New Forest Myths and Folklore E-Book

Brice Stratford

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

Seitenzahl: 406

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

The New Forest is an old, old forest. The stories, like the forest which defines them, are at once fresh and blossoming with each telling, but ever rooted in the deep, dark soil of our history and our heritage. From King Arthur and Robin Hood, to Rufus the Red and Bevis of Hampton, award-winning storyteller Brice Stratford guides you through the folk heritage and mythological past of Britain's most haunted national park, taking in five headed dragons, giant ettins, and shape-shifting pixies along the way.

Leseprobe

For my grandfathers:

Peter David Brice (1928–2000)

Graham Douglas Stratford (1930–2019)

Original illustrations by David Thiérrée, Nate Hillyer and Krzysztof Wroński.

First published 2022

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Brice Stratford, 2022

The right of Brice Stratford 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 75099 989 2

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Introduction

Prologue: The Seeds of the Forest

MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF THE OLD FOREST

Of the Ytene

1 The Battle of Netley Marsh

2 King Arthur and the Cadnam Oak

3 Orfeo in Elfland

4 Arwald and the Panshard of the Gods

5 Yernagate’s Nap

6 The Slaving of Bevis of Hampton

Of Nova Foresta

7 The Red King and the White Ship

8 The Conquest of the Christchurch Dragon

9 William Brewer and the Birth of Beaulieu Abbey

10 The Stratford Lyon and the Bishop’s Ditch

11 The Cursed Lord of Lower Burgate

12 How Maurice de Berkeley Slew the Bisterne Dragon

FOLKTALES OF THE NEW FOREST

Tales of the Ettinwood

13 The Dodington Curse

14 Sprack Jack and the Pixies

15 Dame Alice Lisle and the Bloody Assize

16 Stubbs’s Gold and the Groaning Tree

17 The True Forest Witches

18 How Lazy Laurence got the Grockles

Smugglers’ Yarns

19 Fiddlers’ Race

20 Smuggling Spirits

21 The Ambrose Hole Gang

22 The Murder of Daniel Chater

23 The Cape of Lovey Warne

24 Highwayman’s Grave and the Naked Man

Ghost Stories of a Forester

25 Spring-Skulled Jack & the Dark Figure of Colbury

26 Poor Fanny Smith and the Remembrances of Sin

27 Haunted Pubs and Tavern Spectres

28 The Ghosts of Glasshayes

29 Puck, Povey and the New Forest Hunt

30 The Beng at the Mullery Bridge

The Lore of the Land

31 Mayday & Midsummer

32 Christmas & Midwinter

33 The Ghost of the Forest

Epilogue

INTRODUCTION

This book is not one book, but two.

First are the ‘Myths and Legends of the Old Forest’ – chronicle history in the true sense, a scopic transcription of the oldest tales, honed through more than a decade of storytelling. This covers the fifth age of the Forest. Next come the ‘Folktales of the New Forest’, in which I take a different approach, recording and researching as antiquarian folklorist. This covers the sixth age of the Forest. You may well prefer one to the other, but do try both, for though they point in different directions they are branches of the same tree.

The New Forest is my home, and the only home I will ever know. It is the only place I really fit. When I get off the train after time away, at the first breath of Forest air the constant tension of everywhere else is calmed, and I finally feel at ease. It is the greatest privilege of my life to be from the New Forest, and there can be no greater inheritance for my children; a home that’s always there to return to, familiar and safe and maintained, long after I am dead.

In finding these stories I have used many sources, from medieval romance and history (where I have translated directly from the originals) to guidebooks, academic texts and personal remembrances, to simply buying people drinks in pubs and listening to what they have to say. Every single one was, at some point and in some form, told to me by a Forester; some have never before been published. Some of the language is ancient, and some of the dialect is dense, and often both are designed to be heard rather than read, but I have written this book with that in mind. Where the patterns and words might seem unwieldy or unfamiliar, try reading them aloud, to yourself or someone else. Explore the rhythm, the cadence, the musicality of the words, as well as their technical meaning.

Where Forest/Forester and Island are capitalised in the text, they refer specifically to the New Forest and the Isle of Wight. I have also capitalised Commoner, as within the New Forest a Commoner (someone who holds rights over the common land) is as much a minority cultural identity as it is an agricultural vocation, passed on through the same community of families for hundreds of years.

I’ve invented nothing of what follows, only curated, interpreted, recorded and observed.

This work could not be what it is without standing on the giant shoulders of John Richard de Capel Wise, and his definitive 1862 The New Forest: Its History and Scenery. He died, aged fifty-nine, on April Fools’ Day 1890, and is buried at Bolton’s Bench graveyard, beneath the red tombstone, just on the left as you enter through the lychgate. I encourage you to visit when his death-day rolls around, to pay your respects and to leave some token of thanks.

Perhaps I’ll see you there.

