The Book of English Folk Tales

by Sybil Marshall

  Tales of near-misses rose and passed from mouth to mouth over hill and dale, but still the raider picked off the fattest sheep when and how he liked, apparently getting bolder every day. Willy Jackson, for instance, when carrying a loaded gun (like everybody else in the district who could beg, borrow or steal one), suddenly looked up to see the dog-vampire regarding him calmly from the middle of the path only thirty yards away from him. So of course Willy whipped up the gun to his shoulder, and fired. As Willy said, you couldn’t trust guns to go off every time. His missed fire, and t’girt dog sloped off, as usual without uttering a sound.

  On another occasion, thirteen men, all carrying loaded guns, trapped him in the middle of a field of standing corn. They closed in on him in a circle, guns cocked; but he chose his time, and suddenly made a dash for it between two of them, coming within five yards of one Will Rotherby. The sight of the beast at such close quarters completely robbed that worthy of all self-possession, so that he quite forgot to pull the trigger, but leapt sideways yelling, ‘Skerse! What a dog!’ – while the others, apparently, were more concerned with Willy’s behaviour than their mutual quarry. A little way off, in a copse, was a deaf old man named Jack Wilson, who perhaps had the most extraordinary adventure of all. He was very old, and bent with years of work, and had legs so bowed outwards at the knees that, to use country parlance, ‘you could run a wheelbarrow through ’em’. Jack was gathering sticks for his fire, and being nearly stone deaf, was quite unaware of the excitement close at hand, and the altercation aroused by Will Rotherby’s failure to fire. The dog, making off at its usual liquid speed, made straight for the bent old man, and dived between his distanced knees, neatly somersaulting him base over apex in the process, because of its own long legs and high back.

  Jack averred afterwards, and continued to do so to his dying day in spite of all subsequent evidence, that what had caused his acrobatic turn was no dog at all, but a lion. Hadn’t he both seen and felt it?

  The serious situation was now handed over to the regular packs of hounds and their experienced huntsmen. They entered into the sport with a will, and the dog certainly provided them with runs as good as any fox in living memory. In the way of fox-hunting districts, the accounts of each were remembered, discussed, enlarged, embroidered, and eventually turned into detailed folk-narratives in their own right. The distance covered in some was remarkable, as were the numbers of riders up and out. One morning, for instance, one run started when the hounds found on Kinniside Fell and chased their quarry to Wastwater, on to Calder, then on to Seascale – but by that time night had fallen, and the two hundred men who had set out had to break off pursuit because they could no longer see. A Sunday morning meet found him on the high fells, and the chase was on again. Down towards Ennerdale the horses thundered with the hounds in full cry, and down inside Ennerdale Church the congregation lifted their heads and listened, breaking off their responses as if struck dumb. The next moment the church was emptied, as every man who could, including the parson, the Reverend Mr Ponsonby, took to horse and joined in. On and on went the chase (though the parson was forced to quit from exhaustion) till the dog led them into Cockermouth. There, they ran into a most violent thunderstorm (some said, as a result of thus profaning the sabbath), and were all drenched to the skin. Nobody saw how or where the dog escaped to, but suddenly they had lost him – as indeed they did on another day when he took them from Ennerdale all the way to St Bees. On that occasion he was actually observed quietly and calmly slipping out of a garden, and following his weary and worn hunters home.

  But all good things must come to an end, even the charmed life of so phenomenal a creature as ‘t’girt dog of Ennerdale’.

  On 12th September 1910, he was sighted again in a field of corn. Hastily a large body of men with guns surrounded him, and he was wounded enough for the hounds to keep him in view, though they would not tackle him. They followed him down to the Enen river, and when the huntsmen arrived they found him bathing his wound in a pool, while the hounds stood off at a safe distance. A man called John Steed was first on the scene, but the hounds prevented him from getting a clear view of the prey, and the wounded beast was able to make one last bid for life and freedom. He went to ground in Eskat Woods, but was at last flushed out, and brought down by John Steed’s gun so that the hounds were able to finish him.

  Thus ended a larger-than-life creature of the kind about which legends are made and tales recounted from generation to generation; not as the hero of the story, for that fame (as well as £10) went to John Steed – but as eight stones of dog carcase, and yellow-tawny hide striped with grey, in a glass case in Keswick museum.

  The Campden Wonder

  This extraordinary but true story of queer doings in Cotswold country became the subject of a pamphlet and so was known nationwide – but to this day remains the ‘wonder’ that it was at the time, no explanation ever having been given.

  Hard times there had been for everybody, rich and poor like, ever since the Civil War began; and though when it was over, the country in general had been able to settle down again, (though under severe discipline from Old Noll), Chipping Campden had not felt the last of its effects, as the following story relates.

  In 1645, Campden House, the seat of Viscount Campden, was held for the king by one Sir Henry Bard and a garrison under his command. Bard, though a cavalier, had risen from the ranks, and was a hard, cruel, selfish and rapacious soldier. He had no intention of going without anything if his men could come by it by any means, fair or foul; and the raids he made among the poor in the area made him as many enemies among those who supported the king as among those who put their trust in Parliament, for as they said, they were left without ‘a Sunday shift of cloathes to their backs’.

