Folklore of Sussex E-Book

Jacqueline Simpson

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Folklore
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 358

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

Sussex, although near London and nowadays extensively urbanised, has a rich heritage of traditional local stories, customs and beliefs. Among many topics explored here are tales linked to landscape features and ancient churches which involve such colourful themes as lost bells, buried treasures, dragons, fairies and the Devil. There are also traditions relating to ghosts, graves and gibbets and the strange powers of witches. Everyday life is reflected in the customs and beliefs surrounding birth, marriage and death and in traditional cures for illness. This book, when it was first published in 1973, was the first to be entirely devoted to Sussex folklore. This new edition contains information collected over the years, updated accounts of county customs and, alongside the original line drawings, is illustrated with photographs and printed ephemera relating to Sussex lore.

Leseprobe

FOLKLORE

of

SUSSEX

FOLKLORE

of

SUSSEX

JACQUELINE SIMPSON

Cover illustrations by John Gay Galsworthy

Originally published by B.T. Batsford, 1973

This edition published 2009

Reprinted 2013

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© Jacqueline Simpson, 1973, 2002, 2009, 2013

The right of Jacqueline Simpson to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, 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 9999 4

Original typesetting by The History Press

Contents

Foreword to the First Edition

Acknowledgements

Map of Sussex

Introduction

1

Churches, Bells and Treasures

2

Giants and Bogeymen

3

Dragons of Land and Water

4

Graves and Ghosts

5

Fairies

6

The Devil

7

Witches

8

Healing Charms and Magic Cures

9

From the Cradle to the Grave

10

The Turning Year

11

Local Humour

Notes

Bibliography

Foreword to the First Edition

In his monumental work The British Folklorists (London, 1968), Professor Richard M. Dorson sadly refers to the ‘fading of the British folklore movement’ at the time of the First World War. Later he pays tribute to the work of Katharine Briggs, Iona and Peter Opie, and one or two other scholars. Granting that there is substance in his basic view, it might now seem more appropriate to have used the term ‘temporary eclipse’.

Since his book was published we have seen the continued achievements of Katharine Briggs, and the Opies have added to their researches in the field of children’s lore. Yet it is true that much remains to be done, and a public appeal on the day that I write this underlines the need for still greater efforts in recording the lore and games of schoolchildren. It is not necessary to confine such an appeal to the activities of the young since, in times of ever more efficient and all-pervading mass communications, the fluidity of tradition is greatly intensified. This appeal drew particular attention to the influence of television and advertising jingles, but there is no need to stress the effect of numerous modern pressures on tradition as a whole. This is not to say that folklore and custom disappear: rather that the new or the variant is superimposed on the old with increased rapidity.

This volume by Jacqueline Simpson is therefore especially welcome, not only because of its wide scope, which can be seen from a glance thorough her own Introduction, but also because, for the first time, it brings together in an easily accessible form the folklore of Sussex. She has assembled material not hitherto published, or drawn from widely scattered sources, and presented it in such a way as to stimulate interest and collection in her own county and elsewhere. This, as I have stressed, is essential and her volume is prepared in a manner calculated to entrance and arouse the enthusiasm of the general reader and the scholar. Both have their part to play.

Jacqueline Simpson’s own scholarship is already well known to those familiar with her other work, notably the Penguin English Dictionary and her attractive and readable presentation of Icelandic folktales. She combines a delightful style and charming wit with meticulous scholarship and the present volume is a fitting complement to her accomplishments in other fields. She has for many years been a member of the Folklore Society’s Committee and her interesting and incisive contributions to the Society’s Journal are much appreciated by members. It is therefore a particular pleasure to me to welcome this brilliant young scholar as the first contributor to what it is hoped will be built into a comprehensive series on the folklore of the British Isles.

