BETTY MUNDY’S BOTTOM
In a ‘once upon a time’ sort of a time – a time that belongs to stories; a time that carries Napoleonic elements, and elements of a more mythic age of kings and castles – there were three sailors. These three sailors had been paid off at Portsmouth, and, having spent all their money in Spice Island, were heading to London to sign on another ship. They seemed to have strayed from the Portsmouth–London road, but then that road was a grim and dangerous thoroughfare, bedevilled by robbers, rogues, cutpurses, villains, foot-pads, low-pads, high-pads, ruffians, scamps, snafflers, toby-gills, skull smashers, and murdering, thieving, highwaymen, so a diversion was often made. Thus the three sailors meandered up the side of the Meon Valley.
Night fell, and the sailors found themselves in Betty Mundy’s Bottom. They decided to light a fire and sleep under a tree, with only half a bottle of rum left between them. One sailor kept watch in case there should be any robbers, rogues, cutpurses and etc.
‘’Allo my babes,’ said a voice in the tree. The sailor looked up, and there, in the tree, was a fairy.
At this point, I must discuss the vexed subject of fairies. In a lot of the old Hampshire stories, the fairies were not little sylph-like beings with gossamer wings, but substantial beings whose efforts at flight were sometimes hampered by their not inconsiderable bulk. This fairy was called Betty Mundy, and she was a rotund, buxom, jolly, red-faced lady, with a smile so broad it seemed to go from one side of her round face to the other.
‘Spare us a drop of rum, Jack,’ said the fairy to the astonished sailor. She took a good swig, and then asked him what three sailors were doing in her forest.
‘We’re on our way to London Town,’ said the sailor, ‘and we’ve no money left, and we’re starving hungry.’
‘Well now, here’s a present for you – a cloak to save your feet,’ said Betty, and handed him a cloak before she vanished.
Fearing ridicule, and thinking he must have imagined the whole thing, the sailor made no mention of this when he woke up one of his mates to take his turn at sentry duty.
‘’Allo my babes,’ said Betty – and don’t we go through the whole thing all over again. This time, though, when the sailor complained of having no money, she handed him a purse, saying, ‘Here’s a present for you, my luvver, a purse to save you work.’
When he woke the third sailor without mentioning events, and the third sailor took up his post, Betty gave him a ‘horn to save you fist-a-cuffs,’ before she vanished.
Come the morning, the sailors found their gifts still there, so they told each other what had taken place and then emptied out the purse. Leastways, it never could be emptied; it just kept on producing gold and silver coins. Wonderful, wonderful. No need to walk to London, no need to sign on some bloody, leaky hell ship; soon they had got themselves a pub, built like a castle, and there they were: dressed like three fine gentlemen.
Now, King Stephen, who lived in the castle on Stephen’s Castle Down, got to hear about the three fine gentlemen, and, given that he had a daughter of marriageable age, and he wasn’t going to marry her off to some thick Hampshire Hog, he invited the three fine gentlemen to tea. What people didn’t know was that the princess was also a witch, and a bitter foe of Betty Mundy. I’d put all that down to jealousy; the princess was all pale and slim with flaxen hair – so wouldn’t she envy a fine, plump, lump of a woman like Betty Mundy, a woman who never thought a jealous thought?
Well, the sailors, with fine powdered periwigs on their heads (the tar having long grown out of their hair), set out in a coach and horses for Stephen’s Castle. There was much follde-lolling and lah-de-dahing, and one of the sailors found himself walking arm-in-arm with the princess; I believe that this is known as ‘dallying’.
‘From whence dost thy fortune come?’ quoth the princess, ‘hast thou inherited it from thy forebears?’
The foolish sailor thought that he would impress her with his magical powers, and so, drawing forth the purse, he said, ‘Money is no object to me – I have as much as I want.’ And the eyes of the wicked princess glinted, and she thought, ‘Mine – mine – mine! I want – I want – I want!’ and, as soon as she could (which was quite soon), she nicked the purse and substituted another one. The sailor’s purse may have had magical powers, but it looked like a purse generally fashionable at the time – the time being ‘once upon a time’.