  In May 1645, however, the king, with Prince Rupert, left Oxford for Chester, to try to relieve the siege of that town. Passing within sight of Campden House, he sent word to Sir Henry Bard to draw off his men and join the army bent for Chester; and according to Bard, his orders were to make sure, before he left the house, that under no circumstances should the enemy be able to make use of it.

  Bard, being the man he was, carried out the order to the letter, and just before marching out, his men put the mansion to the torch, and burned it to the ground – despite the fact that its owner, the third Viscount Campden, was fighting for the king somewhere else, and that Bard’s ertswhile hostess. Lady Juliana, mother of the owner, was thereby made homeless.

  But Lady Juliana was made of tough stuff, and with the help of her steward, William Harrison, she carried on the estate, and weathered the storm. That she was a formidable woman of stern character is left in no doubt by her attitude when, fifteen years later, a most extraordinary nine days’ wonder of tragic proportions set the district agog.

  William Harrison had by this time – August 1660 – worked for Lady Juliana in the capacity of steward for fifty years, and was now an old man, approaching seventy. His loyalty to the noble family was above suspicion, and as a result he enjoyed considerable comfort and was well rewarded. His wife, however, was, as described by a pamphleteer later, a snotty, covetous presbyterian’, puritanical and mean-minded, a supporter of the Parliamentary party. They had one son, Edward, and were able to keep servants of their own, among whom was a house-servant called John Perry.

  On 16th August, the steward informed his wife that he was that day going to walk to Charringworth, about three miles away, to collect his lady’s rents from that district. Then away he went.

  Evening came and he had not come home; and when dusk began to fall, even his waspish wife began to show signs of anxiety, lest something had happened to him on the way. So she called her servant, John Perry, and sent him off in search of his master.

  Hours passed, but neither master nor man returned. When morning dawned and there was still no sign of either, the wife took counsel with her son, Edward, and they decided that it would be of no use at all to send another servant after Perry. The son himself would h
ave to go, which he did.

  Edward Harrison had not travelled more than a mile before he met John Perry, coming homewards alone.

  ‘Where have you been all night?’ asked the son, agitated that Perry had not been successful in his search.

  John Perry was a stolid, reliable lad – ‘Looking for the master,’ he replied. ‘Looked everywhere, I have, far and near.’

  ‘Not far enough!’ said Edward. ‘Turn about and come back with me. Now ’tis daylight, we can ask from one house to another, and find where he was seen last.’

  This they did, calling at each of the estate tenant’s houses in turn, and going from one to another till they reached Ebrington.

  Yes, said the wife of the last tenant they visited, the steward had called there for their rent last evening. He had seemed tired after his long day’s work, and they had invited him to rest awhile. This he had done, leaving them later saying he was now going home. No one had anything more to add to this account, so Edward and Perry started back to Campden keeping to the path that the old man had most likely taken.

  On their way back from Ebrington to Campden, they met a village woman in a state of great excitement.

  ‘Look what I have found,’ she said – and showed them a comb and a neckerchief stained with blood, which Edward recognized immediately as belonging to his father.

  ‘Where did you find them?’ he asked, dreading the worst.

  ‘In the furze brake just back yonder,’ she replied, and led them to the spot. They searched the furze brake high and low, and then extended their careful examination to the ground all round it. No further sign of the missing man came to light, nor any clue as to his whereabouts, living or dead. There was nothing to do but to return home to William’s wife (or widow) without tidings of her husband. Lady Juliana maintained a stoic silence throughout, though she had lost her faithful steward, and, presumably, her quarter’s rents.

  Mrs Harrison, however, was not to be so easily appeased. Her suspicion was that there had been foul play, and that the perpetrator of it was none other than her own servant, John Perry, though he was to all intents and purposes an honest, if not a very quick-witted local lad with no grudge at all against his master. As neither Lady Juliana nor her son seemed prepared to lift a finger in the business, Mrs Harrison denounced John Perry, who was then brought before the nearest magistrate.

  Here the boy was examined; but he told such a rambling, confused tale of how he had spent his time after leaving to look for his master that the magistrate could make neither head nor tail of it. So he decided to keep John in custody in case of further developments.

  At the end of a week, when William Harrison had still not been found, John Perry suddenly announced that he now wanted to confess, and to make a clean breast of everything. The bench of magistrates sat, and John was brought before them to make his statement.

  It was, he said, due entirely to the wickedness of his own mother, Joan Perry, and of his brother Richard. They had long been at him with suggestions that he should help himself to some of his master’s worldly goods, but he had always before resisted them. They had, however, at last worked upon him so much that he had agreed to their plan, and promised to keep an eye open for a good opportunity. That opportunity had come when he had heard that Harrison was to set out rent-collecting, for on his way home he would be carrying a good deal of money in cash. John had rushed home to rouse his mother and brother to action when sent out to find his missing master in the summer dusk.

