And the old lady said, “Let it alone. Leave it there,” and so they never moved it, and the daughter and my mother was there when she died. And when she died, and they’d done different things to her, like what they has to do, one of them saying, “You’d better take care of that purse, and see that’s safe,” they opened the purse, and there was nothink in it, it was quite empty. The Devil had took her and the money together.
23
The Gipsy’s Curse
Recorded from W. H. Barrett, resident of the Cambridgeshire Fens, on October 11, 1963. Mr. Barrett is the well-known storyteller who has published Tales from the Fens and More Tales from the Fens, both edited by Enid Porter (London, 1963, 1964).
Motif G269.4, “Curse by disappointed witch,” is familiar in England and the United States. New England examples can be found in R. M. Dorson, Jonathan Draws the Long Bow (Cambridge, Mass., 1946), pp. 33–35.
Mr. Barrett writes in the course of a letter: “Everyone in those days that lived around my home held firm belief in the power witches possessed, and a lot of good food us children would have been glad to have was wasted by being placed outside the door for a wandering witch to collect for her supper, who never appeared in human form. Any seen were disguised as cats or rats, and it was a well-known fact the dish the food was placed in needed no washing up next morning, it was so clean. My father, who was in great demand as a lay preacher in the Fen chapels, firmly believed that stewed pigs’ brains served on a plate which had contained the witches’ supper (unwashed) gave him such power to preach in his sermons that it caused his listeners to sit enthralled.”
THERE WAS AN old gipsy woman who pitched her cariavan in a waste piece of ground. She was a filthy old bitch, and we boys used to be terrified to meet the glance of her deep-sunk dark eyes. She’d set out every morning with a basket on her arm in which there were pieces of dirty lace. This was really a legalized form of begging. She would return home in the evening, with the basket filled with what she had been given, scrounged, or stolen. She was a terror to the people that lived close by, and there was one woman whom—oh! she was always pestering; eventually, the woman seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown. So her husband went to the police, and asked the police if they could not take the old gipsy’s cariavan away. The police said they could not, as it stood on waste ground, but they would send along and warn the old gipsy that if she didn’t stop pestering the local people, they would put a pair of handcuffs on her, take her before the magistrates, and have her sent to prison. Well, the policeman went and warned the old gipsy.
That night, when the man who had been to the police was returning from his work, the old gipsy stopped him on the high road, and after spitting in his face, said, “Oh! You are the old man who went and told the police to have me locked up and sent to jail, are you? Well, you’re a wicked old man, treating a poor old woman like me like that. Now, in return for doing this, I will give you a gipsy’s curse; and that curse is, that neither you, or any of your offspring will die in their own beds.”
The man, being of a religious turn of mind, only shrugged his shoulders, but there were some bystanders near. They’d heard the gipsy curse him, but they forgot all about it until, some time later, that man died at his work-bench, in his carpenter’s shop. As the years passed, five of his offspring died also, four in hospital and one killed on active service. That makes you think a bit, doesn’t it? I have given a lot of thought to it myself, for, you see, the man on whom the gipsy laid her curse, was my father.
24
The Open Grave
Contributed by Ruth L. Tongue to Folk-Lore, LXXIII (1962), 106–108 as she heard it in Taunton Deane in 1961 and again in Chipstable in April, 1963, both in Somerset.
Motifs here are K1601, “Deceiver falls into his own trap (literally)”; D1278.1, “Magic churchyard mould”; and C411.1, “Tabu: asking for reason of an unusual action.” It is believed unlucky to leave a grave open on Sunday (E. and M. A. Radford, Encyclopedia of Superstitions, p. 261); see the song in “Mr. Fox’s Courtship” No. 43 in this volume.
“Robin herdick” is a robin redbreast.
THERE WAS A sexton who cared for a church, and he wasn’t at all suitable. The parson was a rich hunting man, and there was very few services he troubled to hold, not more than two-three in the year. So sexton, he had his own way, and a bad way it was. Folk that were curious would notice him dig a grave, so of course they’d ask whose ’twas, and all he’d answer them was, “You’ll see soon enough.” And not a word more.
And sure enough, that open grave was filled with one of them. There were a godly and respected old farmer who was churchwarden, and he had his doubts about sexton. One afternoon he came on him digging a grave, unbeknown to all, so he naturally asks whose ’tis. Sexton looked at him squinty-eyed, and says, “You’ll know soon enough,” and not a word more. And in three days farmer himself were buried in it.
By and by, folks came to notice that it were those who doubted the sexton as filled his open graves, but what to do about it they couldn’t tell. Then old Betty, the gifted woman, she was guided to find a way. She came upon sexton in the dimmet, busy digging a new open grave, and she made a criss-cross avore she spoke a word, and she did not waste questions to put herself in his power—no—she pick up a bit of grave-mould, and creeps up all on her tip-toes, and drops ’en down on sexton a-digging. “Hungry earth must be fed, and open graves lie in wait,” says she. “You’ll see soon enough.”
Sexton, he let out a skritch like the foul fiend himself, and he began to climb out arter old Betty, but her skittered off, spry as a robin herdick, and he took and slipped on grave-edge, and a-fell onto his back-spine into ’en. Then he gave out two more fearsome yells. “Dree on ’en,” says old Betty. “Aye, he can bide still now.”
