The Pope, hearing of his Fame, sent for him to preach at Rome: he had not above two daies warning to goe. Wherefore he conjured for a fleet spirit. Up comes a spirit he asks how fleet resp: as fleet as a bird in the air. yt was not enough. Another as fleet as an arrow out of a bow. not enough either. a 3rd as swift as thought. This would do. He commands it to take the shape of a horse, and presently it was so; a black horse on which his great saddle and footcloth was putt.
The first thing he thought on was St Pauls steeple lead: he did kick it with his foot and asked where he was, and the spirit told him, etc. When he came to Rome the groom asked what he should give his horse quoth he, a peck of live coales.
This from an old man at Malmesbury.
36
St. Aloys and the Lame Nag
Recorded from Ruth L. Tongue, September 29, 1963, as she heard it from a carter at Wincanton in Somerset, where the legend is well known.
There is a carving of St. Aloys at Wincanton Church. There is also a very fine alabaster carving in the Nottingham Castle Museum representing the miracle. St. Aloys was not St. Aloysius Gonzaga but the earlier St. Eligius of Noyon. Sabine Baring-Gould says in his Lives of the Saints (XV, p. 9), “In art he is represented erroneously as a farrier, with a horse’s leg in his hand; the story going that as he was one day shoeing a horse, the animal proved restive, so he took the leg off, shod it, and put it on again, without evil consequences.”
The story is known in France and Germany and is discussed by P. Saintyves in his Saints, Successeurs des Dieux (Paris, 1907), pp. 248–51.
Type 753, Christ and the Smith, popular throughout Europe, uses Motif E782.4, “Horse’s leg cut off and replaced,” present here, but with the sequel of a disastrous attempt at imitation. A Kentucky text is in Marie Campbell, Tales from the Cloud Walking Country (Bloomington, Indiana, 1958), pp. 191–93, “The Blacksmith That Tried Doctoring.”
THERE WERE A carter ’ad a ’oss. Fine ’oss ’e were, worked wonderful till ’e took ’en carting stones, and they broked ’is feet dreadful. ’E ’ad a sand-crack so wide you could ’a’ put a finger in it. Well! when ’e took ’en down to blacksmith, ’e couldn’t do nothing for it. ’Ot as fire that foot was, and the butcher ’e began to get ’is axe ready. But the carter, ’e was proper proud o’ that ’orse, real fond of it ’e was, so ’e ’ears about St. Aloys, down to Wincanton, and ’e reckoned as ’ow ’e’d take cart’orse there. Well, it took ’en the best part o’ two days to do the two mile, but carter ’e were determined ’oss should ’ave a chance. Well, when they got to Wincanton, St. Aloys come out of is smithy. “Bring ’oss in ’ere,” says ’e, “I’ll take care of ’en, and ’ere’s a bit o’ zider for ’ee, and some bread and cheese.” “I’m feared ’e won’t stand,” says carter, knowing ’ow ’e’d treated blacksmith. “Oh! ’E’ll be all right,” says St. Aloys.
So carter, ’e sits down to ’ave ’is zider, and ’is bread and cheese; welcome as May, it was; and Saint, ’e just put ’is ’and on old ’oss, and then ’e go into smithy. Carter, ’e took a look, and then ’e took another look, and ’e gollops down ’is zider. There’s old ’oss, wi’ a bit o’ ’ay in ’is mouth, what Saint ’ad give ’im, and Saint were busy in the smithy, and old ’oss were standing there wi’ three legs!”
“’Ere we are then,” says the saint coming out, and ’e brings out fourth leg, and ’e claps it on, and old ’oss stands there, and ’e nuckers quietly wi’ ’is bit of ’ay. And ’e worked for years arter that. Ah! That was St. Aloys, that was, down to Wincanton. Proper fine smith!”
37
St. David’s Flood
Recorded from Ruth L. Tongue, September 9, 1963. This historical tradition is from the Blackdown Hills and a village called Thorn St. Margaret. It is about a village called Bleadon, and Miss Tongue has heard it many times in Somerset, first in 1906 and last in 1960. This version is from a farmer’s daughter who used to hear the story from her grandfather. It contains Motif N825.3, “Old woman helper.”
