FOLKLORE
of
SUSSEX
FOLKLORE
of
SUSSEX
JACQUELINE SIMPSON
Cover illustrations by John Gay Galsworthy
Originally published by B.T. Batsford, 1973
This edition published 2009
Reprinted 2013
The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG
www.thehistorypress.co.uk
This ebook edition first published in 2013
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© Jacqueline Simpson, 1973, 2002, 2009, 2013
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EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 9999 4
Original typesetting by The History Press
Contents
Foreword to the First Edition
Acknowledgements
Map of Sussex
Introduction
1
Churches, Bells and Treasures
2
Giants and Bogeymen
3
Dragons of Land and Water
4
Graves and Ghosts
5
Fairies
6
The Devil
7
Witches
8
Healing Charms and Magic Cures
9
From the Cradle to the Grave
10
The Turning Year
11
Local Humour
Notes
Bibliography
Foreword to the First Edition
In his monumental work The British Folklorists (London, 1968), Professor Richard M. Dorson sadly refers to the ‘fading of the British folklore movement’ at the time of the First World War. Later he pays tribute to the work of Katharine Briggs, Iona and Peter Opie, and one or two other scholars. Granting that there is substance in his basic view, it might now seem more appropriate to have used the term ‘temporary eclipse’.
Since his book was published we have seen the continued achievements of Katharine Briggs, and the Opies have added to their researches in the field of children’s lore. Yet it is true that much remains to be done, and a public appeal on the day that I write this underlines the need for still greater efforts in recording the lore and games of schoolchildren. It is not necessary to confine such an appeal to the activities of the young since, in times of ever more efficient and all-pervading mass communications, the fluidity of tradition is greatly intensified. This appeal drew particular attention to the influence of television and advertising jingles, but there is no need to stress the effect of numerous modern pressures on tradition as a whole. This is not to say that folklore and custom disappear: rather that the new or the variant is superimposed on the old with increased rapidity.
This volume by Jacqueline Simpson is therefore especially welcome, not only because of its wide scope, which can be seen from a glance thorough her own Introduction, but also because, for the first time, it brings together in an easily accessible form the folklore of Sussex. She has assembled material not hitherto published, or drawn from widely scattered sources, and presented it in such a way as to stimulate interest and collection in her own county and elsewhere. This, as I have stressed, is essential and her volume is prepared in a manner calculated to entrance and arouse the enthusiasm of the general reader and the scholar. Both have their part to play.
Jacqueline Simpson’s own scholarship is already well known to those familiar with her other work, notably the Penguin English Dictionary and her attractive and readable presentation of Icelandic folktales. She combines a delightful style and charming wit with meticulous scholarship and the present volume is a fitting complement to her accomplishments in other fields. She has for many years been a member of the Folklore Society’s Committee and her interesting and incisive contributions to the Society’s Journal are much appreciated by members. It is therefore a particular pleasure to me to welcome this brilliant young scholar as the first contributor to what it is hoped will be built into a comprehensive series on the folklore of the British Isles.
Venetia Newall
London University
February 1973
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to the following authors and publishers for permission to quote from the books and journals mentioned (page references are to Folklore of Sussex): Bob Copper, A Song for Every Season, Wm. Heinemann Ltd (1971) for pages 114–15, 122–3 and 130–2; A. Beckett, The Wonderful Weald, Mills & Boon Ltd (1911) for pages 163–4; L. Grant, A Chronicle of Rye, Noel Douglas (1927) for page 36; Folklore (LXIX, 1958) for page 92; W.D. Parish, A Dictionary of Sussex Dialect (revised by Helena Hall), Gardners, Bexhill (1957) for page 36; Sussex County Magazine for pages 37–8, 50, 56, 67, 69–72, 75–6, 83, 103, 143; West Sussex Gazette for pages 21, 22, 91, 100–1, 109, 144–5, 154, 161–2; Sussex Notes and Queries for page 68; L.N. Candlin, Tales of Old Sussex (1985) for pages 162–3; M. Wright Cuckfield, An Old Sussex Town, C. Clarke, Haywards Heath (1971) for pages 47–8; M. Wyndham, Mrs Paddick, Chapman & Hall Ltd (1947) for pages 102 and 105. Thanks also toTony Wales for providing many of the illustrations.
Introduction
There have been many books written about Sussex, its history and the beauties of its countryside, but in all of them its folklore, legends and folk-customs receive only minor and incidental mention, or, at the best, a single chapter. Yet the foundations for the study of Sussex lore had been well laid in the nineteenth century by three pioneers whose essays, though brief, are crammed with valuable material – M.A. Lower, who recorded several local legends (two of them verbatim) in his Contributions to Literature (1854) and in an article in Sussex Archaeological Collections XIII (1861); Mrs Charlotte Latham, who published a collection of ‘West Sussex Superstitions’ in Folk-Lore Record I (1878); and F.E. Sawyer, who listed many seasonal customs in Sussex Archaeological Collections XXXIII (1883), and also produced a pamphlet on Sussex Place-Rhymes and Local Proverbs (1884).
