In an instant the whole procession vanished, coffin and all. Thunder and lightning, with roaring wind and torrential rain, enveloped the church and all its surroundings.
Through the storm the two men fought their way back to the village; but from that moment, Robin seemed a different person. He who had always been so full of life and mischief became melancholy and dull, avoiding his friends and seeking no company except that of the ‘hoss doctor’ who had shared with him the terrible experience. But life had to go on, and work continued. Robin went to work as before, since he was still as healthy and as strong as ever; and gradually the horror of what he had seen grew less. It was harvest time, and in the long summer days there was no one more active and hard working than Robin. Then, when a month had passed, they were topping up the last corn-stack when Robin slipped on the shiny straw, and fell. He was picked up unconscious, and died, so that exactly one month to the day on which he had seen his own fairy ‘fetch’, his old friend helped to carry his coffin over the very same path that the tiny procession had taken.
Ghosts
Ghosts come in such numbers, and in such amazing variety that it is difficult to pick and choose among them, and it is sad that more of them cannot be included in this collection, especially the well-attested ones like the romantic drummer of Potter-Heigham, who still crosses the ice on ghostly skates to visit his sweetheart on the other side of the broad, or the wicked Lady Ferrers, who in the flesh lived a double life as lady of the manor during the day and notorious highwayman at night. According to all accounts, her restless spirit still calls back its human form on occasions – the last reported sighting being at a children’s Sunday school treat!
The Ghost of Lady Hobby
Remorse is the keynote of this story of a most unusual sort of ghost, making Lady Hobby akin to Lady Macbeth, though one was solid flesh and blood and the other only a restless spirit forever striving to cleanse itself of innocent blood; but it is the tragic little victim in this case for whom the heart is wrung, not the unnatural perpetrator of the crime, however remorseful her spirit may appear in its nocturnal wanderings.
In the days of the first Queen Elizabeth, there lived at Bisham Abbey a proud and beautiful lady. She was proud of her face and figure, proud of her beautiful clothes and jewels, proud of her own ancient lineage and that of the man into whose family she had married. In fact, she was proud of everything except her little son, the next Hobby in the line. Of him she could not be proud, for though he was as healthy and sturdy a little boy as any mother could have wished, the truth was that he was a dullard at his lessons, and seemed not to be able to learn at all.
This grieved his proud mother beyond all reason. She simply could not understand how it could possibly be that a son of hers should not be as good at his books as he was bright and skilful at his outdoor games and sports. She made up her mind, after trying many tutors for him, to teach him herself; for it seemed plain to her that the reason for his backwardness was that he would not, and not that he could not, learn. Very well, he should be made to learn, and if he did not, then he should be severely punished with strap and rod. She herself would be his mentor, and nothing should prevail upon her to relent until her son was as much the equal of his peers in learning as he was in every other gentlemanly pursuit.
So poor Hobby’s ordeal began. Day after day he sat at his lessons with his stern mother as tutor, while the Thames ran sweetly through the meadows of his prison, and his friends played and fished there in the sunshine. For every failure, the hours of his schooling were lengthened; for every mistake, extra work was given; for every disobedience, the rod or the strap were applied without mercy, in order to make him try harder, and do better.
Deprived of his outdoor life, he began to grown wan and listless. Faced with more and more work that he could not comprehend, and of an amount he could not accomplish, he appeared every day to be more dull than he had been the day before. Fear of failure, and of punishment, robbed him of what skill and understanding he had; and still his cold, proud mother saw it only as an insult to her that he would not do better.
The pen was his chief enemy. Try as he would, he could not complete a single line of his copy book without the ink spirtling from the end of his quill, without blots dropping on to his work, without smudges from his inky fingers or his cuffs as his hand laboriously crept along the line of writing. For every blot, for every smudge, there was a swift cut with the cane, so that his tears ran down to complete the ruin of his copy-book page.
