Devonshire Folk Tales E-Book

Michael Dacre

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

Seitenzahl: 262

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

This collection of traditional stories and tales, many of which are published for the first time, will delight lovers of Devonshire folklore. Some of the stories have been gleaned from residents of the county, whilst others have been developed by the author and have evolved through countless tellings. All the tales within represent this large and diverse county throughout its long and distinguished history, from the founding of Britain itself by Brute the Trojan at Totnes, to recent reports of haunted roads and phantom hairy hands. Also included are giants, devils, witches, ghosts, fairies, spectral black dogs and a wide range of other supernatural phenomena, all exemplifying the vigorous and earthy nature of the Devon imagination down through the ages. It is a book of wonders, to terrify and intrigue, and leads the reader around this beautiful and fascinating county.

Leseprobe

MICHAEL DACRE

Wendy Dacre provided the main illustrations which were made as shadow puppet scenes on a screen and then digitally photographed.

First published in 2011

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2011

All rights reserved

© Michael Dacre, 2011

The right of Michael Dacre, 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 7033 7

MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 7034 4

Original typesetting by The History Press

CONTENTS

Introduction

One

The Founding of Britain: Brute the Trojan and Gogmagog

Two

Childe’s Tomb and the Legends of Ordulf and Elfrida

Three

Strange Waters: de Bathe Pool and the Wood Henge at Bow

Four

Legends of Sir Francis Drake – the Wizard

A Game of Bowls

Fire-ships

Water from Dartmoor

Drake’s Cannonball

Drake and the Devil

The Wyvern

The Clever Cabin Boy

Drake’s Drum

Five

Legends of the Fitz Family

John Fitz

Sir John Fitz

Six

Lady Howard

Seven

Dewer

The Dewerstone

‘Good Sport!’

Branscombe’s Loaf and Cheese

Squire Cabell

The Whisht Hounds

Brentor Church

Dewer as ‘Dieus’

Eight

Tales of Berry Pomeroy

The Lady in White

The Lady in Blue

Castle Mill

John Nokes’s Dream

Dogs and Cameras

‘Anyone seen a Ghost?’

Nine

Jan Bodacott’s Story

Ten

The Devil at Widecombe

Eleven

Cranmere Benjie

Twelve

The Hairy Hands of Postbridge

Thirteen

The Candle of Bridgerule

Fourteen

Fairy Ointment

Fifteen

More Pixy Tales

Tom White

Jan Coo

Chudleigh Rocks and Other Snippets

Sixteen

The Two Farmers

Seventeen

The Three Sillies

Eighteen

The Parson and the Clerk

Nineteen

Tom Taw

Twenty

More Tales of the Taw

The Devil Comes to Belstone

The Talking Hare

The Seven Prebends of Chulmleigh

Francimass

Jack the White-Hat

Twenty-one

The Fish and the Ring

Twenty-two

Tom Faggus the Highwayman

Twenty-three

Witch Hares

‘Run, Granny, Run!’

Moll Stancombe

Dewer Hunts a Hare

Twenty-four

The White Bird of the Oxenhams

Twenty-five

Buried Treasure

Cadbury and Dolbury

Fardel Hall

Trow Hill

Downhouse

Radford

Twenty-six

Ghost Houses

Chagford

Buckfastleigh

Mary Morton’s Story

Harleston

Dolton

Twenty-seven

Haunted Roads

Sidford

Beetor Cross

Long Lane

de Bathe Cross

The A38

Milton Combe

The A386: Merton to Meeth

Twenty-eight

Cruel Copinger

Twenty-nine

Witches

The Witches of Ashreigney

The Witch of Membury

Thirty

The Devil’s Footprints, or the Great Devon Mystery

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

In 1988 I became a professional storyteller, having been inspired by The Company of Storytellers who were then touring Devon, performing and running workshops for Beaford Arts, our local north Devon arts centre. The company – Ben Haggarty, Sally Pomme Clayton and Hugh Lupton – were specifically telling stories for adults and I had never come across this before. I was spellbound, caught in a web of words, images and astonishing stories. Here was an art form whose existence I had never suspected but immediately wanted to practise. We signed up for all their courses and at the end of their tour we joined them in a public performance in the old cobbled inn yard of the George in Hatherleigh. After the show, over a pint or two on an outside bench, they asked us what we were doing and when we said we were unemployed at that time, they asked, ‘Why don’t you become storytellers?’ So we said, ‘All right then!’, and we did. We got a brochure together and sent it to schools and began to get bookings. Two years later I was the storyteller-in-residence for the Beaford Centre.