PROLOGUE

THE SEEDS OF THE FOREST

Of the seven worlds on the World Tree, ours is but one: the Middle Earth. Of all the forests and all the woodlands in all the Middle Earth, the greatest was the Worldwood. Once upon a time, all was this one great Forest, and all of this one great Forest stemmed from the roots of the World Tree. As civilisations sprouted and grew, and continents branched and split, this Worldwood was hacked and felled and whittled down. Soon enough, what once had covered the world covered only the West, and soon enough what once had covered the West covered only Western Europe, and sooner still what once had covered all of Western Europe covered only Albion, land of the giants.

Once upon a time, this land of giants surged with elves and dwarves, ettins and ents, pixies and hobbits and knuckers and hobs, ruled over by the sea god Alebion and his cliff-white bride, Albina, and it was to this land of ettins and magic that Brutus of Troy and Corineus sailed, taming its shores, driving its giants into the sea, making its magic folk flee to the land of Fairy.

Many left willingly, many were forced, many were killed, but it is in mountains and forests that such things dwell longest. Stories of strange survivals and stubborn hangers-on can be found in such places long after the rest have been purged from cities and coast. Brutus’s own encounters with the Forest were brutal, but just as the Romans could never completely quell the British Isles, so Brutus could never completely rid the Ettinwood of its magical inhabitants, nor could he successfully close up the many passages to the otherworld of Fairy, hidden in its barrows, woodlands and shades.

And so this land of giants was settled and tamed by that Brutus of Troy, and with giants beaten to submission and fairy folk returned (mostly) to Elfland, Albion took the name of Britain, and its next age began. Over the centuries other ages came and other ages went, and like the god-king Sceafa, many new and divergent peoples sailed and drifted to our shores. Each was added to the bubbling cauldron of our country and our culture, each a new flavour to the soup. Wave after wave of forgotten tribes inhabited our land, and by extension, our Forest.

The first of the Forest whose name survives were called the Belgae, Germanic in origin rather than Celtic (whatever that might mean) and cousins to the the Germanic tribes that would later become the Anglo-Saxons, the Old English. Over time, the Belgae split into three: the core Belgae, who retained the bulk of the Forest, the Atrebates to the north-east, and the Durotriges to the west. By the time the Romans invaded our shores, in 55 BC, the once-world forest covered just the base of Great Britain, and it was these three tribes of Belgae who inhabited it. What names they might have used I cannot say, but Romans called it the Spinaii, the Forest of Thorns, for the rough gorse which can be seen here still, ready to grip at haunches and heels, felling grockles, the unwary, the unwelcome.

Time went by, as time has a habit of doing, and the Forest of Thorns was pruned and pollarded further. Before the Romans were mere memory, leaving great, crumbling city walls and endless, rigid roads, the Jutes arrived, cousins to the Belgae, later ruling the Island and the Forest as tiny kingdoms. They called their Forest Kingdom the Ytene, so named either for its rulers, as the Juten Forest, or for its wild, unkempt landscape, as the Great Furze. So it was that the World Forest was clipped to the Forest of Thorns, and the Forest of Thorns clipped to the Great Juten Furze, the Ytene.

Next came the Anglo-Saxons, when tribes of Angles and tribes of Saxons and even more Jutes arrived (Frisians, too), and the Kingdom of Wessex was founded, and the Ytene a founding part of it. Later came the Vikings – Danes, Swedes and Nords. Some say our Forest grew the name of Jettenweald, or Ettinwood, the Forest of Giants or Monsters. Our pagan gods were revived by their Scandinavian kin, and the Ytene was kept safe until another wave of Germanic cousins were sighted.

And the Normans came, and the Normans saw, and the Normans conquered – another ingredient tossed to the bubbling soup. With their armies, the Ettinwood was clipped once more, and what remained was claimed by William the Bastard as hunting ground, with harsh and cruel laws governing its conservation. He called it ‘Nova Foresta’, and we call it the New Forest.

It is the stories of this New Forest, this Nova Foresta, this Ettinwood, Ytene or Spinaii that we are here to tell. Some ancient, some antique, some merely vintage; some as they were found, some in arrested decay, some seamlessly restored or propped up still against the straining remains of others. The stories, like the Forest that defines them, are at once fresh and blossoming with each telling, but ever-rooted in the deep, dark soil of our history and our heritage – old yet ever new.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

MYTHS ANDLEGENDS OF THEOLD FOREST

OF THEYTENE

1

THE BATTLE OFNETLEY MARSH

A lich is a dead man. A corpse, but also more and also less than that. Not quite a soul, not quite a ghost, a lich is what is left when that which makes a life has died, but that which makes a spirit has been lost; the soul eaten. Death for the dead. Some say to end your life a lich is the worst that can befall a man. Some say it’s worse than any hell. Some simply change the subject, and look to speak of better things. Some say nothing at all.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Once upon a time, before England was England, before Wessex was Wessex, the land was ruled by many different tribes, split many ways to many territories. The Ytene Forest then sat in lands held by a certain petty king named Natanleod. We shall call him Netley, hereonin, for ease of pronunciation, meaning ‘king of the Wet Wood’.

