The Book of English Folk Tales

by Sybil Marshall

  There were giants in the land in those days, specially in Cornwall; and they were giants, too, in appetite, in temper, in passion. Everything they did was larger than life, and twice as extraordinary.

  Bolster was one such whose doings were many and various, but his chief eccentricity was one concerning the state of matrimony. His ungallant assertion was that one year was as much as any man could endure of one woman; so at the end of one year, he disposed of his current wife, and took a new one. As he was not bound by the normal span of life allocated to ordinary man, he had, by the time he met Jecholiah, run through some thousand spouses, and had got rid of each one in the same fashion, which afforded him a good deal of sport and healthy exercise. When the end of the year came round, he took his wife up to the top of the lofty hill known as St Agnes’s Beacon, and then, retiring some distance away, picked up huge stones and boulders and aimed them at her till he killed her. The missiles of granite lie about on the hill to this day.

  This was pretty strenuous exercise, even for a giant, and he liked to feel physically fit so as to make the most of this annual sport. So on the morning of the day appointed, he took himself off to the hills for a walk until he found a disused mineshaft, of which there were plenty in the area. Then he sat down by the side of the shaft, and opened a vein in his arm, which he afterwards draped over the shaft, and lay back to enjoy the sunshine while he bled himself as much as he deemed sufficient for his purpose. This was, in fact, when the mine-shaft he had chosen was about to brim over with his blood. Then he would seal the vein, and feeling very refreshed and fit, go home to fetch his wife and deal with the business in hand.

  Now his thousandth wife was a lady named Jecholiah, and she had been a good, hardworking, cheerful and loving wife to him; but her time was up, and in this one respect she proved much more recalcitrant than her predecessors. Try as she might, she could not bring herself to the point of sacrifice demanded of her in the cause of her husband’s interests and desires. She was a woman of spirit, and she thought male domination was being taken a bit too far when it required her to accompany him meekly to the top of St Agnes’s Beacon, and there act as a living aunt-sally till a well-aimed lump of granite finished his sport. It occurred to her to wonder what St Agnes thought about it, too; it hardly seemed a measure of which a female saint could wholeheartedly approve. That being so, as the end of her year of marriage to Bolster drew near, she appealed to St Agnes for advice and help.

  As it happened, St Agnes had been feeling affronted at the continual use to which Bolster put her beacon; so that she appeared in person to Jecholiah, and the two women laid their heads together to conspire against Jecholiah’s lawful husband’s immediate plans. On St Agnes’s instructions, Jecholiah returned home all smiles, and during the evening informed her spouse that she had made her peace with God, and was ready, out of her great love for Bolster, for self-immolation the next day.

  When morning came, she put on her best array, and behaved in the most loving, wifely way she knew. She smiled and sang about her work of providing Bolster with his enormous breakfast, and when he was ready to set out, she accompanied him of her own accord, skipping along at his side like a lamb in springtime, chattering loving nonsense and smiling up at him for all the world as if she were on her way to her wedding instead of her death. When at last they came to a particularly pleasant hillside, she professed that she felt a little tired, so should they sit down a while? St Agnes’s Beacon was only a little way off, now, and there was no hurry; beside, he had to let blood, or he would be in no condition to bring the matter to a satisfactory conclusion.

  ‘See,’ said Jecholiah. ‘Here’s a mine-shaft on the spot, when you are ready to use it. Might have been put there on purpose!’

  ‘One’s as good as another,’ agreed Bolster. ‘And there’s no time like the present, so they say.’

  So he sat down, took out his razor, and opened the vein on his arm for the thousandth time. Then he draped his arm over the open mine-shaft, and lay back, looking up at his lovely, loving, obedient wife.

  Jecholiah sat down by his head, stroking it and making loving small-talk. Once or twice he heaved himself up to have a look into the shaft, but it was not full yet, so he lay back again, blissfully contented to anticipate the afternoon’s sport to come, and the pleasures of the new bride he had already chosen and would carry off, willy-nilly, before night.