Twenty-two years later, here I am with a book of Devonshire folk tales, the fruit of a rich and varied career in this large, diverse county; itself rich in the oral tradition, replete with legends, myths, fairytales and the popular fictions of a people close to the land. And what a stunning landscape it is! The stories reflect and are imbued with the wildness and danger of the moors, the ruggedness and treachery of the coasts and the remoteness and secrecy of much of the hilly, wooded and leafy lane-threaded countryside.

Devonshire Folk Tales is a new book of traditional Devon stories, some of them not previously published nor well known. One or two of the stories I have gleaned myself from ordinary people living here. A handful of them I have evolved over the years. Others are well known and have been anthologised in many previous collections but have here been given a new vitality, a fresh clothing of dynamic words.

All the stories are peculiarly Devonian, from the founding of Britain itself by Brute the Trojan at Totnes – he is supposed to have said, ‘Here I stand and here I rest/And this place shall be called Totnes’, and the stone he said it on can still be seen in Totnes High Street – to a Devon dialect version of ‘The Three Sillies’, printed in Ilfracombe in 1922. Additionally there are recent reports of haunted roads, of which Devon boasts a considerable number, told to me by personal friends and acquaintances, some of whom experienced the hauntings themselves.

Here then are tales of giants, devils, witches, ghosts, fairies (or pixies), spectral black dogs (of which Devon boasts whole packs), historical characters and a wide range of supernatural and natural phenomena, all exemplifying the vigorous and earthy nature of the Devon imagination down through the ages. It is a book of wonders to terrify and intrigue, and all the stories are set in an actual place you can visit, so it is also a tourist’s guide to the folklore on the ground of this beautiful and fascinating county.

ONE

THE FOUNDING OF BRITAIN: BRUTE THE TROJAN AND GOGMAGOG

After the fall of Troy, when the Greeks took the city by means of the wooden horse devised by the wily Odysseus, some of the Trojans, led by Aeneas, fled the carnage, rapine and pillage and set sail into the Mediterranean, coming at length to the shores of Italy, where they founded a new city that would one day be Rome.

Aeneas’s son Ascanius had a son called Sylvius, and when Sylvius’s wife was about to give birth, Ascanius had his wizards surround the bed to predict the child’s future and whether it would be a boy or a girl. The wizards duly intoned their tone-deaf incantations, drank their hallucinogenic potions, lit their noxious concoctions and examined their reeking entrails, thus by art-magic terrifying the young mother out of her wits. They pronounced that the child was a boy who would be the death of his mother and father, who would be outlawed, outcast and exiled and who would found a race and country whose power and fame would extend over the whole world.

Nor were the wizards out in their forecast. The mother died in giving birth to the boy, who was duly named Brute, and in his sixteenth year Brute killed his father in a hunting accident. The huntsmen drove the deer in front of them and Brute, taking aim, loosed a fateful arrow which whistled through the air and struck Sylvius under the left pap. He died instantly. Brute’s surviving relatives were uneasy at the proximity of a boy who had killed his parents, so the lad was exiled and made his way to Greece, where he freed the enslaved Trojans, numbering some 7,000, and in 320 ships this outlawed people, having no country to call their own, embarked on their greatest adventure, sailing into the Mediterranean and into the unknown.

On the misty morning of the third day, they came to the uninhabited island of Leogecia, which had been laid waste by pirates some years earlier. Brute sent a party of men to spy out the land and, after killing many deer in the forest, they chanced upon the ruins of a city, overgrown by trees and undergrowth. Among these eerie and abandoned buildings they discovered a ruined temple dedicated to Diana, goddess of the hunt. In the temple stood a marble statue of the goddess; intact, perfect, with bared breasts, raised bow and arrow, and features so lifelike that the men were afraid of her, for the eyes followed them around the clearing.

Returning to the ships with the venison, the hunters told Brute of the city and its temple, and that night he made his way alone to the place with all things needful for a sacrifice. He set up an altar before the statue, raised a goblet filled with wine mixed with the blood of a pure-white hind, drank from it and said, in thrilling, ringing tones:

Great Goddess, Diana, forest queen, protecter of lost children,

You who walk the maze of Heaven and the forest paths,

Tell us what land, what safe home and haven we may inhabit,

That we may build temples to you there, Great Goddess Diana.

