Folklore of Sussex

by Jacqueline Simpson

  There is much controversy about the interpretation of certain old and puzzling jokes about the people of Piddinghoe (pronounced ‘Piddenoo’). They are said to indulge in various apparently senseless occupations – they shoe magpies, they hang their fields out to dry, they fish for the moon, they go digging for moonshine, for daylight or for smoke. On one level, these sayings can be taken simply as alleging that the people of Piddinghoe were utter idiots, for, as we shall see below, accusations of imbecility are a stock form of rural wit. However, a half-hidden meaning can be glimpsed in most of them. This village was a noted centre for the manufacture of chalk whitening, the chalk being ground up in water and then spread on sloping shelves to drain (hence ‘hanging fields out to dry’); it was also once a smugglers’ haunt, where kegs of spirits and tobacco (‘moonshine’, ‘smoke’) might well be buried or hidden in the river, to be dug up or fished up again later. As for ‘shoeing the magpies’, which has baffled most commentators, on one level it is merely a variant of a rural proverb ‘to shoe the goose’, meaning ‘to attempt something futile or absurd’; recently, however, an elderly inhabitant of the village explained its inner meaning as alluding to the shoeing of the black and white oxen used for ploughing, these being locally known as ‘magpies’. Finally, it is worth quoting a rhyme which must date from the Napoleonic wars, which hints at these villagers’ prudent wish to avoid trouble and concentrate on their profitable trade of smuggling:

  Englishmen fight, Frenchmen too;

  We don’t, we live at Piddenhoo.

  Very different is the traditional image of Pevensey people – self-important, self-satisfied, boastful and ignorant. Some anecdotes about them go back to the Tudor writer Andrew Boorde (who owned a house in the town), and others to Elizabethan times. The whole cycle probably first sprang from what must have seemed a ridiculous contrast between the town’s theoretical status as a corporate member of the Cinque Ports, with its own Mayor and Court House, and its actual insignificance once the sea had receded from its harbour in late medieval times. Certainly the pomposity of the Mayor was a favourite target. One newly elected Mayor, says Boorde, graciously greeted a man who had doffed his cap to him with the words: ‘Put on your hat, man, put on your hat! Though I am Mayor of Pemsey, I am still but a man!’ Another, being illiterate, tried to read a letter upside down, and when the error was pointed out to him, he roared, ‘Hold your tongue, sir! While I am Mayor of Pemsey, I’ll hold a letter which way uppards I like.’ It is also said that this Mayor, after laboriously deciphering a royal decree against persons maliciously firing beacons, went forth in all the majesty of his office to arrest a woman for frying bacon.

  During the Napoleonic wars, Pevensey people are said to have boasted:

  If Boneyparte should have the heart

  To land on Pemsey Level,

  Then my three sons with their three guns

  Would blow him to the devil.

  More recently jokes have been made hitting at their pride in their ancient Castle, of which one man is alleged to have said, ‘I don’t justly know how old it be, but it were here when I were a boy, an’ I’ve bin ’ere a matter o’ fifty year.’ They are also said to be inordinately fond of the desolate expanses of Pevensey Marsh – ‘A beautiful place, surelye! No hills, no trees, nor nothing to interrupt the view.’

  Very many local jokes consist of pinning a reputation for idiotic stupidity onto inhabitants of a neighbouring district, and offering ludicrous anecdotes (which often fall into recurrent patterns) to illustrate the point. Among Sussex instances are the following: The men of Balcombe were jealous that the church of neighbouring Cuckfield had a higher spire than theirs, so they piled manure all round their own church to make its spire grow; at Storrington, people are so stupid that they have to go outside and look at a pond to see if it’s raining or not; at Barcombe, when they want to make a cart, they make a wagon and cut it in two; at West Wittering, they sit up all night to wind the wind in with a winch, for fear there should not be enough wind to turn the sails of their mills next day. Such jokes are a traditional form of folk humour, which can be readily paralleled in other parts of England and indeed abroad.