Venetia Newall

London University

February 1973

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to the following authors and publishers for permission to quote from the books and journals mentioned (page references are to Folklore of Sussex): Bob Copper, A Song for Every Season, Wm. Heinemann Ltd (1971) for pages 114–15, 122–3 and 130–2; A. Beckett, The Wonderful Weald, Mills & Boon Ltd (1911) for pages 163–4; L. Grant, A Chronicle of Rye, Noel Douglas (1927) for page 36; Folklore (LXIX, 1958) for page 92; W.D. Parish, A Dictionary of Sussex Dialect (revised by Helena Hall), Gardners, Bexhill (1957) for page 36; Sussex County Magazine for pages 37–8, 50, 56, 67, 69–72, 75–6, 83, 103, 143; West Sussex Gazette for pages 21, 22, 91, 100–1, 109, 144–5, 154, 161–2; Sussex Notes and Queries for page 68; L.N. Candlin, Tales of Old Sussex (1985) for pages 162–3; M. Wright Cuckfield, An Old Sussex Town, C. Clarke, Haywards Heath (1971) for pages 47–8; M. Wyndham, Mrs Paddick, Chapman & Hall Ltd (1947) for pages 102 and 105. Thanks also toTony Wales for providing many of the illustrations.

Introduction

There have been many books written about Sussex, its history and the beauties of its countryside, but in all of them its folklore, legends and folk-customs receive only minor and incidental mention, or, at the best, a single chapter. Yet the foundations for the study of Sussex lore had been well laid in the nineteenth century by three pioneers whose essays, though brief, are crammed with valuable material – M.A. Lower, who recorded several local legends (two of them verbatim) in his Contributions to Literature (1854) and in an article in Sussex Archaeological CollectionsXIII (1861); Mrs Charlotte Latham, who published a collection of ‘West Sussex Superstitions’ in Folk-Lore RecordI (1878); and F.E. Sawyer, who listed many seasonal customs in Sussex Archaeological CollectionsXXXIII (1883), and also produced a pamphlet on Sussex Place-Rhymes and Local Proverbs (1884).

This promising beginning, however, was never systematically followed up, though many individual items appeared in various scattered sources. Local historians describing their own towns and villages would often include two or three local tales and superstitions, while some of the more colourful legends attached to topographical features naturally appear again and again in general descriptions of the county. First-hand accounts of customs and festivals are also found in the reminiscences of people who have known rural working-class life from the inside, notably Harry Burstow in 1911 and Bob Copper (1971, 1973, 1976), but books of this type are unfortunately rare. The Sussex County Magazine (1926–56) includes a good many articles and letters touching on points of folklore; many are of great value, being based on first-hand observation or personal memories, but a few merely repeat, without acknowledgement, material drawn from older printed sources. Of particular interest are the articles contributed by Miss L.N. Candlin to the Sussex County Magazine and to the West Sussex Gazette from the 1940s onwards, since these are drawn from her own family traditions (particularly concerning the Washington, Brighton and Lewes areas), and from oral informants in many parts of Sussex. I am very grateful to her for allowing me the free use of this material, and for supplementing it with conversation and correspondence. Some of her writings have now been collected as Tales of Old Sussex (1985) and Memories of Old Sussex (1987). Other useful recent books are Tony Wales’s A Sussex Garland (1986) and A Treasury of Sussex Folklore (2000), Jim Etherington’s Lewes Bonfire Night (1993), and Andrew Allen’s A Dictionary of Sussex Folk Medicine (1995).

The aim of the present book, therefore, is to give a coherent picture of the considerable amount of Sussex folklore which has been recorded over the last 150 years, and some of which is still very much alive today. Broadly speaking, the material falls into four main categories. First, local legends: that is to say, stories that are attached to some particular place (whether it be to a natural feature such as a wood or pool, to a visible archaeological feature such as a burial mound, or to a church, house or monument), or else to some particular person whose notoriety or eccentricity serves to attract anecdotes. The actual content of such legends is very often supernatural, fantastic or grotesque; they include tales of buried treasures, lost bells, giants, bogeymen, dragons, fairies, ghosts, witches and the Devil. Occasionally they are not merely linked to well-known landmarks, but are vouched for by their narrators as having happened to ‘a man my great-grandfather knew’, or perhaps even to a closer friend or relative. Such stories have a good chance of surviving well in oral tradition, since once one has heard the legend attached to a prominent building or landmark, it is almost impossible to see the place without remembering the story.

The second major category is that of traditional beliefs and magical practices. Two chapters are devoted to particular aspects of this field – non-rational healing methods and beliefs concerned with the human life-cycle – while others are mentioned in the chapters about the Devil, fairies and witches. Thirdly comes the very extensive category of seasonal observances; this includes a varied assortment of festivals, ceremonies, customs, games, rituals, beliefs and sayings which are linked to particular dates. Here the main emphasis is on what the community, or certain groups within it, actually do in obedience to tradition, rather than on their stories and beliefs. Needless to say, there is no town or village that ever observed every single one of the seasonal customs; I have been careful to name precise localities wherever possible. Finally, there are the stock rhymes, sayings and anecdotes applied to inhabitants of certain villages by their neighbours. Sussex people have not been saddled with a regional ‘character’ to the same extent as, say, Scotsmen and Yorkshiremen; on a more local level, however, taunts and teasing sayings are quite plentiful.