Then he walked three times round the altar, poured out the wine and blood upon it, and lay down in front of it on the hide of the white hind who had kindly donated the blood. At midnight Brute slipped into the sweetest sleep he had known since killing his father and dreamed that he awoke, that the marble image of the goddess turned her luminous eyes upon him, that she stepped down from the plinth, the new moon in her hair, a sceptre in her hand, the morning star glittering at its point. Fixing him with her lovely green eyes, the goddess Diana spoke these words in a voice like a peal of silver bells:

Brute, lost child, you sacrificed your father to me

And you shall be exalted to the highest honour.

You will sail from this sea, centre of the old world,

Past the Pillars of Hercules into an unknown sea,

Where you will find an island, the abode of giants,

Sad remnant of a strong race but old now and past it.

The Island of the Mighty will be your new home

And you will found a race, the mightiest ever known.

When Brute awoke next morning, he hastened back to the ships and told his companions of his wonderful vision and with great joy they got underway, making full sail to the west in search of the island-home Diana had promised them.

They had many adventures, fighting off Moroccan corsairs and escaping from sirens, and in Gaul they found more refugees from Troy, led by a huge man called Corineus, 7ft high, strong and valiant, whose favourite hobby was giant-wrestling. They joined forces, sailing into the unknown sea, a fair wind behind them and on the third day they saw land. It was a place of mists and mellow fruitfulness, with a gentle coastline, richly forested, with red cliffs and sandy beaches. A soft rain was falling on their ships as they steered into the mouth of a river, tree-clad hills rising on either side as they rowed, slowly and wonderingly up this turning, twisting river, until they came to a broad, open place, the wooded hills lying back from it, a great dark moor in the distance. Here the river ran broad and shallow; ahead it narrowed, becoming unavigable so here it was that Brute decided to land.

He was the first to step ashore and, as he did so, his foot made an imprint in a large, granite rock lying on the bank and he said, ‘Here I stand and here I rest and this place shall be called Totnes.’ Actually he said it in Trojan or Crooked Greek but there, where the salt tide mingles with the brown waters of the moorland Dart, Totnes still stands firm and the stone that Brute stepped on lies halfway up the High Street, outside No 37. You can see the footprint and it’s called the Brutus Stone, to prove the truth of what I say.

At that time the island was called Albion after the giant of the same name, son of the Celtic sea-god Manannan Mac Lir. He fathered a race of giants and they were the indigenous people when Brute arrived on these shores. But Brute wanted this land, for it was beautiful and bountiful and had been promised to him by the goddess Diana, so they drove all the giants up onto the high moors, where they sheltered in caves, and the Trojans took the land. But the giants were only biding their time. They gathered in a huge cave on Dartmoor, where they plotted their revenge, electing a leader for the first time, being natural anarchists – Gogmagog, who was 20ft tall. He could uproot an oak tree, strip off the branches like celery leaves and wield it like a hazel wand.

The Britons were celebrating the anniversary of their landing at a festival of thanksgiving to Diana at Totnes when the giants burst into the feasting hall and fell upon the surprised invaders, ripping off arms and legs, wrenching heads from bodies and gouging out hearts and entrails, Gogmagog laying about him with his enormous club. But the Britons soon rallied, fighting back fiercely, and the giants – huge, lumbering has-beens – could not dodge the British swords, spears and arrows. They fell in great bloody heaps until only Gogmagog was left alive and him they caught and bound, for Corineus had a mind to wrestle with him. For this they went to the place where Plymouth now stands, for there was much clearing up for the womenfolk to do at Totnes – burying the bodies, sluicing the blood from the hall, aromatherapy and new feng shui.

On what is now Plymouth Hoe Corineus, a giant of a man himself at 7ft high, faced Gogmagog, 20ft tall and ugly to boot, and soon they were hugging each other tight in the shackles of their embraces, making the very air quake with their heaving and gasping. Gogmagog broke three of Corineus’s ribs – cric-crac! cric-crac! cric-crac!

Roused by pain and fury and suddenly imbued with divine strength from Diana, Corineus broke the giant’s grip, heaved him up on his shoulders and ran to the edge of the cliff, where he hurled the monster onto the sharp rocks below, so that he was mangled to pieces and dyed all the waters of Plymouth Sound red with his blood. Thereafter that place was known as ‘Lamgoemagot’ or ‘Gogmagog’s Leap’.

