The Book of English Folk Tales

by Sybil Marshall

  Secondly, they are often very local stories, in which the point is completely lost if the listener does not know the person concerned, or at least his family, and their characteristics. Though this type is perhaps one of the most prevalent of all, the details in this category matter more than in most. My father had a wealth of such anecdotes – like one about a local character known as ‘Mauley’ who would do anything for a free pint of beer. He once offered (according to the tale) to eat his own dirty stockings for such a reward. Somebody challenged him, and the beer was brought. He took off his filthy stockings, put them in a frying pan and held them over the tap-room fire till they were reduced to ashes – which he then swilled down with his free pint. Written thus, it becomes a rather distasteful reflection of rural crudity; but if one happens to know the background details of’Mauley’s’ character, other examples of his wit, his sad life-story and his sadder end it is a different matter. I can still hear in my head, and see in my mind’s eye, my father telling such a tale with a mixture of moral condemnation tempered with tolerance, compassion and understanding in his voice, and it makes all the difference. Only a Homer or a Shakespeare could really capture it in written language. I prefer as a general rule not to try. It is for this reason that very few such tales have found their way into this selection.

  (F) Moral Tales

  To ‘point a moral’ is as natural to the folk as to ‘adorn a tale’. In fact, they very often boil down to the same thing. People used to summing up a human situation with a proverb like ‘A man with a pretty wife needs eyes in his backside’ turn naturally to a tale to point a moral when they find it necessary. Such a narration as ‘Wild Darrell’ may have been used to warn many a beloved son against hedonistic extravagance, however different circumstances might be. It was such stories that unlettered local preachers found so useful for the pulpit, and which were welcomed with such interest by the rows of bored children surreptitiously making ‘rabbits’ of their Sunday handkerchiefs. I can vouch personally for the fact that while prayers and homilies went unheeded, such tales often left a permanent signpost to good behaviour in adult life.

  One last point remains to be explained, the inclusion of four ballads (of varying age) in their poetic form. It seemed to me necessary to remind the reader how much our folk literature owes to those in the past who could neither read nor write, and who had to memorize the story and its detail whole before they could add it to their repertoire. The slight difference between the Norse skald and the Anglo-Saxon scop was largely that the one was expected to extemporize new stories, about his lord’s deeds for instance, while the other often shaped and reshaped old ones. One was, in fact, a poet, or ‘maker’, and the other a minstrel. The poet made his tales in rhythm; there are various suggestions as to the reason why – that it accompanied the movements of the oar, or that it might be accompanied by percussion or harp, for instance. The minstrel no doubt found this rhythm (and rhyme, when that, too, was employed) an enormous aid to memory; and once a story had really become shaped into ballad form, there was far less chance of details being altered. The oldest folk story in the English literature (i.e. written down), Beowulf, is in poetic form. Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, though later, is another case in point.

  The ballad sellers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were often quite illiterate; but they learned by heart the words, and recited or sang the tale instead of merely telling it. It was a different way of putting the same thing over to an audience, and in considering ‘The Marriage of Sir Gawaine’, for example, it seemed to me that no words of mine could do justice to the tale half so well as the old ballad. ‘The Smuggler’s Bride’ is typical of ’the Debatable Land’ that still exists between folk tale and folk song; their common frontier is the passing on of a good story.

  To sum up, then, this lengthy introduction: I regard my function in this book to be the same as that of the scop or the medieval minstrel – that is, to purvey old tales in an entertaining fashion. It has been a labour of love. No doubt this is because of my own folk-origin in rural England, in whose ‘strange atmosphere my early years were passed’ (as well as most of my later years, incidentally). Whatever education and experience may have done to modify the influence of those early years, it is there among my folk that I still belong in spirit. And I like the feeling (rather than the knowledge) that by telling these old stories yet again for others to enjoy, I reach out across ages past to add my voice to the babble of those countless folk forebears of mine who found pleasure and solace in repeating, over and over again, the same endless, age-defying yarns.