Local legends, as has been remarked already, are closely linked to topographical features, especially those which seem in any way mysterious. They may be dramatic natural formations, such as prominent hills and steep coombes ascribed to the Devil’s work, or to a giant (pp. 26, 58–60), or man-made structures whose age and purpose had been forgotten. It is noteworthy that all the hills alleged to have treasure buried on them are the sites of Iron Age forts (pp. 21–3), that several spots named as fairy haunts are prehistoric or medieval earthworks (pp. 51, 56), and that certain barrows are associated with the Devil or with giants (pp. 26–7, 58–9, 63). Other conspicuous archaeological features mentioned in legends are the Long Man of Wilmington and Stane Street (pp. 25–7, 58).

There is an obvious connection between coastal erosion and legends of lost churches (pp. 19–20), while particularly deep places in rivers, bogs, moats and harbours have attracted stories of sunken bells (pp. 18–21). In three of these the name ‘Bell Hole’ occurs, and the name may well have given rise to the legend rather than vice versa; it has been suggested that in these cases ‘bell’ is a corruption of the dialect word pell, which simply means a deep hole in a river. Then again there are the strange pools called Knucker Holes, sometimes said to have monsters in them, the outstanding example being at Lyminster (pp. 34–9); dense woods may be reputed haunted; oddly placed or conspicuous buildings, notably churches, have their typical stories too. Indeed, so close is the correlation between landscape and legend that it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that every landmark and almost every building mentioned in this book is notable in its own right, quite apart from the story attached to it.

History too is reflected in legends, albeit in a very simplified form, and often distorted by mistaken antiquarian theories which linger on at popular level long after they are discarded by scholars. Thus, it was once thought that the name Alfriston meant ‘Alfred’s Town’, and this idea fostered the growth of legends that Alfred fought the Danes nearby, and even that an iron pot displayed in the Star Inn was the very one in which he burned the cakes. Danes occur quite often in Sussex stories, even though the county suffered relatively little from their raids. One tale about them, concerning the battle in Kingley Vale (p. 45), may well be based on fact; there are two others in which any original factual basis has vanished beneath fictional motifs (the raid on Bosham, pp. 18–19, and an alleged battle which Alfred fought against them on Terrible Down near Isfield, in which men waded knee-deep in blood); and one which is a sheer fantasy inspired by place-names – that Danish warriors cut withies at Withy Pits near Three Bridges to conceal their numbers, but were turned back at Turner’s Hill and crawled away to Crawley. Clearly, when folk-imagination functions in this way, it is rash to seek historical information from tales about colourful figures of the far past, such as Druids, Danes or Julius Caesar. Oddly enough, the most momentous event that ever took place on Sussex soil, the Battle of Hastings, has left only minor traces on its tales (pp. 16–17, 46).

Even stories about comparatively modern personages are often unreliable. Charles II figures in Sussex lore because he passed through the county when fleeing to France in 1651; oral tradition has so multiplied his alleged hiding-places and overnight stops on the journey that one wonders how he ever reached the coast at all. The famous episode of his hiding in an oak tree after the battle of Worcester has inspired Sussex imitations; he is said to have hidden in a yew near St Leonard’s Forest, where ‘an old woman came out and gave him some pease pudden’, and also, more plausibly, in a hollow elm in what are now the grounds of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton. This latter tale has been handed down among the descendants of a Brighton boatman who sailed on the king’s ship, yet even this excellent provenance cannot stifle an uneasy suspicion that there would have been no elm at Brighton if there had been no oak at Boscobel.