The echo of this fight survives down the centuries to the present day. A Plymouth woman told Theo Brown, the late folklore recorder for the Devonshire Association, that the red earth of Devon was due to the county being formed from the body and blood of a giant, while in Tudor times, two giant figures were cut into the earth on the hillside of Plymouth Hoe. The Plymouth Corporation audit book for 1529 states, ‘Cleansing of the Gogmagog 8d’, and in 1566, ‘New cutting the Gogmagog 20d’.

Alas, these figures, one of whom was surely Corineus, were destroyed when the Royal Citadel was built in the reign of Charles II; but during the excavation for the foundations the builders turned up a huge pair of jaws and teeth that could only have belonged to a giant.

Two giant effigies have stood in the Guildhall in London for centuries. The present figures replaced a pair destroyed in the Blitz of the Second World War, which in turn replaced a pair consumed by the Great Fire of London in 1666. They are now called Gog and Magog but Queen Elizabeth I would have known them as Gogmagog and Corineus.

After this great victory over the indigenous inhabitants the Britons colonised the country, calling it Britain after Brute, while Corineus ruled over Cornwall, naming it after himself. Later, Brute founded the city of New Troy on the banks of the Thames, which became known as the City of London. And so Brute, the slayer of his mother and father, outcast, exile and outlaw man, came home to the island of Britain and fulfilled the final prophecy of the soothsayers, founding the mighty race of the British people, and when he died, his three sons ruled the Island of the Mighty. Locrine ruled over Logria or Logres, which is present-day England, Camber held Cambria, which we call Wales, while Albanact ruled over Albany, which we call Scotland.

Thus according to that grand old fabricator, Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his Histories of the Kings of Britain, the founding of Britain herself took place in Devonshire, presided over by our tutelary goddess, Diana. You know it makes sense.

TWO

CHILDE’S TOMB AND THE LEGENDS OF ORDULF AND ELFRIDA

CHILDE’S TOMB

Childe’s Tomb, a rough granite cross on a rough granite plinth, is not strictly speaking a tomb at all, though beneath it lies the remains of a barrow and a stone cist, or kistvaen, which have been empty for a long time. It stands at the edge of Fox Tor Mire, several miles southwest of Princetown and commands a desolate view over one of the widest and most treacherous bogs on Dartmoor, the one that Arthur Conan Doyle had in mind for Grimpen Mire in The Hound of the Baskervilles. Childe’s Tomb is not a tomb but the memorial of one.

Risdon gives the story in his Survey of Devon of 1630. Childe was a Saxon lord in the time of King Edgar, Childe being his title, as in Byron’s ‘Child Harold’ or the fairytale ‘Child Roland to the Dark Tower Came’, and he was ‘a man of fair possessions’, according to Risdon, owning much land in the Plymstock area. Childe of Plymstock was also a keen hunter who liked to hunt alone on the moor at all times of the year.

One day in the middle of winter, while tracking the deer out in the deepest wastes of the moor, he was overwhelmed by a blizzard that blew relentlessly for three days. At first he tried to battle his way through the blinding snow but with all landmarks gone, he went round and round in circles. Finally, when he and his horse were exhausted, he tried to wait out the storm; but the snow went on and on and on swirling around him, and Childe knew that death was at hand. In desperation, for he was a big man ‘in the heat of his prime’, as Risdon puts it, he killed his beloved horse, ripped open its belly with his hunting knife and crawled in amongst the entrails, seeking warmth and shelter from the deadly wind – but to no avail. The wind shrieked louder, the stinging snow drove faster, piercing the sodden carcase and Childe’s life ebbed away. A week later, a pedlar crossing the moor caught sight of the horse’s body and found Childe inside, curled up and frozen stiff. Nearby, scrawled on a stone in the horse’s blood were the words, ‘They fyrste that fyndes and brings mee to my grave / The priorie of Plimstoke they shall have’.

The pedlar brought the news to Tavistock, at which Abbot Sihtric and the monks of Tavistock Abbey were delighted, for it was well-known that Childe had ordained in his will that all his lands and riches should go to the church that buried him and this dying screed bequeathed Plymstock Priory as well. Unfortunately, the news of Childe’s death sped almost as quickly to the monks of Plymstock and they were equally certain that Childe’s lands and riches, especially the priory, should be in Plymstock hands.