Well, the next day, back at the pub, the sailor looked for a few quid to buy a paper and – no money. He shook and shook the purse, but nothing, and finally he twigged what had happened. ‘Now,’ said the sailor with the cloak to save your feet, ‘we’ll try this out,’ and he donned the cloak, wished himself into the princess’s bedroom, and there was the purse. Before he could grab it, though, in came the princess.
‘Thief! Intruder! Burglar! Sailor in my bedroom!’ she screamed, and a hurly-burly of soldiers, guards and pikemen came rushing in. The sailor panicked, and it is hard to make a wish with a veritable army descending on you, so he ran to the window and jumped. Oh dear – the cloak snagged on the window, and the sailor tumbled, cloakless, into the moat.
When the bedraggled sailor arrived back at the pub, it was time for the third sailor to use his horn to save fist-a-cuffs. The three of them walked to the foot of the castle, the sailor blew the horn, and a terrible spectral army blew in like marsh mist, hissing and sighing – from King’s Copse and Sergeant’s Copse, from Corhampton Forest and the Punch Bowl beneath Beacon Hill. The soldiers surrounded the castle and stamped their skeletal feet, rattled their swords and ground their teeth. The sailors called out that if their treasures weren’t restored to them, they would lay siege to the castle and starve everybody out.
The princess may have been evil, but she was certainly brighter than the sailors, and she immediately saw the flaw in the plan. Putting on the cloak, she wished herself next to the sailor with the horn, grabbed it, and, before he could say, ‘splice my mainbrace and blow on my horn,’ she wished herself back into the castle. The army faded back into the landscape, and the sailors were left standing in a field, looking like three scarecrows.
Well, they had the pub didn’t they? That soon went to wrack and ruin because they drank too much, gave too much away, and sold too little. They were, after all, still sailors at heart. Finally, with nothing left, they decided to go their separate ways. One said he’d carry on up to London Town; another said he’d take the road back to Portsmouth; and the third said he’d head for Bristol via Lower Upham, Upper Lowham, Bishops Waltham, and a few more places besides.
The first sailor, having finished off the rum, got no further than Betty Mundy’s Bottom that night, and settled down under the same tree he’d slumbered under all that time ago.
‘Well,’ said Betty Mundy, appearing in the tree, ‘you made a mess of that you gurt lummox. Who has my treasures now, eh? The wicked bloody witch of Stephen’s Castle, that’s who.’
‘Sorry,’ said the sailor, ‘I’m hungry.’
‘Eat a bloody apple then,’ said Betty, and looking up the sailor saw an apple tree where there hadn’t been one before, and it was groaning under the weight of the juiciest apples you’ve ever seen.
The sailor picked one, bit into it, and – oh Lord – his nose started to grow. It grew out from his face and then, being too heavy to remain horizontal in the air, clumped to the ground and started to push its way through stinging nettles, brambles and pine needles, whilst Betty Mundy screeched with laughter. It grew its way westwards until it met the Bristol-bound sailor just past Bigpath Farm.
‘This is a strange thing,’ said he, and followed it back.
The nose then diverted back towards the Meon Valley, meeting the Portsmouth-bound sailor just outside Soberton.
‘This is a strange thing,’ said he, and followed it back.
As for the nose, it continued down the course of the Meon, through Wickham and Knowle, Catisfield, Titchfield and Little Posbrook, and out into the sea at Hill Head. To the sailor’s
immense discomfort, it pushed along the seabed, stuffing his nostrils full of wet sand, before it arrived on the Isle of Wight, at Woodside Bay. It pushed its way over the Island, crossing the central ridge at Godshill, before growing down Blackgang Chine, and out into the sea at Chale Bay. Before the nose crossed the Channel to France, Betty relented.
‘Give him a pear, boys,’ she said, and – lo and behold – there, next to the apple tree, was a pear tree, groaning under the weight of fine-looking pears. As soon as the sailor bit into one of these, his nose started to shrink – faster and faster – till – SLAP – it was back to its normal size (which wasn’t small).
