Derbyshire Folk Tales E-Book

Pete Castle

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

Seitenzahl: 228

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Passed down from generation to generation, many of Derbyshire's most popular folk tales are gathered together here for the first time. Ranging from stories specific to the region, such as 'The Derby Ram', to others which are local versions of well-known classics, like 'Beauty and the Beast', all of the tales in this collection are rooted in Derbyshire's past. Written to recreate the oral traditions that made these anecdotes popular, this book provides entertainment for all. Richly illustrated with original drawings, accounts of love, loss, heroes and villains are all brought to life through vivid descriptions that have survived for several centuries. These tales have been adapted to make them accessible, enjoyable and, at times, very relevant to contemporary readers.

Leseprobe

PETE CASTLE

To all the tellers who told these tales before me, and to all those who will carry them on into the future.

First published in 2011

The History Press The Mill, Brimscombe Port Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QGwww.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2011

All rights reserved © Pete Castle, 2010, 2011

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

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 7031 3MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 7032 0

Original typesetting by The History Press

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Derby Ram

ONE:

TALES OF LOVE AND LOVERS

Like Meat Loves Salt

The Golden Ball or Hangman

Mr Fox or Overheard Up A Tree

Dorothy Vernon & John Manners

– A Derbyshire Romeo & Juliet

Murder in Winnat’s Pass

Lover’s Leaps and Other Smaller Steps

Spinners and Weavers

The Blink-Eyed Cobbler

TWO:

FAIRY TALES

Kitty Green

The Lady Who Lived in a Glass House

The Small-Tooth Dog

The Green Lady of One Tree Hill

Little Blue Eyes, Turkey and the Music Box

The Little Red Hairy Man

THREE:

TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL

The Story of the Devil’s Arse

The Derbyshire Werewolf

The Bakewell Witches

Strange Goings-on Around Chesterfield

Crooker

The Ashbourne Minister

FOUR:

TALES OF HEROES

King Arthur and Sir Terrible

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Robin Hood and Little John

Robin Hood’s Picking Rods

Eyam, the Plague Village

The Lady with the Lamp –

The Story of Florence Nightingale

The Runaway Train –

The Story of John Axon

FIVE:

TALES OF ROGUES AND VAGABONDS

The Butcher Gets a Toasting

The Drunken Butcher of Tideswell

The Bakewell Elephant

The Man Who Stole the Parson’s Sheep

The Devil in the Church Porch

The Sheep Thief

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to:

Sue for sticking with me for the past forty-plus years and for reading and criticising the rough drafts

Bob Trubshaw for being the go-between with The History Press

Ray for the pictures

All the musicians and storytellers I’ve worked with over the years

And, especially, all the people who have listened to me tell stories and sing songs for over three decades. I don’t like to call you ‘fans’, but I suppose you are.

INTRODUCTION

THE DERBY RAM

From almost anywhere in Belper, where I live, I am aware of the hills which loom over the town. They are called the Chevin (an Old English name for a wooded ridge) and they are one of my favourite places. I love walking there. North Lane, variously described as a Roman road or packhorse route, is like a time warp; you can imagine yourself back into distant history and when you come down off the hills you find a whole network of pathways leading towards the town and the mills. They always bring to my mind stories and songs, including some of those in this book.

It’s odd that I should be writing a book of Derbyshire folk tales for I am, by birth, a man of Kent. However, I left that county when I went to Bretton Hall College of Education in the West Riding of Yorkshire, as it was then called, in 1965 and haven’t lived there since. After short spells in Lincolnshire and Nottingham and a longer period in Luton, we came to Derbyshire over twenty years ago and I now definitely think of it as ‘home’.

It was whilst living in Luton in 1978 that I gave up my ‘proper’ job as a teacher to go full time as a folk musician, a thing I had been doing as a hobby and then semiprofessionally ever since college. Some time soon after that I discovered storytelling and have divided my time pretty equally between the two ever since. In fact, I describe myself as ‘a storyteller who sings half his stories’, and I rarely do a performance which does not include at least a token number of both forms.