Netley was a weak and selfish man who kept a weak and selfish crowd about him, a king unworthy of a capital ‘K’. The Forest deserved better. The story of how this king gave the land his name is the story of how the Ytene came first to be united, how Wessex was won and how England was begun.

It is important to remember that the tribes of Britain at this time were not a single people or a single nation, and nor were the tribes of the Anglo-Saxons; they were many different peoples, with many different leaders, and just as some British tribes warred with other British tribes, so some British tribes warred with some Anglo-Saxon tribes. Many found peace and friendship. Many Britons joined the English, and many Anglo-Saxons joined and fought for the British. A time would come when the British of England and the English of Britain were one and the same, with shared ancestry and shared culture, and the seeds of that time were planted with the birth of a man named Cerdic.

Cerdic was not British, and Cerdic was not Anglo-Saxon. Cerdic was both. His father, Elesa, was a grandson of Giwis, an Anglo-Saxon nobleman descended from the great god Woden himself, who had come to Britain as Roman influence faded, offering the military service of his men in exchange for land to settle, founding a tribe that would come to be known by his name – the Gewisse.

When Elesa found love and a wife, he found it in a Briton. Cerdic’s mother was the daughter of tribal kings, and her blood held to be noble amongst the Belgae, an ancient and revered line. This dual heritage would give Cerdic his throne and his people. It would also make Cerdic a target.

Elesa had been well respected as a good and sure leader of the Gewisse, and his marriage to British royalty gave him significant support amongst the British tribes. With every act of Netley’s cruelty, with every stroke of his complacency, this support for Elesa branched and swelled, and the call for a new and better king grew louder. Elesa, however, had long ago sworn loyalty to Netley, for good or ill, foul or fair. He had no hunger for thrones, nor desire to rule beyond his tribe. Elesa was a man of his word. Netley was not.

There is a kind of man who combines his treachery with arrogance, and for this kind of man life is a sort of hell, which cannot be escaped. They know, deep down, how cruel and ruthless they can be, how little their word or smile or love means. They also think, deep down, that all around them are inferior, in thought, in heart. And so as bad, as cold and cruel as they know themselves to be, they cannot help believing all about are worse, and that the nobler and the kinder they appear, the deeper their deceit, the sharper their cunning.

A suspicious, friendless world they inhabit, these men, and it was through this world that king Netley walked. To him, the honesty and faithfulness of Elesa could mean only fear and danger, and as Elesa’s support grew, so too did Netley’s furtiveness and paranoia, until this petty king betrayed his most loyal of subjects, broke his oath, and sent a hooded man to kill Elesa as he slept.

When the murdered corpse was found, much hue and mourning poured through the Gewisse, and Cerdic knew that, with the blood of his mother and father filling his heart, he could never be safe while Netley reigned. Under cover of night, Cerdic bid his mother farewell and left the shores of Britain with his son, Cynric, sailing to the ancestral land of his great grandfather Giwis. There, his story was received with anger and with woe and won the support of many, with hall after hall pledging men and aid to the Gewisse to take vengeance for the death of Elesa, and the betrayal of his people.

So it was, in AD 495, Cerdic and Cynric returned to Britain with five good ships of fighting men, sailed through Southampton Water, up the River Avon and on to the Ytene Forest, where once upon a time King Heremod of wolvish mind had fled, and met his sorry end.

Cerdic landed at a place near Breamore, thereafter named Cerdic’s Ford, which we call Charford. As the Gewisse disembarked, the Jutish and Belgic families of the Ytene came to witness. They had heard tell of Netley’s treachery, and all had held respect for Elesa as a good and noble man. As one, they pledged their allegiance.

When word of the landing came to king Netley, it came in the middle of a meal. Happily stewing in mead and in meat, surrounded by his court of sycophants, Netley was outraged at the disturbance, spilling drink and platter alike as he raged at the messenger, ‘Go now from my sight and tell this invader that the land and those who squat on it are mine and mine alone, to use and do with as I please and damn the consequences. It pleases me not to have his filth infecting it. He has until the morning light to flee the way he came or we shall meet in battle, and his blood I will use to water the ground, his bones to feed the earth, his head to adorn my hall.’

Backing away from the spitting king, the messenger rode to Cerdic’s encampment to pass on the drunken challenge. There, he was welcomed with forbearance, and Cerdic listened to his words in silence, as the nervous rider recounted the sort of insults that only a man who knows he won’t have to speak them himself would choose. Cerdic simply nodded, thanked the messenger for his service, and bid him wait nearby with food, drink and fresh hay for his horse, until the response was ready to send.

When the messenger returned to Netley, he did so with a gift for his king – the sheath of Cerdic’s sword, and the promise that Cerdic would take it back himself when it was needed once more.

