North Yorkshire Folk Tales - Ingrid Barton - E-Book

North Yorkshire Folk Tales E-Book

Ingrid Barton

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Beschreibung

Whether hailing from the open Yorkshire Dales or the close-knit neighbourhoods of its towns and cities, North Yorkshire folk have always been fond of a good tale. This collection of stories from around the county is a tribute to their narrative vitality, and commemorates places and people who have left their mark on their communities. Here you will find dragon-slayers, boggarts and giants, tragic love affairs, thwarted villainy, witches, fairies, ghosts and much more. Historical characters, as rugged and powerful as the landscape they stride, drift in and out of the stories, strangely transformed by the mists of legend. North Yorkshire Folk Tales features Dick Turpin, General Wade, St Oswald, Mother Shipton and Ragnar Hairy Breeches, among others. These intriguing stories, brought to life with charming illustrations, will be enjoyed by readers time and again.

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Seitenzahl: 306

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

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CONTENTS

Title

Story Locations

Introduction

1 People

2 Giants

3 Dragons

4 Creatures of the Night

5 Hobs and Such

6 Mysteries

7 Witches

8 York Stories

Notes

Copyright

STORY LOCATIONS

INTRODUCTION

What are folk tales? Tales told by working people and recorded by those with enough leisure, education and income to go around collecting them. The concept of ‘folktale’ is relatively recent. Before that, there were just stories that lived or died on the tongues of local people. It was only when they began to disappear that they suddenly became precious enough to be given a name.

In Yorkshire, as in the rest of England, there is no longer a direct line of oral storytelling tradition as there still is in Iran, Morocco or the traveller communities of Scotland. We still pass on jokes or urban myths – the buds of new folk tales – but to tell stories and develop them requires time, and time is singularly lacking in our age. The poorest agricultural worker of the past spent more time chatting to his friends and family than most of us do now (if you exclude the barrier method of the Internet).

We can no longer rely on the oral tradition, but fortunately, in Yorkshire at least, we can get some idea of the richness of that lost heritage from the work of a few men (and a couple of women) who were sufficiently interested in the common people around them to record their tales with some sympathy. They were no Brothers Grimm: collecting stories was an interest rather than a passion, however, they realised just in time that reforming clerics and the growth of schools and literacy would eventually lead to the disappearance of folk tales just as they were leading to the suppression of folk customs.

It is inevitable then that most of the stories in this book have been collected by people, mostly vicars, who were not themselves storytellers; and some bear the heavy hand of Victorian ‘improvement’. I have treated them in the way any modern oral storyteller does by taking the often sketchy outline of the stories and making them my own by adding colour and details. Some people may object to my occasional use of Yorkshire dialect phrases, but Yorkshire dialect was the pithy, muscular form of speech in which the stories would originally have been told; to leave it out altogether would be to insult those old tellers. (On the other hand, if you are an expert in Yorkshire dialect I apologise for any mistakes.)

Some people do not consider historical stories, or ones about historical people, to be folk tales; I have only included ones that have a genuine folk element (i.e. they are what folk wanted to believe was true; so Archbishop Lancelot Blackburne becomes a pirate and the squalid Dick Turpin a hero).

North Yorkshire is a very large area and it has many stories, some of which are very similar (See Dragons). I have tried to give a broad range of the most lively ones, but there are plenty more. Folk tales are still growing out there, though slowly nowadays, rather like yew trees.

Sources for further reading can be found at the back of the book, along with notes for most of the stories.

Ingrid Barton, 2014

1

PEOPLE

SOMETHINGTO HIS ADVANTAGE

Hambledon Hills

There was once a man living at Upsall in the Hambledon Hills who had a dream. In it he heard a voice saying, ‘If you stand on London Bridge you will hear something to your advantage.’

The man was as poor as a church mouse so he had nothing to lose. He was also a Yorkshireman and knew better than to blab to anyone, so one day, without telling his friends or neighbours, he locked the door of his little cottage and with half a loaf of bread in his pocket, set off for London.

It was a long way so he hitched rides on passing carts, and sometimes stopped off for a day or two carrying out odd jobs to pay for his next few nights’ board and lodging, but slowly he got nearer to the capital. At last he fell in with some drovers who were driving cattle to the London markets and they took him right into the city. He did not tell them about his dream and they thought him just another amiable idiot going to gawp at the sights.