When we moved to Derby in 1987 I told myself that I would not learn any Derbyshire songs or stories, partly because I didn’t want to step on the toes of those who were already doing them, but mainly because of the problem of accent and dialect. I don’t ‘do’ dialect anyway but, coming from the south, I speak of ‘bath’ and ‘grass’ with a long ‘ar’ sound in the middle, as in the word ‘marvellous’, whereas locals use a short ‘a’, as in ‘happy’. That doesn’t particularly matter in stories but it sometimes affects the rhymes in songs. Another worry was ‘authenticity’. Could, and should, I do Derbyshire material, not being a native?

I gave in because, like most storytellers, I do quite a lot of work in schools and I realised that most of the local schoolchildren had not heard of ‘The Derby Ram’. They all supported the local football team, Derby County, but had no idea why their nickname was ‘the Rams’. Soon I discovered that, outside of the folk scene, many of the adults did not have a great deal more knowledge. People who had lived in the city their whole lives did not associate with the song despite the bells of the cathedral playing a version of the tune. A few older ones remembered singing it when they were at school, but it was the exception to find anyone who knew anything else about it. (It was one of the first folk songs I was ever aware of, from way back before I became interested in folk music per se and was still at school in Kent. My first version was probably sung by Burl Ives.)

Now I always try to include it when I work in Derbyshire. That led on to other songs and then I found some stories and that gave rise to this book. So, to thank ‘The Derby Ram’, we’ll start with that.

Although ‘The Derby Ram’ is not actually a story, it is the iconic image of Derbyshire. As a song, ‘The Derby Ram’ is known throughout the English speaking world. There are versions from all over the British Isles, not just Derbyshire, and it made itself at home in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand – wherever English people made their homes. It also crops up in poetry anthologies, particularly those aimed at children, although it is by no means childish (some verses in some versions are very adult!).

The ‘story’ which all these versions tell is pretty much the same: as I was going to Derby I chanced upon an enormous ram… there is then a catalogue of the different parts of the ram, how big they were and what was, or could be, done with them. End of story. Although the words stay pretty constant, the tunes and choruses vary widely.

Here is a typical set of words collected by Llewellynn Jewitt in the mid-nineteenth century:

The Derby Ram

As I was going to Darby (sic), Sir, All on a market day, I met the finest Ram, Sir, That ever was fed on hay.

Daddle-i-day, daddle-i-day, Fal-de-ral, fal-de-ral, diddle-i-day.

This Ram was fat behind, Sir, This Ram was fat before, This Ram was ten yards high, Sir, Indeed he was no more.

The wool upon his back, Sir, Reached up unto the sky, The eagles made their nests there, Sir, For I heard the young ones cry.

The wool upon his belly, Sir, It dragged upon the ground, It was sold in Darby town, Sir, For forty thousand pound.

The space between his horns, Sir, Was as far as a man could reach, And there they built a pulpit For the parson there to preach.

The teeth that were in his mouth, Sir, Were like a regiment of men, And the tongue that hung between them, Sir, Would have dined them twice and again.

This Ram jumped o’er a wall, Sir, His tail caught on a briar, It reached from Darby town, Sir, All into Leicestershire.

And of this tail so long, Sir, Twas ten miles and an ell, They made a goodly rope, Sir, To toll the market bell.

This Ram had four legs to walk on, Sir, This Ram had four legs to stand, And every leg he had, Sir, Stood on an acre of land.

The butcher that killed this Ram, Sir, Was drownded in the blood, And the boy that held the pail, Sir, Was carried away in the flood.

All the maids in Darby, Sir, Came begging for his horns, To take them to coopers, To make them milking gawns.

The little boys of Darby, Sir, They came to beg his eyes, To kick about the streets, Sir, For they were football size.

The tanner that tanned its hide, Sir, Would never be poor any more, For when he had tanned and retched it, It covered all Sinfin Moor.

The jaws that were in his head, Sir, They were so fine and thin, They were sold to a Methodist parson, For a pulpit to preach in.

Indeed, Sir, this is true, Sir, I never was taught to lie, And had you been to Darby, Sir, You’d have seen it as well as I.

