Sussex Folk Tales E-Book

Michael O'Leary

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

Seitenzahl: 295

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

With screaming demons in Wealdon copses and dragons lurking in bottomless ponds, the folk tales of Sussex truly represent the diversity of the area. Meet knuckers and willocks, mawkins and marsh monsters, the Piltdown Man, Lord Moon of Amberley Swamp and the princess of the Mixon Hole. There is also something terrible crawling to Crawley from Gatwick, which develops a degraded appetite in a bin… From ghosts and madmen to witches and wise women, Michael O'Leary reveals many of the hidden horrors of Sussex – horrors that can be found in the most beautiful places, or that lurk beneath the seemingly mundane. Amid these dark tales are stories of humour and silliness, of love, lust and passion.

Leseprobe

To Sarah, Daniel and Ruth,

whose travels have taken them all a bit further than Sussex

And for my mum,

remembering her and her parents when they lived in Robin Cottage

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Map of Sussex

The Seven Good Things of Sussex

Introduction

1 From a Hill to a Bill Through a Hole

Dragon Scales and Dragon Blood • The Bells of Bosham • The Merman Figurine • The Bosham Car Wash • Canute’s Daughter • The Man in the Moon • The Mixon Hole • Pook Lane • The Trundle

2 Arundel and up the Arun to Amberley

Bevis of Arundel • The Lyminster Knucker • Sussex Zombies • The Caretaker’s Story • Lord Moon

3 Three Hills

The Miller of Highdown Hill • Cissbury Ring • The Cissbury Serpent • Circumambulations and Chanklebury • The Jealous Husband

4 Valleys and Alleys, Bottoms and Brighton

Moon’s Bottom • The Legend of the Devil’s Dyke • The King of the High Downs • Trevor’s Boots • The Magnificent City on the Margin of the Sea • Quadrophenia Alley • The Brighton Thing • The Flying Dutchman of Moulsecoomb • The Spectre of Dale Hill • The Signalman • The Pig in a Poke • Puck and the Carter • Mount Caburn’s Revenge • Come All You Little Streamers

5 Little Bo-Peep Has Lost Her Sheep

Elizabeth’s Run • The Sparrows in the Thatch • The Lay Man of Wilmington • Landscape Change: Beachy Head to the Pevensey Levels • The Pevensey Scream • Little Bo-Peep

6 The Far East

William’s Toes • The Giant of Brede • Down to the Marshes from Rye • Elynge Ellet • Into the West

7 Tales of Bones and the Clodgy Slab

Mud • The Hawkhurst Gang • The Dancing Princess • The Unquiet Grave • The Gypsum Pharisees • St Dunstan and the Devil • Nan Tuck • The Piltdown Man

8 A Tale of Two Forests, Two Saints, and an Airport

Ashdown Forest • Wildisher’s Castle • St Leonard’s Forest • St Leonard the Dragon Slayer • The Continuous Survival of the Forest Knuckers • The Crawley-Crawley Creature • The Travels of St Cuthman and his Mum • Dragon’s Green

9 Squaring the Circle

The A272 – A Pilgrim’s Way • The Ambersham Time Shift • The Curfew Gardens and a Discourse Upon Bells • The Mercer’s Son of Midhurst • The Eternal Wanderings of a Fratricide • Poor Old Peggy Poyson • The Hungry Grave • Feather, Blood and Bone

10 Still Rambling On

Rosie’s Walk • Tell Me a Story

Glossary

Bibliography

Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to Rosie and Ben Sutcliffe for being such excellent walking companions on many an exploration, and for sharing my geographical mania and juvenile humour!

Thank you to Pat Bowen for her help and hospitality, and for generously sharing a story, and potentially more. Her love of Sussex is infectious.

Thank you to Sarah Rundle for being so helpful and generous with information, and for her research and suggestions. Sarah is a real, sharing storyteller.

Thank you to Umi Sinha for drawing my attention to Ovingdean Grange via the story of the Devil’s Dyke as related by an entirely fictitious Master Cisbury Oldfirle! Thanks also to Umi for the chance to tell a few tales at the Guesthouse Storytellers in Newhaven.

Thank you to Jamie Crawford, another selfless storyteller, for suggesting all this.

Thank you to the driven O’Donnell for a conversation about the Mixon Hole, as we sat outside a pub in Stromness!