  Jecholiah lifted his huge head, and put it in her lap. Then she began to sing, soft, soothing music that seemed in tune with the birds, the breeze in the grass, and the clouds in the azure above, while the rhythm echoed that of the sea just lying ahead, stretched out along the northern coast of Cornwall.

  Jecholiah sang on, and Bolster closed his eyes. The shaft was not yet full. Then he slept, but still his wife continued her song. At length she saw what she had been watching for: the sea in front of her began to show tinges and streaks of red among the blue. Stroking her sleeping husband’s forehead, the obedient woman began her song again, and the afternoon wore on.

  At length he stirred, and feeling a strange sensation of weakness, as well as dreadful foreboding, he heaved himself to his feet and looked out to sea. As far as the distant horizon it was red, a deep, brilliant red the colour of blood; and the late afternoon sky, catching the reflection flamed lurid blood-red down to meet it, framing the blood-red sun. The mine, so carefully pointed out by St Agnes to Jecholiah, had an outlet to the sea, and for the whole time the giant had lain there, he had been losing his life-blood to the ocean.

  Understanding too late what had happened, he turned to wreak vengeance on his deceitful wife; but his head began to swim, his knees to buckle, and his breath to fail. With an almighty crash he fell to the ground, and that, as all good stories relate, was the end of him. And good riddance, too, as all women of good spirit will agree.

  Place Memory

  ‘Visions’ that occur and recur on the same spots are amongst those instances of the paranormal most interesting to modern psychical researchers, some of whom have put forward the theory that where great emotion has been expended in the past it is possible for the place itself to have retained some imprint which, given the right conditions, may be recalled to sight and hearing – as a sort of spectral ‘play-back’.

  Battlefields would seem to be appropriate spots for such happenings, and there are accounts of just such sightings on several, notably Marston Moor and Edgehill. There is a report that the Battle of Edgehill was re-fought by ghostly armies on each of the three nights immediately following the battle, and that the king himself, being appraised of it after the second night, went out to view it on the third. It is also averred that the people of Northamptonshire, in the past, have been able to witness the battle fought all over again (on the anniversary of it), by watching the reflection of the action in the clouds.

  Time to Think

  This is a shortened version of a story taken from an unpublished manuscript written by my brother just before his death in 1976. The main incident relates to 1921–2, approximately.

  Now I am an old man, I have plenty of time to think, especially at nights. And like all other old folks, I think about the past, and the things that happened to me when I was young; and it’s surprising how often I manage to put two and two together, and make four.

  There’s a place in my old home county of Huntingdonshire where accidents just go on happening, do what they may nowadays to make the place safer for traffic. It is a crossroads lying on the road between St Ives and Ramsey, close to the little village of Kings Ripton. The land thereabouts is flat; there are no buildings or trees to obscure the view in any direction; the hedges have been cut low, and fairly recently the roads have been altered, to reduce the speed of traffic; but still unaccountable accidents, often fatal, keep happening, on or near this spot. A lot of time and money has gone into trying to fathom out the cause, and to find a cure, but clever as they may be, they haven’t found the one or the other. Of course, they never thought about asking such a
s me. If they had done, I could have told them they were wasting their time. The only way to prevent accidents from happening there in future is to make a new road altogether, well clear of the spot where the two old ones cross. And now I’ll tell you how I know.

  Towards the end of the First World War, my father bought a horse that had been condemned for further use in the army. We had a little farm about twelve miles from St Ives, and we wanted a light horse to do easy work about the farm and to go between the shafts of a light cart that we used to take pigs and other things to market in.

  The horse Dad bought was a beauty. The only thing we could ever find wrong with him was that he had a crack in one of his hooves, but it never troubled him at all and never got any worse. He had a great big letter C branded on his rump, and I used to wonder how on earth anybody could ever have brought themselves to disfigure such a beautiful animal. Of course, we didn’t know his temper when Dad bought him in an auction. He could have turned out a demon horse for all we knew about him, so we had to watch him very carefully for the first week or two.