Thus, the war began.

For thirteen years, skirmishes, battles and petty conflict roiled and yawed between Cerdic’s people and Netley’s, and Cerdic’s blade remained unsheathed and bloody. The great reckoning promised by Netley failed to materialise.

Netley had responded with a force of warriors immediately, half-cocked and unprepared. The men that came were killed, or were stripped of their weapons and armour and sent back barefoot. Netley’s manoeuvres since then had been intermittent bursts of violence and hostility, alternated with frantic, obsessive devotion to his personal defences. The farms and settlements of his people were left to their own devices – and to the mercy of Cerdic.

For thirteen years, then, this state of harrying attack and swift rebuttal, of gradual gnawing and general anxiety pervaded. Cerdic’s camp within the Ytene took root, and his followers grew as more Jutes came from overseas to join their kinfolks’ cause, and Britons, Celts and Belgae from surrounding tribes, who had grown tired of Netley’s cruel and selfish rule, chose a better life and a wiser ruler in the safety of the Forest.

Soon enough, Cerdic’s Ytene grew to reflect Cerdic himself. The Belgae and the Jutes, the Celtic and the Anglo-Saxon, the British and the English began to live, think and work as one – as neighbours and friends, husbands and wives, kinsmen and comrades in arms against the tyranny of old king Netley.

Finally, in AD 508, the two armies met full in the field for a decisive, final battle – for the Ytene, for the Gewisse, and for the future of their peoples. A desperate Netley had realised that he could stand to lose no more in dribs and drabs to the burgeoning realm of Cerdic. That if he was weakened any further he would inevitably be crushed, that his only hope was one last, all-or-nothing assault on a looming future that threatened no place for him.

Netley’s chosen ground was below his hill fort on Tatchbury Mount, where he called in favours and debts and mercenaries from all over Britain and beyond, accruing a vast horde of over ten thousand fighters for his cause. Some say Netley invoked ancient alliances, and made strange pacts; that ettins, giants and inhuman things swelled the ranks.

Even with his new and growing followers, Cerdic was heavily outnumbered, and the chosen landscape put them at a further disadvantage. Though they were strong fighters, Cerdic knew that in pitched battle against Netley’s unnatural army, their likelihood of victory was narrow. His only hope was tactical, and though his advisors baulked at depleting their already limited numbers, he nevertheless divided his forces in two.

Cerdic was to lead the stronger and more experienced right flank himself, made up of the three thousand men who had sailed with him thirteen years earlier. Cynric was to lead the left, being those who had joined them over the intervening years – the Jutes, the Gewisse, the Belgae; British and English alike.

The morning of the battle came, and with his bolstered force and territorial advantage, Netley sat easy in his fort, laughing with his companions, sneering at the inevitable win and bidding the bards start composing their songs of his victory. After breaking his fast with bread and with meat, Netley stepped from the hill fort to survey his troops, and an impressive sight they were.

Obedient men, cruel men, ruthless men – he had them all, and more besides. The strange, bloated, towering things from deep within the woods; the squat ones with flashing eyes from out the barrows; the twisted, staring things he didn’t like to watch.

He looked at his strength, at his power, at his instruments of victory, and he felt triumph. Thirteen years of humiliation, ignominy and insult. Soon he would be revenged upon them all, and have what was rightfully his once more. His land. His people. His right.

They all belonged to him.

As Netley paced about, surveying his troops, he felt a small crunch beneath his foot, looked down and smeared the remains of the beetle on the wet grass. He continued on his way, stepping more carefully than before, admiring the exotic array of strange armours and unfamiliar blades, until he came to a small, muddy stream that stank of stagnant water, and turned away to avoid the smell.

As he retraced his route back to the comfort of his hill fort, Netley felt he was being watched. Soon enough, he passed an old, bent, bloodied man hanging from an old, bent, blackened tree – a beggar, thief or similar. Netley strode on, avoiding eye contact, back to his hill fort, head swelling with dreams of dominance, of glory and of feasting.

Far from the hill fort, Cerdic paced about the heathland, anxious and tense. He looked about him at the Forest landscape, rough and wild, and at the tents of his encampment. He looked at his men and at their faces, at the children and wives they had with them. Thought of the hopes each first had of building a home and a life in this new, forest kingdom.

He looked to the far distance, to the sight of the enemy’s thick, dark presence on the impassive ground. Cerdic felt the weight of his men’s hopes on his shoulders, of their families and their lives, of his father, his great grandfather and his greatest grandfather.

Cerdic turned and walked in a different direction, searching for peace from the rising tide of thought, and he walked, and he walked, and he thought and he thought, and before he knew it he could look about him and see nothing but the boundless land, and hear nothing but the songs of the birds and the whip of the wind, and smell only pollen and earth. He stood and he breathed, and felt the silence of the landscape fold about him.

