Gloucestershire Folk Tales for Children E-Book

Anthony Nanson

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 142

Beschreibung

How do you survive a mermaid's curse? Where lurks the immortal cat? Who cooks old boots in a stew? Is treasure really buried down under May Hill? Dive into these tales from forest, vale and high blue hill, on a journey that will take you far into the past, deep into other worlds and through the seasons of the year – all without leaving Gloucestershire! Strange and fabulous stories from all over the county are brought to life in this book by Stroud storytellers Anthony Nanson and Kirsty Hartsiotis.

Leseprobe

First published 2020

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Kirsty Hartsiotis and Anthony Nanson, 2020

The right of Kirsty Hartsiotis and Anthony Nanson to be identified as the Authors 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 9546 7

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Things You Can Do with These Stories

Map of the Stories

  1   Goram and Vincent

  2   The Fairy Peel

  3   The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter

  4   To Gloucester a-Mothering

  5   The Mermaid’s Curse

  6   Crocket’s Hole

  7   The Land of Dreams

  8   The Immortal Cat of Chipping Sodbury

  9   Whitsun Revels in St Briavels

10   Puck of Paganhill

11   The Cotswold Olympicks

12   A Candle in the Window

13   The Great Sea Serpent of Coombe Hill

14   A Midsummer Night’s Watch

15   Yubberton Yawnies

16   Harvest Home

17   The Flaxley Hare

18   The Tailor of Gloucester

19   Owlpen Manor

20   A New Year’s Blessing

Glossary

Acknowledgements

Sources

THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH THESE STORIES

The first thing to do, of course, is read the stories! We hope you enjoy them. You may want to read them aloud to your family or friends. If you don’t enjoy reading aloud, get someone else to do the reading so you can enjoy listening. Read one story at one time, another story another time. Now and again you may see an unusual spelling where a character is speaking Gloucestershire dialect.

Why have we called these stories ‘folk tales’? ‘Folk’ means the stories come from the ordinary folk of Gloucestershire or have to do with their customs. ‘Tales’ means stories that are told. What’s the difference between telling and reading? When you read a story, you have the book in front of you and you read out the exact words. When you tell a tale, you don’t have any text; you just tell the story from memory. There’s no need to learn by heart the exact words in the book. Forget about that! All you have to remember is the gist of the story – the main things that happen. When you tell the story, you can use whatever words you want. The words will be different each time you tell the same tale!

Sometimes people think that telling a story like this must be difficult. It isn’t really. We think that telling a story is more fun than reading it, but then we would – we’re storytellers! The important thing is to remember the main things that happen in the story. It’s useful to make a list of these. Even better is to make a ‘storyboard’. That’s just a posh word for a comic strip. Take a big sheet of paper and divide it up into, say, eight boxes. In each of the boxes draw a picture of one of the important events in the story you want to tell. Make sure you put them in the right order! Underneath each picture you could write a few words to sum up what’s happening. A storyboard is a nice thing to make, but it’s also a handy tool to remind you of the gist of the story.

Now you should be ready to tell the story to some of your family or friends. A younger brother or sister can be a good audience! It’s best to put away the storyboard before you tell the story, so you and your audience can focus on telling and listening.

When you tell one of the stories, you may find that it changes quite a bit. That’s absolutely fine. Stories are always changing. If you enjoy writing, you may want to write your own version of the story. That really gives you the chance to think about how to change the story to make it more interesting to you. If you enjoy drawing and painting, you might want to create a picture of your favourite moment in a story.

If you like acting, then get some friends together to perform a play based on the story. You’ll have to decide who is going to be which characters. Depending on numbers, some actors may need to play more than one character – or even use their bodies to represent the scenery (trees, buildings, etc.). Then you can invite your mum, dad, gran, etc. to come and be the audience. You may need to move some furniture to make enough space. Maybe the furniture – and perhaps some blankets draped over it – can help to provide scenery.

The stories in this book take place in different locations around Gloucestershire. We visited all these places to get a feel for them before we wrote the stories. A brilliant thing to do is ask your mum or dad or guardian to take you to these locations – and then to either tell or read the story right there in the place where it happened. When you do this, the story comes alive in a special way. The place becomes a bit more magical because now it’s not just a place but a place with a story. You’ll never see those places in the same way again!