  1981

  Sybil Marshall

  The Supernatural

  The Little People

  All the ‘fairies’ and other supernatural beings of this first group of stories are of the diminutive kind. They have human characteristics but are also endowed with powers of magic and enchantment. They live underground or in hillside caves, and do not care much for human company except where they attach themselves to a particular place or household, either for good or ill, and even then they take care not to be seen. These are the true ‘folk’ fairies, common to all European countries, where in some areas belief in them continued until quite recently.

  Seeing Is Believing

  In this tale, a Sussex labourer is allowed to speak for himself. His tale concerns the involvement of supernatural creatures in the ordinary, everyday life of the folk, not, as in ‘fairy tales’, the translation of humans to a faery world. The little people, generally so well disposed towards humanity, like to keep their activities secret, as James Meppom found to his cost; but dragons don’t need to hide. Nobody stays long enough in their vicinity to cause them any annoyance.

  They tell me as some folk don’t believe in the little people, as we call Pharisees, no more than they do in dragons. The reason is that they never set eyes on the one nor the other. They believe in the angels, though, and they believe in God, but I don’t suppose any of ’em ‘as ever seen Him. ‘Ah,’ they say, ‘but God and the angels are in the Bible, so they must be true.’ Well, ain’t the Pharisees in the Bible, likewise? And as for seeing, there’s folks as have seen ’em, as I heard tell many a time when I was a boy. And I have seen the rings they make, dancing on the grass. If the Pharisees didn’t make ’em, what did? But many a year ago there was a chap called Mas’ Fowington, what told another man called Mark Antony Lower all about the time his grandmother see the little people, and this Mas’ Lower wrote it all down.

  Mas’ Fowington’s old granny said she’d seen the Pharisees with her own eyes, time an’ again; and she was a very truthful woman, by all accounts. They was little folks,’ she says, ‘no more than a foot high, and they was uncommon fond o’ dancing.’ They joined hands and made a ring, and danced on it till the grass come up three times as green there as it was anywhere else – like it says in the old harvest song folks used to sing in the old days. ‘We’ll sing and dance like Pharisees,’ it says. There’s other folks beside Mas’ Fowington’s granny as have heard ’em singing in queer, tiny little voices.

  Then there’s that story about how one o’ they Pharisees took vengeance on a farmer called Jeems Meppom. He were Mas’ Fowington’s great-grandmother’s brother. It would ha’ been a powerful sight better for Jeems if he hadn’t never seen ’em – or leastwise, if he hadn’t never offended ’em, because that’s what happened, seeminglie.

  Jeems was a small farmer who had to thrash his own corn. His barn stood a fairish way from the house, and both of ’em were in a very lonesome place. And Jeems would thresh his wheat or oats in the barn all day, and then go home for his supper and bed, leaving the heap o’ threshed corn on the barn floor. And morning after morning, that there heap were bigger than he’d left it the night afore. Well, Mas’ Meppom just didn’t rightly know what to make on’t. But he were a real out-and-out chap for boldness, what feared neither man nor devil, as the saying is. So he made up his mind to go over to the barn some night, and see how it was managed.


  Well, accordinglie, he went up there one evening early, and hid himself behind some straw. After a long while he begun to get powerful tired and sleepy, ‘cos it were well after his bedtime, and he thought it weren’t going to be no use to watch no longer. When it got pretty near midnight, he decided to go home to bed, and just as he begun to move, he heard a curious sort o’ sound coming towards the barn, so he stopped where he was. And he peeped out o’ the straw, and what should he see but a couple of little fellows about eighteen inches high come into the barn without ever opening a door. They pulled off their jackets, and they begun to thresh that corn with two tiddly little flails as they’d brought with ’em. And they set in to that threshing at such a rate as you wouldn’t hardly credit.

  No doubt Mas’ Meppom would ha’ been scared if they’d been bigger, but as it was they was such tedious little chaps that all he wanted to do was to bust out laughing. Thump, thump, thump went their tiddly flails, regular as a clock, and Jeems had to push a handful o’ straw in his mouth to stop hisself from laughing out loud. So they kept at that threshing till they got tired, and then they stopped for a bit of a breather. And one of ’em says to the other in a little squeaky voice, as it might ha’ been a mouse talking, ‘I say Puck,’ he says, ‘I sweat! Do you sweat?’