The broad trends of popular feeling have left more solid traces in folk tradition – such as the anti-Catholic prejudice which accounted for the intensity of the Guy Fawkes celebrations at Lewes and elsewhere, and perhaps for some ogre legends too (see pp. 29–30). This feeling, however, never suppressed the legends of local saints, nor could it entirely erase traces of old Catholic customs such as laying money on coffins (p. 112), and possibly the form of wassailing described on pp. 150–1. And it is almost unnecessary to point out the close links between certain crafts and ways of life and particular stories and customs – blacksmiths had their craft legend and their feast of Old Clem (pp. 143–5); cobblers their St Crispin feast (pp. 135–7); shepherds their tall stories, tales of sheep-stealers, and beliefs about ‘wish hounds’ (pp. 48–9, 162–3); carters their tales of carts bewitched (pp. 68–9); bellringers their tales of lost bells (pp. 20–1); while the connection between agriculture and many seasonal customs is immediately obvious. The smugglers hold a particular place in folklore, for they are thought to have encouraged all sorts of super-natural beliefs and stories as a cover for their own activities; in addition, of course, their exploits are often locally remembered, their alleged tunnels are talked of to this day (p. 24), and their ghosts are often said to walk.

It must also be said that the stories collected in this book, though ‘real Sussex’ in the sense that they have been cherished here for several generations at least, cannot be considered exclusive to this county – on the contrary, very many can be matched in other parts of England. The story of the Hangman’s Stone (p. 163) is told also of rocks in Northumberland and on Exmoor; the stolen Bosham Bell has a counterpart at Whitby Abbey, Yorkshire; the story of the lost Slinfold Bell shares its white oxen and its verse with that of Great Tom of Kentsham; there are irremovable skulls like those of Warbleton Priory (pp. 46–7) in various houses in Dorset,Yorkshire, Lancashire and Westmorland; the upside-down burial on Highdown Hill (pp. 41–3) can be matched on Box Hill, Surrey; the bogey called Spring-Heeled Jack (pp. 28–9) was feared by London children too – and these are but a few examples from what could be a long list. The same holds good for beliefs and for most seasonal customs too; they are traditional in Sussex, but not unique to her. Regional differences do exist in folklore, but they seldom follow county boundaries.

Inevitably the question arises, at what period did these tales, beliefs and customs flourish most? And how old are they? No general answer is possible; each case must be assessed on the evidence available, which all too often is less full than one would wish. I have given the oldest source known to me for each item in the notes at the end of the book, but in most cases it is obvious that the story or custom was already old by the time it was first mentioned in print. Roughly speaking, the picture given here refers primarily to the nineteenth century and the first few years of the twentieth, the period which was brought to a close by the First World War and by the revolution in modern agriculture and transport. When the tale or belief remained current in more recent times, I have indicated this.

But it would be wrong to assume that there is no folklore to be found nowadays; on the contrary, it is quite easy to find people, including young people in their teens and twenties, who know local traditions which have reached them orally, not from any printed source. It is indeed very likely that some Sussex readers of this book will be reminded of stories, beliefs or customs in their own districts which I have not mentioned, or of variant versions of the stories I do tell; information about such items would be most welcome.

Finally, I wish to express my thanks to the staff of the Reference Department in Worthing Public Library, who laid before me the rich resources of their Sussex Room; to Miss L.N. Candlin, whose valuable contribution has been mentioned already; to many friends in and around Worthing who (sometimes unwittingly) added items to the list; and to Dr Venetia Newall for additional information and encouragement.

Jacqueline Simpson

Worthing, 1972

A Note on the Second Edition

In the years since this book was written, many people have given me additional information; some are personal friends, others were members of audiences to which I have given talks on Sussex folklore. They will find their contributions gratefully used in this second edition. I am also grateful to those who could confirm that the tales or customs I mentioned were still remembered.

Jacqueline Simpson

Worthing, 2002

1

Churches, Bells and Treasures

One would expect that churches, by virtue of their prominent place in the landscape and in village life, would be the subjects of many and various types of legend; in fact, however, stories about them are predominantly of one type only, the ‘foundation legend’ – that is, a tale which purports to explain some peculiarity in the siting or structure of the church.

One such is at Alfriston; it is a cruciform building dating from around 1360, and it stands at some little distance from the houses, on what is probably an ancient Saxon mound, on the Tye, the village green. The real reason for the choice of this site may very well have been its comparative safety from flooding in a rather low-lying area, but legend ascribes it to supernatural guidance. The foundations were first laid, so the story goes, in a field just west of the village street, but the work made no progress, since every morning the builders found that all the stones they had laid the previous day had been uprooted, whirled through the air, and flung onto the mound on the Tye. They were puzzled and anxious, not knowing whether the supernatural force at work was a heavenly one, to be obeyed, or diabolical, to be resisted. But after some days of this, a wise man noticed four oxen lying on the Tye with their rumps touching, so as to form an equal-armed cross. The sacred sign formed by these innocent beasts was taken as settling the matter, and accordingly a church, cruciform in construction, was built upon the Tye.