  We needn’t have bothered. He was as docile and intelligent as he was strong and handsome. He seemed to know what to do before you even suggested it to him, and was so willing that you nearly had to use force to stop him working. But best of all, he was a character in his own right. He’d been some officer’s cherished charger, I reckon, and had never been treated rough. He just loved human company, and wanted affection more than anything else. Well, he fell on his feet alright, like a cat, when he was knocked down to Dad at the sale. The minute I set eyes on him, I loved him, and Dad let me have the job of looking after him and working him whenever he could. I was about fifteen then. We didn’t know his name before we had him, so I called him Short – but we lived in the fens, and as anybody who knows anything at all about the fen will tell you, fenmen put the word ‘old’ in front of pretty near everything, only they don’t bother with the last ‘d’. So Short became Ole Short, for short, and Ole Short and me were pals from the very first.

  He was so mischievous that you had to be wide awake to stop him from playing tricks on you. When I was harnessing him, I never knew whether to use my right hand or my left to reach under his belly for the strap. If I used one, my head would be towards his as I stooped, and quick as lightning he’d nip off my cap and take a grab at my hair – never enough to hurt me, though many a time he’s lifted me right off the ground and pulled a tuft of hair out by the roots. If I used the other hand, I presented him with my rump, and he never lost the chance of giving me a playful nip that stung for a minute or two, though never once did he bite too hard. And if we spent the first couple of weeks sizing him up for any unexpected vices, he obviously spent his time seeing what he could make of us.

  We were very pleased with our bargain. Then one Saturday tea-time, as we all sat round the table in the farmhouse kitchen, there was a thumping and a rattling at the door, and in walks Ole Short. Dad and I both jumped up to catch him, but not before he’d helped himself to most of our precious wartime sugar from the sugar basin on the table.

  Dad couldn’t understand how he’d got out of his stable, or out of the yard, or through the garden gate; and though he never said so, I could see that he blamed me for not shutting the doors and gates properly.

  The next Saturday afternoon, in comes our uninvited guest again, and clears the sugar bowl as before. Mam was cross, this time, and Dad grumbled at me about being so careless. He said he’d do the shutting up himself in future as he couldn’t trust me, in case Ole Short got out on the road, or into any danger. So he did do it himself, and I sulked – till the next Saturday tea-time, when in walked Ole Short to help himself to the sugar, just as before. There was no doubt about it – that clever old horse could undo any sort of door or gate fastening we’d got. We had to put new fastenings of a complicated sort on every door and gate, and especially on the barn where the new wheat lay, because of course a pint of wheat is enough to kill any horse. Ole Short spent his life trying to get that barn door open, and one day when he was very old, enjoying a well-earned retirement, he succeeded, and committed suicide.

  But I must return to my main story. After we’d had Ole Short about a month, and could see no sort of wrong in him at all, Dad decided to try him out by taking some pigs to market at St Ives. When Dad got home late on the Monday afternoon, he sat down to tea with a worried sort of look on his face. Mam got his tea and then asked what was the matter. ‘Haven’t the pigs made well?’ she asked. Dad nodded. ‘Ah, they sold all right,’ he said. ‘It’s that new ’oss that’s worrying me. I hope he ain’t going to start showing us tricks by acting like he did today!’

  We all wanted to know what happened – me especially, because I just couldn’t believe Ole Short was going to turn out wrong after all. It seemed they had got to St Ives in fine style, no trouble at all, and started back in the same way. So Dad was just jogging along, relaxed and comfortable, when they reached the crossroads I’ve mentioned before. Then without warning Ole Short shied at something, laid back his ears and plunged into a wild gallop. He got off the road and on to the verge, which had on it great heaps of granite for making the road up, every fifty yards or so. Ole Short took no notice of these, but took the cart over the top of them on one wheel with the other nearly in the ditch, and it was all Dad could do to keep himself from being thrown out and the cart tipped over. Nothing he could do had any effect on Ole Short, and they went down into Kings Ripton at the same mad gallop. Then just through the village. Short returned to the road, slowed down to a gentle trot, and brought Dad and the cart home perfectly safe.