Thank you to Baljinder and Aran for story suggestions whilst I wrote some of this in a courtyard in Patiala.

Thank you to all at the History Press.

And, of course, thanks to all the people I’ve bumped into in my wanderings; the bloke in the pub, the woman in the farm shop, the kids in the schools from Selsey Bill to Crawley, and whoever the hell that was in Brighton. Stories are being spun all the time.

Legend to O’Leary’s rough map of Sussex, showing story locations

1. Kingley Vale

21. Pevensey Castle

2. Bosham

22. Ninfield

3. Selsey

23. Hastings

4. The Mixon Hole

24. Brede

5. East Lavant

25. Romney Marsh

6. The Trundle

26. Brightling

7. Arundle Castle

27. Mayfield

8. Lyminster

28. Nan Tuck’s Lane

9. Amberley

29. Piltdown

10. Highdown Hill

30. Ashdown Forest

11. Cissbury Ring

31. St Leonard’s Forest

12. Chanctonbury Ring

32. Gatwick Airport

13. The Devil’s Dyke

33. Earwig Lane

14. Dale Hill

34. Dragon’s Green

15. Beeding Hill

35. Wisborough Green

16. Mount Caburn

36. South Ambersham

17. Seaford

37. Midhurst

18. Alciston

38. Lurgashall

19. The Long Man of Wilmington

39. Cape Horn

20. Beachy Head

40. Torberry Hill

THE SEVEN GOOD THINGS OF SUSSEX

Pulborough eel

Selsey cockle

Chichester lobster

Rye herring

Arundel mullet

Amberley trout

Bourne wheatear

INTRODUCTION

When I was asked to tell stories at a place called Gumber Bothy, I thought it must be somewhere in the Scottish Highlands. However, I soon discovered that it was in West Sussex and close to home. I drove off to a deserted car park up on the South Downs, where I was met by a teacher who led me to Gumber Bothy, some way from the road. My job was to tell stories to somewhat disaffected teenagers around a campfire.

I dragged my story box behind me, a converted ammunition box that I’d found on a dump, that had since grown wheels, and which contained various musical instruments and artefacts that sometimes help a story along. Swords to ploughshares.

The session went well; there’s nothing like a fire, the open air, and a few tales to temporarily dispel disaffection, and then it was time for me to head back to my van. The teacher asked me if I needed to be shown the way, or whether I could find my own way back.

‘I’ll find my own way back, no problem,’ I said, full of male direction-finding confidence – and off I plodded, story box trundling behind me.

Of course – I got lost.

I stood on a hill, tired and weary, my hand hurting from hauling on the rope that pulled my story box, and looked out into the darkness. There were no lights, not a single one. Yet this was the south of England – so surely there’s always a light somewhere; a house, a farm, a stretch of road with a car. But there was nothing; just the smudge of woodland under a pale quarter moon, and the sweep of the Downs.

I eventually found my way back to the van, but only after realising how wild parts of the southern counties can be. Arguably, Sussex, east and west combined, may contain more woodland than any other English county. To find out for sure would involve someone having to count every tree – and it would be extremely frustrating to lose count at 999,999 and have to start all over again – but there is an awful lot of non-urban land. In the woods, and out on the Downs, it can be wild.

‘As night falls, it requires very little effort for those who stand beside a downland tumulus in the screaming wind, or in the dark recesses of a wealden copse, to feel something of the religion of the pagan South Saxons, their belief in barrow wights, witch hounds and wood demons,’ wrote an unknown author very evocatively, and up on the Downs, for downs are always up, it can be wild.

(I love the above quote, but I am unable to properly attribute the author, something that is my fault. In the early part of this century I was involved in a storytelling project in mid-Sussex. I photocopied a chapter, called Pagan Sussex, out of a library book, but neglected to write down the name of the author. My recent enquiries, and twiddlings with Google, have failed to locate the book, which is no longer in the library, so if anyone could identify it, I would be grateful.)

Our wander through Sussex, however, will not just be through those wild regions – we’ll also take a stroll through the urban landscape, and the semi-urban landscape: the ‘edgelands’. We’ll find stories in Brighton, Crawley and Gatwick, as well as the more conventionally picturesque Arundel or Lewes.