There came a day when poor young Hobby did worse than usual, and his tutor lost all the remains of her maternal patience. Seizing him, she began to beat him with all the pent-up rage of her proud, frustrated feelings. His screams fell on deaf ears, his pleas for clemency went unheeded. Tirelessly her arm rose and fell, till the child at last fell senseless at her feet. Whether he died there and then, or a few hours later, as a result of her attack, nobody knows. Nobody knows, either, the extent of her grief and remorse, when the full horror of her treatment of Hobby came home to her; but that she died in the course of time, and could find no solace or forgiveness even in the grave, is proved by her wandering, unquiet spirit, which paces still through the house, and lingers longest in the room where Hobby was beaten to death for nothing more than the blotting of his copybook.
Many are the people who have testified to seeing the ghost of his cruel mother, for it is no ordinary ghost. Down the corridor she glides, dressed in the full gown of Elizabethan fashion, with stomacher and ruff, coif, weeds and wimple; but the sight of her is enough to chill the blood, for the dark stuff of her heavy dress gleams up as ghastly white, while face, ruff and trimmings show black against them. As for her hands, they are the most terrible of all. Stretched always in front of her, the black hands strive in vain to reach and plunge themselves into the cleansing water of a washbowl, also black, that floats in mid-air at arm’s length before her. Try as she may, she cannot get near it, for it sways this way and that of its own accord, keeping always just out of her reach.
Perhaps the reversal of the tones in the apparition is a constant reminder of the unnatural behaviour of a mother towards her own small child. And as for the bowl, what horrors of the scene at Bisham Abbey in the immediate aftermath of the child’s cruel death does it not conjure up!
Lest this should be regarded as yet another macabre tale ‘invented by the folk’ from very scanty evidence, there exists something more concrete than Lady Hobby’s remorseful spirit to vouch for a little of the truth of it.
Some hundred and twenty years ago, repairs were being carried out at the ancient house, where once the girl who was to become ‘Gloriana’ was imprisoned in the care of Sir Thomas Hobby. In the room in which the dull little scholar sat so often in tears at his lessons, it was necessary to remove the shutters from a window. Tucked down between the shutter and the wall, the workmen discovered several copy-books of the kind that children of the past were so wont to pore over in distress. All dated back to the days of Elizabeth the First; and one of them corresponded in every way with the sad cause of little Hobby’s fate, for in it there was not one single line which was not inked, and blotted, and smudged, and finally washed with painful tears.
Herne the Hunter
This is a tale of jealousy and intrigue, of passionate men falling easily to the wiles of the Devil – and of their punishment when the Evil One handed them over to the thrall of their victim’s ghost.
Day after day the forest rang with the sounds of the chase as the king and his nobles hunted the handsome deer. The crash of hoof and antler through the undergrowth, the notes of the huntsman’s horn, the excited cries of knights and foresters, and the pounding of horses mingled among the trees as the startled stag sought safety in flight, and the excited men sought satisfaction in killing. The scene was certainly a brave one to the sight, what with the colourful costume of the nobles and the green garb of the foresters, the strength and motion of the horses and the swift red grace of the quarry; and
it was exquisite pleasure to the king to watch his trained foresters ride like centaurs and shoot like Apollo at the sound of his voice or the mere lifting of his royal finger.
Of all his men, however, there was no other like Herne, his head forester. Herne seemed part of the woodland himself, as straight as a tree, as sturdy as an oak, as handsome as the dappled sunlight, as swift and graceful as the deer itself. He rode faster and shot straighter than any other man, and seemed to know by instinct, as well as by long experience, what move the tiring stag must make. He was invaluable to his princely master, who made much of him, praising him loudly and showering him with favours as a mark of the royal esteem – all of which served to make Herne himself more keen, and his fellow foresters more envious.
