eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
With origins lost in the mists of time, these lively folk tales reflect the wisdom (and eccentricities) of South Yorkshire's county and people. Amongst the heroes and villains, giants and fairies, knights and highwaymen, are well-known figures, such as Robin Hood and the Dragon of Wantley, as well as lesser-known tales of mysterious goings-on at Firbeck Hall and Roche Abbey. These enchanting tales, many never before recorded in print, will bewitch readers and storytellers, young and old alike.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780750966412 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 10/05/2015 |
| Series: | Folk Tales |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
South Yorkshire: Folk Tales
By Simon Heywood, Damien Barker
The History Press
Copyright © 2015 Simon Heywood & Damien BarkerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7509-6641-2
CHAPTER 1
Beginnings
Carconan on the Don
Conisbrough Castle stands at the meeting place of two rivers, the Don and the Dearne. Old as the castle is, its foundations are older; there were other strongholds in the place before it.
The story of these strongholds ranges across many lands and generations, but it begins in the long dark years before Arthur ruled in Britain.
In those days, King Conan Meriadoc ruled in London. There were greedy and heartless men in plenty in Britain then – and kings were worse than most – but Conan was the worst of them all. He was an evil man – cruel and small-minded. It was Conan who built the first fortress on the Don, because his family had ruled there time out of mind. He named it after himself: Carconan, the stronghold of Conan.
Cruel as he was, King Conan was the commander of all the legions of Roman Britain. He treated them as a private army. As king and commander, he answered only to the Roman emperor himself, and he knew that the emperor was weak. The Roman legionaries themselves, too, were more British than the Britons, having settled in the island many generations ago, in the long years of peace; they knew no king, and no commander, but Conan.
And, in these dark days, it was good that Britain had Conan and his legions. The island was ravaged day and night by Saxon brigands, pirates and savages from out of the dark north. They came by night in carved longships, marching inland, burning and plundering. King Conan and his private army were the only protection against them.
But one island was too small an empire for Conan, and no sooner had he built his new fortress at Carconan than he abandoned it, and left Britain altogether in search of conquest and plunder overseas. And he took the legions with him, leaving the island of Britain utterly defenceless. The Saxons fell on Britain like a wolf on the fold. Amid the havoc, the fortress of Carconan, newly built though it was, fell into ruin. Conan, meanwhile, was lucky in his plundering, and he carved himself out a whole new kingdom along the western coasts of Europe.
Then, at last, he told his victorious armies that they were legionaries no longer, but settlers and family men. The north-western coasts of Europe were now their home, and he would see to it that the British tongue would be spoken in the new kingdom forever. This was the sort of detail that Conan thought important; he was happy to abandon his homeland, but he was going to force those around him to speak his own mother tongue.
Conan's new colony now needed women and children, and so he remembered his island home again, and sent word, telling the lords of the Britons to send him unmarried women. He ordered new brides for his men by the shipload. They must speak British, he insisted, so that they could teach the British tongue to their children.
At this request, the Britons were aghast. Conan had already taken every able-bodied fighting man from the island. Now he wanted the women as well. It was as if he meant to make a desert of the island altogether. But still the Britons feared Conan's anger, and so the free women of Britain were sent off to Gaul. Many even went willingly, thinking it would be safer to follow King Conan than to stay in Britain and face the Saxons.
Most of the women never arrived. Their ships were wrecked in storms and lost on the lonely coasts. Many drowned. Saxon pirates fell on the rest, and took them as slaves. There are many stories of the sorrows of those days.
So, in the end, Conan never got his brides from Britain. He did not let this deter him though. He simply ordered his legionaries to take wives from the local people. The British soldiers went courting among the tribes of Gaul, and made marriage settlements with the local families, as the custom was. The Gaulish tribes were happy enough to make friendly treaties with these powerful incomers. Soon every legionary who wanted a wife had one from among the Gaulish women.
