The Book of English Folk Tales

by Sybil Marshall

  He was born into a fairly well-to-do family, at Fradlingham, in Yorkshire, where his parents lived a calm and peaceful, if unexciting rural existence. The boy found it too dull for his liking, for from his infancy he showed a tendency to headstrong likes and dislikes, a turbulent nature and a longing for adventure. When he reached the age of twelve, he cut loose, and ran away from home. He found work as a stable boy with a Mr Hugh Bethel, of Rise, and later, after five years, as a jockey with a Mr Turner, well known in the racing circles of that time. At this point in his career, a great adventure came his way. He had by this time a good deal of knowledge and skill in the business of horse dealing, and was chosen by the agent of the Duke of Northumberland to accompany a present of horses that nobleman was making to the Czar in Russia. He enjoyed the trip very much, particularly the time spent at sea, and returned to England with the fixed intention of thereafter becoming a sailor. He joined a ship of the line as an ordinary seaman, and almost immediately made a voyage to the West Indies; but the difference between being a matelot in the navy of the day and a passenger on his way to the Czar was more than he had expected, and more than his turbulent spirit could endure. He left the service as soon as he could, and decided to try soldiering as an infantryman instead. Military discipline, he discovered, was as bad as the naval variety, and just as irksome. While stationed at Chatham, he persuaded another private in his regiment to join him in a bid for freedom.

  They managed to escape without detection at night, and as soon as possible broke into a gentleman’s residence, where they helped themselves to a suit of civilian clothes each. They then buried their uniforms, and went on in a fair degree of assurance that they would not be recaptured. As Matchan was already so familiar with the racing fraternity and its ways, they trudged about the country, coinciding where they could with race meetings, at which Matchan could generally pick up something to keep them going as far as the next. In this way they came to Huntingdon races. Here their luck very nearly ran out, for they were actually arrested, and accused of being deserters; but Matchan had a glib tongue, and furnished the authorities on the spot with such a plausible tale that he was believed, especially as it was observed how little of a military bearing either of them showed. So they were released; but the effect of the scare had been very severe on both of them. They parted company, and Matchan went on alone. Now, however, some of his bravado had deserted him. He was in constant fear of being picked up again as a deserter, and this prevented him from finding work to feed himself. His solution to the problem was certainly an ingenious one. He decided to re-enlist in a different regiment, which he did, and became once again an infantryman, this time in the 49th regiment of foot, then stationed near Huntingdon.

  He had not been long in this role before he was chosen for a special mission, perhaps because of his ‘tough’ nature. The Quartermaster-Sergeant, whose name was Jones, had a son of his own in the regiment. Benjamin Jones was a drummer boy, and was, at the time, about fifteen years of age. The Quartermaster-Sergeant was in the habit of employing his young son to fetch the subsistence money for the troops from Major Reynolds, who lived at Diddington Hall. Matchan was selected as the boy’s escort, and on 18th August 1780, the two set out. The boy received from the major the sum of £7 in gold, and they started on the return journey. It seems strange that the drummer-boy, who had supposedly made the journey previously, should have been tempted out of the direct route, but Matchan, as we have seen before, was persuasive of tongue. However it was, they took a wrong turn, and went on as far as Alconbury. There they stayed the night, and in the morning turned again towards Huntingdon.

  As they trudged along side by side, Matchan’s thoughts turned again and again to the gold his companion was carrying. Were it not for the boy, he could appropriate the money, and with it be free of the army, and of England, before the law could catch up with him. He was a man of violent passion and as quick to action as to thought. They were just coming up to a copse that stretched on each side of the road, a little way from Creamer’s Hut (now Brampton Hut). Matchan suddenly turned and seized the boy, dragging him off into the trees, where he slit this throat with his pocket knife, and relieved the corpse of the purse of gold. He hid the body as well as he could, and went back to the road, retracing his steps through Alconbury, then on to Stilton and Wandsford, where he took the precaution of fitting himself out with a new suit of clothes. He then turned towards Stamford, from where he booked a seat on the York coach, and travelled towards his boyhood home at Fradlingham. He found only his mother living, and nothing to be gained there, so he made at once towards the coast, where he intended to take ship as soon as opportunity offered.

  Once again, luck of a strange nature altered the course of events. He had no sooner reached the coast than he fell victim to a press-gang, and willy-nilly he found himself again at sea as a sailor in the navy! At least he was in no danger there of being apprehended for the murder of the drummer-boy whose body had not been found for several days, by which time Matchan was away from England, whether he would or no. He was engaged in several naval skirmishes over the next few years, being discharged at last in 1786 – six years after he had committed his crime. He felt safe from detection, and began his wandering life once more, in company with another discharged sailor.