For a while he did indeed enjoy walking by the mighty River Thames, impressed by the size and wealth of the buildings and the splendour of the clothes and carriages of the gentry. Then he thought, ‘If I was to hear something to my advantage I could be living as high as these folk! Now where is that bridge?’ Guessing that if he kept along the river he would eventually get to it, he hurried on.

His first sight of the famous London Bridge was inspiring, for this was in the days when there was only one bridge across the river and it was always crowded. There were people and horses and wagons and cattle, and even a flock of geese with tarred feet trying to cross the bridge. Those coming from the south were supposed to keep to the left, and those going out of the city to the right, but not everyone obeyed the rules and every so often a struggle would break out. There were shops and houses too, old ones, built right onto the bridge itself, leaning out over the river on both sides, so that our man was actually on it before he had realised.

‘I mun be a reet gormless gavrison to have come here in first place,’ said our man. ‘But now I’m here I mun mak the best on it.’ He pushed and shoved his way along, among all the other pushers and shovers until he had crossed the whole bridge. ‘Now what?’ he wondered, for though he had kept an ear out hoping to hear ‘something to his advantage’, he had learned nothing except some interesting new southern swearwords.

He turned back and once more crossed the bridge, but once again nothing out of the usual happened. He was losing hope now and cursed himself for an idiot as he thought of the long road home. ‘Still, third time pays for all!’ he thought and set off again. This time he stopped in the middle, where there was a narrow gap between one house and another. He leaned on the parapet looking out over the river.

‘A fine prospect!’ said a voice at his elbow. A respectable, though not richly dressed, young man stood there. ‘Might I join you?’

‘I suppose,’ said our man suspiciously. He had heard many tales of the tricksy nature of Londoners and how they cheated poor Yorkshiremen out of their money. ‘I’ve got no brass, tha knows,’ he added bluntly.

The young man laughed, ‘I assure you I have no designs on your pocket. We’re not all thieves here! I can tell that you’re a Yorkshireman, by your talk. I spent many years in York as a boy. It’s a pleasure to hear the old accent again.’

‘Oh aye.’

‘Yes indeed. Fine horses, fine ale and fine lasses there. I remember it well.’

Our man was a little mollified to hear his county praised, so he moved over to let the young man lean beside him. They looked out over the river in silence for a bit, enjoying the sight of so many boats, little and big, crowding the waterway.

Finally, the young man said, ‘They’re talking of knocking all these old shops down and building a new bridge. It’d be a shame, don’t you think?’

‘Mebbe.’

‘So what has brought you down to this den of iniquity from God’s own county?’

Our man hesitated. ‘I – well, I dreamed I should.’

‘And you followed your dream. Oh my dear fellow, do you realise how fortunate you are! How I envy you!’ the young man sighed, thinking of the dreary counting house where he worked and from which he dreamed of escaping. ‘How I wish I might follow your example!’

‘You have dreams, then?’

‘Don’t all men dream that life might be better?’

‘An’ do their dreams come true?’

‘True? Alas, no. What joy to have one’s dreams come true!’

‘I reckon all that about dreams coming true is just shite,’ said our man gloomily.

‘Oh, don’t say that!’ spluttered his companion. ‘The world would be such a terrible place if we didn’t have dreams, don’t you think?’

‘Have you ever dreamed and it come true, then?’ our man pressed on.

The young man hesitated. ‘Oh, you mean dreams in your sleep? No – though, now you mention it, curiously enough I had one the other night that I hope might do so.’

‘Did you now!’

‘Yes, I dreamed I found a treasure!’

Our man turned and fixed him with a piercing eye.

‘Oh aye?’

‘I dreamed that I was in an old castle courtyard, and there was a big elder tree there.’

‘That’s nowt special.’

‘Wait! When I dug beneath it I unearthed a huge pot of gold!’

‘Now that’s more like!’ breathed our man. ‘Pity you don’t know where it was!’

‘Ah, but I do – well, I remember the name, but unfortunately I’ve not the slightest idea where it is.’ The young man sighed sadly.