But Tavistock was nearer and Tavistock got to the body first and started carting it laboriously back over the moor on a bier. The monks of Plymstock got wind of this and rode hell-for-leather round by road to the only bridge over the fast-flowing River Tavy, where they skulked most unmonklike in ambush, armed to the teeth. The monks of Tavistock heard of this too – the abbey spy network must have been almost supernatural – and they struggled several more miles upstream, where they erected a makeshift bridge, crossed over the swirling, snow-fed Tavy, and made it safely to the consecrated grounds of Tavistock Abbey. This bridge was thereafter called ‘Guile Bridge’. The body of Childe the Hunter is indeed supposed to be buried at Tavistock Abbey, but how the monks of Tavistock got their hands on Plymstock Priory poses a problem, for there never was a priory at Plymstock.

ORDULF

Some scholars have identified Childe the Hunter with Ordulf, son of Ordgar, Earl of Devon. Father and son were buried in Tavistock Abbey, which they had helped to found. Ordulf’s tomb became one of the famous sights of the abbey because it was so enormous, for Ordulf was a giant as well – 8ft tall. In 1125 William of Malmesbury gave an account of some of his feats:

He was travelling to Exeter in company with King Edgar his kinsman. On dismounting from their horses at the city gate early in the morning, they found the door doubly barred and bolted against them. Thereupon Ordulf seized the bolts with both hands and with very little apparent effort broke them to pieces [though bolts are usually on the inside of a gate], tearing down part of the wall as he did so. Then, warming to the work and gnashing his teeth, he loosened the gate with a kick and forced open the hinges on either side [though hinges are usually only on one side] with such violence as to shiver the door posts. The rest of the company applauded [no doubt uneasily] but the king pretended to make light of it, saying he must be possessed of the Devil’s own strength.

In a wood near Horton in Dorset there was a monastery, now destroyed, which thanks to Ordulf’s generosity ranked in those days as an abbey. To this place he used to resort in moments of leisure. There down a ravine abounding in game flowed a stream 10ft wide. Ordulf would bestride this stream and with a large knife would casually strike off the heads of the beasts that his retainers drove toward him.

‘For all his size and strength,’ writes William of Malmesbury, he died in the prime of life (‘in the heat of his prime’) leaving instructions that he was to be buried at Horton. But as he had directed certain legacies to be given to the church which housed his body, his wishes were frustrated by the violence of Abbot Sihtric, who carried off both giver and gifts to his own abbey at Tavistock. Later on Sihtric turned pirate, ‘to the disgrace of his order and the discredit of the church’, a vocation obviously more suited to his abilities.

ELFRIDA

Once upon a time the most beautiful woman in England was Elfrida, daughter of Ordgar, Earl of Devon and sister to Ordulf the Giant. She lived in Harewood Castle on the banks of the River Tamar, a few miles to the west of Tavistock, and the rumour of her beauty came to the court of King Edgar, who had recently been widowed and was looking for a wife and mother for his six-year-old son Edward.

King Edgar murmured to his most trusted courtier, ‘Ethelwold, dear chap, ride down to Devon and bring me word of this Elfrida’s beauty, whether she be fit for a queen’. Ethelwold took horses and rode down into the West Country until he reached the lovely fairytale castle of Harewood on its wooded elevation above the river. As he clattered into the courtyard, Elfrida herself came to greet him in the doorway. He was struck dumb by her beauty. With her long golden plaits, her eyes the colour of speedwell, young, clear-skinned, red-lipped and delicious, in her gown of pure-white silk trimmed with gold, she was the picture of a fairytale princess. Now young Ethelwold had brought his own heart with him down to Devon that day and he lost it there and then.

He forgot the weariness of his long ride down the A30, he forgot his friends’ requests for clotted cream and cider, he forgot his loyalty to the king. He was head over heels in love and nothing else mattered. So Ethelwold wooed Elfrida for himself and because he was a handsome young courtier, impoverished but accomplished, he won her for his wife. But on his wedding night fear crept up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. What could he tell the king? The king might not be best pleased with him for stealing his bride.

Then he had an idea. Making the excuse of important state business to his wife of a day, he rode back to the court and said to King Edgar, ‘Your Majesty has been misinformed. Rumour has exaggerated the Lady Elfrida’s beauty. She is fair but not so fair as to be worthy of a king’.

