fire, and proceeded to pick up a tree bigger than was in the cart, and to carry it home on his shoulders.

As awareness of his great strength spread even further, Tom had many adventures. He fought many fights, lifted and threw many a heavy weight, and won many a contest. And his fame reached the ears of a brewer from King’s Lynn, who needed a good strong man to carry his beer to Wisbech. The brewer sought to hire Tom and promised him a new set of clothes each year, a roof over his head (for him and his mother) and as much food and drink as he wanted.