‘What was the name? Happen I might know it.’

‘Up – something. Oh, I know; Upsall. You ever heard of it?’

‘No.’

Back in Upsall his friends teased him about his prolonged absence.

‘He’ll have a fancy woman down there!’ said one.

‘No, more like he’s being chased by some lass he’s fathered a bairn on!’ said another.

‘No, no. He’s been away in Pudding Pie Hill – wi’ the fairies!’ said a third.

Our man sat quietly and smiled. He could take jokes; he knew that they would soon be laughing on the other side of their faces.

That night he left his cottage just as if he was going for a walk – if you ignored the spade over his shoulder. The old castle of the Scropes had been abandoned since the Civil War and its gates had rotted away long ago. He peered into the courtyard with its roofless stables and piles of rubbish. Ivy was claiming the place, shooting up the keep walls and concealing in many humps and bumps the fallen stonework. It was very dark and our man had heard tales of ghosts. He clutched his spade and thought of the golden treasure.

As he looked around he thought he could see a lightness in one corner. He peered closer: white blossom. A large elder tree stood there. He strode bravely across and thrust his spade between the cobblestones beneath the tree. They put up a good resistance for a while but he was persistent and soon he was able to pull several out. Beneath them he thought he could see a dark hole. Our man thought of giant worms and poisonous toads, but he gritted his teeth and reached into it. Almost at once he touched something cold and smooth – a box, or perhaps a pot or something. He glanced around quickly but no one was around. Swiftly he pulled it up – it was heavier than he expected and he had to use both hands – and then shoved the stones back into place. Standing up with difficulty, he hid the pot as best he could under his coat and staggered home.

In the dim light of his rush-lit cottage, our man excitedly brushed the soil off the pot. He could to see that it was ancient. On its lid there was writing. Our man was not too good at reading, but even he could see that the letters were not like the ones he had learned at dame school. He briefly wondered if it was a curse. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound,’ he muttered to himself with a shrug and wrenched the lid off.

There was a moment’s pause, then he leapt to his feet and did a silent dance, for the rush-light now sparkled on gold; coin after coin of solid gold!

The news of our man’s sudden wealth was a nine-days’ wonder in the village. Some folk were pleased at his good fortune, especially as he did not move out but spent his money locally. ‘He’s careful, but he’s not mean,’ they said. Some, inevitably, were jealous, but that is the way of the world since time began, and you can be sure that the jealous ones were just as keen to be bought a pint of ale by our man as the others were. People speculated about where he had come by his fortune (was he secretly a highwayman? An alchemist?), but he said nothing, only smiled, and, as no one local had been robbed recently, in time the gossip died down.

He showed the empty pot to the vicar, hoping that he would be able to read the strange writing, but though the learned man hummed and hawed it was clear that his learning wasn’t great enough. ‘Some pagan druidic language, I expect,’ he said.

There had seemed to be plenty of gold when our man first opened the pot, but it cost a great deal to set up the house of a wealthy man, and the same again to set up a carriage. Our man was careful, but even so the time came when the money began to run out. Needless to say he kept the fact to himself, but soon he was living on tick and began to worry. He was going to have to borrow money and he only knew one way to do that, much though he hated the idea.

One day he surprised his coachman by giving him the day off and driving himself out alone in a little pony trap. He headed into Thirsk. Down a narrow street, he drove and knocked on an unremarkable door. A maid answered it.

‘Is the Jew in?’ demanded our man.

‘Mr Isaac is within,’ she replied coldly. ‘Do you have an appointment?’

‘Damn it!’ spluttered our man. ‘I need brass!’ She led him to a comfortably furnished room where the moneylender was sitting at his desk.

‘This person has come to see you,’ announced the maid disdainfully. Mr Isaac saw his new client was upset, but he did not lend money just for the asking. Politely but firmly he delved delicately into his visitor’s history. It was a sign of our man’s desperation that, for the first time, he found himself telling the whole story.

Mr Isaac was fascinated. ‘God has been good to you,’ he said. ‘Do you still have the ancient pot with the strange writing on it?’

‘Aye, but vicar could mak nowt on it.’