  One evening in the late summer of that year, the two were crossing Salisbury Plain when the sky darkened ominously, and a most violent thunderstorm broke over their heads. Men who had been in battles at sea were not very likely to be afra id of thunder, but it seems that the crashes were beyond anything they had ever experienced before, and the lightning absolutely terrifying. It was in a most prolonged and vivid flash that Matchan saw in front of him a spectral figure, which appeared to be that of a deformed and bent old woman. At once Matchan’s guilty conscience rose to accuse him, and almost gibbering with fright, he pointed the figure out to his companion. Strange to say, in the light of the next flash his companion, too, saw the spectre quite clearly; but as he happened to have no crime on his conscience, he reacted to it in an entirely different way from Matchan. He seized a stone, waited for another flash of lightning, and hurled the stone straight at it. His aim was true. The stone passed through the figure, which then sank into the ground and disappeared.

  Both men were now thoroughly alarmed, and the other sailor concluded that one or other of them had offended against the holy laws of God, and broken one or more of the commandments. As it was quite likely that either could have done so, they decided to walk separately so that if either had other strange experiences it would point him out as the guilty man, and he could search his conscience with a view to making amends before it was too late.

  They had not far to go. Walking along the road, one behind the other, they passed a boundary stone. When Matchan’s companion passed it, nothing untoward happened; but when Matchan approached, it rolled over towards him and glared at him with huge, staring eyes. So did every other boundary and milestone on the road.

  Terrified now as only a guilty conscience can make a man, Matchan desired that they should stop at the next inn and take refuge and shelter there. It was not long before a wayside inn came into view, and Matchan hailed the welcoming comfort of company with relief. However, when they had almost reached it, he found a remarkable obstruction between him and the door. On one side of the road down which he must pass stood the figure of Christ; and on the other side stood Benjamin Jones, in his uniform, and with his drum at his side. Matchan passed between them, and entered the inn in a state of collapse.

  When questioned as to the reason for Matchan’s condition, his companion related the dreadful experiences they had had since leaving Salisbury Plain. Every eye turned accusingly on Matchan, who began then to blurt out the whole story of his crime. He voluntarily gave himself up to the law officers, without struggle, and was brought before a magistrate at Shewsbury, who committed him for trial at Huntingdon Assizes. He was condemned to death, and after execution, his body was to be hung in chains on
a gibbet at the scene of the crime as a grisly warning to others that, however long the interval between, ‘murder will out’.

  The Reverend E. Bradley, who, under the pseudonym of Cuthbert Bede, was a frequent contributor to Notes and Queries, gave the following particulars of the gibbet as he gathered it verbatim from an old man who had acted as an ostler in former days at the coaching house on Alconbury Hill.

  ‘I mind,’ said the old man ‘the last gibbet as ever stood in Huntingdonshire. It was put up on the other side of Alconbury, on the Buckden road. Matcham [sic] was the man’s name. He was a soldier, and had been quartered at Alconbury; and he murdered his companion, what was a drummer-boy, for the sake of his money. Matcham’s body was hung in chains, close by the side of the road, and the chains clipped the body and went right round the neck, and the skull remained a long time after the rest of the body had got decayed. There was a swivel on the top of the head, and the body used to turn about in the wind. It often frit me when I was a lad, and I’ve seen horses frit by it, as well. The coach and carriage people were always on the look out for it, but it was never to my taste. Oh yes! I can mind it rotting away, bit by bit, and the red rags flapping from it. After a while they took it down, and very glad I were to see the last of it.’

  Localities, Origins and Causes

  Etiological Tales

  All folk tales are, of course, attached in the telling to a district or a specific town or village, though as explained in the introduction, it is often difficult to prove the exact origin. Etiological tales, on the other hand, are as firmly fixed to one spot as the objects to which they refer, which is why they form a distinct group, in spite of possible overlap with other categories.

  The Rollright Stones

  This story might also have found its way into the ‘Place Memory’ category, because recent research into paranormal phenomena has indicated that indeed the stones may contain some strange ‘force’ not easily understood in rational or conventionally scientific terms.

  At the head of his dwindling army, the king strode on. What his name was, or whence he came, there is now no chance of knowing; but that he was on foot, and that his avowed intention was to subdue the rest of England, is tradition that must not be questioned.

  The way had been long, and the travelling hard. Of those who had set out with the king, many had regretted their allegiance, and had sneaked off in the darkness towards their tiny homesteads again. Younger men had deserted along the route, tempted by the warmth and comfort of a cottage hearthstone, or the lure of a pair of rounded thighs in the hay or the heather. Still more had fallen out, sick or wounded from skirmishes among themselves as well as among the unwelcoming inhabitants of the lands they had passed through. Now they were reduced to three score and ten, or thereabouts, seventy-two or seventy-three, or even only seventy-one; the king could not be sure.