  They had accompanied him, and had lain hidden to waylay Harrison when he was nearly home. They had leapt out at him, strangled him, and taken from his pocket the bag of money. Then he, John, had taken the neckerchief and the comb to plant as false evidence in the furze brake at Ebrington, while his mother and his brother had lugged the body to ‘the great mill sink’ at Wallington, and there thrown it in. The details he gave appeared to be irrefutable, and on the strength of his statement, his mother and his brother were at once arrested.

  Joan Perry and her other son were apparently dumbfounded at this charge, and violently protested their absolute innocence of any knowledge whatsoever of the crime, or even of ever suggesting to John any idea of robbing a good master. They in turn denounced John as an unnatural son and brother, accusing him of desiring to bring harm to people whom he knew to be perfectly innocent of such thoughts, let alone such deeds. John stuck to his story, and when he was shown a length of string that had happened to be in his brother’s pocket at the time of his arrest, he identified it as the very cord with which Harrison had been strangled. So the whole Perry family were kept in custody, and an operation set up to drag ‘the girt mill-sink’ at YVallington. The thorough search there produced nothing helpful whatsoever; there was certainly no body, strangled or otherwise.

  By now the matter was on everybody’s tongue, and it seemed the whole district was agog with the tale – except Lady Juliana and her son, the viscount, who held themselves aloof and took no part. But public indignation ran high, that an old man might not walk home in safety from Charringworth to Campden, and the worried local magistrates committed all three of the Perry family for trial at Gloucester assizes.

  When arraigned before the judge, John Perry repeated his tale; but the judge appeared to be somewhat of a doubting nature, and refused to proceed with the trial until the body of the victim should be produced. He could not, he declared, try anyone for a murder of which no proof existed that it had, in fact, ever taken place. Nevertheless, the three Perrys should remain in custody, until the next assizes. In the course of time these came round again. The judge this time was a different type of man, his name being Sir Robert Hyde.

  Before Sir Robert, John Perry told an entirely different tale. He declared that he must have been out of his mind when he made his confession, and said that he knew nothing whatsoever about Harrison’s death and that his mother and brother had never once mentioned robbing his master. Alas, it was now entirely too late. The judge was a choleric man, the chief of the accused was a perjurer who on oath had told two entirely opposing tales, and the mother and brother, though they knew themselves to be innocent, were now half prepared to believe that John was aware of more than he ought to be about the whole business.

  Public interest in the case was by no means dead, and popular opinion began to take the line that there was more in it at every level than met the eye. The explanation was, of course, that Joan Perry was a witch, and that by her black arts and her connivance with the Devil, she had not only contrived to do away with William Harrison and hide his remains where no one could discover them, but had also enchanted her own son’s tongue so that he had no control over what he was saying. The family was poor and defenceless, and as far as Sir Robert was concerned they were all apparently expendable. He sentenced all three to be hanged on a gibbet to be erected within sight of the supposed crime.

  So the relentless wheels of ‘justice’ turned, and a gallows was set up on Broadway Hill. The poor mother was the first to hang, watched by her two sons. Then came Richard’s turn. He made a last speech to the crowd gathered to watch the public execution, protesting his absolute innocence; then turning to his brother John, who was still waiting for his turn, Richard addressed to him an impassioned plea to save both their lives by making a clean breast of everything, and telling the whole truth now. John remained dumb, and Richard died.

  Then John was brought forward, and standing under the gibbet with the noose already round his neck, he declared that he was entirely innocent, knowing absolutely nothing of his master’s death, or of what had become of him. But, just as the hangman turned him off, he cried out in a loud voice ‘You may hear more hereafter!’

  Joan and Richard, being well and truly dead, were taken down and thrown into a grave at the foot of the gallows. The body of John was left hanging in chains from the gibbet, as an awful warning to passers-by.

  And still the talk went on. What had John meant by his last words? Did he after all know something more th
an he had told? Why had Joan by her magic not averted the dreadful end of the whole family? Was she a witch? Or were they all being ‘witched’ by somebody else? (And though no one dared to say it aloud, there must have been some wonderment as to why Lady Juliana still said nothing, and did nothing, to attempt to save the victims.)

  After three days of such talk, a young gentlewoman came forward, saying that she had great skill in witch-finding, and that she would know at once if Joan Perry had been a witch, provided that she could still view her corpse and find the witch-mark. Consent was given for this posthumous search and the grave at the foot of the gallows was opened. The body of Joan was taken out, and laid on the grass by the side of that of one of her sons, while the other still swung in chains above her. When all was ready the young gentlewoman approached, on horseback, to perform her grisly task. She rode up close to the gallows – but her horse, catching sight of Joan’s corpse, shied to the side and took her under the swinging body of John. Just as she passed under, his feet swung violently, and catching her just as the horse plunged, lifted her out of the saddle and precipitated her full length in the empty grave.