‘I tell you what,’ said Mr Isaacs, ‘I will lend you enough money to pay your immediate debts – I regret that your collateral isn’t good enough for more – but the one condition is that you will show me that pot. I am a collector of antiquities in a small way. It would give me a great deal of pleasure to see it. Perhaps you might be persuaded to part with it for a suitable sum?’

And with that our man had to be satisfied.

A few days later, he returned with the pot. The old man took it to the window and inspected the writing with a large magnifying glass. He gave a short laugh. ‘Very interesting!’ he said.

‘Oh, aye!’ said our man. ‘But when shall I have the money?’

Mr Isaacs put down the glass. He went back to the fire and sat down. He put the pot on his desk. ‘You can’t have it,’ he said.

Our man’s face went as red as a turkey cock. ‘What? But you said! It were a bargain, spit and shake hands, you said!’

‘You can’t have it,’ said Mr Isaacs, ‘because you don’t need it.’

Our man was not stupid, but at that moment, he really did look like a gormless gavrison. Mr Isaacs smiled. ‘The writing is Hebraic script. Would you like to know what it says?’ Our man nodded.

‘It’s a verse:

Look lower!

Where this stood,

Is another twice as good,

You are indeed favoured by God!’

‘Keep the pot!’ gasped our man, when he could speak. ‘And say nowt to anyone!’

Mr Isaacs inclined his head. ‘I can assure you that all our clients’ affairs are treated with the upmost secrecy,’ he began to say, but our man was already out of the door.

The second pot turned out to be, indeed, twice the size of the first. Our man had to take the pony trap with him when he went to get it. It had enough gold in it to last him – but who knows how much gold will be needed in a whole lifetime? Especially when you marry a willing lass and start fathering children a little late in life. Our man did not have to worry, though, for on the second pot was more strange writing – exactly the same as on the first. He knew what it meant now. He said nothing. A true Yorkshireman always likes to have a little something put away for a rainy day.

THE WHITE DOE

Wharfdale

It is Sunday. Folk are coming out of Bolton church when they see a white shape under the trees of the churchyard. At first they hang back, fearful of ghosts. Then, stepping lightly among the hoary gravestones, a snow-white doe comes towards them. It stops at a safe distance and regards them with its great brown eyes, poised to run.

The churchgoers give it a wide berth, but the next Sunday it is there again – and the next. Sunday after Sunday, it returns, now standing further back, by the graves of the Norton family. Folk agree that it is no natural deer, with its sad eyes, but appearing as it does on the Lord’s Day, neither can it be evil. No one attempts to drive it away.

Soon the gossip had a sighting at Rylstone church too. There is speculation as to whose ghost it might be, some favouring one deceased candidate and some another, but most agree that it is the fetch of Emily Norton, come to mourn at her brothers’ grave. ‘A sad tale,’ they agree.

Richard Norton had nine tall sons, archers and swordsmen all. They lived at Rylstone Hall and had a hunting lodge, Norton Tower, near Rylstone Fell where they stayed at times to hunt the red deer. He also had one daughter, Emily, who was quiet and pale and devout.

Among so many boisterous men Emily was often forgotten or neglected, left behind when they went hunting (for she would not join them) and silent as a mouse at the table where they talked loudly of their exploits. She loved them fiercely though: their easy grace on horseback, their rough playful ways and their good spirits. Best of all she loved to see them when they all knelt together at prayers in the evening, silent and respectful for once; a row of brothers united by their religion, a strong wall protecting the family.

She had a particular fondness for her eldest brother Francis and he returned it in the careless way of young men. He often brought her little presents, but one day he surpassed himself by bringing out from under his cloak a little fawn: a white one. It was tiny, bleating feebly.

‘A white deer is good luck!’ he told her. ‘I’ve never seen another. I thought you would make a good mother for it.’

Emily kissed him happily, though she soon learned the hard way what it is to care for another creature’s baby. The little fawn could go for a long time without food, but the moment that it smelt milk it would begin to struggle to its feet, and its bleating grew loud and shrill. The old family shepherd showed her the trick of putting her hand in the milk and getting the fawn to suck her fingers to persuade it to drink by itself.

The fawn survived and began to grow into a fine doe. It followed Emily wherever she went; they became inseparable.