I have been unable to resist the temptation to number the chapters according to the way Sussex shepherds used to count (or tell) sheep, though they really were counting the sheep in pairs. There are variations of this, but I have taken this list from the Revd W.D. Parish’s Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect, 1875:

1. One-erum

6. Sath-erum

2. Two-erum

7. Wineberry

3. Cock-erum

8. Wagtail

4. Shu-erum

9. Tarry-diddle

5. Sith-erum

10. Den

Maybe it is sad that I got this list from a book, rather than from a shepherd, but when I tried I nearly got run over by a quad bike.

The book is ordered geographically – we shall wander from the west to the east through southern Sussex, and then circle back westwards through northern Sussex. Circling. The old stories say that if you circle a church ‘widdershins’ – anti-clockwise – the Devil may appear. If you should circle that wondrous Sussex landmark, Chanctonbury Ring, he’ll almost certainly put in an appearance. Oh dear – and I’m suggesting that we circle the entire county of Sussex widdershins, picking up stories as we go. I hope that we survive to tell the tale.

In Sussex, if it’s not the Devil that makes an appearance, then it’s likely to be a dragon. Let us start walking.

Sussex is full of dragons – the evidence for this is to be found in the pub names: George and Dragon, Red Dragon, Green Dragon, plain and simple Dragon; there is even a village called Dragons Green. To some folklorists these dragons are relics of the ancient ‘Celtic’ past (I put the word ‘Celtic’ in inverted commas because it is a vague and rather romantic word generally used by people with an excessive fondness for ambient music), whilst some say they are relics of a more recent Saxon past (the name Sussex means ‘Land of the South Saxons’). Others say that the dragon is a symbol from medieval Christianity. I’m not a folklorist, I’m just a slightly tipsy storyteller, so I wouldn’t know – I am, however, rather suspicious of overarching theories of everything, and ‘dragon’ is a word, and words can attach themselves to many things, whilst ideas and beliefs can evolve, change, morph and merge. It may of course simply be that there used to be a lot of dragons in Sussex.

(I wish, however, to become a serious folklorist, and intend to begin my research by visiting every pub in Sussex with the word ‘dragon’ in the name. I am willing to accept a research grant from anyone who wishes to further understand this important topic.)

Our widdershins perambulation through Sussex begins by crossing the border from Hampshire and coming to a truly wondrous though not particularly well known place called Kingley Vale. I am eternally grateful to Nick Howes, a teacher at Funtington Primary School, who told me about the Vale when I was telling stories at the school. When I had finished that particular storytelling session I took a stroll up to Kingley Vale, and found that it was a national nature reserve. I wandered through woodland into a narrow, steeply ascending valley, and the birdsong from the woods on each side came to me like a sort of stereo; different sounds for each ear.

Then I entered the ancient yew wood. I’ve seen yew forests before, but nothing like this. A forest usually causes trees to be taller and thinner because of the competition for sunlight, but the trees here are the size of churchyard yews, and there are many of them. Within the trees there is the silent atmosphere of a cathedral, and an intense feeling of being watched. All the trees seem to have grotesque faces, and sometimes these are not seen at the time, but only on photos downloaded afterwards.

After leaving the yew wood I took a steep climb up Bow Hill, on the ridge of which there are four Neolithic round barrows known as the Devil’s Humps (also known as the Kings’ Graves and Bow Hill Barrows), plus a number of smaller barrows. These look for all the world like a line of scales along a dragon’s back. From this dragon’s back there is a spectacular view across the coastal plain, and way over to the Isle of Wight, as well as a fine view north over the South Downs.

DRAGON SCALES AND DRAGON BLOOD

In the ninth century, a party of Danes from the Danelaw of the North decided to attack Chichester. They landed at Bosham, destroyed the town, and left a trail of misery and destruction behind them as they headed north, intent on circling Chichester and taking it from the rear, something these Vikings were rather fond of doing. They were wary of Saxon defenders from Chichester, so they marched under cover of darkness. They found themselves entering Kingley Vale and headed up towards Bow Hill for what would be a great offensive point behind the city.

As they entered the stillness of the yew forest, however, the weather seemed to change and the temperature dropped. A mist rolled through the Devil’s Humps and spilled down the crevice of Kingley Vale – whispering, murmuring and swirling into the forest of yews. The faces of the trees grinned at the Danes, and then something began to detach itself from the hill.

