Yorkshire Folk Tales for Children E-Book

Carmel Page

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 108

Beschreibung

Where in Yorkshire can you walk on a dragon's backbone? Who goes dancing at the Spot Bottom Hops? Which very old story gives advice about loading a dishwasher? Which mischievous child invented Yorkshire pudding? And is it safe to offer a gift to a small-toothed dog? Yorkshire has a rich heritage of fantastical folk stories, traditional tales and words of wisdom handed down through generations. These tales are beautifully retold here for 7- to 11-year-old readers, written and illustrated by storyteller and artist Carmel Page –a southerner by birth but who has lived in Sheffield for so long that she now uses her backdoor as her frontdoor and has started to eat her dinner at lunchtime.

Leseprobe

Tomi three Yorkshire lads,tha’s legend!

First published 2018

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Carmel Page, 2018

The right of Carmel Page 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 7509 8953 4

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed in Great Britain

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Ay Up!

Abart t’ Author

‘Ta Luv, tha’s Bin Grand’

 1 Brigg the Dragon

 2 Jolly Jocunda

 3 A Sweet History of Pontefract Cakes

 4 Tales from the Spot Bottom Hops

 5 The Tongue that Told the Truth

 6 The Upsall Crock of Gold

 7 Robin of Loxley and the Pancake Surprise

 8 The Penhill Giant

 9 The Small-Toothed Dog

10 The Hen-Pecked Husband

11 Beggars Bridge

12 The Silent Drummer Boy

13 The Explicit Fabula

Ay Up!

I’m reet chuffed tha’s chosen mi book t’ read.

Yorkshire is a vast and beautiful region of England with a very distinctive accent. Lots of people visit Yorkshire on holiday to see the Yorkshire Dales, the Moors, the busy cities and the stunning coastline. Many people like it so much they want to stay.

Long ago Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans all visited Yorkshire. They also decided to stay and their stories stayed with them. Over time their tales have mingled with local legends and have been influenced by the Yorkshire landscape. Yorkshire’s brave and adventurous, and fun-loving people have been written into the stories too.

This book contains a picture of Yorkshire, a taste of Yorkshire food and some of Yorkshire’s oldest stories. But be warned, once you enter the land of Yorkshire folk tales you might not want to leave it.

Abart t’ Author

Carmel Page is a Southerner by birth, but she has lived in Sheffield so long that she now uses her back-door as her front-door and has started eating her dinner at lunchtime.

Carmel and her family have a terraced house on the edge of the city, but she tends to live in a world of her own. When she wakes up in the morning her head is so full of stories that she likes to lie in bed for a long time and think about them.

Some days, Carmel gets up early to go to Weston Park Museum where she teaches school children about Ancient Egyptian embalming and mummification. She is very good at demonstrating the bit where the brains are pulled out through the nose. (Not her nose … not the children’s noses either! She uses a big doll for this.)

Yorkshire Sculpture Park is another place Carmel often visits; here she teaches children how to make placards and hold demos. She also gets them to spot toilets in trees and paint with mud.

Sheffield has a storytelling club called The Story Forge, which Carmel co-runs. When she is not at her club she is normally telling people stories, drawing pictures or performing with Flying Teddy Bears. She has enjoyed writing and illustrating this book and hopes you will enjoy reading it.

‘Ta Luv, tha’s Bin Grand’

I would like to say this to:

Kevin, for early morning tea and life-long tolerance;

Beth Guiver, my Fairy Godmother, for so

much more than a big bag of books;

My Feral Friends and the Story Forgers

of Sheffield who have listened lots;

Nicola Guy, for endless answers to elongated emails;

Alex, Harrison, Nighat, Needa and Chelsea, for

sharing their expertise in English literature

and

Ursula and Rhoda, for just being friends.

Brigg the Dragon had breath which smelt of smoke and roast beef.

Billy Biter sat on the roof of his aunt’s house. The smell made Billy feel both sick and hungry at the same time. He watched Brigg resting in the fields below.

‘Perhaps we will get food tomorrow,’ Billy whispered to Tom Puss as he stroked his cat’s warm body and moved closer to the warm chimney pot. ‘Perhaps Aunt Hepzibah will let us back into the house tomorrow.’

‘Meow,’ said Tom Puss, snuggling closer to Billy.

The dragon slept in the Vale of Pickering. His wings were arched across the fields like giant barns, but there were no animals needing shelter. He had just eaten the last of the cows.

Billy looked down at Brigg the Dragon. Brigg’s spiky body lay twisted across the farmland like a winding road of sharp teeth.

That night Billy dreamt that he had walked down Brigg’s spine to somewhere much safer.

The next day, Aunt Hepzibah sent Billy to a cottage in Hunmanby to deliver some new clothes she had made.

‘And don’t tha drop them in puddles,’ she shouted after him,‘or there’ll be nowt for thi tea when tha gets home.’

Billy and Tom Puss set off with the parcel. They weren’t worried about puddles. The dragon’s breath had dried up all of the puddles around Hunmanby; even the pond was empty. It looked like an earthenware bowl, like everyone’s empty food bowls. The dragon had eaten almost everything. Even if Aunt Hepzibah let them in the house she was unlikely to have any food.

‘Come in and have a rest, Billy Biter,’ said the cottager when they arrived in Hunmanby. She looked warily at the sky in case Brigg was near, then she shut the door quickly. Billy sat on a kitchen chair and Tom Puss leapt onto his lap.

‘I’m baking some bread with t’ last of mi flour. When it is ready tha must tek some home to your aunt,’ the cottager said.

‘Thank you.’

Billy hoped his aunt would be pleased enough to let him have some of the bread.