But times were changing. Richard and his children did not realise how much. They were shocked to hear that King Henry had decided to put away his true wife, Catherine, and marry his whore, Anne Bullen. How was it possible for a marriage – especially one of such a long duration – to be dissolved on a whim?

Worse was to follow, for the king, no doubt influenced by bad council, foreigners and above all his base-born chancellor, Cromwell, seemed determined to break with the Holy Father in Rome and bring damnation upon the whole country.

The male portion of the family debated and argued at table and away from it. They were united in their determination not to change their faith in any way. ‘How can a king change what God has ordained?’ they asked. In this, they shared the opinion of most of their neighbours in the North. What they could not agree on was what to do about it. The younger hotheads were all for local landowners raising troops and riding to London to demand that the king change his evil advisors. Older and wiser heads pointed out that this king was not a man who brooked criticism from anyone. ‘Your heads would decorate London Bridge before your feet were out of the stirrups!’ said their father.

Francis said, ‘The king listens to arguments. We should write to him setting out our points carefully.’ But the other sons laughed at him, saying that they were not lawyers but the sons of a gentleman. In the end, the wiser councils prevailed and nothing was done – for the moment.

Meanwhile Emily’s doe was fully grown. She saw that the time had come for her pet to return to the herd and that it would be cruel to keep her a prisoner. She knew that her brothers would never kill her doe and so one day she took her into the deer park, where the herd was feeding. The doe trembled with excitement when she saw others of her kind and tentatively approached the herd. A fine stag caught her scent and came trotting out to meet and claim her. Emily returned home a little sad, but knowing that she had done the best she could for her friend. In the years following Emily often saw the doe running with the herd; flashing in the sunlight as the deer streamed along a hill or shimmering white among the trees of the wood, but they did not approach each other again.

One day a neighbour came galloping to the gates of Rylstone Hall. He brought news that, at first, no one could believe: the king had ordered commissioners to investigate all monasteries and decide whether they were being properly administered. They had the power to close any that were found wanting.

‘It’s just an excuse invented by court lawyers for stealing the Church’s property!’ declared Richard.

‘Like enough it’s the king who will eat the goods,’ said Christopher, another of the sons. ‘He grows as fat as Pig Ellen – and as greedy!’

His father struck him for insulting the king, but his view was silently held by many. The news soon spread to the commoners and they were consumed with fear. If the monasteries closed, who would help to feed the poor in times of famine? Who would provide them with care when they were ill? Who would keep the powers of darkness at bay?

The great landowners of the North and their people were never friends of change. They wished to live the life that their forefathers had lived, safe in the certainties that had sustained them for centuries: their religion, administered by priests in the magic language, Latin; the social hierarchy where everyone knew their place, their responsibilities, their obligations. New ideas, new men, new practices they rejected as dangerous to order, and order, in a troubled region like the North, was thought more important than anything.

Emily heard talk of a pilgrimage as she sat at the family table. It would not be to a holy place but it would be a holy thing itself, formed of abbots, priests, lords and ordinary people. They would go to London humbly and prayerfully to beg the king to spare the monasteries and, by ridding himself of certain evil councillors, to make his people happy.

It seemed to Emily to be a good idea. Surely the king could not refuse a request from so many good people? Francis alone held out against the family joining the ‘Pilgrimage of Grace’, because he did not trust the king – or any king for that matter.

‘Henry will see this as rebellion and use it as a reason to break the power of our northern lords. No king can bear rivals and we northerners have trodden on his toes once too often.’

His father and his brothers ignored his view, saying that they were ready to die for their religion if necessary. In the end it was decided that Francis could remain behind to care for the estate, while father and sons went south with the Pilgrimage.

Day after day passed by without any news reaching Rylstone Hall. One day, Emily and Francis rode out together to view the deer. It was the season of the rut; rival stags were belling out their challenges to each other and then rushing together again and again with a great clash of antlers. Emily could not see her white doe. She shivered in the brisk wind.

‘God protect our father and brothers!’ she murmured.

‘Amen’ her brother replied, but he looked troubled.