Or was the mist in the minds of the Vikings? They had travelled seas, followed coasts and stars, and gazed into an infinity of sky. Yet, at the same time, all that filled their minds was the prospect of rape, pillage and a crude Valhalla. Their motivation was a sense of competition with each other, an intense fear of being made to look less than a man by a competitor with whom it was necessary to cooperate. Their minds were dominated by feuds and threats to their ‘honour’.

The mist from the Devil’s Humps and the yew grove entered their minds and took on the shape of the Vikings’ own symbol, the symbol of the dragon – a symbol designed to strike fear into the hearts of their victims, a symbol carved on the prows of their dragon ships – and turned it against them. Up on Bow Hill the dragon seemed to tear its body from the ground, rip its claws out of the Sussex chalk, and slink, burning and hissing, down the hill. The Danes felt the dragon all around them, and turned on each other, screaming their battle cries, and hacked with sword and axe. Each war cry belonged to a family, a dynasty; each warrior believed his war cry to be superior to the others, and every shout and scream was a provocation. For an hour, amidst the grinning trees, they tore each other apart, until the ground ran with blood, and the birds outside the grove began to sing the dawn chorus.

The story goes that the memory of their deaths haunts the yew grove, and that the memory of a dragon stretches across Bow Hill.

If you go to the yew grove in Kingley Vale, you will find sharp pieces of yew bark, as hard and sharp as dragon scales, and underneath them you will find the sap of the yew tree, which is as thick and red as arterial blood.

THE BELLS OF BOSHAM

News of the defeat at Kingley Vale failed to reach the Danelaw, because there were no survivors left to tell the tale. There were many reasons why a longship wouldn’t return, not least the strong possibility of being wrecked along the coast – the arrival of another fleet of longships along the coast of Sussex was less to do with discovering the fate of those who perished at Kingley Vale, and more to do with rumours of rich pickings at Chichester, and the prosperous port of Bosham.

Watchers on the coast of Selsey saw the dragon ships, striped sails a-flapping, ply their way around Selsey Bill, and into the creeks, channels and lagoons where Bosham hides. Hidden and sheltered though Bosham may be, it was a thriving port, with a church and a monastery, both of which contained treasures that had travelled along maritime trade routes from all over Europe. When news of the imminent arrival of the Vikings reached the populace, everyone – monks, farmers, tradesmen and their families – upped and fled, heading inland into the forest and up to the Downs.

The Vikings sacked the town, and then gleefully looted the largest bell from the church. What a prize! Not only valuable, but a symbol of the church; to take it was to emasculate the town and leave a mark of power. They lowered the bell into the largest longboat, which sank down until its gunwales were just above the water – the Vikings were willing to risk the boat swamping and carrying them to a watery Valhalla, in order to bring such a great prize back to the Danelaw.

As the dragon ships pulled out of Bosham Channel, through the creeks and inlets and towards the open sea, a group of monks – those with the special knowledge of the ring o’bells – ran back into the church, and, with the remaining bells, started to ring a backwards peal in a way that only their order knew. A sudden squall kicked up, a flurry of cats’ paws became a confusion of waves, the wind seemed to blow from every which way, and the low-lying dragon ship was swamped. The huge bell broke free, and with a great sonorous peal, crashed through the side of the boat. The Viking ship sank, and as it did so, a whirlpool span round and round, and, to the sound of the pealing bells of Bosham, the other ships span into the maelstrom and disappeared.

There was no way to retrieve the bell, and so there it lay, and it lies there still.

There was, however, an attempt to retrieve it, several hundred years after it sank.

The story begins when a Bosham fishing boat netted a merman. He was more seal than man, and more man than seal, and he gawped at them and tried to jump back into the sea, but they tied him down, gasping and gulping, and took him back to Bosham to be prodded and poked, examined and tweaked, and finally shut into a cold cell under the church.

Then, one cold misty evening, the monks rang the church bells to announce vespers, and from the deep beyond the inlet came a booming reply. Every time the monks rang the changes, the bell replied from the sea. In his cell under the church, the man from the sea started to gibber and shriek and rattle his chains.

‘Can we get the bell back?’ thought the monks.

‘Can we get the bell back?’ echoed the people of Bosham.

‘Bell back, bell back,’ gibbered the merman, and the people came and took him from his cell, and, in his chains, took him back out to sea, back out to the echoing bell.