What else is there to know? Well, in addition to the song, ‘The Derby Ram’ is part of a mummer’s-type play often called The Owd Tup. This play was (and still is in a few places) performed around Christmas time, mainly in the north-east of the county, around Chesterfield and up into South Yorkshire and Sheffield. The play is very simple – a farmer and his wife have a ram and they are looking for a butcher to kill it. After various introductory speeches we get:

Farmer:Hey! Our old lass, is there a butcher in the town?Wife:My brother Bill’s a blacksmith.Farmer:I said a butcher. Open thee ears, thee blockhead.Wife:Oh, our Bob’s a butcher.Farmer:Well, fetch him here to stick this tup.Wife:Bob! Bob! Come and stick this tup.

After a bit of horseplay Bob does ‘stick’ the tup, which falls down dead and the hat is passed round. Various verses of the song are usually sung at places within the play.

Nobody knows for sure where, when or why either the song or the play first came about. They have definitely been known for several hundred years and various folklorists have surmised that they go back far longer, and might possibly even be a survival from Viking settlers or pre-Roman Britons. Sydney Oldall Addy, who will crop up again later in the book, wrote the following:

Amongst the earliest recollections of my childhood is the performance of the ‘Derby Ram,’ or, as we used to call it, the Old Tup. With tile eye of memory I can see a number of young men standing one winter’s evening in the deep porch of an old country house, and singing the ballad of the Old Tup. In the midst of the company was a young man with a sheep’s skin, horns and all, on his back, and standing on all fours. What it all meant I could not make out, and the thing that most impressed me was the roar of the voices in that vault-like porch…

And elsewhere:

Now when I first read the Edda, and came to the passage which tells how the sons of Bor slew the giant Ymir, and how, when he fell, so much blood ran out of his wounds that all the race of frost-giants was drowned in it, I said to myself, ‘Why, that’s the “Old Tup” and when I read further on and found how they made the sea from his blood, the earth from his flesh, the rocks from his teeth, the heaven from his skull, it seemed to me that I had guessed rightly. The Old Tup was the giant Ymir, and the mummers of my childhood were acting the drama of the Creation.

So perhaps in ‘The Derby Ram’ we have an ancient Scandinavian creation myth still regularly re-enacted in the heart of England! Another theory I have recently come across, and like, is that it is an Anglo-Saxon import. Very similar rituals took place all over Germany up until the end of the nineteenth century. That would also explain the identical happenings in Transylvania too, where many Germans settled in the Middle Ages. Either way, it would make it the oldest item in this collection, although others go back a long way too. Several are legends dating back to the time of the Normans or beyond; King Arthur makes an appearance and Robin Hood, arguably the greatest English folk hero, features several times. At the other end of the spectrum, one story probably has its origins in a nineteenth-century short story and another may have begun as a story told in a school assembly! There are also the Derbyshire versions of several classic fairy tales of the sort which might be found in the collections of Grimm or Perrault, and some tall tales which are pretty timeless.

Whatever their origins, at one time or another they have almost all been told orally before being collected and written down. I hope that the oral aspect will continue – that you might tell some of them. I have told some of them for many years and will be telling others in the future.

For this book I have tried to walk that difficult tightrope between the informal colloquialisms of an oral telling and a literary reworking. I expect I’ve slipped to one side or the other on several occasions. A literal transcription of the oral telling does not read well on the page where the gestures, facial expressions and asides are lacking. Also, many tellings are in places, or to audiences, which make certain explanations and descriptions unnecessary, although they add to the story on the page.

So these are stories intended for telling and they are presented as such, not as academic texts. They may have changed in quite fundamental ways from the version I first came across. They might not be historically correct, but they are good stories!

Pete CastleBelper, 2010

ONE

TALES OF LOVE AND LOVERS

This is one of the longest sections in this book and some of the other stories could have been included here too. You could almost say that most traditional stories deal with love (or its opposite) in one form or another.

Here we have tales of true love, tales where love conquers against all difficulties, thwarted love and lovers betrayed.

Most of the best love songs and stories have some element of distress in them, as shown by the apocryphal story of the pop star who went to his manager full of anguish and broken hearted and told him ‘My woman has run off with my best friend!’ The manager rubbed his hands and said, ‘So we’ll be getting some good new songs for the next album then!’