There is a similar tale about Udimore Church, though here it is the name, rather than the site, which provoked the legend. It is said that the site originally chosen was on the opposite side of the river Ree to that on which the church stands now, but every night the stones were miraculously shifted across, while a voice was heard calling out; ‘O’er the mere! O’er the mere!’ Hence the present site was chosen, and hence the name of the village arose. The explanation of the name is not in fact correct (it actually comes from ‘Uda’s Mere’), but at any rate it becomes a trifle less implausible when one remembers that in broad Sussex dialect the sound ‘th’ becomes ‘d’.

At Hollington, on the other hand, it was the Devil who was held responsible for the curious site of the church, on the outskirts of Hastings, quite a distance from any centre of population, and surrounded by thick woods. There are two slightly divergent accounts, both dating from the 1840s. Both start by telling how, when men of a nearby village tried to build a church, each day’s work was undone during the night. According to the first, all the building materials used simply to vanish into thin air, and this continued until the day when ‘a countryman, happening to pass through an unfrequented wood, found there, to his no small surprise, a church newly built; the Evil One having contrived, since he could not utterly prevent the erection, to get it placed where no one could easily approach it’.

According to the other account, the angry workmen resorted to exorcism when they found their work spoilt:

Priests were summoned to lay the fiend, and they had prepared to commence their potent conjurements, when a voice was heard offering to desist from opposition if the building were erected on the spot which he should indicate. The offer was accepted. The church was raised, and then there sprung up around it a thick wood, concealing it from the general gaze.

Yet another variant on this theme is the legend attached to Battle Abbey Church, built by William the Conqueror in thanksgiving for his victory. It is said that he dreamed that his descendants would rule England for as many years as the nave of the church he was planning would have feet in its length. He therefore ordered the foundations to be marked out at 500 feet, but every night they were miraculously cut back to 315 feet, till the proud king accepted the verdict of Heaven, and allowed building to proceed on this reduced scale. Actually, this legend is rather unsatisfactory, for the date it indicates, 1381, is not particularly significant in our dynastic history. Perhaps the story really belongs to some other church with different dimensions, and has only become transferred to Battle Abbey by accidental confusion.

The founding of a church may also be a major point in a saint’s legend. Everyone who has visited Steyning probably knows how St Cuthman pushed his mother in a wheelbarrow from Devon to Sussex, waiting for some sign from Heaven to show him where he should settle and build a church. As he came into Steyning, the barrow broke, and he cut some withies from a hedge to make a rope to mend it. Haymakers working in Penfold Field (which is still also sometimes known as Cuthman’s Field) burst out laughing at his stupidity. ‘Laugh man, weep Heaven,’ answered Cuthman, and at once a heavy cloudburst drenched that field, and that field only. From that day to this, it always rains on that one meadow in haymaking time; indeed, some call it ‘the Accursed Field’, and declare that nothing will grow upon it. Meanwhile, St Cuthman had struggled a little further on his way, but again the barrow broke, this time beyond repair. Suddenly he realised that this was the sign he had been waiting for, and on this spot he later built the first church at Steyning, a timber one. It said that Christ Himself appeared in the guise of a travelling carpenter, and helped Cuthman to raise a roof-beam which was more than his own skill could manage.

A church may also become a bone of contention between a saint and the Devil. It is said that Satan, furious at certain humiliating defeats he had suffered at the hands of St Dunstan (see pp. 61–2) bided his time until the saint embarked on building a wooden church at Mayfield. Then he came in the night and gave the whole church such a thrust that it leaned all askew; but next day St Dunstan, who was of more than human size and strength, set it upright again with a single heave of his shoulder. Once more, Satan waited for his revenge – indeed, having grown wiser, he waited until the saint was dead. Then, when men of a later generation wished to build a new stone church, he undid their day’s work each night, and also pestered the stonemasons in their quarry, where the mark of his hoofs was long pointed out. How he was foiled the story does not say, but foiled he must have been, for Mayfield Church, dedicated to St Dunstan, now stands completed and in its rightful place.

