Essex Folk Tales for Children E-Book

Jan Williams

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 115

Beschreibung

A knight in glass armour, the basilisk of Saffron Walden, Old King Cole of Colchester – Essex is a place full of fantastical characters and mysterious tales. Storyteller Jan Williams is a familiar sight around the county, entrancing locals with her tales of ghostly Romans and vicious Vikings. These stories – specially chosen to be enjoyed by 7- to 11-year-old readers – will unlock the colourful world of Essex and help children to engage with their surroundings.

Leseprobe

First published 2018

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Jan Williams, 2018

Illustrations © Simon Peecock, 2018

The right of Jan Williams 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 8347 1

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

About the Author

About the Illustrator

NURSERY RHYMES

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

Old King Cole

Humpty Dumpty

Mother Hubbard

WHERE TO FIND A DRAGON

Wormingford – The Coccodil in the Water

Great Bentley – The Dragon Who Loved Beer

Saffron Walden – The Terrifying Basilisk

Henman – Strange News Out of Essex

Brightlingsea – Are You Afraid of the Dark?

WHITE LADIES

Canvey Island – The Smell of Violets

The Song of Jacky Robinson

The Cold Girl at East Mersea

The Ghost at the Dog and Pheasant

Two Husbands, Three Ghosts and Me

INVADERS

Mersea Island – The Ghost of the Roman Centurion

Northey Island – The Heroes of the Battle of Maldon

Benfleet – The Viking Who Lost his Ships

On the Beach – Olaf of the Short Fat Hairy Legs

RUFFIANS AND RASCALS

Pirate Jake at Fingringhoe

Hard Apple Will Smuggles at Paglesham

The Dark House of Rowhedge

The Lady Smuggler of Leigh-on-Sea

HIGHWAYMEN AND THEIR HORSES

Epping – Black Bess and Dick Turpin

Leigh-on-Sea – Brown Meg and Jerry Cutter

Romford – Silver and Stephen Bunce

FAIRY STORIES

The Bad-Tempered Brownie

Funny Man! Funny Man!

Remedies of a Wise Woman

Tales from the Tower

Beauty and the Beast

The King of Colchester’s Daughter

The Gift

A Big Thank You

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I was born on the beautiful west coast of Wales, where there are many magic stories from cities below the waves and bells that ring out from a submerged forest. I was slow to learn to read as a child, but my mother filled my life with those stories which she told me when I had long bouts of sickness and could only lie in bed and listen. She would make up stories based on the little china figures that were dotted around the shelves of my bedroom and they became very real to me.

Luckily, at my school we were encouraged to tell stories, and later I found when I became a teacher myself, the children I taught enjoyed the tales I had learnt in my childhood. It helped that I enjoyed travelling. I have been to Russia, America, the Ukraine, Poland, Spain and France, and I have taught in Canada, Birmingham and Maidstone. Finally, I settled in Brightlingsea in Essex, where barges and fishing smacks still float down the estuary of the River Colne.

I suddenly began to really enjoy my storytelling when I heard that excellent storyteller Taffy Thomas doing a storytelling workshop at Sidmouth, and amazingly the very next year I won Sidmouth Folk Festival Storyteller of the Year! At last I had discovered this is what I really wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be an oral storyteller, someone who told tales aloud. Luckily, I made friends with other storytellers like Carl Merry and Andy Jennings, and we started the Essex Storytellers and travelled around schools, theatres, festivals, historic buildings and libraries! In that way we saw many of the places where the Essex folk tales had grown up, and collected a great deal of information from people who knew this area really well.

Jan Williams2018

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

I was born into a big family in the Moulsham end of Chelmsford. My playground was the swing park of the Woolworths shop and coffee bars. The highlight of the week was Saturday morning pictures. An Essex ‘Townie’ in fact!

But when I hit ten all was to change. Dad’s work was to take him to Colchester, and we went rural. Here I discovered our new home was the magical village of Rowhedge, 3 miles from Colchester. Here I discovered the wonder of wood and streams, gravel pits and marshes, the rhythm of tides with their wealth of birds, beasts, fish and creepy crawlies. I explored and plundered the ruined and deserted buildings of industries that put the village on the map.

Local boys taught my older brother and I the black arts of den building, firemaking and building rafts. One of our finds was an old rubbish dump. We found porcelain, kettles and bottles. I started drawing and painting as a teenager, and among my first artworks were pictures of a pale blue beautiful bottle we had found.

Our family was an arty bunch. My mother was an actor, my father was a writer and my brother was a guitarist. So it stood to reason I should be an artist. I trained for seven years at Colchester Art School, Wimbledon School of Art and the Slade. One of the teachers who helped me was Maggi Hambling. I branched out into collage, sculpture and printmaking.

I lived in London for eight years with my partner before the call of the east coast and all its treasures finally brought us to Brightlingsea.

It was good to meet Jan. Her stories intrigued me with their mix of wildlife, local history and fantasy. And I am delighted to illustrate them.

Now I have three grown-up children. And I continue to paint daily. They are sometimes my toughest critics, but just occasionally my admirers.

Simon Peecock2018

NURSERY RHYMES

The very first stories that we learn as children are usually nursery rhymes, which sometimes do not make much sense, because they have been passed down over many years and are connected with historical events that we no longer completely understand. It is quite a piece of detective work to completely understand the story, yet because they have rhyme and repeat themselves, they stay in our memories, even when we grow old! It is always interesting to find out what nursery rhymes your family can remember. Even when my mother was eighty-five years old, she still remembered the nursery rhymes of her childhood!