As the years wore on, and Herne’s favour with the king still grew, the jealousy of his peers waxed in proportion. At last they could bear it no longer, and began to mutter among themselves that somehow or other an end must be put to it. Once voiced, the idea grew, and they arranged to meet secretly under a stand of great oaks in the middle of the forest at midnight, with the sole purpose of making a plan to bring about Herne’s downfall. Several times they met and aired their grievances to each other; but to plot Herne’s undoing was to risk life and limb, the torture or the gibbet if ever suspicion of them rose in the king’s mind. Fear held them back from taking bold action, while keen-fanged jealousy drove them forward to hope that there might yet be a way of encompassing their desires.
One moonless night, as they stole secretly together and met beneath the majestic oak whose shadow protected them even from the rays of the waning moon, they were startled into terrified silence by a sound on the edge of the clearing. Every man present strained his ears to listen, and at last their leader whispered, ‘Ssst! A horse!’ Still as statues they remained, for it was part of their training to freeze into immobility where they stood, and become invisible among the bushes. Yet in spite of their breath-holding silence, the rider came directly towards them, till he sat his splendid horse on the very edge of their circle, just out of the shadow of the oak. By the cold light of the moon they made him out, his huge black stallion, his tall, strong frame, his handsome, imperious face and his dark, flashing eyes. To everyone present, his face and figure seemed vaguely familiar, yet there was none who could place it, or call to mind where he had seen it before.
At last the leader of the conspirators rose, and gruffly greeted the stranger. He gave them greeting back in a mellow voice like the deep tone of a bell. The leader, taking courage, asked him his business with them.
‘I am one who lives on the outskirts of the forest,’ he replied. ‘I have watched your secret meetings, and I know your designs. I am of like mind with you, and if you so wish it, I can be of help in accomplishing what you desire.’
Overjoyed, the envious keepers accepted the aid offered to them, and asked how it was to be done.
‘Leave everything to me,’ said the handsome stranger. ‘It shall be exactly as you wish; but I shall expect payment, of course.’
They were rather put about by this, for they had little of their own to spare, and inquired what form the payment should take.
‘I shall ask you all to obey me by granting one request only, when it shall be made.’ said the stranger. Till then, I ask nothing; but if you swear on oath to act when I command, I shall ask no other payment now. Swear, and you shall soon see that I make no vain boast of my powers.’
Alarmed and uneasy as they now were, they all swore the oath. Then the dark rider wheeled his horse and rode off, out of the clearing and into the night.
Only a few days later, the king gave orders for his foresters to foregather for the chase. Herne was there, as usual, mounted on the best horse of any of the foresters, with his bow at the ready, and as always, placed at his royal master’s side. Yet something was wrong. When the hunt was about to move off, Herne seemed to have difficulty in controlling his mount, which reared and cavorted in a most extraordinary fashion, bumping up against the king’s horse and bringing down a sharp reproof upon its rider. Then the hunt began, but it was not Herne who first sighted the stag, or who led the chase. Indeed, try as he might, he could not urge his horse to the front, and throughout the day was always lagging behind when his expert skill was needed. As the king bitterly remarked, he seemed like a man so new to the saddle as to be a hindrance rather than a help to the chase.
The rest of the foresters noted his failure in uneasy glee, which was made even greater on the next day when Herne, called upon to finish off the quarry, completely missed his mark and buried his arrow instead in the trunk of the tree under which the exhausted stag was lying. From that moment, Herne’s downfall was rapid, until at last he was dismissed with ignominy from the royal service.
The man himself could not understand what had happened to him; all he knew was that he had lost his skill, and with it the king’s favour. He now had no means of livelihood, and no hope of obtaining any. That night, a most dreadful thunderstorm broke over the vicinity of Windsor, with blue forked lightning such as no living person had ever seen before, and thunder crashes that sent terror through the hearts of the very boldest; and when morning came, the body of Herne was found hanging from a limb of a huge oak tree in the Little Park. Bereft of all hope, he had killed himself.
The guilty foresters had got their wish, but they were neither comfortable, nor happy. There was something too mysterious about the whole affair for them to comprehend, and each remembered with terror the oath to the powerful stranger. When, and how, would payment be demanded?