  Well, when he heard that, Jeems Meppom just couldn’t contain hisself nohow, but bellowed out laughing. Then he jumped up from the heap o’ straw, and hollered, ‘I’ll make ye sweat, ye little rascals! What business ha’ you got in my barn?’

  Now when they heard this, them little Pharisees picked up their flails and whushed right by him. And as they passed him he had such a pain in his head as if somebody had give him a lamentable thump with a hammer, and knocked him down flat as a flounder. How long he laid there he didn’t know, but when he come to hisself it were getting daylight. He got up to go home, but he felt so queer as he could hardly doddle along; and when his wife see how tedious bad he looked, she sent for the doctor directly. But, bless you, that wasn’t no use, and Jeems, he knowed as it wasn’t. The doctor told him not to worrit too much, but keep his spirits up. He said it was only a fit Jeems had had from being almost smothered with a handful o’ straw in his mouth, and from keeping his laugh down when it wanted to come up. But Jeems knowed better.

  ‘Tain’t no use. Sir,’ he says to the doctor. The curse o’ the Pharisees is upon me, and all the stuff in your shop can’t do me no manner o’ good.’

  And he was right, for no more than a year afterwards Jeems Meppom died, and lays in the churchyard over there, poor fellow, under the bank where the snowdrops grows. He were sorry enough that he’d ever interfered with goings-on as didn’t concern him – leastwise, that’s what my great-grandmother used to say.

  Then there was several folks over to Horsham in the old times as see the dragon in St Leonard’s Forest. That were a tedious lonesome old place in times gone by, such a place as you might expect serpents and such to be bred in. And the folks as lived thereabouts was powerful upset by that dragon. It used to come out from the trees and maunder about nearly as far as Horsham, and often round another place called Faygate, and the folks as lived there were lamentable worried by it. Where that had crawled you could always see, on account o’ the slimey trail it left behind it – like a snail, only a powerful sight wider and thicker. But that slimey trail give off such a powerful stink as you couldn’t get anywhere nigh it. It made the air all round so bad as folks died on it, putrefied the air, it did, so as there weren’t many as would stop to look at the dragon long if they did happen to catch sight of it.

  But there were three people as did see that old landserpent. The carrier at Horsham, who used to put up at the White Horse in South’ark, he were one. There were three others, as well, who were willing to sign their names to a paper as were wrote out about it, all three living at the place called Faygate. They were John Steele and Christopher Holder, and a widow woman who couldn’t write her name but made her mark against the place on the paper that said ‘And a Widow Woman dwelling nere Faygate.’ This is that they set their hands to. They said that this serpent, or dragon, was nine feet or more long, and shaped like the axle-tree of a cart, thickest in the middle and thinner at both ends. The front part, as were his neck, were about as long as a man’s arm, and had a white ring of scales all round it. The scales on its back were blackish, and its belly, what anybody could see on’t, were blood red. (Of course, folks didn’t stop long enough close to it to examine it properly.)

  It had very big feet (though some say that dragons get along without feet, and move faster without ’em than most creatures can with ’em). This landserpent could move faster than a man can run, feet or no feet. When he heard the sound of a man or cattle of any kind, he reared his head up and listened, proud as could be. Then folks who had sight of him said he had two powerful great bunches, one each side of him as big as a football, sticking out from his shoulders; and ’twas thought that in time they would grow into wings. The people that wrote their names on paper said they prayed that God would allow for this old dragon to be destroyed before it ever got properly fledged, or God help the poor folks thereabouts!