  ‘What did he shy at?’ Mam asked.

  ‘Blowed if I know. He took me so much by surprise I never had time to look. But I never saw anything o’ the sort to make a hoss shy. I’ll lay he won’t shy at that place again, anyway. I’ll be on the lookout for any such trick as that again.’

  But Dad was wrong. The next time he went to market, the very same thing happened – and again, and again. Short would go towards St Ives without the least bit of bother, but as soon as he reached that particular spot on the way back, there was simply no holding him, till he reached a point the other side of the village, and there he would just as suddenly return to his own well-behaved self.

  We talked and talked about it, and knowing how intelligent the old fellow was, we wondered if it was his way of making it plain that he didn’t like Dad driving him instead of me. Dad said I was plenty old enough now to take the pigs to market myself, so the next time we had any ready, I was given the job, and very delighted I was. All went well – until we reached the crossroads. Then I found out just what Dad had had to put up with from Ole Short. He was no better with me than with Dad. Whoever was driving would keep watch and always be extra ready for him at the danger spot, but he was too strong for any of us. We just couldn’t understand it.

  Then came a Monday when Dad and I both went to market, because Dad wanted to buy a new cow for the house. We rode into St Ives with a neighbour, bought the cow, and drove it home on foot. When we got to the place where Ole Short always bolted, we began to talk about it; and I went down close to the hedge, to look for anything at all that that silly old fool of a horse might take exception to. All I could see was a scrap of black rag, gone green with age, hanging on the hedge; and there was another bit, just the same, at the place where Short always came to his senses again.

  ‘Well, if that’s all he’s a-shying at, week after week,’ Dad said, ‘I reckon he ain’t half the horse I give him credit for being.’ And much as I hated to have to agree with Dad, I couldn’t help it. You could hardly see the rags from the road, anyway.

  So time went on, and I reached my seventeenth birthday. The war was over, and things were looking up for me. I had my first motor-bike. It was one you had to run alongside to get it to start, and then jump on. I was in my glory with it, and started going about on my own. The bike had an acetylene lamp back and front. You filled the containers with carbide and
water, and when you turned the water on it formed acetylene gas that you lit with a match, then closed the front of the lamp to keep the flame from being blown out.

  One Monday when I went with the pigs to St Ives, I happened to meet a pretty little girl from Ramsey, that I’d had my eye on till she went to work at St Ives. She was homesick and unhappy, and I tried to get her to cheer up. ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘I’ve got a motor-bike now. I’ll come over and see you on Sunday, and take you for a ride.’ So I did, and we stopped out till it began to get dark. Then she went in, and I started to go home; but before I got through the town I met a gang of other boys that I’d got to know, and they all wanted to examine my bike. By the time I left them it was pitch dark, nearly eleven o’clock. I lit the lamp on the bike, and away I went. But after about a mile, the lamp started to make a noise like somebody stuttering, and out it went. I lit it again and again, till I’d run out of matches, but it was no good. It would not keep going, and I was still ten miles or more from home, getting on for midnight.

  The police in those days were very hot on catching folks riding without a light, even a push bike, so I was scared to risk riding; but on the other hand, it would take me the best part of three hours to walk home, pushing my bike, and Dad and Mam would be worried to death. So I walked a little way, and then got the bike going and rode a little way, keeping my eyes well skinned for a glimmer of a light anywhere that might be a policeman, and getting off and walking by every house or set of farm buildings where a bobby might be hiding. And in this way I got close to Kings Ripton just after midnight.