When days and nights passed and nothing untoward happened, they began to relax again; but it was not long before strange tales began to reach their ears. There was a trespasser in the forest, a ghostly hunter who, said eye-witnesses, bore a great likeness to the dead Herne. He rode about among the trees at night on an enormous and fierce black charger, managing it with all the consummate horse-manship that Herne was wont to display in times gone by; but above his forester’s cap, there now grew from his head a pair of antlers worthy of the best stag ever reared within the bounds of the forest. And night after night, this ghostly hunter played havoc with the king’s deer. Indeed, the worried keepers knew this to be true, for the herds were thinning down from day to day. Be as vigilant as they might, however, they could find no sign of mortal culprit. Their own lives would be in danger if they could not put an end to the depredations of the poacher soon; but if it truly was a ghost-hunter taking the deer, what could they do to prevent him?
They decided that the first thing to be done was to establish the truth of the rumour, and with quaking hearts they agreed to meet at midnight under the very oak from which Herne’s lifeless body had been cut down.
They had no sooner foregathered there than the dark stranger was once more in their midst. He arrived, as from nowhere, with a flash of fire and the pungent smell of sulphur like an aura about him. This left the terrified foresters in no doubt whatsoever of his true identity. They had placed themselves fairly and squarely in the power of the Evil One and they now knew there was but faint hope of escape.
‘I am come to demand the service, that your oath binds you to perform,’ he said. ‘My command is this – that when Herne the Hunter appears before you, as soon he will, you are to obey him, as of old, in anything he orders you to do. And the first man to fail, I will have his immortal soul – and the next and the next, each one at a time, till I have got you all!’ Then he gave vent to a peal of devilish laughter, and the trembling foresters saw him no more, though the smell of sulphur lingered long behind him.
When they dared to look up again, their blood was chilled with horror afresh, for at the edge of the shadows sat Herne himself, astride a magnificent steed. As rumour had reported, it was Herne to the life, except that his face gleamed ghastly in the moonlight and from his head sprouted enormous gleaming antlers.
What shall he have that killed the deer?
His leathern skin and horns to wear.
What he had been denied in life by his jealous peers had been granted to his ghost in death. He was still Herne the Hunter, come to take command of the chase, as of old; and his former fellows were bound, as of old, to obey him, by reason of their oath to the Devil.
Herne gave orders that the keepers were to meet him under the oak next midnight, mounted and with the king’s hounds well prepared for the chase. Having no option but to obey, they did as they were bid, and followed their ghostly leader in a wild hunt that lasted through the hours of darkness, killing several royal deer in the chase. Night after night, without respite, the hunt swept through the forest, led always by the ghostly figure of the antlered man in whom Herne’s spirit lodged.
Wild tales soon reached the ears of the king, who would hardly have given them credence but for the obvious depletion of his favourite herd, and the evidence of carcasses of deer sometimes left lying when the exhausted keepers returned at daybreak each morning, only to resume their hunting in broad daylight.
When the king at last summoned them to ask for an explanation, they were so worn out with hunting day and night, and so worn down in spirit by the hopelessness of their case, that they threw themselves down before him and confessed all. Then the king flew into a right royal rage of grief for the loss of his peerless forester, and contemptuous anger at the wicked, snivelling cowards at his feet.
‘Take them and hang them, one by one, on Herne the Hunter’s oak!’ he commanded, and it was done. As each one kicked his last at the end of a rope, a dreadful peal of cackling, devilish laughter rang out from the Evil One waiting to seize their souls. So that was the end of the treacherous keepers, though not of the great huntsman himself; for people abroad in Windsor Forest at night have often heard the faint sound of a hunting horn in the distance, and glimpsed among the moonlit trees the wild chase of the ghostly hunt. It is always led by a lithe figure on a black horse, and above the death-mask pallor of the rider’s face sits a pair of branching antlers, worthy of the king’s head forester. It is Herne himself, the great hunter, as he follows the chase of phantom deer from now till kingdom come.
The Book of English Folk Tales Page 13