‘Silly buggers,’ said Betty, ‘get my treasures back.’
The sailors couldn’t work out how this was to be done, so in the end Betty had to tell them.
One sailor (I’d imagine it was the one who favoured Portsmouth) dressed himself as a woman, and, with a basket full of those lovely apples, he presented himself outside the door of Stephen’s Castle, crying out in a voice as high as possible, ‘Lovely apples! Apples for sale, lovely apples!’
The princess, on seeing the luscious fruit, had another fit of the ‘I wants’ and bought the apples, after which the transvestite sailor hastened away from the castle as speedily as possible. The princess took a bite from the apple and her nose grew and grew – across her bed chamber, out of the window, and down the castle wall into the moat. Well, with the princess’s nose heading for the Continent, the king desperately called for all the physicians in the land to come and save her. So, one of our sailors, dressed as a physician, arrived at the gates of the castle, armed with apples and pears. With a piece of this and a piece of that, and the nose shrinking and growing again, the sailor said, ‘There is evil at work here, and you must have stolen goods about you or my cure would surely work.’
The princess denied this at first, but, when the end of her nose encountered a blob fish on the floor of the Solent, she confessed all.
The treasures were restored to the sailors, and the princess got back the nose which was considered so pretty by the tedious people who hung about the castle. As for Betty Mundy, she married all three sailors – seeing how she’d worn out her last three husbands – and they all set up a pub, on a lane, by a wood. This, my dears, is how the lane came to be called Sailor’s Lane and the wood Sailor’s Wood – just as the bottom had come to be called Betty Mundy’s Bottom – and they all lived happily ever after. Sadly, the pub is long gone now – but it used to be one of the best pubs in Hampshire.
THE CHURCH WITH NO NAME
Corhampton, Meonstoke and Exton are so close that nowadays they form one settlement with three churches. As they only have two pubs, this creates a most undesirable imbalance. Many visitors have assumed that St Andrew’s Church, Meonstoke, is Corhampton Church, and whilst they have visited a beautiful church, they have missed the real jewel of the Meon Valley. The little graveyard on the mound is part of Corhampton Church’s beauty; and there are gravestones in the shadow of the ancient yew tree with evocative names like ‘Fortune Coker’ and ‘Levi and Charity Singleton’. Legend tells of another grave, and I shall tell the story.
At one time, there was a custom in parts of Hampshire to put a fag-hook (the Hampshire phrase for a sickle) on the top of a newly occupied grave. This was to stop the dead from walking; the dead didn’t particularly want to walk because it delayed their entry into paradise, so, if the custom was neglected, the dead could get quite upset about it.
Now, on a farm near Corhampton – I don’t know which farm – there lived a farmer. He was prosperous and well respected; a local magistrate and altogether a most worthy fellow. It so happens that sometimes a worthy father is let down by his less-than-worthy son, and so it was in this case. The son was an energetic young man, but his energies weren’t spent on the farm. Rather, they were spent on gallivanting around at night: poaching, gambling, drinking, and generally keeping bad company. He was also a handsome and rather dashing young man, so the young women liked him, and – oh dear me – didn’t he put one of those young women in the family way.
Well, his father got to hear about this and he summoned his recalcitrant son to him, sat him down at the kitchen table, and said, ‘Now, if you want to inherit this farm from me, you will have to change your ways. You’ll have to stop gallivanting about at night, you’ll have to pull your weight on the farm, and you’ll have to marry that young woman and make a good husband to her and a good father to the child.’
What the father didn’t know was that actually his son was in love with the young woman, and he was going to ask her to marry him. But he was going to ask her to marry him because that’s what he wanted, not because that’s what his father wanted, and – oh dear me – fathers and sons – didn’t they fall to arguing, and didn’t their fists bang on the table, and didn’t the spit fly everywhere.