This promising beginning, however, was never systematically followed up, though many individual items appeared in various scattered sources. Local historians describing their own towns and villages would often include two or three local tales and superstitions, while some of the more colourful legends attached to topographical features naturally appear again and again in general descriptions of the county. First-hand accounts of customs and festivals are also found in the reminiscences of people who have known rural working-class life from the inside, notably Harry Burstow in 1911 and Bob Copper (1971, 1973, 1976), but books of this type are unfortunately rare. The Sussex County Magazine (1926–56) includes a good many articles and letters touching on points of folklore; many are of great value, being based on first-hand observation or personal memories, but a few merely repeat, without acknowledgement, material drawn from older printed sources. Of particular interest are the articles contributed by Miss L.N. Candlin to the Sussex County Magazine and to the West Sussex Gazette from the 1940s onwards, since these are drawn from her own family traditions (particularly concerning the Washington, Brig
hton and Lewes areas), and from oral informants in many parts of Sussex. I am very grateful to her for allowing me the free use of this material, and for supplementing it with conversation and correspondence. Some of her writings have now been collected as Tales of Old Sussex (1985) and Memories of Old Sussex (1987). Other useful recent books are Tony Wales’s A Sussex Garland (1986) and A Treasury of Sussex Folklore (2000), Jim Etherington’s Lewes Bonfire Night (1993), and Andrew Allen’s A Dictionary of Sussex Folk Medicine (1995).
The aim of the present book, therefore, is to give a coherent picture of the considerable amount of Sussex folklore which has been recorded over the last 150 years, and some of which is still very much alive today. Broadly speaking, the material falls into four main categories. First, local legends: that is to say, stories that are attached to some particular place (whether it be to a natural feature such as a wood or pool, to a visible archaeological feature such as a burial mound, or to a church, house or monument), or else to some particular person whose notoriety or eccentricity serves to attract anecdotes. The actual content of such legends is very often supernatural, fantastic or grotesque; they include tales of buried treasures, lost bells, giants, bogeymen, dragons, fairies, ghosts, witches and the Devil. Occasionally they are not merely linked to well-known landmarks, but are vouched for by their narrators as having happened to ‘a man my great-grandfather knew’, or perhaps even to a closer friend or relative. Such stories have a good chance of surviving well in oral tradition, since once one has heard the legend attached to a prominent building or landmark, it is almost impossible to see the place without remembering the story.
The second major category is that of traditional beliefs and magical practices. Two chapters are devoted to particular aspects of this field – non-rational healing methods and beliefs concerned with the human life-cycle – while others are mentioned in the chapters about the Devil, fairies and witches. Thirdly comes the very extensive category of seasonal observances; this includes a varied assortment of festivals, ceremonies, customs, games, rituals, beliefs and sayings which are linked to particular dates. Here the main emphasis is on what the community, or certain groups within it, actually do in obedience to tradition, rather than on their stories and beliefs. Needless to say, there is no town or village that ever observed every single one of the seasonal customs; I have been careful to name precise localities wherever possible. Finally, there are the stock rhymes, sayings and anecdotes applied to inhabitants of certain villages by their neighbours. Sussex people have not been saddled with a regional ‘character’ to the same extent as, say, Scotsmen and Yorkshiremen; on a more local level, however, taunts and teasing sayings are quite plentiful.
Local legends, as has been remarked already, are closely linked to topographical features, especially those which seem in any way mysterious. They may be dramatic natural formations, such as prominent hills and steep coombes ascribed to the Devil’s work, or to a giant (pp. 26, 58–60), or man-made structures whose age and purpose had been forgotten. It is noteworthy that all the hills alleged to have treasure buried on them are the sites of Iron Age forts (pp. 21–3), that several spots named as fairy haunts are prehistoric or medieval earthworks (pp. 51, 56), and that certain barrows are associated with the Devil or with giants (pp. 26–7, 58–9, 63). Other conspicuous archaeological features mentioned in legends are the Long Man of Wilmington and Stane Street (pp. 25–7, 58).
There is an obvious connection between coastal erosion and legends of lost churches (pp. 19–20), while particularly deep places in rivers, bogs, moats and harbours have attracted stories of sunken bells (pp. 18–21). In three of these the name ‘Bell Hole’ occurs, and the name may well have given rise to the legend rather than vice versa; it has been suggested that in these cases ‘bell’ is a corruption of the dialect word pell, which simply means a deep hole in a river. Then again there are the strange pools called Knucker Holes, sometimes said to have monsters in them, the outstanding example being at Lyminster (pp. 34–9); dense woods may be reputed haunted; oddly placed or conspicuous buildings, notably churches, have their typical stories too. Indeed, so close is the correlation between landscape and legend that it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that every landmark and almost every building mentioned in this book is notable in its own right, quite apart from the story attached to it.