A tradition rather reminiscent of this is a Hampshire legend preserved in a poem by Charlotte M. Yonge, “The Cat of Cat Copse” (Monthly Packet, Christmas, 1879, p. 17), about a Saxon boy, a thane’s son, who had been carried away by the Norsemen, whose boat was stranded by the tide as they sailed up a river for another raid. Like the Danes of Bleadon they were all massacred. The boy was left alone in the boat with the white kitten he had carried away with him. He escaped over the mud and hid in Catwood Copse while the slaughter of the Danes went on. The next day the cat led him back to his ruined home, where he found his father and King Alfred mourning the slaughter that the Danes had made.
Another Somerset tradition, commemorated in an early poem of Wordsworth, “The Danish Boy” (composed 1799), is of a Danish lad who was spared by the intercession of the Saxon women when a camp of the Danes was destroyed, and kept as a herd-boy. The ghosts of the boy and his dog are said to haunt the hill above, where he used to sit crooning Danish songs and looking over the sea.
“Hurd-yed” means red-head, and it is supposed to mean either Danish or pixy blood in Somerset.
ST. DAVID’S FLOOD is a name for the spring tide which in the old days brought Christian saints to Somerset. They came up river on St. David’s Flood. Later on there was a fishing hamlet down by the shore, and one day all the men were out fishing and a little herd boy came running back to the village in terror to say that six Danish galleys were sailing along and would come up the river on St. David’s Flood. Well, the women and the children scampered away to the nearby village of Uphill, which could give them some safety, and they could warn the farming folk there. But one old granny was down by the riverside gathering gladdon for thatching her cottage, and as the long ships sailed by she crouched down among the rushes and watched the Danes landing and scattering to plunder. They had tied up their boats and left them without even a guard. St. David’s Flood had brought them up, the very flood that had carried the saints up in olden days, but it was turning now, it was not waiting for the pirates to finish their work.
When they had gone the old woman crept out from her hiding place and watched the tide. It runs out very quickly there, and she saw that it was on the turn. So she undid the mooring of each of the galleys, and then she stood and watched them jostling against each other, going down river and out into the Severn Sea. In the meantime the men of Uphill had done their work well. They had ambushed the loaded pirates and driven them back towards their boats. But no boats were there, and not a hurd-yed survived that bloody day. And that, they say, is why the village is called Bleadon.
38
The Legend of Gold Hill
Reprinted from W. H. Barrett, Tales from the Fens, ed. Enid Porter (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), pp. 133–35. Told to Barrett by his great-uncle, who lived near Gold Hill, in the Cambridgeshire Fens.
An example of the racy and creative treatment of historical tradition by the English countrymen. Recognizable motifs are K331, “Goods stolen while owner sleeps”; K301, “Master thief”; K620, “Escape by deceiving the guard”; N765, “Meeting with robber band”; and F709.3, “Country of thieves.”
Organized bands of thieves are prominent in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist (1837) and Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris (1831).
HUNDREDS OF YEARS ago King John, who had heard of the fine goings on at Wisbech Fair, thought he might have a bit of fun there himself, so he came to the castle, and put up there for the night. Then he joined the crowd at the Fair and made as much noise as anyone else. After the frolics were over, the king was just sober enough to find his own way back to the castle, taking a Wisbech wench with him to keep him warm from the cold fen wind. But when he woke up in the morning, he found that all his money and jewels were missing and that the girl had gone, and his servant too.
John flew into a terrible temper, and ordered the castle to be searched from top to bottom, but all that was found were six wenches from Wisbech down in the soldiers’ quarters, and they swore they knew nothing of any jewels or treasures, they’d only come to the castle to do the weekly wash. So the king fretted and fumed and ordered the sentry who’d been on duty at the gate to be hung from the castle wall; then he clattered out of the castle, leaving orders that the search was to go on. No one remembered to change that order and that’s why people are still looking for that treasure today.
Next morning a man came into the castle yard with his cart, to take the dung away from the stables, and he was just bending down to lift up a load, when a dagger was pushed between his ribs and he fell down dead. Then the king’s servant and the girl who’d shared John’s bed that night lifted up the corpse and dumped it in the cart. The girl nipped in beside it, and the servant pulled down the top. Then he led the horse to the castle gate, which the sentry unbolted for him, and came out on to the road and into the marketplace. There he took the horse out of the shafts and left the cart standing by the hot-eel stall. When the stall-holder came back from the tavern, not liking the smell of the dung in the cart, he put himself between the shafts and pulled the cart along to the river bank and toppled it into the river, where it sank.