Cerdic sank to the floor, first sitting, then laying in the rough tapestry of grass and ground, weed and lichen. He shut his eyes and breathed deep the earth. He spoke, there and then, unashamed and open. Prayed to the land that enfolded him; to Ingui and to Tue; to Woden; to Thunner and his flaming axe; to Ytene itself. He spoke to them all, and he gripped the earth and pressed his body into it, bowing down, breathing it in. He felt the cool dew on his face and the softness of the grass.

He opened his eyes.

Inches from his nose was a stag beetle, upturned amongst the green blades and caught on its back, wiry legs fighting helpless at the air, the pincers of its mighty horns turning and twisting, pleading to nothing. Cerdic stared and blinked at the tiny life before him, the life which neither knew nor cared of the struggles of men, of kings, of armies and tribes.

Cerdic smiled, gently righting the beetle, who, after a lazy circuit of Cerdic’s wrist, disappeared amongst the rough green of the ground. ‘You, at least, survive this day, my friend.’

Cerdic heaved himself to standing. There, in the peace of that Forest heathland, he felt the landscape about him like a blanket or a cloak, and he walked there, safe, until he came to a little stream dammed by a fallen tree, with a tiny colony of half-dead newts and water creatures, gaping helpless, trapped in the dried-up patch that once had been safe and wet in the course of the now-diverted stream.

Cerdic moved aside the fallen tree, cleared the clumps of leaf and bracken, watched the water fill their home once more. As the life and the vigour of the reptiles returned, he smiled to see the stream restored to health. ‘You, at least, survive this day, my friends.’

Cerdic watched the waters there until he didn’t, and he felt the landscape submerge him like a warm bath, and he walked, and he walked, safe through the wetlands of the Forest, until he came to the start of a path, next to which was a towering, twisted, black and cruel tree, its claw-branches spreading wide.

Beneath the dark and boughy tree, an old man lay, broken and bloodied. Cerdic knelt beside him.

The old man was older than any he had known.

His bulging eyes were pale and almost white, his skin the same. Wrinkled with age beyond imagination, bruised about his throat, and in his side a gaping wound. From his head there curled two horns, curven like a ram’s, matching the upturned ends of the thick, white moustache that sat above his beardless but unshaven jaw. Cerdic put his ear to the old man’s chest and felt the faintest of somethings. Life clung still.

Cerdic stroked the man’s cold brow, tore strips from his clothes to dress the wounds, poured water from the nearby stream between his cracked lips and pressed food from his bag to the old man’s mouth. In time, the old man blinked, heaved himself to sitting, the wrinkles filling before Cerdic’s eyes. As he rose, weakness and age receding, the bulging eyes glowed strangely and they looked into Cerdic’s own. They gripped his mind and they gripped his heart, and the old man opened his mouth and spoke words in a language strange and familiar, which Cerdic could not understand but felt he knew, and the old man turned and walked away.

Cerdic tried and failed to speak. Beneath the dark tree, where the old man had lain, Cerdic saw an axe, rusted in the earth. He picked the old tool up, pulled blade from ground, cleaned it as best he could and attacked the roots of the tree.

He hacked and he hewed, he chopped and he heaved, and after what could have been an hour and could have been a lifetime, the dark, black, twisted tree collapsed to earth, its trunk laid low, hollow with decay. Cerdic laid a palm upon the open wound, and when he took it away saw a fresh, white shoot growing there.

He looked up to the horizon ahead. Stood at the start of a winding path, the end of which was far beyond the bounds of sight. Enshrouded by the heathland, the wetland, the woodland, Cerdic breathed them into himself – and was changed.

He began to walk, away from what was left of the dark, dead tree. He followed the path to battle.

A wolf watched patiently, silent in the trees.

The day wore on, the armies marched, and with horn and beating drum, the soldiers roared and the killings began. Seeing his divided foe, Netley smiled and ordered the full force of his rage to attack the right flank. These were the battle-hardened warriors, the three thousand who first had infected his land thirteen years ago, and spent every day since insulting him. The left were mainly farmers and settlers, a mismatched group of Briton and English, Belgae and Jute, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon – traitors or enemies all, but no great threat; young still, and battle-soft.

The right flank held the focus of his hate. Cerdic. Cerdic whose blood he vowed would water the ground, whose bones would feed the earth, whose head would decorate his hall. Everything he had he threw in force at Cerdic’s flank, and skulls were crushed, and limbs were torn, and life spilled out from dying men. Things that were not men bellowed and screamed, and dark deeds were done, and Cerdic’s forces were driven back.

As Cerdic’s flank retreated, Netley watched from his hill fort and smiled. For a flicker of a moment, he considered just allowing them to escape, lives and shame intact. But Netley had made his vow, and knew he could never be satisfied but by blood, by bones, and by the utter desolation of his enemy. He commanded pursuit, he commanded slaughter, and his forces obeyed.