  Among them, though, were their five captains, the petty lords at whose command they had first left hearth and home to follow the king to fresh and greener pastures. As close as brothers were these five, forever finding excuses for putting their heads together and whispering counsels not meant for the king to hear. He was well aware of their intrigue, but kept himself aloof, sure of his own power and of his own judgment, and confident of success in his purpose. Over the next line of hills lay a stretch of countryside vital to his overall conquest. So up the slope he plodded, while the five knights held close together, a little distance away.

  When he was nearly at the top, a figure appeared on the brow, facing him as he strode on. It was the figure of an aged woman, gnarled and twisted but with a commanding presence. She held up her hand in a gesture that stopped him in his tracks, and all his followers with him.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked, in a voice of chilling power.

  ‘Passage across the hill. No one stands in my way.’

  ‘The hill is mine, and the land all round it,’ she replied. ‘What is your purpose?’

  ‘To conquer England, and rule it as one kingdom.’

  She gave a cackle of mocking laughter, holding out a long finger with which she pointed to the brow of the hill.

  ‘Ah, so I thought,’ she said.

  ‘Seven long strides more take thee.

  And if Long Compton thou canst see.

  King of all England thou shalt be!’

  The king measured with his eye the distance to the top of the slope, and saw indeed that it was about seven paces. He was now within a few yards of succeeding in his enterprise, if the old beldame could be believed, and he had no reason to doubt her prophecy. So he turned to face his army, and cried out in exultation,

  ‘Stick, stock and stone,

  As King of England I shall be known!’

  Then he turned about again, and began to pace out his seven long strides towards the top of the hill; but to his great chagrin, there rose before him a long mound of earth that completely obscured the view down into the valley. And there he stood, while his five knights drew close together and whispered at his discomfiture, and his men spread out in a loose semi-circle behind him.

  Then the witch raised her arm again, and in a loud voice cried,

  ‘Because Long Compton thou canst not see.

  King of England thou shalt not be.

  Rise up stick, and stand still stone.

  King of England thou shalt be none.

  Thee and thy men hoar stone shall be.

  And I myself an eldern tree!’

  Then the king (and every man with him) felt his feet turn cold as stone, and so heavy on the earth that strength could not raise them an inch; and gradually the freezing numbness crept upwards, till king, knights and men had all been turned to solid blocks of stone.

  And there they are to this day, at Little Rollright in the Cotswold country – the Kingstone tall and commanding, a little apart as a king should be; the five knights with their heads together, plotting still, and the men scattered around and about them in a loose, wide circle. Ask not how many men there are, for though the number is thought to be seventy-two, no one is ever able to count them and make the number of them the same on two successive counts.

  There are those who believe that the king still waits, like Arthur and King Redbeard, for the curse to be lifted, when he will march forward again with his men to confound his enemies and take over the realm of England. In the meantime, as he waits while age upon age rolls past, he is surrounded by elder trees, progeny of that tree into which the old crone magicked herself upon that fateful day. It is best not to visit the Rollright Stones on Midsummer Eve, for then, they say, if you stick a knife into one of the elder trees, it will not be sap that runs, but blood; and at the sight of it, the stone that was once a king will bend and bow his head, acknowledging still its power.

  The five knights still whisper their treachery to each other as the evening breeze drifts round them; but though many have set out in the moonlight to eavesdrop on their whispering, no one yet has stayed long enough to hear what they have to say.

  No doubt it is better that way.

  The Hurlers

  This story could have been equally at home among the collection of those about the struggles of the early Christian saints against the residue of paganism; but as the stones are still there to be seen and wondered at, folk-belief in their origin seems to be the more important point to stress.

  High up above the village of St Cleer, among the heather and bracken that grows on Craddock Moor, there stand three circles of ancient stones. Strangers wonder how they came there, and what caused people of old to drag such huge pieces of rock a thousand feet above sea level, and to what use they put them, when they got them there; but the people who live thereabouts know exactly how the stones came to be there, and why. It happened like this.

  It was in the days when Christianity was still struggling in Britain to hold its own against the devotion of the people to the Old Gods. The pagan peoples of the West had little time for the new religion, and continued to worship the gods of
field and farm, of river and tree, of thunder, frost and storm. These were strong and ferocious gods, good fellows for the main part, though capricious – gods led by Woden and Tiw, and Thor, gods that strong men might look up to, especially in time of war or conflict. The robust nature of the Cornish, in particular, did not take kindly to the meek nature of the Christ who preached nothing but peace and loving-kindness, and offered rewards only in the world to come.

  Yet it was these very people the early Christian preachers had set their hearts on turning from their heathen ways, and gathering into the bosom of the Church. Taking their lives in their hands, they ventured into Cornwall, building tiny churches here and there, and by example as well as by precept, gradually gathering little flocks around them. So on Sundays, the pagan hearts of Cornishmen and women were stilled into submission by the pious, courageous saints who carried so boldly the banner of Christ among them. Such a saint was Cleer, who pitched his spiritual tent in the neighbourhood of Liskeard, under Craddock Moor.