They gave him a net to contain the bell, but kept a chain fastened to his leg so he couldn’t escape. Way down below, he completed his task and so they hauled him up. They then tried to haul up the bell, but nearly swamped the boats in the process. Finally they fastened ropes to the nets, and ran the ropes to six white oxen on shore. It is well known that only white oxen can haul a bell from the deep – just ask the men of Knowlton in Dorset, or the folk of Etchingham in East Sussex. The oxen hauled and hauled, but just as one of the monks noticed that an ox had a black hair on its rump, the man from the sea howled, a squall blew up, and the boat capsized. The net tore, there was a ‘crack’ as the shackles holding the merman snapped, and boat, crew and merman were pitched into the sea, and the bell ‘BONG BONG BONGED’ its way back down into the depths.

Some men were drowned, some were hauled out of the water – but the merman was free again. As for the bell, it is said that sometimes when the church bells of Bosham ring out on a misty-moisty evening, a deep reply can be heard from across the harbour, and the reply completes the proper ring o’bells.

It is also said that a yacht may make its way into the harbour on such a still, misty evening, and that the man on board – the banker, or TV producer, or whoever it is – must keep a careful eye out. For it could be that a merman hauls himself aboard, and it may be that the woman of the boat finds the salty embraces of the man from the sea more enticing than those of the jaded money man.

THE MERMAN FIGURINE

Bosham is vulnerable to flooding, and there is now a sophisticated system of pipes and sluice gates in place as flood control. I was told that during the digging of the trenches for the pipes, a little figurine – half man, half fish – was unearthed, but I don’t know what became of it. I did, of course, receive this information from that impeccable source: a bloke who heard it from a bloke. Strangely, though, I heard personally, from the rather enigmatic diver O’Donnell, that whilst diving Bell Hole, out in the Bosham Deeps, he also found such a figurine. O’Donnell is, however, a professional diver, and divers do tend to be great storytellers. I’m never inclined to entirely trust a storyteller.

THE BOSHAM CAR WASH

Strange place, Bosham, not least for the pronunciation – ‘Bozzum’ – but then why should spellings and pronunciation go together? It would deny the history of the language and make life too easy for foreigners.

One of the strange things about Bosham is the car wash. If you want to wash your car whilst there you can participate in a piece of modern folklore – for folklore is not something that sits statically in the past; after all, the present is always drifting back into the past, just as the future drifts back to the present!

Take your car down to the road by the beach, at the end of the High Street, down by Bosham Quay. Park it there; it’s a lovely spot for gazing out over Bosham Channel. Ignore, as so many do, the sign that says ‘This Road Floods Each Tide’ and wander off to the pub for a few drinks. You can drink as much as you like, because you won’t be driving afterwards; a tidal car wash really doesn’t help a car’s engine function effectively. The Bosham Car Wash will be in folklore collections of the future, but I’m all for watching folklore as it happens. If you put ‘Bosham Car Wash’ into YouTube, modern folklore will display itself in front of your eyes, and you can enjoy it (as long as it’s not your car).

CANUTE’S DAUGHTER

And what of the church from whence the Danes stole the bell? Holy Trinity Church is flooded with history. It is depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry; Harold sailed from here to meet William of Normandy in 1064. I don’t think the meeting went well.

King Canute is said to be buried here, and he had a palace, now gone, in Bosham. There is a legend that it was in Bosham that he demonstrated the limits of a king’s power to his sycophantic courtiers, by commanding the tide to retreat. However, that event actually took place over the border in Hampshire; at least I said so in Hampshire and Isle of Wight Folk Tales, and if I change my mind I’m bound to upset someone.

Canute was, of course – as he would have to have been in those times – a thug and a warlord, and his real name was Cnut, which suits him much better.

He did, however, have a little daughter and she was everything that her father wasn’t. She was kind and caring; she insisted that no one in Bosham should ever go hungry. She was a delight to the village. All of Bosham was in mourning when, at the age of eight, she slipped and fell into the mill stream. She was buried under Holy Trinity Church, and after a while history slipped into legend, and no one really knew if the body of Canute’s daughter lay under the church or not.

Then, in 1865, the church underwent a restoration. The vicar took the opportunity to investigate the legend. The floor was taken up, and a stone coffin was found. It was opened, and there were the remains of a child. As they removed the heavy stone lid, it broke in half with a crack. There was a rush of air, and something flew from the coffin like a whisper.