On they galloped, roaring and screeching for murder, but as Cerdic’s flank fell back and drew them on, Cynric’s wheeled round to pursue them, enveloping and surrounding Netley’s forces, sending waves of panic and confusion as renewed attack came from behind, just as they thought to find resistance vanquished.

At this, Cerdic’s men rallied and turned, fighting on and towsing the foe with second vigour, and Netley’s forces found onslaught from all sides, chaos swirling through them, and no way to retreat to advantageous ground. The tide of battle began to turn.

On it raged, and Netley’s men suffered, but still their vast numbers proved their strength, and still the victory was unsure. Cerdic himself pressed on through the maelstrom, hacking and roaring as he did, until the flight of a raven overhead caught his eye, and he watched it score the horizon, where the distant figure of an old man stood with curven horns like those of a ram.

And though he was far away, Cerdic heard him speak as clearly as a whisper in the ear, the same familiar words from when first they had met. And though still the words he spoke were strange, and in a language Cerdic did not know, now Cerdic understood them, every one.

‘You, at least, survive this day, my friend.’

As he watched, the old man lifted his arms and the ground beneath the warring men began to shift and flow. From the centre of Netley’s ranks great, liquid trees shot up, crushing and hurling, impaling and worse. Thick, cruel hedges of gorse sprung and twined round ankles and calves, scoring skin from flesh and dragging bodies down to be pinned and trampled underfoot. From amongst the panicked mortal men the great ettins, the Fairy folk, the inhuman ones turned on those about them and fought against Netley’s troops from within. Chaos reigned.

An eagle circled, cackling and impatient, and Netley watched, horrified, as his army collapsed, begging for the mercy of Cerdic.

Netley fled. He ran, cowardly from his hill fort, ran alone to the marshy ground below, stained red with the blood of his fallen men. He ran as far from those still left alive as his feet allowed until he felt a crunch in the ground, and looked down to see that all was blackness.

The earth he stood on was alive. Countless swarming beetles, over his feet, up his legs, in his clothes; coating him, weighing him down. Still he tried to run, but the soil beneath him started to give, the reddened mud parting, opening to muck and stagnant, bloody swamp. He looked to the sky and screamed for help, called to the lone figure of an old man in the distance. An old man with bulging eyes and an upward-curled moustache, with curven horns like those of a ram.

The bulging eyes filled Netley’s soul, stared into and through him, and the old man spoke in strange and unfamiliar words, in a language Netley could not understand and never will.

Netley watched in gaping silence as, from the bloody marsh beneath, the bones of dead men rose to drag him down into the Forest floor, skeletal fingers clawing cold and strong, his own lich army pulling him down, down, to lead them in eternity. Netley looked to the eyes of the old man, felt his limbs go limp, and, broken, wept as they took him with them, no fight left, deep through the softened earth, to join and feed what lies below.

When Cerdic’s men had won the day, the rest of Netley’s forces had surrendered and the dead had been counted, all that could be found of Netley was his head, no body beneath it, poking upright from the bloodied earth of the marsh, gaping silent at something no living man could see.

In the empty hill fort of Tatchbury Mount, Cerdic found the sheath of his sword. He wiped the blood from his blade and returned it to its bed to rest.

Cerdic forged and wore the rings of the Ytene, then, and from this base he planted his roots and strengthened his forces over the coming years, gradually increasing his land until the territory of the Gewisse spread through much of the south. He took the island of Vectis a few years later, gifting it to his nephews, Stuf and Wihtgar (after whom it was renamed the Isle of Wiht). Later still was the Battle of Cerdic’s Ford, where he entrenched on the crest of a high hill; today it is called Clearbury Ring, and the earthworks can be seen there still.

Thus, Cerdic created the Hampshire border, which has remained (more or less) to this day. Cerdic died in AD 534, and his line lived on as kings and queens, through Cynric and on, even to our Elizabeth II, his very great granddaughter.

In death, Cerdic was remembered as a leader. As Anglo-Saxon and as Briton; as King of the Ytene, King of the Gewisse, and the truest Englishman. With his lifelong battles through the Forest and beyond, Cerdic founded what would come to be known as the Kingdom of Wessex, and which would one day flower and come to be known as the one, true kingdom of England – a United Kingdom.

Cerdic named that baleful battleground the Netley Marsh, and rather than display the head of his vanquished enemy in triumph, he took the trophy and rode just beyond the bounds of the Ytene, near to a village named Downton. There he had the head buried in a mound facing away from the Forest, to ward off any future foe. The mound was after known as Nettlebury, and can still be found by those who know where to look.

Over five thousand dead men fed the Forest that day, alongside their petty king Netley, and at certain times of twilight and the year, in certain parts of the Ettinwood, travellers who know how can look to the marshy ground beneath them and see the lich army below, the gaping faces of long-dead soldiers floating by, whispering out, keen to find food for the Forest floor.

Those who stare too long or lean too close risk joining them.

