Peterson had amassed a fortune as a judge in India, and, retiring to the New Forest in the 1870s, he thought that he would build the tallest concrete tower in the world. This tower was supposed to be a magnet for spiritual energy – Peterson was fond of esoteric spiritual ideas, a very Victorian habit that is the true ancestor of much modern ‘new age’ thinking. He used local labour to build the tower, supervising the work himself. During a time of hardship, Peterson was philanthropic, and one of the reasons for the tower’s construction was to provide employment. My mate, Roy Barnard, recalls his uncle telling him that Peterson employed people to plant cabbages upside down, and then employed other people to dig them up and plant them the right way round! This may be a caricature of Peterson’s employment plans, but it shows how rapidly folklore develops.
Some of the people employed in the building of the tower were from an obscure religious sect known as ‘The New Forest Shakers’. Shakers they weren’t – the name had been purloined from the American sect. ‘Jumpers’ would have been a more appropriate name, because that’s what they did; they jumped. Their charismatic leader was known as ‘Jump to Glory Jane’, though her name wasn’t Jane at all, it was Mary Ann Girling. Jump alliterates with Jane, and so ‘Jumping Jane’ it was.
Mary Ann Girling came from Suffolk, and it seems that some grief drove her to her religious obsessions. She always dressed in black: a long, black Victorian dress, and a black bonnet with a feather pointing vertically upwards … and she would jump – up and down – up and down – into a state of religious ecstasy.
She collected followers in Suffolk, but this led to trouble and strife with the local population, and eventually they were driven out. They went down to the East End of London, where they collected more lost souls, and eventually they were driven out of London too. The sect ended up in Hordle, on the edge of the New Forest – the Forest that had always been a refuge for outcasts, dissenters and the lost.
Here, Mary Ann Girling’s mania grew more pronounced – one time she even announced that the world would end at midnight on New Year’s Eve. She and her followers waited out in a field for the end of the world, and then all had to trudge home, damply, in the early hours of the morning. After this, she began to believe that she was the reincarnation of Christ; she announced herself to be immortal, and then she died. A plaque was placed in Hordle churchyard:
Mary Girling Leader of the Hordle Shakers was buried here in 1886
And time went on.
One day, in the 1990s, a group of young men (though ‘men’ may not be a particularly appropriate description) came driving out of Bournemouth, intent on trouble and strife. They robbed a filling station just outside New Milton, and then careered off through a maze of lanes and country roads. When they heard the police sirens, they decided to dump the money. The ringleader stopped the car, saw that strange, tall concrete tower, ran into Hordle churchyard, and dumped the money behind a bush. He didn’t notice the plaque on the wall. The police caught up with the young men, but the car, rather unusually for them, legally belonged to one of the gang, and the police had no evidence.
The next day, the ringleader went back to recover the money. Now, he really wasn’t too bright, and he knew nothing about reading maps, so he cruised around till the evening – when he saw that unmistakable tower, and then Hordle churchyard. There was the bush, and behind it, still there, was the money. It was as he turned back towards his car that he saw something terrible at the churchyard gates. There was the tall, gaunt, angular figure of a woman, wearing a long, black Victorian dress and a large, black bonnet with a feather pointing vertically upwards … and she was jumping – up and down – up and down. Now, if a woman is wearing a heavy Victorian dress you can’t see whether she’s bending her legs at the knee or not – but you’d swear that this apparition wasn’t bending its knees; it was straight and rigid, and yet jumping – up and down – up and down.
The young man panicked and fled blindly in the opposite direction, but every time he looked behind him there she was, always the same distance away … and yet she never seemed to be moving forwards, but was always jumping – up and down. The young man stumbled across a field – and there, ahead of him, tall and gaunt, was Peterson’s Tower. Now, if you are being pursued by something terrible, surely the worst thing you can do is go down a blind alley – head for a dead end? But then, if you’re terrified, the mind doesn’t work logically.