News began at last to dribble in. It seemed that the Pilgrimage had not reached London. It had met the king’s forces and there had been a stand-off, neither wishing to fight the other. Perhaps if one of those great Northern lords had been prepared to take charge the king might have been forced to grant some of their requests, but none did, and so at the first mention of a pardon for all who departed quietly, men began to drift away. Richard and his sons returned angry and humiliated.

The monasteries closed. Bolton Abbey was despoiled and its treasures carried away by men who suddenly became rich. Only the monastery church remained in use, a simple parish church now. Time passed. The old king died and went to be judged by God. His young son, a fierce Protestant but mercifully a weakling, died soon after. At last, Mary, a true Catholic queen, came to restore the land. Around Rylstone people breathed more freely, now the old ways would return, they said. Some of the Norton family agreed with them. Others, like Francis, were not so sure. As time went on, the new queen did not thrive. She had no children; she was ill. Men said she was wasting away. Now all the Nortons were alarmed. The next in line to the throne was another Protestant, the bastard Elizabeth. Surely the followers of the true religion must stop her taking the throne!

Upon Mary’s passing, Elizabeth was crowned. She showed no intention of undoing the evil her father had done. She pretended to be gracious and forgiving, but it was only a matter of time, thought the Nortons, before she remembered the Northern lords and wished to bring them to heel.

There was no talk of persuasion. Force of arms, they decided, was the only way to remove this upstart queen and replace her with her Catholic cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots. Now free speech at dinner in front of servants or women ceased. Emily heard whispering, doors closed on her and there was an atmosphere of conspiracy. She knew they were planning rebellion and fear grew in her heart. Her brothers asked her to make a banner for them, embroidered with the five wounds of Christ. They began to practise more with sword and buckler. They almost abandoned hunting in favour of polishing off their fighting skills.

Emily implored Francis to tell her what was happening, but he shook his head and said that the time was not yet ripe. She took to visiting her mother’s grave in Rylstone church to pray for her family.

Then there was a day of bags being packed, of whinnying horses being groomed and harnessed. Men she did not know gathered in the courtyard. Her father called her into the parlour and kissed her. He told her that he and eight of her brothers were going to join an armed rebellion led by the Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland.

‘You must be a brave lass and keep the hall while we are gone.’

‘Is Francis going with you?’

‘He is, but only as my squire. He says he will not fight against the queen, foolish lad. We shall see!’ replied her father.

They rode away in great style, her father and her nine brothers, proud beneath the banner she had worked for them. What could she do but pray for their safe return?

Her prayers were destined not to be answered.

Once again, a neighbour on a sweating horse galloped to the gates of Rylstone Hall with news, but this time his eyes were red with weeping.

‘Mistress Emily, you must be brave,’ he began, and Emily knew that all was lost. White as her own doe, she led him into the hall and sat with him at the empty table while he told her of the failure of the rebellion; of the capture of her father and brothers.

‘The Queen’s Grace now says that all those who went on the Pilgrimage of Grace have forfeited by this uprising the pardon given to them by her father. She will have blood, Mistress Emily. Her anger is terrible, they say.’

‘Are my father and brothers then, dead? I thought them only captured.’ He hesitated.

‘They live yet, mistress, but in prison and condemned to be hanged for treason.’

Emily stared at the wall before her, still as an alabaster monument.

‘And what of my brother Francis? Was he also taken? He swore he would not fight!’

The neighbour looked down at his hands and said nothing.

‘Speak!’

‘Your brother Francis did not fight, they say, but when your brothers and father were taken he picked up their standard, the one that bore the five wounds of Christ, and escaped with it. But as he rode past Bolton Priory, Sir George Bowes and his henchmen met with him by accident and, thinking to gain favour with the queen, slew him …’

She fell forward onto the table as though he had struck her with a hammer. The neighbour shouted for the servants who chafed her hands and temples and laid her in bed. ‘Your message has surely killed her!’ they said, but she was not dead. Next day she rose from her bed to begin her duties as the head of the shattered household.

Her first duty was to find Francis’ body and bring it home for burial, but even that was denied to her, for his killers, struck with guilt perhaps, had had him buried in the churchyard at Bolton Priory. She rode over there as soon as she felt strong enough and spent many hours praying by the newly piled earth that marked his grave.