Some, who have seen the sight and lived to tell of it, speak of a certain headless lich amongst the rest – finely dressed, in raiment fit for a king (a king not worthy of a capital ‘K’).

Next time you cross the Lichmoor Brook at twilight, the parish lantern lighting your way, look down and search for figures in the water, and wonder how Latchmore got its name. Look for the headless lich who leads and ask him, if you can. But don’t stare down at the depths too long.

You might find things stare back.

2

KING ARTHUR ANDTHE CADNAM OAK

These tales are tales of deaths, and of beginnings, each twined and inextricable. The birth of every age requires the death of that which came before it.

Once upon a time, there was a great, great battle. This was not the first, nor the last, of the great, great battles; this was not the greatest nor the worst of the great, great battles; this was not the strangest nor the bravest, nor the shortest nor the longest, nor the wildest nor the dullest of the great, great battles, but nevertheless, this great, great battle was a great, great battle. A great, great battle indeed.

When Cerdic died and Cynric took the triple throne of Wessex, the Ytene and the Gewisse, Britain still was home to many tribes and many peoples, and many, many kings. Of all of these many kings, none were mourned nor remembered quite so hard and quite so long as Arthur, who just three years after Cerdic’s death, met his own in the heart of the Ytene, at the Battle of Camlann, or Cadnam.

Though Arthur warred with many tribes – Scottish, Irish, Anglo-Saxon and British alike – Cerdic appears in not a single list of foes, nor any account of any battle fought. There are those who say a peace held between Arthur’s domain and Cerdic’s. Indeed, there are even those who say that Cerdic was his ally, that he advised and fought alongside him, and ruled a united Ytene with his blessing.

There are others still, who say that Arthur’s Camelot was Winchester. There are even those that say his final battle against his kindred Mordred sprawled on from that city to the bounds of the New Forest, and that Arthur met his end in the Ettinwood, and his blood fed the Forest earth.

Now, every tongue in every mouth in all the land could tell a tale of Arthur, and each say something different, so the stories of how this battle came about I’ll save for others to expound. Let it suffice to say that the battle raged with a great fury, and never was there seen a more doleful conflict between the British tribes, for this was the worst of their three futile battles. One that caused such death, pain and woe on both sides, and so weakened their peoples, that, soon after, their territories and kingdoms would wane, and English tribes rise in their stead.

The full forces of every territory were given over to this fight, to bolster the strength of Arthur or of Mordred, Arthur’s kin and greatest enemy, and all fought with fury and with hurt, all the long day, and never stinted ’til countless men lay dead upon the down, and the Forest fed.

Of all the thousands who had begun the day, only four remained alive atop it, and in amongst the four was Arthur. He looked to his right and saw Sir Lucan the Butler, and he looked to his left and saw Lucan’s brother, Sir Bedivere, and he looked ahead and saw Mordred, bent double, propped against his sword.

King Arthur felt his fire return. ‘Give me my spear.’

Sir Lucan looked at him through tired eyes. ‘Sir, let him be, for he is broken. If ye can pass this unhappy day and strengthen, we shall be well revenged upon him. For God’s sake, my Lord, leave off this. Ye have won the field. For here we three are alive, and with Sir Mordred, none are left. Leave off now, and this wicked day of destiny is past.’

‘Tide death, tide life,’ whispered the king. ‘He shall never escape.’

Sir Lucan bowed his head in silence, and Bedivere nodded to his king. ‘God speed you well, old friend.’

Arthur gripped his spear in both hands, wrenched himself forward, and charged. Mordred raised his sword, forced himself upright, and charged. And there they met, amongst the countless dead in the shades of the Ytene, and with a flick and feign, the head of Arthur’s spear was under Mordred’s shield. With a groan like the toll of a bell, it bit through his chest, burrowed hard and tore itself from out the other side, and Mordred gaped, as blood not words flowed from his tongue.

Mordred stood, and Arthur stood, and Mordred gripped the spear and pulled himself along its length, drilling the death-blade ever further through himself, and Mordred brought his sword down upon King Arthur’s head, and both collapsed, and Arthur let their weapons go.

When Arthur woke, Sir Lucan lay dead nearby. Sir Bedivere sat between his brother and the king, head bowed. Arthur’s eyes swivelled, and he forced his words from his chest. Bedivere listened. ‘Go, Bedivere. Take Excalibur and walk with it until waters appear before you. When thou comest there, I charge thee, throw my sword into that water, and come here to me again and tell me what thou there see’st. I may not stand, mine head works so.’

‘My Lord,’ said Bedivere, ‘your commandment shall be done.’

Bedivere walked from the field of battle, and through the Ettinwood, until he saw an oak. He looked at the sword, with its pommel of precious stones, and he said to himself, ‘If I throw this rich sword in the water, thereof shall never come good, but harm and loss.’

And so Bedivere climbed that tree and thrust that sword into its trunk, hidden high amongst its branches. He returned to Arthur and told him that the deed was done, that he had walked to water and there had thrown the sword.