Now as the servant and the girl were riding along on the horse, they were seen by two Fenmen who were lying hidden in the reeds near the trackway just outside Wisbech. By making the sound of bird calls, the two men passed on the news to others, hidden farther along the track, that two travelers were on their way. These others passed the message on until the servant and the girl had come to a group of huts standing hidden in tall reeds and osiers. A crowd of Fenmen were waiting for them here and they surrounded the pair and made them get off the horse. The servant knew that the men would recognize the livery he was wearing, so he told them that he and his wife were royal servants; they had lost their way, and were wandering along the track trying to find their master.
“And what have you got in those two leather bags?” asked the Fenmen. “Money,” said the servant, “gold and silver money and a lot of jewels and precious stones which I stole last night from the king, when he was asleep.” And he emptied out the bags to show his haul.
“Well,” said the Fenmen, “we certainly don’t want to kill a man who seems to be better than ten of us when it comes to thieving. So you’d better come here and live with us, there’s plenty of work going in your trade with all the money that’s lying about in the manors on the edge of the Fens.”
So the man and the girl were taken to the mound where the Fenmen lived, and were given a hut and a cooking pot. They were also taught the law of the Fens, which was that they must never steal from a neighbor and must always help each other in time of need. They soon settled down in their new home and one of the first things they did was to pack up the royal livery inside the two leather bags, and send them by boat down to Lynn. From there the bags were sent on to the king, who, when he saw them, flew into such a rage that he had a fit and died. Then just nine months after Wisbech Fair, the girl had a lusty boy who, when he grew up, was called the Prince, and he became the greatest thief the Fens have ever known.
Meantime, of course, the Fenmen made the most of all the gold and silver coins which the servant and the girl had brought. Most of the money went on paying the Abbot of Ely so that the Fenmen he held in prison could be set free, and so much gold was paid out that the monks began to wonder where it all came from. But the Fenmen could never use the jewels, so they divided them among themselves, and each man hid his share under the floor of his hut. Years afterwards a great flood came and swept right over the Welney Fens and washed away all the huts. Later on the Dutchmen came, to drain the Fens and dig wide ditches, and one of these went right across the Fen, near where the huts had been. While they were working on the ditch, they came across a few pieces of jewelry, and later on a few more bits were turned up by the plough. When folks heard of this, they began to call the mound, where those old Fenmen had lived, “Gold Hill.” So you see, John didn’t lose all his treasures in the Wash; some of it disappeared at a place between Littleport and Wisbech, on the Welney Wash.
39
The Grey Goose Feathers
Recorded from W. H. Barrett, October 11, 1963. Mr. Barrett heard this tradition of the Cambridgeshire Fens from Chafer Legge in 1900. His written version, edited by Enid Porter, is in Tales from the Fens (London, 1963), pp. 148–49, and is close to the oral text. The grey goose feathers also enter into another unusual tradition in the same book, “French Prisoners in the Fens,” pp. 73–84.
Identifiable motifs are M202.0.1, “Bargain or promise to be fulfilled at all hazards”; M205, “Breaking of promises or bargains”; and K1812, “King in disguise.”
THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of years ago, the Fenmen, living in their desolate wastes, bonded themselves into a secret society. This society was called “The Brotherhood of the Grey Goose Feathers,” and anyone who was initiated into that brotherhood, and possessed a grey goose feather, was sure that whenever they was in trouble or distress, help would immediately be given by the whole Fenmen. When King Charles the First escaped from Oxford, he made his way into the uplands of Norfolk, and stayed at a place called Stowe Hall, just outside of Downham Market.
And in passing, I may remark that I saw the chamber where, in case Cromwell’s men came to look for him, he did hide. This chamber was aside of a great big chimney; it was hidden by old paneling.
Well, after Charles had consulted with his advisers, he decided to rejoin his troops just outside Oxford. The safest route in those days, for a fugitive, was through the desolate trackless Fens. There was one man, named Porter, who kept an inn at Southery. He used to guide travelers across the trackless waste. So he was sent for, and asked if he would take a very important personage to Huntingdon, and he said, “Yes, I will.” So they brought the important personage to see what sort of a man the old Fenman was, and some of the King’s advisers didn’t think it was safe for him to go that long journey with only one man. But Porter said if that was what was worrying them, he would initiate the important personage into the Brotherhood of the Grey Goose Feathers. So they brought a feather, and Porter severed it down the centre, and gave half to the important personage, and retained half himself. As he did so, he said, “Whilst fishes have scales, and birds have feathers, I will do all I can for you, and so will every other man who belongs to the Brotherhood of the Grey Goose Feathers.”