A grim story is told concerning the church spire at West Tarring (once an independent village, now absorbed into Worthing). This is slightly crooked, a flaw which allegedly caused the architect such shame and despair that he killed himself by jumping from the spire, or hanging himself from it, or jumping from the cliffs at Beachy Head, according to different local informants. In fact, the distortion only became gradually apparent after the roof was reshingled late in the nineteenth century with slabs too heavy for its timbers, so the original architect was not to blame. Legends featuring suicidal or murderous architects are fairly widespread, and a story conforming to the pattern presumably began to be told in Tarring early in the twentieth century.

If churches attract legends, so too do their bells. Indeed, bells hold a great fascination for the imagination, because of their holiness and beauty, their power against evil spirits, and the slightly eerie sense of mystery which surrounds them. Particularly memorable are the legends of lost church bells, and Sussex has its full share of these. The most famous, undoubtedly, is that of the Bosham bell, which first appeared in print in the late nineteenth century, but must certainly be far older. There are some variations of detail, but the main outline of the tale is this:

In the days of Alfred the Great, Bosham was a flourishing port, with a fine church and rich monastery; but in those days, also, the Sussex coast was frequently attacked by bands of Viking raiders. One day a Viking ship was sighted making for Bosham harbour, and at this not only the farmers and fishermen but even the priests and monks fled inland, taking with them whatever valuables they could carry away, and abandoning the rest of their goods to fate. So it happened that when the raiders landed they found the church undefended, and were able to carry off the great tenor bell, the finest in the whole peal. They lashed it to the cross-benches of their ship, and set sail, delighted with their prize.

Meanwhile, the monks crept back to their plundered church. When they saw the enemy making for the open sea, they rang the remaining bells – some say, in thanksgiving for their own safety, but some say, in a backwards peal, as a solemn curse on the sacrilegious Danes. The ship was nearing the mouth of the estuary when this peal came ringing across the water, and at the sound the stolen bell broke loose from its moorings and replied, in a single loud note; then it crashed through the ship’s hull, so that bell and ship and men all vanished beneath the waves. There are some, however, who deny that the ship sank; they say its shattered planking closed again at once, and not one drop came in – a miracle which converted the heathen Danes on the spot. But all agree that the bell itself disappeared into the depths, at the spot which is now called Bosham Deep, but was formerly known as Bell Hole. And all agree that whenever the bells ring from Bosham Church, the sunken one still answers from beneath the waves.

Now the men of Bosham grieved for their lost bell, and many times they tried to recover it, but could never do so. At length, centuries after it had first been lost, a man who was knowledgeable about such matters told them that there was one way to raise it, but only one. They must find a team of pure white oxen (or, some say, white horses), harness them to the bell, and so draw it up on shore. The team was assembled, after much searching; a rope was fastened to the bell, and the oxen began to haul. All went well; the huge shape of the bell could be glimpsed as it was gradually drawn into shallow water; then all at once, when it had almost touched land, the rope snapped, and the bell rolled back into the depths – for, though nobody had noticed this, on one of the oxen there was a single black hair.

Some people, however, say that the failure of this rescue attempt was due to the foolishness of a woman. The parson who was supervising the operation had given strict orders that no female voice must be heard while it was in progress, but one woman could not restrain her excitement as she ran along the bank to watch; just at the critical moment when the bell broke the surface, she joyfully screeched, ‘Oop she comes!’ – and down she went again, for ever. It is surely no coincidence that this version comes from a harbourmaster, for sailors have a deep mistrust of the ill-luck women can bring. Whichever version one accepts, the Bosham Bell was lost again, this time for good, and only its answering note is ever heard.

It has more than once been suggested that the ‘answer’ is in fact an echo thrown back across the harbour from woods on the opposite shore, though I have not come on any first-hand account from anyone claiming to have heard such an echo himself. But the legend itself is locally very well known, and there is sometimes added to it a little rhyme, the call of the lost bell:

Ye bells of Bosham, ring for me, For as ye ring, I ring wi’ ye.

There are traditions too, though less widely known than this one, about the bells of churches that have been covered by the sea as a result of coastal erosion. At Bulverhythe, where much of the old village has been destroyed in this way, local fishermen say they ‘can hear the bells of Bulverhythe’ whenever the waves make a loud raking sound on the shingle, and that this means either bad weather or an approaching thaw. The saying was first recorded in 1884, and is still sometimes heard. Similarly, men who fished the shallow banks of Selsey Bill, where the old town of Selsey stood, used to believe that at very low tides they could sometimes hear the bells of the sunken cathedral of St Wilfred sounding underwater, out by the Owers Light. This tradition is remembered still, as are others of the same type about a lost village and its bell off Kingston Gorse, near Ferring, and off Pett Level, near Hastings.