LIKE MEAT LOVES SALT

I am often asked, ‘What is your favourite story?’ I usually reply that I like them all or I wouldn’t tell them, but there are some for which I definitely have a soft spot. This is one of my favourite Derbyshire stories – and probably one of my favourites out of all that I tell.

It started as a very short fragment, so when I decided to tell it I had to complete it and since then it has grown in repeated tellings. It is a strange but lovely tale which starts like King Lear but finishes like Cinderella! The ending is guaranteed to get an ‘Aaah!’ from the audience.

There was once a man who had three daughters and one day he did one of those things which no one in their right mind would do – he sat his daughters down and he asked them each in turn how much they loved him. Now you’d know that was going to lead to trouble wouldn’t you? Somebody was sure to get hurt!

First he turned to his eldest daughter and said, ‘How much do you love me, my dear?’

She replied, ‘Father, I love you more then the sun and the moon and the stars and the universe and everything!’ And that pleased him.

Then he turned to his middle daughter, ‘How much do you love me, my dear?’

‘Father, I love you more than I love my own life’, she said. And that pleased him too.

So then it was the turn of his youngest daughter, and his youngest daughter was really his favourite even though he didn’t like to admit it – even to himself. ‘How much do you love me, my dear?’ he asked.

She thought for a while and then said, ‘Father, I love you like meat loves salt’. And he didn’t understand that at all.

‘Meat? Salt? We have meat every day’, he thought. ‘Salt? You can buy a big block of salt for a few pence… You don’t love me at all, you ungrateful girl. Get out! Go away! I never want to see you again!’ he shouted, and he banished her there and then from his house, with just the clothes she was wearing.

She wandered across the countryside until she came across a young gentleman who had been out riding and had had an accident. He’d been thrown from his horse and was lying on the ground more dead than alive. She was able to go and fetch water from a stream and revive him.

When he opened his eyes, he didn’t know where he was and he didn’t remember what had happened. All he was aware of was a beautiful face bending over him and comforting him and he knew that this creature had saved his life. He didn’t know who it was, or what it was. Was it a fairy or a wood nymph? Had he died and gone to Heaven? Was it an angel? Or was it a young woman? Whoever, or whatever, she was, he instantly fell deeply in love with her and he took the ring from his finger and gave it to her.

As soon as she saw that he was going to be alright, she gathered up her skirts and ran off, leaving the young gentleman to gather his wits and climb back on his horse and turn its head towards his home.

The horse knew the way and with every step it took, the young man fell more and more deeply in love with the mysterious young woman who had saved his life. So much so that when he got home all he could do was to take to his bed and stay there dying of love-sickness. He couldn’t eat, he couldn’t sleep, he didn’t wash himself or comb his hair. He could think of nothing but the young woman. He lay there with that hollow, empty feeling in his chest as though his heart had been wrenched out and his whole self with it.

Who was the mysterious young woman he was in love with? How was he going to find her again? That was all he could think about.

Meanwhile… she wandered across the countryside for several more days until she came to a big house and she plucked up the courage to go to the back door and beg a bite of food to eat and some water to drink; and because the people were kind to her she dared to ask whether there was a job going, for now she was banished from her father’s house she had to find some way of supporting herself. She was given a job as the lowliest kitchen maid, the skivvy; the one who had to get up first in the morning to light the fires to heat the water before anyone else got up; the one that had all the dirtiest pots and pans to clean out. It wasn’t what she was used to but it wasn’t too bad.

Over the next few days, just by listening to what the other servants were gossiping about, she pieced together the story that somewhere upstairs in the house was the young master who had had an accident when he was out riding. His life had been saved by some mysterious young woman whom he had fallen madly in love with, and now he was dying of a broken heart and no one could think of a way to find the young woman and so save his life and make him happy.

The next time the cook prepared some broth for the invalid, the young woman persuaded the ‘tweeny’, the servant who usually did the running up and down stairs, to let her take it up to the young man. She quickly wiped her face and hands but couldn’t get rid of all the dirt and grime which had built up. As she was going up the stairs she slipped the ring he had given to her into the bowl.