While you’re there on location why not take some photos or draw a picture of the place? A good project is to keep a scrapbook in which, on a different page for each story, you stick your photos and drawings and write some words about the places and stories. You could also paste in your storyboards or your own written versions of stories. Or you could do all of this digitally on a blog.

When you’ve used up the tales in this book, there are lots more stories in other counties of Britain. If you go on holiday in a particular part of the country – or even another country – you could investigate the folk tales there. You’ll find books of them in local bookshops or online. Back here in Gloucestershire, maybe when you’re a bit older, you can check out the tales in our two other books: Gloucestershire Folk Tales and Gloucestershire Ghost Tales. Meanwhile, we hope you enjoy this one!

Anthony Nanson andKirsty Hartsiotis

MAP OF THE STORIES

1

GORAM AND VINCENT

Long, long ago, in the mists of time, Britain was inhabited by giants. In the area where, in later times, the city of Bristol was built, there lived two giants. They were brothers. One, called Goram, lived on the Gloucestershire side. The other, Vincent, lived on the Somerset side. Being giants, they were both enormously strong. With their bare hands they could dig and sculpt the bedrock of the land. On Blaise Hill, near Henbury, Goram built himself a gigantic stone chair where he liked to sit with a cup of cider and enjoy the view. On Dundry Down, Vincent made a triangle-shaped earthwork called Maes Knoll – and nearby he constructed the Wansdyke and the stone circle at Stanton Drew. Vincent really enjoyed digging and building. He spent most of his time working.

These two brothers, they fell in love with the same woman. Well, she wasn’t really a woman. She was a giant like them. You might call her a goddess. Whereas Goram and Vincent were giants of earth and stone, Avona was a lady of the water. She gave her name to her river – the Avon – as smooth and beautiful as she was. In those far distant times the Avon pooled to form a huge lake extending all the way from where Bradford-on-Avon is today to where Bristol is. Avona wanted more than anything for her river to reach the sea. So she said to Goram and Vincent, ‘Whichever of you can dig a channel to drain the lake, he’ll be the one to whom I’ll give my love.’

The two giants both really loved her. They both felt desperate to be the one who’d drain the lake. To do that, they’d have to cut through the limestone hills that blocked the Avon from reaching the Bristol Channel. Goram set to digging a channel right next to his stone chair on Blaise Hill. Vincent began to dig further south near Clifton. They dug and they dug and they dug. It was hot, exhausting work. Goram had a pool – Tarn Lake – where he could wash away the sweat. Beside the pool was a flat-topped rocky stand where he could put his soap – he called it his Soap-Dish. He dug and dug and dug – till he’d cut a steep-sided gorge through the hills. It wasn’t quite finished; the gorge would need to go a bit further before it would drain the lake. He was doing well, but he was tired and thirsty. Time to refresh himself with a wash in the pool and then sit on his chair and drink some good Gloucestershire cider. Before he knew it, he’d fallen fast asleep! There he sat in his chair, snoring so loud that the earth vibrated.

Meanwhile, down at Clifton, Vincent was steadily digging away. He loved to dig – and he loved Avona. He just kept digging, pacing his strength, never stopping to rest, though the sweat dripped down his big brawny muscles. He dug and dug and dug – till he’d dug a huge gorge all the way through the hills. As he knocked down the last rocks damming the lake, there was a terrific roar and a torrent of grey water came flooding through, racing in a mad hurry to the sea.

Avona was delighted to see her river flowing so free through this splendid new Avon Gorge. She gave Vincent a big hug and kiss and said she would marry him. Exhausted though he was, Vincent was the happiest giant in Britain.

When Goram woke up, he saw that Vincent’s gorge was finished, and much bigger than Goram’s, and Vincent had won Avona’s love. Goram was furious. ‘How could I be so stupid as to fall asleep!’ He stamped on the ground – so hard that the earth shook. You can still see the footprint shape of flat bare rock where Goram stamped.

He was so angry that he started being really stupid. He climbed on to the top of his chair and hollered, ‘HEY YOU, VINCENT, YOU UGLY GIANT!’

When Vincent heard this shouting, he climbed up to the rocks above his gorge – a spot today called St Vincent Rocks – to see what was going on.

From his vantage point, Goram spotted him. It’s hard to miss a giant, even when they’re miles away. ‘YOU THINK YOU’RE THE BEST, DO YOU?’ shouted Goram. ‘LET’S HAVE A STONE-THROWING FIGHT AND THEN WE’LL SEE WHO’S THE BEST!’