Sometimes we know who wrote the nursery rhymes, or sometimes they just got passed down by word of mouth from person to person over the years, with nobody saying who invented them. We can be proud of the fact that four of the best-known English nursery rhymes started in Colchester.

TWINKLE, TWINKLE LITTLE STAR

The first one I found out about was when I celebrated the anniversary of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ in the lovely gardens of Colchester Castle, in front of the pretty eighteenth-century house that is Hollytrees Museum.

BE A STAR

Twinkle, twinkle little star

How I wonder what you are!

Up above the world so high,

Like a diamond in the sky

Twinkle, twinkle little star,

How I wonder what you are!

When the blazing sun is gone;

When he nothing shines upon,

Then you show your little light,

Twinkle, twinkle all the night.

Twinkle, twinkle little star,

How I wonder what you are!

Then the traveller in the dark,

Thanks you for your tiny spark,

He could not see which way to go

If you did not twinkle so.

Twinkle, twinkle little star,

How I wonder what you are!

In the dark blue sky, you keep,

And often through my curtains peep,

For you never shut your eye,

Till the sun is in the sky,

Twinkle, twinkle little star,

How I wonder what you are!

As your bright and tiny spark,

Lights the traveller in the dark

Though I know not what you are.

Twinkle, twinkle little star

How I wonder what you are!

Now, we do know who wrote these well-loved verses. It was a girl called Jane Taylor, who had a sister called Ann, three years older than her. Ann used to worry about Jane because she was a rather delicate child. In fact, her father moved the family from London to Lavenham and then to Colchester to keep her well.

Jane developed into an imaginative child, who loved entertaining people. When they lived in Lavenham, they used to put her on the baker’s kneading board, so she could be seen and heard telling her stories to a crowded shop, full of listeners. She was still rather a timid child, but Ann, with the help of the servants, kept an eye on Jane when she walked about the village muttering her verses.

The girls grew up in a house full of books. Their father, Isaac Taylor, did copper engravings for book illustration, and from early morning until dusk his five children helped him. They stopped only for meals, during which time the books were read aloud so the process of learning continued. Ironically, when Isaac discovered that his children won poetry competitions, he said very emphatically that he did not wish his daughters to become authors, yet they did!

Amusingly, a London publisher read the children’s poems when they appeared anonymously, and in 1804–05 he published Original Poems for Infant Minds by several Young Minds, including Ann, Jane and their brother Isaac.

Ann and Jane went on to write books for children which were well liked, especially the book with ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’ in it. They may have been inspired by their father taking Jane to a series of lectures by an ‘astronomer of repute’ at the Moot Hall.

Moonlight had a special fascination for the family too. Jane would sit on a Roman wall reading poems to her friends by moonlight. When the family grew up and were separated, their father told them all to leave their houses at night for a few minutes and gaze up at the moon thinking of each other. And then, when Ann got married, Jane wrote on her own with her mother’s encouragement, but sadly Jane died when she was 41. Ann lived longer but only occasionally wrote, about social issues like anti-slavery, prison reform and ethics. I must admit, it is Jane I admire, for she was a shy person who came to life through her imagination. That was what I was like as a child myself.

OLD KING COLE

They love festivals and feasting in Colchester, and so it seems appropriate that Old King Cole may have been a Colchester man. See what the nursery rhyme has to say about him.

Old King Cole was a merry old soul

And a merry old soul was he.

He called for his pipe

And he called for his bowl

And he called for his fiddlers three.

Every fiddler had a fiddle

And a very fine fiddle had he

Oh there’s none so fair as can compare

With King Cole and his fiddlers three.

Like many nursery rhymes, no one knows who wrote the rhyme, but all the illustrations of him show a remarkably merry fellow who enjoyed music and food and his pipe, and the rhyme appears to have been composed about 1706.

So who was he? Finding a few clues, he seems to have been inspired by a Celtic king who gave his name to Colchester (Col was the first part of the king’s name and Chester was the name for a fort, so putting the two phrases together made it ‘Col’s Fort’, and this developed into ‘Colchester’).

Another clue might have been that he was the father of St Helena, and she was famous for going all the way to Jerusalem to find the True Cross which grew as a tree at Golgotha, and relics of the Three Wise Men. Later on, Colchester put symbols of this journey on its town’s shield, and the shield still has the same design. There was a cross on a green budding piece of wood against a blood red background, and three nails to remember the crucifixion of Jesus, and three crowns for the Three Wise Men.

Stand in front of Colchester Town Hall and look up to the very top. You will see a statue of St Helena carrying the cross, and inside the building there is a stained-glass window design of her. As for King Cole, he seems to be a very popular illustration in books of fairy tales and a good verse to chant. It’s just a little strange that he always appears in a costume that seems more Tudor than Roman. Perhaps his story was much later in history. Maybe you will have ideas of your own about his story.

HUMPTY DUMPTY

Humpty Dumpty always provokes lively discussion as to what his historical origins might be. Again, we have no idea whose rhyme this might be. His name makes us smile, and even more curious is the idea that he is egg-shaped.

The nursery rhyme version, however, actually is quite complicated, as people in Colchester like to think of him as a cannon! This is what the rhyme actually says:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Many people believe the small, egg-shaped mortar cannon appears in the story of the siege of Colchester, when the Roundheads attacked the king’s men in 1648 during the English Civil War. The king’s men tried to protect their city, and in particular they put a cannon on St Mary’s Church, which was fired by no less a person than ‘One Eyed Jack Thompson’.