The young invalid wasn’t interested in broth, he wasn’t interested in anything except finding his true love, but she persuaded him that he had to have a little of the soup. He ate a couple of mouthfuls without thinking and then the spoon clinked on something in the bottom of the bowl. He fished it out. It was his ring, the one he had given to the girl in the forest. ‘Where did you get this ring?’ he demanded.

‘From him who it belongs to’, she answered.

Up to this point he hadn’t taken any notice of the servant girl who had brought the soup. (Those of you who have servants know that they are invisible, just like pieces of furniture!) But at that he stopped and looked at her, and he saw through the dirt and the grime. They fell into each other’s arms and before many minutes had passed a wedding had been arranged!

As the bride at the wedding it was her privilege to arrange the food, so she told the cook that she didn’t mind what was served but that it must all be prepared without any salt.

‘I can’t do that!’ spluttered the cook. ‘Just think what everyone would say. No one would eat it. It would be horrible! I have my reputation to think of. I’m a good cook and people recognise that. I won’t do it!’ But the bride insisted.

On the day of the wedding everyone from all around was invited, including the man with three daughters with whom we started the story. He knew who the groom was to be and felt honoured to have been asked to the wedding, but he had no idea about the identity of the bride. When the ceremony was over everyone took their places in the great hall for the wedding feast. There were rows and rows of tables and the guests were arranged along them in order of importance. At the front of the hall, at right angles to the others, was the table for the wedding party. When everyone was seated the food was served and everyone started to eat, but after a few mouthfuls the room began to hum with the sound of grumbling and complaining. There was a great deal of spluttering and grimacing. ‘There’s no salt in the food!’, ‘What’s the cook thinking of?’, ‘We can’t eat this...’ Then, amidst all the complaining and mumbling, an old man seated at the back of the room stood up and let out a loud wail, ‘O woe is me!’ he cried. ‘Once upon a time I had a daughter and I asked her how much she loved me and she said she loved me like meat loves salt. I didn’t understand what she meant and I sent her away. She’s probably been taken by bandits or eaten by wild beasts and I’ll never see her again…’

Everyone was shocked and the room fell silent. Then the young bride rose to her feet and walked down the room and embraced her father. And the two of them were reconciled.

And they all lived happily ever after.

THE GOLDEN BALL

OR HANGMAN

Like the previous story this one was collected by Sydney Oldall Addy. Mr Addy lived at the end of the nineteenth century in Norton, which was then a separate village in Derbyshire but is now a suburb to the south-west of Sheffield. He was a very clever and interesting man. I have no idea what he did for a living – I have heard someone describe him as the Revd Addy but I don’t think that is correct – but, in the way of the times, he was an expert amateur at no end of things. He collected and wrote about folk songs and customs, traditional stories, archaeology, buildings, children’s games; in fact anything which he found interesting and worth preserving.

One of the – no, I think the – best ever collection of Derbyshire folk tales is the one he published in 1895 called Household Tales and Traditional Remains which is, sadly, impossible to get hold of these days but can be found in various libraries and archives. Addy said it was a collection of stories he found in the counties of York, Lincoln, Derby and Nottingham. However, an analysis of the places he credits for the stories put almost all of them, apart from the Lincolnshire ones, within the small area where those three counties meet. In other words, within a short distance of his home in Norton. I don’t now how he travelled, probably by horse or pony and trap – I don’t suppose an antiquarian would go in for one of those newfangled automobiles! I like to picture him on his bicycle, peddling out across the moors heading for the Hope Valley or to Chesterfield armed with his notebooks and wondering what gems he would find that day.

This strange little story was told to him by Sarah Ellen Potter, aged fourteen, ‘the daughter of Mr George Potter, of Castleton’ (who, I believe, may have kept one of the pubs in the town). ‘Hangman’ is well known as a song. It is one of the classic ballads and has been sung by all kinds of folk singers, including the black American blues singer Leadbelly and the rock band Led Zeppelin!

Once upon a time there was a little girl. She was a nice little girl and everyone loved her, including the Magician. One day the Magician created for her a beautiful golden ball and he gave it to her father to present to her on her birthday. But along with the ball went a warning – if you ever lose the ball, the Magician will have you hanged!