  Stories about alleged local fools tend to agglomerate into cycles, as has already been seen in the case of Pevensey and of Piddinghoe. Such a cycle has been elaborated in our own time by a Worthing humorist, Alfred Longley, centring upon an imaginary character named ‘Jimmy Smuggles’, whose adventures are partly devised as a satire on recent local events, but also in part based upon traditional jokes of the type described above. It has long been a standard witticism in Worthing to say of a man who has no obvious means of livelihood, and is suspected of being a lazy scrounger, that he ‘works at Sompting Treacle Mine’ – Sompting being a small village nearby. This remarkable mine, according to Mr Longley, was invented by ‘Jimmy Smuggles’, an imaginary personage whose knowledge and resourcefulness were a byword among workmen at about the time of the First World War.

  Furthermore, Jimmy devised a way to lower the chimney of his mine so that the harvest moon could pass overhead without getting stuck on it, and also invented other weird industries such as a Porridge Quarry and the making of handkerchiefs for weeping willows. He and his friends tried to light their homes with bottled moonlight, and kept the sea salty with sacks of rock-salt; he once advised mill-wrights on Cissbury Hill to build only one mill there, not two, ‘for there be only wind enough for one’; he taught some workmen how to lift a hole over a wall; and he foiled Napoleon’s invasion by painting sheep red and massing them on the Downs. Jokes of this type have a long history in English folklore, and have sometimes achieved much more than merely local currency, as in the case of the famous Nottinghamshire tales about the Wise Men of Gotham; the numerous jokes about ‘Jimmy Smuggles’ collected and elaborated by Mr Longley prove, if proof were needed, that one traditional vein of English humour and fantasy is by no means exhausted.

  Other small Sussex villages could also boast of a treacle mine, as was revealed in a series of letters in the West Sussex Gazette in 1973. There was one at Rowhook where, it was said, people long ago lived on bread and treacle only, and knew there was nothing more than a sheet of cardboard between themselves and Hell. There was another at Burpham, just across the river from much larger Arundel; boys from Arundel would taunt Burpham boys, telling them to get back to their mine. It is also said that no man from this village can run properly, because the treacle sticks to his feet. Some Burpham people explain the tradition by saying a ‘treacle mine’ simply means cash hidden away, for instance in an old sock or down a well, to be used for some special treat. At Patcham, some disused buildings were alleged to be the entrance to a mine, about which elaborate tales were told, as one letter-writer showed:

  The Treacle Mines at Patcham are one of our old Sussex industries, a link in a chain which has spanned the centuries… Millions of years ago, when England was a tropical country, before the Ice Age, sugar cane flourished here. Year after year it grew, ripened and rotted unharvested, the molasses draining away down into the folds of the hills, where it accumulated above an impermeable layer of clay. The centuries passed, the colder weather came, and sugar cane no longer grew on the Downs, but the underground lake of treacle lay patiently waiting until in 1871 Peter Jones, a scientist who had long suspected its existence, sank the first shaft. The ensuing treacle gusher spouted for three days, covering the countryside for several miles around with a fine rain of treacle, until it was at last brought under control. Since that day, the treacle mines have provided employment for many Patcham families, the jealously guarded privilege of free treacle (tins not provided) being handed down from father to son in the families of the original twenty employees. During the war the treacle mines rendered sterling service to the Allied cause, eking out the sugar ration…

  Tony Wales, in A Sussex Garland, not only mentions treacle mines at Patcham and Faygate but recalls being puzzled as a boy when older people talked of Rusper Docks but laughed if he asked to
be taken to see the ships there (Rusper is far inland); he adds that there are ‘shrimp boats at Didling Harbour and winkle barges at Pallingham Quay’.

  This peculiar form of joke can be put to many uses: to baffle or amuse children; as a taunt or, conversely, as a slogan for local pride, as when the Sompting football team christened themselves ‘the Treacle Miners’; as the basis for practical jokes, when older boys send gullible younger ones in search of the non-existent mine. It is found in many other counties, too, and its association with Jimmy Smuggles is only one example of a widespread example of traditional humour.

  Sometimes the point of the joke is that what seems foolishness is in fact cunning. Here is a Sussex version of a story well known in Wiltshire, bringing in those typical Sussex characters, the smuggler and the shepherd:

  It happened that one day a shepherd on the hill above Cuckmere Haven, near Seaford, saw two smugglers come up from the beach and sink two kegs of brandy into a dewpond. ‘Ah,’ says he to himself, ‘come nightfall I’ll have one of they.’ Later in the day, when he had folded his sheep, he returned to the pond and began fishing around with his crook. Suddenly two preventive men appeared and asked him what he was at. The shepherd, not wanting to give the smugglers away or lose his keg of brandy, replied, ‘Dannel it, can’t you see the old moon has fallen into the pond? I be a-tryin’ to fish her out, but I can’t seem to hook her no-ways.’ At this the preventive men rode off laughing heartily at the ‘silly Sussex’, and the not-so-silly shepherd got his brandy!