The next day a little girl arrived at a nearby farm. She carried a jug, and held it out to the farmer’s wife.

‘Do you want milk, dear?’ said the farmer’s wife, surprised to see a girl that she didn’t recognise. The girl didn’t reply. She just smiled.

‘That’ll be a penny, dear,’ said the good woman, after filling the jug, but the girl, still smiling, just turned and walked away. The farmer’s wife just gaped, and she was so beguiled by the girl’s smile that she didn’t chase after her.

The smiling child returned the next day and once more held up the jug.

‘My dear, it does cost a penny,’ said the good woman, but once again the girl turned and walked away, carrying a full jug of milk.

There is, of course, a third time, because things usually happen in threes in stories; that is if it’s not sevens, and the listeners usually get impatient before the storyteller reaches the seventh event.

The third time, after filling the jug, the farmer’s wife decided to follow the girl. Into the village they went, down along the water’s edge, until the little girl entered the churchyard and disappeared behind a gravestone. When the farmer’s wife looked behind the gravestone, what did she see, to her surprise and consternation, but the little girl holding a baby and feeding it milk from the tip of her finger.

‘Oh my dear little mite,’ said the woman, gathering up the baby. In a whisper the girl seemed to go from them, leaving no trace, and yet some trace, like a blessing.

Well, the abandoned baby was a girl, and she was brought up by the farmer and his wife, who had never had children. When she was an adult she emigrated to Newfoundland, and it was her great-granddaughter who told me the story as we went fishing for cod out of Newfoundland’s Fortune Harbour.

As for the stone coffin, it was re-excavated in 1954, and no bones were found. What was found, however, was a small bottle containing a strange brown liquid. No one was able to work out what the liquid was; but I know. It’s the story (stories can keep for a long time when they’re bottled, but you always need to let them out in the end).

THE MAN IN THE MOON

Children can be great sources of modern folklore, not least because they don’t call it folklore and put it in books. It’s just stuff. They’ll tell you about Bloody Mary who haunts the school toilets, or the ghastly, ghostly teacher who haunts the caretaker’s treasure trove of a cupboard. It was children in Selsey Bill who told me about Patrick Moore.

Well, Patrick Moore is a legend because of all those years in the public eye as a popular astronomer, and because of his individuality (something that people sometimes call ‘eccentricity’, but I don’t really know what that word means). He certainly lives in Selsey, and amongst his many accomplishments, a local feat is that he played a key role in founding the Bognor Birdman competition, where people attempt to fly off the end of Bognor pier. It’s all in aid of charity, and I don’t know if anyone has yet succeeded in taking flight.

The story that children tell is that he has been to the moon. In 1998 Patrick Moore was eating in his local Indian restaurant when there was an explosive thunderclap. Across Selsey, windows were sucked from their frames, cars were lifted into the air, and chimney stacks crashed to the ground. The tornado, for this really was a ‘twister’, whirled the restaurant around and around and hurled Sir Patrick up to the moon. For two years Patrick Moore was the man in the moon – and who else would he be – until the year 2000, when he descended unto earth in another twister, and arrived back in his own shower. The children said that this was the reason that nothing was heard from Patrick Moore between 1998 and 2000, and I rather regret having checked this out and finding it not to be true. Still, Sir Patrick himself said, ‘I can’t explain it. It is said that lightning never strikes twice, but clearly the same is not true of tornados. It makes me quite nervous to go outside.’

(Since I wrote this, Patrick Moore has died. He has left a Patrick Moore-sized hole in Selsey, but he’ll go on being a legend.)

THE MIXON HOLE

At one time you would have to be careful about going outside at night in the area where Selsey is now. This was because of the smugglers.

That is, unless you were dead.

An old custom was that the dead should be placed, in their coffins, on the shingle beach at what was then wild land at the end of the misty and remote Manhood Peninsula. In the morning the coffin would be gone – and it was said that the people of the sea had taken it to the Mixon Hole.

Now, over time, the sea has claimed much of the coastline, and where the Mixon Hole lies on the seabed – now a challenging focus for divers – there was once a river estuary, a Roman fort, and a straight Roman road that led to Fishbourne Palace, near Chichester. Fishermen have always known about the Mixon Hole, because it’s a good spot for lobsters, and it always carried the story of a lost settlement.