The long and the short of it was that the son went stamping off out of the house in a red rage, off down the sunken lane. Now, this young man thought he knew every track, every by-way, every sunken lane, between Droxford and East Meon – and yet, when he calmed down and came to his senses, he didn’t have a clue where he was. He was at a fork in the lane, and at the fork in the lane there was a withered, blasted, old elm tree. When it’s dark, the moonlight and the shadows can play tricks with your vision – but he could swear that leaning against the dead tree there was a coffin, all upended. He approached it, hoping it was just a shadow; but, sure enough, it was a coffin. The young man fumbled at the lid, and opened it like a door. Saints preserve us; inside was the body of an old woman, her arms folded across her withered breasts, and her face wriggling and heaving with maggots and worms. The horror-struck young man slammed the lid shut, and then he heard voices from the left-hand lane. Quick as he could, he hid himself behind an oak tree at the side of the track, and then, out of the darkness, came a host of little men. Now, Cornwall and Devon lay much exaggerated claim to the pixies, but they were always much more active in Hampshire (as can be seen by those stone toadstools on which old Hampshire barns are so often set).
The pixies gathered around the coffin and one of them said, ‘We has to bury she proper, loike.’
‘Wait, you,’ said another, ‘someone’s been tampering with this.’
‘Who would that be then?’
‘The gobby young man that can help us bury her.’
And, quick as you like, the pixies were gathered around the young man, who had thought he was all hidden away; their gimlet eyes were glinting in the darkness, and they were saying, ‘Give us a hand there, hog face, we needs to bury her.’
‘I don’t do nothing for no one,’ said the young man – and that was his mistake. The pixies were soon on him, dragging him down the lane, with his fingers cutting grooves in the mud. At the foot of the coffin, they grabbed him by the hair, hoisted him to his feet, and opened the lid. Oh dear me – oh dear me – his face was just inches away from that of the corpse, and – SNAP – she opened her eyes. Worse was to come. All of a sudden, she leapt out of the coffin and straight onto his back, with her arms around his neck, and her legs around his waist. A terrible stench enveloped him, a stench that was worse than the baddest bad breath you could ever imagine, and she screeched in his ear, ‘FAG-HOOK, FAG-HOOK!’
‘Get off me, get off me,’ gurgled the young man, trying to scrape her off against a tree. But the more he tried to detach her, the tighter was her grip, and the louder she screeched, ‘FAG-HOOK, FAG-HOOK!’
Then, one of the pixies said, ‘Here you are my dear,’ and handed the old woman a sickle, which she held, ominously, against the young man’s throat.
‘Bye bye,’ said the pixie, and all the little men disappeared off down the lane, leaving the young man and the corpse, lurching around beneath the old elm tree.
Then she hissed in his ear, ‘Bury me, bury me.’
‘Where?’ groaned the young man.
‘East Meon,’ said she, ‘All Saints’.’
‘For God
’s sake, I don’t know where I am.’
But … there was a bony finger pointing up the right-hand lane, with the flesh hanging off in strips. So the young man followed the direction shown by the pointing digit; up hill, down dale, through beds of nettles and bramble bushes, across streams and through hedges. Sometimes he knew where he was, sometimes he didn’t. There he was on the wild summit of Old Winchester Hill, which is nowhere near Winchester, and then he was in some wretched thicket. Finally, there ahead of them, was All Saints’ Church, East Meon.
‘Bury me,’ hissed the old woman.
‘Where?’ groaned the young man, stumbling into the graveyard.
‘Inside,’ said she.
The young man stumbled up to the porch, but the door was locked. There, though, leaning against the side of the porch, was a spade; so the young man took the spade and levered the door open. There they were inside the old church, and the carvings of Adam and Eve and the Great Serpent seemed to glare at them from the wondrous font. The finger pointed at the flagstones, so the young man levered one aside, and, with the corpse clamped to his back and the fag-hook pressed to his throat, he started to dig. Then the spade sank into something soft, and, oh dear me, wasn’t it another corpse of another old woman. She sat up and screamed, ‘GET OUT OF YERE, GET BURIED IN YOUR OWN PARISH!’
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Folk Tales Page 8