A cold winter’s day brought a group of six men on tired horses into her courtyard. They were heavily cloaked and led three pack mules bearing three black sinister loads. Though they were muffled up to the eyes, Emily had no sooner caught sight of them than she ran weeping to meet them, for she recognised some of the brothers that she thought lost forever.

They told her that though their father and her brothers Christopher and Thomas had been executed, the king had shown mercy to six of them. ‘We have brought the others back with us to lie in their own land,’ they told her. They decided to bury their dead at Bolton Priory next to their brother.

Now the wrath of the queen broke over the North like a tidal wave. Anyone who had been involved in the Pilgrimage of Grace was to be punished. Hangmen had never been so busy; in every town and village known to have taken part people were hanged; lords, knights and gentlemen died as well as commoners.

The Norton family had only a little time together before the final blow struck them. Their father, having been hanged as a traitor, had forfeited his estates to the Crown. Soon the sequestrator arrived with his men to take possession and the remaining Nortons had to leave their family home. They were destitute, forced to rely on their neighbours for shelter and the very food they ate.

The remaining Norton brothers no longer dared remain in England. Being young and active they went abroad to seek their fortune in foreign wars, but their sister refused to go with them. She became a wanderer, freely offered shelter and sustenance by those who still clung stubbornly to the old faith. She walked the moors in all weathers from cottage to cottage, unwilling to be a burden for too long. Sometimes she walked to Bolton church, the only part of its monastery to remain in use. She could often be seen there as months turned into years, praying in the nave or by the graves of her father and brothers.

One day she could bear the separation from her old home no longer. She walked the long miles to Rylstone to sit once more in the deer park near Norton Tower where she and her brothers had once played.

As she rested under an oak tree and looked around at the familiar landscape, she saw, beyond the yellow summer gorse, a herd of deer. There was a white one among them, who seemed to be watching her. Slowly, cautiously, it left the herd and came towards her. Trembling with something like hope, Emily held out her hand. Gracefully the white doe stepped up to her and bent its head to lick her salty palm. Then, with a sigh, it settled itself down beside her just as it had when it was a fawn. Emily, comforted at last, wept for her lost family as she had never been able to before.

From that day on the two became once more inseparable. Their two souls drew closer together until they seemed like one. Lonely shepherds grew familiar with the sight of them walking slowly, gracefully together along the top of a hill or drinking at a moorland pool as they travelled between the churches of Bolton and Rylstone. On moonlit nights, they might be seen sleeping curled in the bracken or sheltering from rain below the rocks of Rylstone crag.

How long do deer live? Longer than Emily, it seems. Her hard life and grief soon wore down what was left of her youth and health. She died long before her time and was buried by her former neighbours next to her mother in Rylstone church. Not long afterwards, the white doe was seen for the first time on its own at Bolton. Some folk believed that Emily’s soul, unable to bear leaving the graves of her family even for the joys of heaven, returned again and again in the ghostly form of the white doe. But it may be that her lonely, unquiet soul still clung to that of the living friend of her youth until the white doe too lay down to sleep for the last time by Norton Tower.

POTTER THOMPSON

Swaledale

On the banks of the Swale rises a huge rock on which the old market town of Richmond stands. A poor man by the name of Potter Thompson once lived there. He made the simple pancheons and jugs used by dairymaids up and down the dale, and sold them in the market or carried them up Swaledale loaded on his old donkey. It was a hard life, for his pots sold very cheaply and he had a nagging wife to support; she was always telling him how lazy and stupid he was. He was a cheerful man nevertheless, especially when he was away from home, and Richmond folk were fond of him, though, as they said, he would never set the Swale on fire.

When his wife’s tongue drove him out of the house, he would wander about town hoping that someone would buy him a beer, or he would stroll down to the river and enjoy the sight and sound of the swirling water.

One day, when his wife was more than usually angry at the pittance he had brought home from the market, he stomped down to the river to cool off, for he had answered her back, which was always fatal. It was a cold and windy day. The river was the colour of tea, made so by the ironstone upstream – no, not tea, he thought, more like beer with the curling cream foam on it. ‘A river of beer!’ he thought. ‘Now that would be a thing to see!’ He fell into a happy dream imagining it.