History too is reflected in legends, albeit in a very simplified form, and often distorted by mistaken antiquarian theories which linger on at popular level long after they are discarded by scholars. Thus, it was once thought that the name Alfriston meant ‘Alfred’s Town’, and this idea fostered the growth of legends that Alfred fought the Danes nearby, and even that an iron pot displayed in the Star Inn was the very one in which he burned the cakes. Danes occur quite often in Sussex stories, even though the county suffered relatively little from their raids. One tale about them, concerning the battle in Kingley Vale (p. 45), may well be based on fact; there are two others in which any original factual basis has vanished beneath fictional motifs (the raid on Bosham, pp. 18–19, and an alleged battle which Alfred fought against them on Terrible Down near Isfield, in which men waded knee-deep in blood); and one which is a sheer fantasy inspired by place-names – that Danish warriors cut withies at Withy Pits near Three Bridges to conceal their numbers, but were turned back at Turner’s Hill and crawled away to Crawley. Clearly, when folk-imagination functions in this way, it is rash to seek historical information from tales about colourful figures of the far past, such as Druids, Danes or Julius Caesar. Oddly enough, the most momentous event that ever took place on Sussex soil, the Battle of Hastings, has left only minor traces on its tales (pp. 16–17, 46).
Even stories about comparatively modern personages are often unreliable. Charles II figures in Sussex lore because he passed through the county when fleeing to France in 1651; oral tradition has so multiplied his alleged hiding-places and overnight stops on the journey that one wonders how he ever reached the coast at all. The famous episode of his hiding in an oak tree after the battle of Worcester has inspired Sussex imitations; he is said to have hidden in a yew near St Leonard’s Forest, where ‘an old woman came out and gave him some pease pudden’, and also, more plausibly, in a hollow elm in what are now the grounds of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton. This latter tale has been handed down among the descendants of a Brighton boatman who sailed on the king’s ship, yet even this excellent provenance cannot stifle an uneasy suspicion that there would have been no elm at Brighton if there had been no oak at Boscobel.
The broad trends of popular feeling have left more solid traces in folk tradition – such as the anti-Catholic prejudice which accounted for the intensity of the Guy Fawkes celebrations at Lewes and elsewhere, and perhaps for some ogre legends too (see pp. 29–30). This feeling, however, never suppressed the legends of local saints, nor could it entirely erase traces of old Catholic customs such as laying money on coffins (p. 112), and possibly the form of wassailing described on pp. 150–1. And it is almost unnecessary to point out the close links between certain crafts and ways of life and particular stories and customs – blacksmiths had their craft legend and their feast of Old Clem (pp. 143–5); cobblers their St Crispin feast (pp. 135–7); shepherds their tall stories, tales of sheep-stealers, and beliefs about ‘wish hounds’ (pp. 48–9, 162–3); carters their tales of carts bewitched (pp. 68–9); bellringers their tales of lost bells (pp. 20–1); while the connection between agriculture and many seasonal customs is immediately obvious. The smugglers hold a particular place in folklore, for they are thought to have encouraged all sorts of super-natural beliefs and stories as a cover for their own activities; in addition, of course, their exploits are often locally remembered, their alleged tunnels are talked of to this day (p. 24), and their ghosts are often said to walk.
It must also be said that the stories collected in this book, though ‘real Sussex’ in the sense that they have been cherished here for several generations at least, cannot be considered exclusive to this coun
ty – on the contrary, very many can be matched in other parts of England. The story of the Hangman’s Stone (p. 163) is told also of rocks in Northumberland and on Exmoor; the stolen Bosham Bell has a counterpart at Whitby Abbey, Yorkshire; the story of the lost Slinfold Bell shares its white oxen and its verse with that of Great Tom of Kentsham; there are irremovable skulls like those of Warbleton Priory (pp. 46–7) in various houses in Dorset,Yorkshire, Lancashire and Westmorland; the upside-down burial on Highdown Hill (pp. 41–3) can be matched on Box Hill, Surrey; the bogey called Spring-Heeled Jack (pp. 28–9) was feared by London children too – and these are but a few examples from what could be a long list. The same holds good for beliefs and for most seasonal customs too; they are traditional in Sussex, but not unique to her. Regional differences do exist in folklore, but they seldom follow county boundaries.
Inevitably the question arises, at what period did these tales, beliefs and customs flourish most? And how old are they? No general answer is possible; each case must be assessed on the evidence available, which all too often is less full than one would wish. I have given the oldest source known to me for each item in the notes at the end of the book, but in most cases it is obvious that the story or custom was already old by the time it was first mentioned in print. Roughly speaking, the picture given here refers primarily to the nineteenth century and the first few years of the twentieth, the period which was brought to a close by the First World War and by the revolution in modern agriculture and transport. When the tale or belief remained current in more recent times, I have indicated this.
But it would be wrong to assume that there is no folklore to be found nowadays; on the contrary, it is quite easy to find people, including young people in their teens and twenties, who know local traditions which have reached them orally, not from any printed source. It is indeed very likely that some Sussex readers of this book will be reminded of stories, beliefs or customs in their own districts which I have not mentioned, or of variant versions of the stories I do tell; information about such items would be most welcome.
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