Edgar accepted his trusted courtier’s word, while Ethelwold kept his marriage secret and spent as much time with his family as he could, keeping Elfrida in Harewood and Tavistock, where she was well away from the court. But rumour is a persistent hound, dogging the whispered tales to the king’s ear – that Elfrida was even more beautiful than the tale-tellers said, that the king was deceived by his most trusted courtier, and that Ethelwold had seized the beauty for himself.

Edgar was determined to see for himself and ordered a hunting expedition to the Royal Forest of Dartmoor, commanding Ethelwold to prepare Harewood as his hunting lodge. Horrified, Ethelwold rode hell-for-leather to Harewood, beseeching his wife to hide her beauty from the king or his life and their life together would be forfeit. But this was the first Elfrida had heard of Edgar’s intentions toward her and she was furious. To be sought by a king, then tricked into marriage by a mere courtier! Why, the young scallywag wasn’t even wealthy! She was the one with the money! But she concealed her true feelings beneath her cunning.

‘Of course, my dear,’ she soothed, ‘we cannot allow the king to mar our great happiness together. I will find a way to disguise my beauty. Devon mud should do it’. Relieved, Ethelwold rode back to meet the king at Tavistock and brought him to Harewood.

But when they rode into the courtyard of Harewood Castle, there to greet King Edgar at the doorway was the loveliest young woman he had ever seen, with her long golden hair, her skin like cream, the bloom of the heather in her cheeks, clad in the costliest gown of light-blue silk to match her eyes. Edgar fell in love with her on the spot but disguised his true feelings under an aloof politeness and Ethelwold was much relieved, for it seemed that Edgar was untouched by Elfrida’s beauty.

The next day, the Royal Hunt rode out onto the lonely wastes of Dartmoor and in the course of the day Ethelwold suffered a most unlucky accident; somehow he got in the way of a hunter’s arrow and it was his lifeless body that was borne back to Harewood.

Loud was Elfrida’s grief, but not too long. After the shortest decent period Edgar married her and she became Queen of England. So end all true fairytales. She bore Edgar a son, Ethelred, and she became stepmother to his other son, Edward; but as time went on she began to long for her own son Ethelred to be King of England.

Time passed, as it does, and this story now passes out of Devon into Dorset, but it will return.

Edgar died. Edward, his elder son, became King of England at the age of thirteen, even though some men said that Ethelred would make a better king, on account of Edward’s outbursts of temper and violent behaviour; but Dunstan, the great archbishop and statesman, insisted on placing the elder son on the throne.

In AD 978, when King Edward was sixteen, he was hunting down in Dorset in the royal forest hard by the Purbeck Hills, when he got separated from his companions. Coming to the edge of the wood he saw, in the red glow of the sunset, a fairytale castle on a steep round hill. It was Corfe Castle, the royal residence of his stepmother, Queen Elfrida, in her widowhood. Now, although there was no love lost between these two, Edward was the king and trusted absolutely in his Divine Right, so as he was thirsty and hungry and the dark night falling fast, he turned his horse’s steps toward the castle.

Queen Elfrida met him at the gate, for she had seen his approach. She was still a beautiful woman, richly dressed, her long, golden hair falling loosely down her silk-clad back, holding out a golden goblet of wine for her royal stepson to drink and surrounded by her servants in the darkening shadows of the gateway. Edward rode up to her as she greeted him with loving words, holding out to him the cup of wine. All at once her servants pressed close in upon him from all sides. One seized the horse’s reins, one grasped and twisted his arm, while a third slid a long thin dagger between his ribs into his heart. The golden goblet clattered down onto the stones of the gateway, blood and wine soaked his hunting-dress – and Edward, uttering one anguished cry, spurred his horse away from that stepmotherly greeting, now slumping in the saddle, now falling.

Ethelred, watching wide-eyed and horrified from the darkness of the gateway, saw his kingly half-brother dragged on the ground by one foot in the stirrup into the woods. Elfrida’s varlets ran after him, following the blood, shook the king’s carcase free of the horse and chucked it into a nearby stream.

There it lay far into the night, during which time unknown hands raised it and bore it into the hut of an old blind woman who lived by the stream. In the night a great shaft of light shone down from Heaven, streaming through the gaps in the mouldering thatch and illuminating the royal corpse. The old woman awoke and saw the light for the first time in her life, hobbled across to the young king’s body and looked upon his face, blessing God for a miracle and for a new saint.