Inland churches have their lost bells too. Near Isfield, at the junction of the Ouse and the Iron River, it is said that a bell was hurled into the river by over-zealous Puritans, at a spot called Bell Hole Brook; while at Etchingham, whose church was formerly surrounded by a moat, it is said that a bell lies hidden underground where the moat once was, and that it can never be raised again unless six white oxen drag it out. Both these legends were first mentioned in print in 1861 and are still current; similar tales were told of Hurstmonceux and Arlington, in the latter case associated with another ‘Bell Hole’, a deep pool in the Cuckmere River.

Very much alive, even now, is the tale of the Alfoldean Bell (also sometimes referred to as the Slinfold, Rudgwick, or Nowhurst Bell). Alfoldean is a bridge spanning the Arun about a mile and a half north of Slinfold, near the point where the old Roman road called Stane Street (now the A29 from Pulborough) joins the A281 from Horsham to Guildford; the spot is also known as Roman Gate. The ground thereabouts was, until recent times, very swampy.

There has long been a tradition in and around the villages of Slinfold and Rudgwick (traceable far back into the nineteenth century, and surely older still) that a bell was once lost in a bog at this spot. According to Harry Burstow, a Horsham bell-ringer who was born in 1826, this took place in the times of the Roman occupation – by which he may perhaps have meant the days when England was a Roman Catholic land. The bell, he said, had been cast in Rome itself, and was being taken up Stane Street from Chichester on its way to York, where it was to be hung in York Minster. But according to John Pullen, also a bell-ringer and a Rudgwick man, it was near the end of its journey, being destined for Rudgwick Church, only a few miles away. But both agree that it fell from the wagon and rolled into the swamp at Alfoldean, where it remains to this day, despite an attempt to raise it with a team of white oxen or heifers.

The story of this attempt is best told in the words of Stephen Peacock of Slinfold, who heard the tale from his father of the same name, who was born in 1829 and died in 1911; the elder Peacock had himself learnt the story from an old carter named Pete Greenfield, who worked on Dedisham Manor Farm, the estate nearest to Alfoldean Bridge:

They went to a cunning ’ooman [i.e. a white witch], and she told them that if they got twelve white oxen and went to the spot at midnight, they could raise the bell. But no one was to say a word, or speak. So, the story goes, one night they went with twelve white oxen which they hooked on to the bell in the bog. Then, just as the oxen drew the old bell to the top of the bog, one of the men shouted out:

We’ve got the Alfoldean gurt bell, In spite of all the devils in hell!

At that moment the chain which held it broke, the bell slipped back, and they never got it after all.

So strong is this tradition, and so precise the information it gives as to the site of the lost bell, that in 1971 a dowser was called in to locate it; his report was encouraging, and an excavation was carried out at the spot he indicated, but nothing was found.

Even more convincing are tales that claim that a sum of money, or a plot of land, was donated to a church to pay for a curfew bell to be rung there at nightfall in perpetuity, the donor being a man who once lost his way on the hills and was guided towards safety by the distant sound of church bells. This is said to have happened at Midhurst, and also at Storrington, where the tale is associated with a certain ‘Bell Field’. At Rodmell, they say, there was a miller who hated the sound of church bells so bitterly that one day, being disturbed by the sound of a peal, he cursed the bells, the smith who made them and the church itself. Rather surprisingly, no immediate punishment befell him. But years later, at a time when the district was severely flooded, he lost his way and was struggling desperately across the waterlogged fields when he heard the Rodmell bells ringing in the distance. Their sound guided him home, and in gratitude for this deliverance he acknowledged how wrong he had been and paid for a set of new bells for the church. Such tales are well within the bounds of possibility, but the fact that they are told in many places across England means that they should be seen as legends, not as historically factual memories.

I do not know whether dowsers have ever tried their skills at finding the various traditional treasures allegedly buried on the Sussex Downs, but if they should wish to, there is no lack of such sites – all prominent hills, and, in almost every case, crowned with Iron Age forts. Such earthworks are mysterious enough in themselves to attract stories, and the excavations of archaeologists, the purpose of which certainly puzzled some local people considerably, must have reinforced the existing traditions.