The young man stumbled through the dark, gaping doorway of the tower and dragged himself up the spiral staircase. He came to an empty room, and crossed it to the next spiral staircase. When he looked behind him, there she was, at the doorway – jumping – up and down – up and down. Then to the next room – and again, there she was, behind him – jumping – up and down – up and down. And so, he continued up through the thirteen stages of the tower, till he got to the highest room, where an iron ladder led to the roof.
Now Peterson’s Tower, predictably enough, was being used as a mobile phone mast, and there, in the top room, was all the receiving and transmitting equipment. As the young man dragged himself up the iron ladder, the shade of Jump to Glory Jane passed through the receivers and transmitters, fizzled and crackled – and jumped off into cyberspace.
Maybe the end of the story should be that the young man did his own jumping, and leaped to his death from the top of the tower – but he didn’t. The police found him the next day, crouching in a foetal position, rocking backwards and forwards, laughing and crying at the same time. I heard that the young man is now in Tatchbury Mount Hospital in Calmore, just to the east of the Forest. He never recovered, and never seems to find any peace.
If you look out of the window of his room, there’s a strange sight – a mobile phone mast disguised as a tree. In a forest full of beautiful trees, a mobile phone mast disguised as a tree is a jarring sight. Its ‘branches’ are perfectly straight and parallel, and it certainly doesn’t look like a tree. It looks tall and gaunt, rigid and angular – for all the world like Jump to Glory Jane.
So, folklore lives and breathes – it doesn’t die, it adapts. The Forest is full of folklore, which reaches back into a distant past, but, like a tree, it still continues to grow; and even when an old oak has fallen, new branches grow out of the trunk.
Two
SOUTHAMPTON
If we travel east from the Forest, we come to the city of Southampton. To leave the glades of the New Forest, and drive along a dull dual carriageway through the urban splurge of Totton, is not the most inspiring entry into a city.
Southampton does seem, at first, a very prosaic place – a city that builds its reputation on being a ‘shopping city’, with its new Ikea, its West Quay Shopping Centre, its Toys R Us. But, if you get to know it, there is another Southampton – a city with hidden places, sudden vistas, and a greater stretch of city walls than York. This is the city where King Canute had a palace. Well – maybe not.
In 1805, Sir Henry Englefield wrote a glorious book entitled A Walk through Southampton, and in this book he called a medieval building in Porter’s Lane ‘Canute’s Palace’, because if it wasn’t it should have been. The story of Canute, like Coventry’s story of Lady Godiva, is known nationally: that King Canute sat in his chair, facing the oncoming tide, as a ‘rebuke to the impious flattery of his courtiers’. The tide continued and King Canute exclaimed:
Let all the inhabitants of earth know that vain and trifling is the power of kings, and that none is worthy of the name of king but He whose nod the heaven, the earth, the sea obey by laws eternal.
Did he hell!
KING CNUT
This king – let’s drop the ‘a’ and call him by his old name of Cnut – this king who hacked off the noses and ears of his hostages, this vicious, power-hungry, ravaging oaf – do we really think he would make an example of himself to teach his courtiers a lesson in humble piety? I think not.
Now, Southampton has two main rivers, the Test and the Itchen. These two rivers join Southampton Water
at their mouths and make the city centre a peninsula. I happen to live close to the banks of the Itchen, in old Northam. Englefield wrote that:
…it is more probable that the regal chair was placed on the sandy shore of the Southampton river [the Test], than in the black and oozy bed of the Itchen at Northam, where some have fixed the scene of this striking and characteristic story.
But Sir Henry is only going against the traditional location because he believes the sentimental story, and he wants a more auspicious location for it. Here’s the more likely version:
The invading Cnut took Mercia and Northumbria, and, soon after, following the murder of King Eadmund, managed to grab Wessex, whose capital was at Winchester. There was a minor Saxon uprising in Wareham, some Danes were mas- sacred, and Cnut thought that he’d wreak his revenge on the inhabitants of Southampton. Not Wareham, but it would do.
The trouble was, Southampton was known to be strange. It had the sea on three sides, and it had something quite unique: a double tide. It was said that the inhabitants had dark magical powers, powers that enabled them to control the tides. Cnut’s followers, being Danes, were superstitious and feared these powers.