However, it was also possible that the leaving of a coffin was a smuggler’s ploy, and that the coffin contained contraband goods to be picked up by a coastal cutter and distributed up and down the coast.

And so one evening a revenue officer followed the funeral procession down to the shingle beach, watched the coffin being laid to rest, watched the mourners depart … and waited.

Night fell, and with a moon flying behind ragged clouds, still he waited, fortifying himself with the occasional swig from a brandy flask. No doubt the brandy had been smuggled, but a job is a job; catch a smuggling gang and you’d make a name for yourself, and get a promotion.

Then, in the early hours of the morning, his blood ran cold. Out of the sea there came first heads – then shoulders – then torsos – then whole bodies – six creatures, or men, or monsters. Two looked like Roman soldiers, and four like drowned mariners – and for the love of God, wasn’t one of them old Samuel Stacker from Bosham, who had been drowned only the year before? There were limpet shells on their faces and their bodies were festooned with seaweed and sea wrack and their eyes shone in the darkness like pale, yellow lanterns.

They stooped over the coffin, lifted it onto their shoulders, and walked back into the sea. The astonished excise man followed them, and his astonishment turned to wonder when he saw steps descending and a straight road cut through the sea.

A voice drifted back to him through the night air, or was it through the water; ‘Do you see yonder excise man that be following us?’

‘Aye, I do.’

‘What shall we do?’

‘Let him take his soul down to the Mixon Hole.’

And so he did: excise man, soul and all, followed them to a four square fort and after the coffinbearers had entered, he came to the gate and the guards let him pass; for he’d abandoned any pretence at hiding.

Inside the castle, on thrones of seaweed and sea shells, sat the king and queen of the Mixon Hole, whilst around them swam tompot blennies, gobies and blobfish, none of them a pretty sight.

‘Well,’ said the king, ‘share the rest of your brandy, for we have plenty more.’

And so he did – and a drowned musician picked up his barnacle-encrusted harp, and another his flute, and they began to play. The king began to dance, and so did the queen, and so did the revenue officer.

The cod and the hake,

The haddock and the sole,

They all danced together,

Down the Mixon Hole.

Then the king and queen’s daughter began to dance, and oh she was a beautiful mermaid – all wibbly-wobbly green flesh, double bubble chins, and flashing fish scales.

And she gazed at the revenue officer and said, ‘Stay – stay with me.’ And he said ‘yes’, and then he thought of his wife and children, and he said ‘no’, and then he thought of the rippling flesh of the sea princess, and he said ‘yes’, and then he thought of promotion and a life in London and said ‘no’, and then he thought of the sea, and green caverns, and salty caresses, and said ‘yes’, and then he shouted ‘NO!’, and ran back to the straight road through the sea, and the steps to the beach – it was morning and he was back on shore. But it wasn’t familiar; there was a straight sea wall that seemed to be carved out of stone, and when he climbed onto it there were weird houses from a bad dream, and people wearing strange clothes. A man approached, with a dog on a long, leather cord. The excise man spoke to him, asking what was what, and the man looked frightened and hurried away. Then there was a youth, wearing a hood, and with shoes that shone white.

‘Where be I?’ asked the excise man.

‘You is a nutter, innit,’ replied the youth, and also turned away, shouting incomprehensible things over his shoulder.

Well, the revenue officer could not account for anyone putting the clocks forward to this extent, and he wandered Selsey for a while, got picked up by the police, was sectioned and released, and now he wanders the streets of Brighton telling his tale. In Brighton there are people who believe him, because in Brighton there are people who like to chemically alter their brains. I also believe him, though, and that is because I have talked to the diver O’Donnell, who dived the Mixon Hole when the weather was inclement and the tide was turning. He said that at the right angle you could feel yourself flying over a fort and an estuary, and you could see the Roman ships a-coming into harbour. In spite of the fact the bird we call a ‘diver’ is known to the Americans as a ‘loon’, I know that the Mixon Hole carries a memory, and that land and seabed carry memories in exactly the same way our brains do; because where do we come from, if not the land and the sea; and where do they come from, if not the stars?

POOK LANE

Before we wander out of this chapter and over an entirely arbitrary border into the next chapter, let’s say a word or two about the Sussex fairies, who we’ll be seeing more of later.

In Sussex people called them ‘Pharisees’, and David Arscott, in