And there wasn’t a sound in graveyard, but a whisper of wind in the grasses. Old Betty, she says her prayers and go on whoame, and sexton he lay there with his back a-broked. Come morning, folks could a-see his dead corpse in the open grave, and they all zee who ’twas vor soon enough.
My great-gran she did zay, “An open grave must be ved, or the man who digs it will find himself be one to fill it—in a coffin.”
25
Annie Luker’s Ghost
Recorded from Ruth L. Tongue, September 27, 1963, to whom the experience was told in 1963 in Somerset by the widow of the old man in the story, who more than hinted that her husband was a witch as well.
Relevant motifs are E401.1.2, “Footsteps of invisible ghost heard” (many references in E. W. Baughman, A Type and Motif-Index of the Folktales of England and North America) and E247, “Ghost kills man who had had ghost exorcised for too short a time,” for which Baughman cites a 1904 reference from Northumberland. The belief that a ghost will come to fetch one of the living away is fairly widespread, but perhaps best known in the corpse-candle beliefs investigated by Richard Baxter and John Aubrey in the seventeenth century (see Baxter, The Certainty of the World of Spirits, London, 1691 and Aubrey, Miscellanies upon Various Subjects, 5th ed., London, 1890, pp. 165–67, “Corps-Candles in Wales”). The accusation of taking the form of a rabbit or hare is commonly leveled against witches in England (G211.2.7).
I KNOW WHAT you say about ghosts is quite true. We ’ad one to our cottage. Oh, yes! We come down to cottage arter it were empty, like, and I got Vicar to come and bless cottage. You see, it did belong to old Annie Luker, and she wasn’t well liked. Everybody said she ’ad dark dealings; could turn ’erself into a rabbit. Well, arter she died, there weren’t no one as ’ud go near. But my ’usband ’e was a clever man, bit too clever, if you ask me, ’e say, “We’ll go to cottage.” So us took it.
Folk in village didn’t like it very much, and they come and say to me, “Does ’ee know ’twas Annie Luker’s cottage?”
I says, “Yes, I’ll get Vicar to come and bless it.”
So we did, and we went there, me and my ’usband, and our daughter Mary. Well, us ’ad been there about three months, when all of a sudden, one night, I ’ears a girt bang. I sits up in bed, and I listens, and someone come in! I could ’ear ’en downstairs. I nudges ’usband, see.
“Bob,” I says, “wake up, will ’ee? What be it?”
Well, we sat up in bed, and then we could ’ear someone coming upstairs—bump, bump, and kerflop, kerflop.
’Usband, ’e got proper cross, and ’e calls out, “Mary, what be ’ee about? Coming in this time o’ night!”
Then us ’eard our Mary, from ’er bedroom next to ours, by the passage-way, and she say, “Dad, oh! Dad, I’ve been ’ome hours. Whatever is it?” And then ’er goes under blankets like I did.
My ’usband ’e listened, and then we ’eard ’en again, thump, thump, kerflop, kerflop coming along up the stairs towards our door, and all of a sudden, my ’usband—’oo nothing much worried ’im—’e say, “Oh! ’Tis old Annie Luker!” And ’e come under blankets too.
Well, sometimes she’d come and sometimes she ’ouldn’t. Never see ’er, but ’ear ’er, yes. And then, my ’usband, ’e was took ill, and not long ago ’e died. ’Aven’t ’eard Annie since. Folks say she knew what she wanted, and she come for ’im.
26
The Son Murdered by His Parents
Printed by Myra E. Jennings in Old Cornwall, 11, No. 7 (Summer 1934, issued by the Federation of Old Cornish Societies), 40–41, with the comment, “This story was told by my greatgrandfather to my mother, who told it to me.”
This is Type 939A, Killing the Returned Soldier, with a dramatic and logical addition of ghostly motifs: E451.4.1, “Ghost asked to identify self ‘in name of God’”; E441, “Ghost laid by reburial”; and E4231.5, “Revenant as swine.” Type 939A is sparsely reported from eastern Europe, but Maria Kosko has accumulated numerous variant texts; preliminary studies are her “Varia à propos du Malentendu,” Comparative Literature, X (1958), 367–77, and “L’ Auberge de Jérusalem à Dantzig,” Fabula, IV (1961), 81–97. Her forthcoming monograph will devote two chapters to the fortunes of the legend in England. Baughman cites additional texts: from Michigan (Polish), in R. M. Dorson, “Polish Tales from Joe Woods,” Western Folklore, VIII (1949), 136; from Missouri, in Vance Randolph, Who Blowed Up the Church House?, pp. 23–24, “The Boy that Fooled his Folks”; and from Cornwall, in Robert Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England, 2nd series (London, 1865), pp. 253–55, “The Penryn Tragedy.”
Literary uses of the theme appear in the play by George Lillo, The Fatal Curiosity (1736), the novel by Constance Holme, The Splendid Fairing (1933), and the humorous story by Stephen Leacock, “Caroline’s Christmas” (1911), a comic reshaping of the tale.
A WAYSIDE COTTAGE had belonged to two old people, who died, leaving it in very bad repair. Their only son had gone out, years before, to Australia, and no word had been heard from him since. So, after some time the cottage was done up, and new tenants moved in. They found it impossible to live there though, because of the strange sounds they heard at night. So badly was it haunted that the parson was called in. His efforts were all in vain and it remained empty.