‘What saw thee there?’ said the king.

‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I saw nothing but waves and winds.’

‘That is untrue,’ said the king. ‘Go again, and do my commandment; spare not, but throw it in.’

So Bedivere returned to the tree and took the sword from its branches, and from that day, the oak tree thrived, and every year thereafter put forth fresh, green leaves on Christmas Day. Its descendant stands there still and does the same, and people know it as the ‘Wonderfull’ Oak of Cadnam, and sing it songs and give it ale on Old Christmas Day.

Bedivere walked on until he came to a great stone, and he looked at the sword and thought it a sin and shame to throw away that noble blade, and so buried it there, beneath the stone, and returned to the king and reported that he’d been at the water and done his commandment.

‘What saw thee there?’ asked Arthur.

‘Sire,’ he said, ‘I saw nothing but the waters wap and waves wan.’

‘Ah, traitor untrue,’ said King Arthur, quietly. ‘Now hast thou betrayed me twice. Thou art named a noble knight, and would see me dead for the richness of a sword.’

And Sir Bedivere felt shame. He went to the stone and retrieved the sword, and ever after all who lay beneath it felt great refreshment, and in time an inn for travellers was built there, and it stands today with the name of John Barleycorn.

Bedivere went from there and walked, and walked, until the trees before him parted and the earth split, and where he had been sure no water was, a great, vast lake appeared.

There, he bound a rope to the hilt of Excalibur and swung the thing around his head, once, twice, thrice, and with a great and final strain, he let the weapon go. It flew, twisting and turning, to the centre of the lake, and from that lake there came an arm and hand above the water, which caught it, shook it thrice and brandished it. The sun caught its blade and the precious stones that covered it blazed, and then the hand and the sword were gone, and not a ripple left behind them.

Sir Bedivere left that lake and returned to his king, and told him what he had seen. The king nodded, and commanded Bedivere to show him to the lake, and with a strength the knight had thought long gone, Arthur forced himself upright, and tried to stand, but could not.

‘Alas,’ said the king, ‘help me hence, for I dread that I have tarried overlong.’

Then Sir Bedivere took the king upon his back and so went with him to that waterside, and when the trees parted and the earth split, and the lake appeared before them, it seemed greater still than before, stretching on, and on, past the bounds of the Ytene, and past the bounds of Britain, and past the bounds of Middle Earth.

On the bank, where none before had been, a boat awaited them, and on it stood a stooping ferryman, with grey hood and long spear, and in the boat there sat three weeping women, in hoods of mourning black.

‘Lay me with them, Bedivere.’

And he did so softly. There the three received him with grief, and in one of their laps King Arthur laid his head, and with a tear she stroked his cheek, and said, ‘Dear brother, why have ye tarried so long?’

The ferryman pushed away from the bank, and Sir Bedivere cried, ‘My Lord, what shall become of me?’

‘Comfort thyself,’ said the king, ‘for in me is no trust for to trust in; I will to the Vale of Avalon, and if thou hear never more of me, pray for my soul.’

And still the three wept and mourned, that it was pity to hear, and when the boat was lost from sight, Bedivere wept too, and cried and cried ’til no more tears were left to cry. Finally he went from that place, but had not gone a hundred yards before he turned back, to call in vain for Arthur once more across the waters. But the trees would not part, and the earth would not split, and Bedivere searched and he searched, but he never again found that lake, and he never again saw his king, and he walked until the night fell and the stars shone and he came to a strange hill, on which he fell to his knees and slept.

When Bedivere woke, he found himself before an ancient chapel, at once strange and yet familiar, and inside he found a fire burning and an old man praying to a tomb. When the old man saw Bedivere he smiled, and welcomed him as a friend from long ago.

Bedivere joined the man in prayer, and night followed night, and day followed day, and year followed year. There Bedivere stayed with his old friend, praying by the fire before the tomb, waiting for the day when his king would need him once more.

Some say he prays there still.

Some say that they have found such a lake, in a parting through the trees, and seen the sword at its centre. In AD 1951, a family travelling through Cadnam swore they saw it glittering there before them. Though they spent years searching, neither they nor anyone else but Bedivere has ever seen it twice and stayed on land.

Some say the hill that Bedivere found was Stagbury, near Furzley, and though no trace of building survives there, many barrows do. Many travellers still, at night, have seen a fire burn there atop the hill which cannot be found come morning, or seen a chapel there that is not seen by day, or met a man in rags who prays there, and says, when he is asked, that men once called him Bedivere.

I have seen no such thing, and whether these are ghosts or gods or old wives’ tales, I cannot say, but I have met with those who say they’ve seen such things, and I have met with some who say they’ve spoken with the man in rags, and others still who say they’ve knelt with him, and joined in prayer, and looked upon the tomb and have seen written there this verse:

Hic jacet Arthurus, Rex quondam, Rexque futurus.

Here lies Arthur, Once and Future King.