The best-known and most detailed tradition is that of the Golden Calf on the Trundle, near Goodwood. The first allusion to it that I know of is in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1870, which merely states that ‘Aaron’s Golden Calf is buried in Rook’s Hill’ – this being the name of the hill as a whole, while the Trundle, strictly speaking, is the hill-fort on the summit. More detailed is a dialogue quoted in Parish’s Dictionary of Sussex Dialect, 1875, to illustrate the countryman’s conscientious avoidance of the Devil’s name by a pointed use of the word. ‘he’; Parish does not name the hill in question, but it is generally assumed that he was referring to the Trundle:

‘In the Down there’s a golden calf buried; people know very well where it is – I could show you any day.’ ‘Then why don’t you dig it up?’ ‘Oh, it’s not allowed; he wouldn’t let them.’ ‘Has anyone ever tried?’ ‘Oh yes, but it’s never there when you look; he moves it away.’

E.C. Curwen, excavating the Trundle in 1928, found that the legend ‘was much upon the lips of the people of Singleton during the progress of our excavation’. More recently still, a writer in the West Sussex Gazette gave more details of the sort of experience which, so the story goes, may be expected by those who try to unearth the treasure:

You know, there’s many a one that tried… My Dad used to say as his grandfather got up early on Holy Sunday [i.e. Easter Sunday] an’ went along to the place an’ started digging. An’ he actually ketched sight of a lump o’ gold, an’ then he was almost deafed by a clap o’ thunder, an’ when he looked again, the gold was gone.

There is also a quite different account of the treasure hidden on the Trundle, according to which it is not Aaron’s calf at all, but a mass of gold and other booty gathered by a Viking host – the same Vikings, indeed, who are said to have been slaughtered in Kingley Vale by men from Chichester (see below, p. 45). Before setting out for this battle, they hid their hoard somewhere on the hill, and set a ghostly calf to guard it; on certain nights this calf may still be heard bleating, as it roams the wooded slopes below the Trundle.

The remaining Sussex treasure-legends are mostly bare statements of belief, without narrative detail. Thus, the Golden Calf is also said to lie on Clayton Hill (where there are barrows, though no fort), and to be protected by the Devil, in the same way as on the Trundle. Chanctonbury, Hollingbury, and Pulborough Mount conceal some unspecified treasure; on Mount Caburn there is a silver coffin and also (separately) a knight in golden armour; on Firle Beacon, a silver coffin; under the Long Man of Wilmington, ‘one of the Romans in a gold coffin’.

Cissbury was the scene of a slightly more elaborate story, current in the 1860s. It was said that a blocked-up tunnel ran underground from Offington Hall to Cissbury Ring (a good two miles), and that at the far end of the tunnel there lay a treasure. The owner of the Hall ‘had offered half the money to anyone who would clear out the subterranean passage, and several persons had begun digging, but had all been driven back by large snakes springing at them with open mouths and angry hisses’. The alleged existence of the tunnel is still remembered in Worthing, though Offington Hall has been demolished; the treasure and its guardian snakes, however, seem now to be forgotten.

The last of these hill-top legends concerns Torbery or Tarberry Hill, near South Harting. Though the nature of the treasure is not specified, it is reputed to be so splendid that a local rhyme declares:

Who knows what Tarberry would bear Would plough it with a golden share.

Such, at least, was the version of the rhyme recorded in 1877. A more recent version somewhat ironically makes the use of a golden ploughshare a necessary condition, without which the gold cannot be unearthed – no doubt, on the principle that it takes money to make money:

He who would find what Torbery would bear Must plough it with a golden share.

Finally, a treasure story attached to an old house, Chiddingly Place. In the main gallery of this Tudor mansion, there was, once upon a time, a crock of gold, over which brooded an evil spirit in the shape of a black hen. There she sat, night and day, never moving and never taking food, until one day a robber rashly tried to seize the gold. At this, the hen hurled herself at him with such violence that he fell senseless, and then flew away through the east window of the hall, bending two thick iron bars as she forced her way between them. They were pointed out long afterwards in proof of the tale. As for the foolhardy thief, when he came round from his stunned condition, he was found to have gone mad, and he had to be rocked in a cradle for the rest of his days.