Cnut determined to teach his followers a lesson and, after attacking and taking Southampton, he took his captives out to the ‘black and oozy bed of the Itchen at Northam’ and had them buried up to their necks. The Danes then watched the tide come in and drown the unfortunate Saxons. The moral as far as Cnut was concerned was to demonstrate to his men that none of the Saxons had the power to drive back the tide. The moral as far as anyone else is concerned is that power corrupts and Vikings are vile!
THE LEGEND OF SIR BEVOIS
In the centre of Southampton stands the Bargate. This medieval gate used to be the entrance to the city – though now it stands strangely alone, the adjoining buildings having been demolished in the 1930s during a monumental act of civic vandalism (the sort of vandalism that over the years has damaged Southampton as much as the Luftwaffe did in the 1940s).
There are some steps that lead up to a little museum above the arch, though the museum is rarely open, being run entirely by volunteers. If you do go inside, you will see two large wooden panels, each one with a painting of a figure on it. One is of a knight called Sir Bevois, and the other of a giant called Ascupart. These two paintings used to be on the outside of the Bargate, guarding the entrance to the city, but the weather and the vicissitudes of time meant that they had to be brought inside.
At one time, all the inhabitants of Southampton would have been familiar with the stories of Sir Bevois (sometimes known as Bevis). Indeed, in 1724 Daniel Defoe wrote:
Whatever the fable of Bevis of Southampton, and the giants in the woods thereabouts may be derived from, I found the people of Southampton mighty willing to have those things pass for true.
…and those names are still in the fabric of the city; there is an area called Bevois Town, built upon a hill that was once called Bevois Mount, and at its foot is Bevois Valley. This is a fairly unprepossessing part of town now, but the names make a palimpsest, a document hidden under another document; you can use your imagination and see the hill, the valley – all rolling down to the river, before the Victorian city overwhelmed it. There is also an Ascupart Street very close to Bevois Town, and a thirteenth-century tower called Arundel Tower which is named after Bevois’ mighty steed. (Rather more pleasingly, the tower is also known as Windwhistle Tower – once you get to know it, you find Southampton is full of these little touches!)
These stories are often traced back to a Middle English romance called Bevis of Hamtoun. Nowadays it seems that we always have to look for a written source, as if stories are only squiggly lines on paper. Yet before stories were written down they were told, and there is a lot of evidence of a character called Bevis before the writing of the romance. All along the south coast there are relics of someone called Bevis; he’s in the landscape of the area as much as Arthur is in the landscape of England and Wales. Before the city spread over Bevois Mount, there was a long barrow on the hill known as Bevis’s Tomb; on the top of Portsdown Hill (that singular hill that overlooks Portsmouth) there is another long barrow called Bevis’s Grave; on the border between Hampshire and Sussex there is a long barrow called Bevis’s Thumb.
Maybe there was a Saxon warrior called Bevis, who resisted the Danes or the Normans, in much the same way that Arthur is often regarded to be a Romano-Briton who resisted the Saxons. Who knows? But here is one version of the story of Bevois of Hamtun…
Once upon a time, Southampton was called Hamtun, and Hamtun had a castle – it’s long gone now, except for Windwhistle Tower. In that castle there lived a boy called Bevois. He lived there with his father, Sir Guy, who was Earl of Hamtun. Sir Guy was important, but he wasn’t happy. His wife had died, and so he turned his face against the world – and he showed no care for little Bevois. Often he’d lash out at the boy, and try though Bevois might to earn the approval of his father, he only ever seemed to be subject to his anger.
One day, Sir Guy was going out hunting. Hooves clattered across the courtyard as he trotted out towards Lordswood – the great forest that lay behind Hamtun and connected the Forest of Bere to the east with the New Forest to the west. Bevois ran after him and called, ‘Father, Father, can I come with you?’
‘Get away from me,’ roared Sir Guy and kicked out at him. Poor Bevois ran back into the castle crying. Sir Guy rode deeper and deeper into the forest. ‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ he thought, ‘but ever since my wife died I’ve never done the right thing. Foolish it may be, but I’ve always blamed Bevois, since she died giving birth to him.’