‘Meow,’ said Tom Puss, licking his lips.

Before they set off home the cottager also gave Billy a pile of firewood. She tied it onto his back.

When Billy and Tom Puss passed Mrs Greenaway’s home they smelt something so wonderful they stopped in the road. It was ginger and spice and sweetness. Mrs Greenaway was baking Yorkshire parkin. Of all the women who baked parkin, Mrs Greenaway’s was always the stickiest and the spiciest and the sweetest.

‘Mmm,’ Billy murmured as he smelt it.

Mrs Greenaway heard him.

‘If you give me that loaf of bread, Billy Biter,’ she said, ‘I will give you three pieces of parkin: one for you, one for Tom Puss and one for Aunt Hepzibah.’

‘Meow, Meow,’ said Tom Puss before Billy could say anything.

They stayed a while, talking to Mrs Greenaway about the dragon. By the time they set off for home, with the three large pieces of parkin, it was getting late. A sea fret had covered the land in cold mist. The air was damp and the road was dark. Billy and Tom Puss got confused.

‘Is it this way?’ Billy asked Tom Puss. As he turned around he tumbled right over his cat and they both rolled arsey-versey into the field where Brigg the Dragon was resting. They landed on Brigg’s face. If his mouth had been open they would have landed inside it.

‘Rarrrr,’ Brigg roared. ‘Thaaat’s my eye you’ve just poked yourrr sticks into.’ The roar of his scalding breath was so loud and putrid it nearly killed them both. Brigg rubbed his sore eye with the tip of his wing, ‘I waaant to look at you beforrre I eat you.’

Billy was shaking so much he dropped one of the pieces of parkin. Immediately Brigg’s fiery tongue came out of his mouth and licked up the parkin. It was very sweet and very spicy and very sticky, and it got stuck in the dragon’s teeth. He couldn’t swallow it down and had to suck it like a sweet, but it tasted good.

‘Whaaat do you call thisss?’ he growled.

But whilst he had been distracted by the sticky parkin, Billy and Tom Puss had turned away, rushed out of the field and run back down the lane before they could be caught.

When they got home, Aunt Hepzibah was asleep in her chair by the fireside. Billy untied the firewood, then started to unwrap the parkin. The smell of the sweet, sticky parkin woke her up.

‘What’s tha’ smell?’ she asked as she took some parkin.

‘It’s Mrs Greenaway’s parkin.’

‘MRS GREENAWAY’S PARKIN!’ she shouted, throwing it onto the floor and stamping on it. ‘I don’t need Mrs Greenaway making parkin for me! I can make better parkin than Mrs Greenaway. I’ll show her how t’ make parkin!’ She leapt from her chair and began spooning syrup into a big pan. It slid slowly from her spoon in golden strings.

‘Get out of my way.’

Billy and Tom Puss had already gone. They knew better than to stay indoors when Aunt Hepzibah was baking.

‘Another night sleeping on the roof,’ said Billy as he picked up Tom Puss, but he was grinning. They still had a large piece of Mrs Greenaway’s parkin to share between them. Soon their tummies were full and the chimney pot was warm because Aunt Hepzibah had stoked up the fire to bake her parkin. But Billy and Tom Puss did not sleep well. All night they heard the clanking of baking tins and the clattering of spoons as the hot butter, treacle and syrup was stirred into the flour and then the oatmeal and spices were mixed in.

By the morning Aunt Hepzibah had baked the biggest parkin either of them had ever seen. It was cooling on the table and nearly covered it. She put on her coat and shoes in a mad hurry, not even bothering to do them up.

‘I’ll show thi! I’ll show thi!’ Aunt Hepzibah muttered under her breath as she set off down the road towards Mrs Greenaway’s house. She was halfway there, struggling with the huge parkin in her arms, when she tripped over her shoelaces and fell arsey-versey into the field where the dragon lay. He had just opened his mouth to give an early morning yawn and Aunt Hepzibah tumbled inside. The dragon swallowed her up in one mouthful and then made a large and smoky burp.

‘Thaaat was a surpr...’ but before Brigg the Dragon could finish what he was saying he had a second surprise. A giant-sized Yorkshire parkin rolled right into his open mouth. He was delighted, but it was such a huge piece of parkin that it stuck his teeth together and he could hardly snort. He thrashed his head about; he couldn’t unstick the parkin from his teeth. He stood up, beat his wings and took off, up into the air. He needed a drink or he would choke.

When the local people heard the beat of Brigg’s wings, they all came out of their houses to see if he was leaving. The dragon flew to the cliffs above Filey. The townspeople watched him from the beach.

Billy picked Tom Puss up and ran down to the beach too. Then, with a huge flap of his wings, Brigg the Dragon threw himself down into the sea, he was hoping a drink of seawater would clear his throat. He was so big that as he flopped into the sea it made the tide go out in Filey Bay and so he couldn’t get a drink. The townspeople all ran down the beach towards him, and while the dragon lay gasping for breath they all hit him hard on the nose.

Then everyone saw the tide about to rush back in again. The townspeople didn’t have time to run all the way back up the beach and feared they would be drowned.

‘Climb on his back,’ Billy shouted, leaping up and pulling others up behind him. Everyone got onto the dragon just before the waves returned with a gigantic splash.

‘Hold onto his spines!’

If they hadn’t held on they would have been washed away by the powerful waves spraying around them. Everyone was covered in seawater, but they were all safe.

‘Meow!’ said Tom Puss, shaking his fur dry.

The townspeople started to run back to the beach along Brigg’s body, terrified that he would rise up and throw them all into the sea. Billy Biter didn’t run. He could feel that the dragon lay completely still beneath him and he was sure that he would never move again.