With that, Goram snapped off a big chunk of rock from the top of his chair and hurled it in the direction of his brother. But the stone was too big and heavy. It fell a long way short – and landed at place today called Druid’s Hill. There weren’t any druids in the time of the giants, but that big stone was later propped up on three others to make a cromlech, where later still the druids came to pray.

Vincent, having won Avona’s love, was feeling much too happy to start throwing stones back at Goram. He climbed back down the cliffs of the gorge and started to dig a cave where he could live close to Avona’s river.

That made Goram even more angry. He leapt across the river and began charging around on the Somerset side, shouting at the top of his voice. He sprinted up Dundry Down, looking for things Vincent had made that he could smash up. He was running so fast he wasn’t looking where he put his feet. He tripped on the earthwork of Maes Knoll and – because he was moving so fast – went hurtling through the air, far, far through the air, right over Weston-super-Mare, to land with a SPLASH! in the Bristol Channel. There, sad to say, poor Goram drowned. You can still see his head and shoulders jutting above the water as the islands of Steep Holm and Flat Holm.

Vincent was very sad that Goram had drowned. He was his brother, after all. He knew that Goram had lost his temper because he’d loved Avona just as much as Vincent had. He wished that things had worked out differently. Now that Vincent was married to the beautiful Avona, he didn’t feel so obsessed with digging and building all the time. Once he’d carved his cave in the cliffs – the Giant’s Hole, as it’s known – he was content to sit there beside his beloved Avona and watch the river flow below, the tides come and go.

Nowadays there’s a bridge across the gorge that Vincent dug, so you can easily cross between the Gloucestershire and Somerset sides. If you go to Henbury and take a walk in the Blaise Castle Estate you can see the smaller gorge that Goram dug and the other things he’s left there from that long-ago time: Goram’s Chair, Tarn Lake, Goram’s Soap-Dish, and the Giant’s Footprint where he stamped. As for the stone he threw at Vincent, you can see that in someone’s garden on Druid’s Hill.

2

THE FAIRY PEEL

It was a topsy-turvy life being a ploughman. For most people working on the farm, the harvest was the busy time. George Greenman of Kingswood was busiest in January. That was when the fields were ploughed so the crops could be sowed. Whereas the harvesters worked in the summer sun, George worked through rain and snow, getting full slabbered with mud. He didn’t like it much, but without him and his ploughs there’d be no harvest for anyone.

At Christmastide there was cake to eat and merriment for the two weeks from Christmas Day to Plough Sunday. On that Sunday, George had dressed up in his best and, with the other ploughmen, taken the village ploughs to the church to be blessed by the parson so there would be a good harvest. They’d carried the ploughs through the village afterwards, singing out, ‘God Speed the Plough!’ There’d been dancing, cider, and a fine meat pudding. But now it was all over and back to work.

Farmer Long had told George to plough one of the fields down by the millstream. George wasn’t looking forward to it much. This field had turnips on it last year, and barley the year before that, and would be so claggy that George would have to use his breast plough to work sand into the soil to lighten it. He hated the breast plough. It was nothing but a long spade! With that against your chest, you did all the work yourself. He preferred the plough the oxen pulled – they did half the work for you!

Still, when George looked at the sunlit hills where Wotton-under-Edge nestled, he felt his spirits lift. All morning he worked, listening to the birds singing in the bare trees in the hedge by the brook. He wasn’t so happy at lunchtime. His lunch was just crusts, all that was left of his wife’s Christmas baking. He thought longingly of the now eaten Christmas cake. Never mind, with the money from this day’s work Annie could buy more flour to make more bread.

He’d not long got back to work when a high, shrill cry split the air. The birds stopped singing and George jumped two feet in the air, bouncing the plough right out of the earth. He let it fall and stared wildly around. Into the breathless air the sound came again. A wailing moan of a noise.

There was no one about. The closest building was the mill, but that lay silent today. On the hills to the east he could see Newark Park. George’s heart raced as he looked back to the village. He could just see the ruins of the old abbey gatehouse beyond the new church. Everyone knew that a tunnel ran from the abbey to Newark Park and then on through the hill to the Black Quarr Caves. And everyone knew that when Henry VIII had got rid of the monasteries the monks at Kingswood tried to flee through the tunnel. They’d found it blocked and all died down there.