As he rode deeper into the forest, Sir Guy came upon a clearing in the woods. In the clearing there was a well, and at the well there was a woman and a little girl. The woman was filling seven wooden jugs with water.
‘What are you doing?’ demanded Sir Guy.
‘This is my job,’ she said, ‘I fill the jugs up with water, carry them down to the village and sell them.’
‘Then I will buy one,’ said Sir Guy, and lifting the jug he drank deep.
Looking at her, he said, ‘You seem to be a strong woman, and a capable one. I need a wife, and a mother for the boy, will you marry me?’
‘Well,’ she thought, ‘that’s a bit sudden.’ But things do happen a bit suddenly in stories – and she thought, ‘Hmmmm, Sir Guy of Hamtun, a very important man – not bad.’
‘Very well,’ she said, ‘but this is my daughter, and she’s called Josyan. She would have to come with me.’
And so it was – they returned to Hamtun and got married. The wedding was wonderful; there were troubadours and harpists, clowns and jugglers, fire-eaters and play actors. They even had storytellers. (I was there myself, though unfortunately I spent the night in the dungeons for getting too drunk to remember any stories.)
Well, it would be good to finish the story there, with a ‘They all lived happily ever after…’ but they didn’t. You see, she turned out to be not so very nice. Oh, she liked being important; she liked being the Earl of Hamtun’s wife. She’d shout at the servants, ‘My dinner’s too hot,’ or, ‘My dinner’s too cold,’ or ‘Take that servant away, give him the sack,’ or ‘Chop off his head!’ She was terrible. As for little Bevois, she didn’t like him at all. She thought that one day he’d be Earl of Hamtun, and she didn’t want that. So she tried to make his life even more miserable than it already was, but miserable he was not. You see, her little daughter, Josyan, became firm friends with Bevois and they became playmates and made each other happy.
Time passed, as it does both in and out of stories, and Josyan and Bevois became older – until Josyan became a young woman and Bevois became a young man. And, inevitably, they fell in love. Now, Josyan’s mother noticed this and growled to herself, ‘I won’t have her marrying him, I’ll put a stop to this.’ In those days, people believed that your dreams came true, so she pretended that she’d had a dream.
‘Sir Gu
y,’ she said, ‘I had a dream last night. I dreamed that there was your very important-looking wooden chair,’ – it was a bit like a throne, with carvings of dragons on the side – ‘and Bevois crept up behind it and chopped it to splinters with an axe. What do you think the dream meant?’
The next day, she said, ‘Sir Guy, last night I had a dream that you were sitting in your very important-looking wooden chair, and Bevois crept up behind you with an axe and CHOPPED OFF YOUR HEAD. What do you think the dream meant?’
Day after day she said she had these terrible dreams – though she made them all up. Finally, it was too much for Sir Guy.
‘Bring Bevois to me,’ he roared at the guards.
Bevois was brought to him, and Sir Guy said, ‘Bevois, you must go, you must leave this place, because I think that you mean to do me harm.’
‘Why, what is it that I have done?’
‘My wife has had these dreams…’
‘Ah – has she? Very well, I will go. I will do what they do in stories; I will go and seek my fortune.’
Bevois fetched a cloth; he fashioned it into a bag, tied it onto the end of a stick, and went down to the kitchens for some food and drink to put in it. Then he had to say farewell to Josyan. Holding each other, the tears running down their cheeks, they felt that their hearts were breaking inside them.
‘One day – one day,’ said Bevois, ‘I will return.’
‘I will always wait for you,’ sobbed Josyan – because in stories that’s just what you do.
Then Bevois left Hamtun – and he walked and he walked and he walked. It was a cold, grey, wet, miserable day and Bevois walked deeper and deeper into the forest. He didn’t know where he was going and he knew that when he had eaten the food and drunk the drink he’d have nothing, and so, with a deep weight on his heart, he trudged on.
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Folk Tales Page 3