  Similar fantasy can be seen in the tall stories which countrymen loved to swap, partly for sheer fun, but partly in the hope that someday someone would be gullible enough to believe them. Several of these had to do with sheep and shepherding, and naturally were favourites with shepherds. There was one about a supremely clever sheep-stealer with a wooden leg, who wore a boot the wrong way round on his wooden leg, ‘so the shepherd never knew if he was a-coming or a-going’. There was also the dramatic tale of the thief at Rottingdean who was actually hanged by a sheep which he had stolen. He had tethered it to a boulder on the cliff-top while he went for a drink, and later returned and fell asleep leaning against the same stone; during the night the sheep got its rope twisted round his neck and over the boulder too, so that by morning the thief was throttled. The boulder is still to be seen, and is known as the Hangman’s Stone.

  But the tallest of all is the tale of the Great Turnip. Sheep are very fond of turnips, and on Thorney Island the shepherds used to swap stories about the wonderful crops of turnips, or ‘termits’, on various farms where they had worked. On one farm, the shepherd was said to have lost a ewe during the winter – then, one day in early spring, he was folding the sheep over a field of very big ‘termits’. He saw an extra large one, and went across to look at it. Peering through a large hole in its side, he saw his own lost ewe deep inside it, and a lovely pair of lambs with her!

  But whatever jokes Sussex people may make at one another’s expense, all would join in appreciating a story in which Londoners are made to look the fools, such as the tale ‘The Mare’s Egg’, told to Arthur Beckett in the early years of the twentieth century:

  Dunnamany year ago, two chaps what had come from Lunnon – a pleäce where all de men be as wise as owls – met a h’old Sussex man what was doddling along a roäd near his village wid a pumpkin under his arm. An’ dese two Lunnon chaps didn’t know what dis pumpkin was, as dey had never sin de loikes of un afore. So one on ’em says to de other, he says, ‘Let’s see what dis here ol’ fellow’s got under ’is arm.’

  So dey goos up to un an’ says, ‘Good marnin’, mister,’ dey says.

  ‘Good marnin’,’ says de ol’ chap, friendly-like.

  ‘What be dat under yer arm?’ says de Lunnoners.

  ‘Dat be a mare’s egg,’ says de ol’ man.

  ‘Dat so?’ says de Lunnoners, believin’ un loike lambs, ‘We’ve never sin one so foine afore.’

  ‘Yes,’ says de ol’ chap, ‘dere be a mort o’ common ones aroun’, but dis ’ere one be a thoroughbred, an’ dat’s why ’tis so gurt an’ foine.’

  ‘Will you sell un?’ says de Lunnoners.

  ‘Wall,’ says de ol’ chap, hesitating-like, ‘I doän’t mind if I do, only I be dubbersome if you’ll gi’ me what I wants fur un; I ain’t a mind to take less dan a golden sovrin’ fur dis ’ere thoroughbred mare’s egg.’

  So arter dunnamuch talk dese ’ere Lunnon chaps dey gi’ un what he axed, an’ so he guv ’em de pumpkin, an’ he says, ‘Mind ye carry it careful,’ he says, ‘’cos ’twill hatch pretty soon, I rackon.’

  ‘All right,’ says de Lunnoners, ‘we’ll be careful.’

  So off dey goos over de fields wud de mare’s egg; and prensley him what was a-carryin’ of it ketches his foot in a hole in de groun’ so dat he dropped de pumpkin all of a sudden, an’ dat starts a hare from de bushes, so dat it rip-an’-run down de hill. De chaps was dat vlothered dat dey was sure dat de mare’s egg was hatched, so dey shouts out to some men what was workin’ at de bottom of de hill, ‘Hi! Stop our colt! Stop our colt!’

  With which neat anecdote of a countryman’s cleverness and townsmen’s gullibility we may fittingly conclude this survey of Sussex traditional tales and customs.