  When it heard an enemy, that serpent would spit, and the filthy venom would fly as much as four rods from his mouth (’bout the same length as a cricket pitch). And if that stuff got on anybody, it were the death of him that minute. They swelled up and died, and many’s the body been found like that, killed by the dragon though he never ate any of ’em. One man thought he’d chase it and run it down, so he took his two tedious great mastiff dogs with him, and set off. Them dogs didn’t know how dangerous the serpent could be, and they got too close, though the man held back a safe distance. When the dragon reared the man turned and run off as fast as he could, but it spit on his dogs. So when he went back, his two dogs laid there dead and p’isened and all swelled up, but they hadn’t been attacked no other way. ’Twas thought the dragon got his meals in the rabbit warren mostly, because that’s where most of them as had clapped eyes on him had seen him; and folks complained that conies were getting powerful scarce on account o’ this. I don’t know no more about it, nor what happened to it; none o’ my kin ever see it, as far as I know, though they’d heard about it from their grannies when they were little children. And I have heard that that paper as the Widow Woman o’ Faygate made her mark on were writ in King James’s day, afore the Civil War. Time out o’ mind, that is, so I shouldn’t think that dragon’s there now. My folks would never go there anyway, on account o’ the ghost o’ Powlett, what still haunts the place. Likes a good ride on hossback, Powlett does, but he h’ant got no hoss of his own. If you go through the forest on a horse, you’ll find him up behind you, with his horrible ghastly arms round your waist. T’ain’t worth risking, I say.

  Ah, there’s more tales about seeley Sussex than them about smugglers over to Alfriston and down to Birling Gap. There’s folks still alive though whose grandads helped to fool the excise men on the cliffs round Cuckmere, that there is. You ask in the Star, or the Smuggler’s at Alfriston. They’ll tell you.

  ‘Aye, We’re Flitting’

  This is another story demonstrating the inadvisability of questioning the help of the unseen little people; but there is a moral to this tale too, pointing out the likely consequences of meanness and ingratitude.

  Farndale lay under snow such as never before in living memory. Up on the moors everything was buried under a thick blanket from which rose little eddies of blue-white smoke-like mist as the wind whipped dry snow into drifts. The valleys were choked and the pools solid. If was as if a white slow death had settled over Yorkshire, bringing life to a standstill – except on the farms. There, where there were animals to be cared for, somehow or other the winter had to be held at bay till the dale was once again gold-over with daffodils.

  Up at old Jonathan Grey’s farm there was great anxiety about the many sheep trapped in the snowdrifts on the moor, and the chance that already some ewes might be dropping early lambs
. The farm was a prosperous one, for Jonathan was well established, and a hard worker like the many generations of his family before him; but he was not rich, or even well-to-do. He was comfortable. His household was comfortable, and his comfortable wife saw to it that the lads and lasses who lived there had a good living too.

  Ralph had been with them since he was a lad of ten, and had learned his craft as a farm-hand from Jonathan himself. As he grew tall and strong into manhood, his skills soon outclassed those of his master. There was no one for a dozen miles in any direction who could shear with such dexterity, mow with such rhythmic speed, or thresh with such untiring strength as Ralph. He owed it all to Jonathan and the farmer’s kindly wife, and worked as hard and as long as he could in gratitude. So it was that when somebody had to go out onto the snow-covered moor to try to rescue sheep and lambs, it was Ralph who volunteered. Jonathan and his wife watched him striding purposefully away, walking with the aid of his shepherd’s crook. Then a fresh blizzard swept down across the landscape, and they saw him no more. Hours passed into days, and days to weeks, but Ralph did not return. When at last the weather let up enough to allow them to look for him, all they found was his frozen corpse, buried beneath a snowdrift.

  It was a tragedy for the farm in more ways than one, for with Ralph’s death the farmer had lost his right-hand man, the best worker and the truest, most loyal servant. Jonathan and his wife grieved for Ralph as for a son, and gloom settled over the household.

  Then, as Jonathan lay brooding in bed in the dead of night, he heard strange noises coming from the barn which was attached to the old stone farmhouse. Thump, thump, thump, it went, in tireless, even rhythm. The farmer thought he must be dreaming, but the noise went on and soon awakened his wife. They sat up in bed listening, and a few minutes later the whole household was roused. They came together with tousled heads and half-opened eyes, bare feet shoved hastily into boots, and bodies draped with blankets and quilts for decency’s sake.