  Notes

  Abbreviations

  SAC: Sussex Archaeological Collections

  SCM: Sussex County Magazine

  SNQ: Sussex Notes and Queries

  WSG: West Sussex Gazette

  INTRODUCTION, pages 10–14

  Almost all the tales alluded to in the Introduction are given in full in the body of the book, and their sources will be found in the notes to relevant chapters. However, for the legends of King Alfred at Alfriston and of the Danes who crawled to Crawley see J.P. Emslie, Folklore XXVI (1915), 163–5; for the battle of Terrible Down, see M.A. Lower, SAC, XV (1863), 161, and J. Turle, SCM IV (1930), 893–4, 1067–8; for tales about Charles II, see M. Baldwin, The Story of the Forest (1971), 17–18, and L.N. Candlin, WSG 1.6.1967.

  1. CHURCHES, BELLS AND TREASURES, pages 15–24

  ALFRISTON: M.A. Lower, SAC XIII (1861), 226; also in many guide books. Lower notes that the same story was also told about Waldron, and Augustus Hare records a simpler version, without oxen, applied to Horeham (A.J.C. Hare, Sussex, 2nd edition (1896), 95).

  UDIMORE: T.W. Horsefield, The History and Antiquities of the County of Sussex (1835), I, 510; also in many guide books.

  HOLLINGTON: W. Diplock, A Handbook for Hastings, St Leonards and their Neighbourhood (1845), 7; C. Knight (pub.), The Land We Live in (c. 1847), I, 286.

  BATTLE ABBEY: L.B. Behrens, Battle Abbey under Thirty Nine Kings (1936), 32

  STEYNING: T. Medland, SAC V (1852), 113–14, summarising from Acta Sanctorum Bollandi, 1658.

  MAYFIELD: M.A. Lower, SAC XIII (1861), 227.

  WEST TARRING SPIRE: Local informants, 1977, 1981.

  BOSHAM BELL: A.J.C. Hare, Sussex, 2nd edition (1896), 197; A.S. Cooke, Off the Beaten Track in Sussex (1911), 168–70; A. Beckett, The Wonderful Weald (1911), 228–9; see also articles by M. Rourke, F.B. Booth, J. Donne and W.V. Cooke in SCM XVII (1943), 107, 175–6; XXIII (1949), 254; XXIV (1950), 252–4. For the ‘screeching woman’ version, see A. Chandler, Chichester Harbour (n.d.), 39–40; his informant was Captain Milward, former harbour-master at Itchenor.

  BULVERHYTHE BELL: F.E. Sawyer, Sussex Place-Rhymes and Local Proverbs (1884), no. 24; L.N. Candlin, personal communication, 1971.

  SELSEY BILL BELL: E.F. Harrison, SCM IX (1935), 265; his informant was an old man from Selsey in about 1875, who claimed that his great-grandfather had once heard this bell. Miss L.N. Candlin informs me that the legend is still remembered (1971).

  PETT LEVEL and KINGSTON GORSE BELLS: Informants at East Preston and Worthing, 1972.

  BELLS LOST INLAND: At Isfield, M.A. Lower, SAC XIII (1861), 227–8, and G. Christian, SCM XXVII (1953), 190–2; at Etchingham, Lower, ibid.; at Hurstmonceux, A.S. Cooke, Off the Beaten Track in Susse
x (1911), 169; at Arlington, A.H. Allcroft, Downland Pathways (1924), 62–3. For a theory that the name ‘Bell Hole’ is a corruption of pell, a dialect word for a deep pool, see D. MacLeod, SNQ V:8 (1935), 229–32.

  ALFOLDEAN (SLINFOLD) BELL: H. Burstow, Reminiscences of Horsham (1911), 101; S.D. Secretan, SCM XVII (1943), 29–30, quoting oral accounts by John Pullen and an old man named Edwards, both of Rudgwick, who both died in the early 1930s; report in WSG 15.7.1965 of an interview with Stephen Peacock. See also reports and correspondence in WSG 17.12.1970, 1.7.1971, 19.8.1971, and 9.11.1972 concerning the dowsing and excavation attempt.

  CURFEW BELLS: At Midhurst, M. O’Rourke, ‘The Bells of Sussex’, SCM XVII (1943), 107–8; at Storrington, oral informants in 1976, 1977 and 2001, some of whom linked the story not to the parish church but to a chapel in the grounds of Chantry Farm; also F.M. Greenfield, Round About Old Storrington (1972), 46–7; at Rodmell, Tony Wales, A Treasury of Sussex Folklore (2000), 132.