And then, once this was done, Conan ordered his men to cut the Gaulish women's tongues out. He did not want the Gaulish tongue spoken, he said, where the children of his new kingdom might hear it. He wanted them to grow up speaking British.
The thing was done. Conan's legionaries were obedient men, and they willingly handed their new wives over to their king's torturers. Some tore the women's tongues out with their own hands. The women themselves had no recourse or protection from this treatment. By Gaulish custom, they could not appeal to their own families; and, in any case, the Gaulish chieftains could hardly defy Conan. In the weeks and months which followed, a strange silence seemed to settle over the western coasts.
Perhaps as a result, Conan's new kingdom somehow got a strange new name. People began to call it the Half-Silent Realm.
And all this time, the old stronghold of Carconan on the Don still stood silent and derelict. But then a strange thing seemed to happen. People who lived on the banks of the rivers – people who knew nothing of Conan's adventures across the seas – began to fear the ruined fortress. Anyone who lingered nearby by night, so it was said, would hear women's voices echoing eerily, weeping and mourning in the empty ruin. There were strange words to be heard in these voices, words which could not be understood. The place got a bad name, and for many years nobody set foot in it at all.
The years passed. Conan prospered. He lived long, and died in his bed, and was buried in his new kingdom. In the years that followed, his descendants prospered, too. His children and grandchildren ruled across the narrow seas as princes, still speaking the British tongue. In Britain, the Saxon plundering went on, and the island fell into a Dark Age.
In the midst of the darkness, a new king arose over the Britons: one even worse, in his way, than Conan had been.
The new king was Vortigern the Thin, a weak and greedy man. The Britons hated him. He could raise no army to protect himself, and so, rather than lose his throne to British rebels, Vortigern took the Saxon pirates themselves into his service, as mercenary soldiers. It was a shameful thing for a king to do, to pay the enemy himself for protection, but the Saxons and their royal client were well matched: they would have fought for anyone who paid, and Vortigern would have paid anyone to do his fighting for him.
The Saxon chieftain was called Hengest, and he had a brother called Horsa. Hengest was a shrewd and practical man. King Vortigern offered him gold and silver, but Hengest laughed.
'If you want me to fight for you, king, then offer me three gifts. Only three things. Such is the custom of my people. Give me a bull's hide; and the knife that slaughtered the bull and flayed it, with the blood still on it; and as much land as I can hide within it. A hide of land is what we call it. Promise me a hide of land, and I will fight for you.'
Vortigern certainly thought this a strange request, but it seemed to him that Hengest was a strange and savage man, so he scratched his head, and promised Hengest that he would have his bull's hide of land.
And on those terms, Vortigern and Hengest went to war against the British rebels. Hengest proved a master of war and a terror to his enemies, and when they returned to London, Vortigern was a king indeed, as great a king as any before Arthur; and all his enemies feared him.
When the wars were over, and the victory feast was in preparation, Vortigern remembered his promise to Hengest. He sent his bemused servants out to the paddock, to kill and flay the nearest bull, and to bring him the hide and the bloody knife. Then, before the whole court, when the feast was at its height, Vortigern presented Hengest with the hide and the bloody knife, and invited him to choose his land – and hide it in the bull's skin, as the Saxon saying put it.
And Hengest took the hide and the bloody knife, and with them he travelled the whole of Britain through, looking this way and that, until he came to the place where the Don meets the Dearne. There he lifted his eyes up, and looked for the first time on the haunted ruins of Carconan.
Hengest knew nothing of the strange stories that surrounded the place, and he liked the look of it. So, taking the bloody knife in one hand, and the hide in the other, he cut carefully at the hide, cutting it into a long spiral strip, as thin as a thread and many miles in length, like greasy gossamer. And then, one morning not long afterwards, some miles from the ruined fortress and with his warriors and followers watching, Hengest drove a wooden stake into the ground, and fastened one end of his leather thread to it.
Then Hengest set off walking. He paid out the thread as he went, pegging it out behind him, walking in a great curve mile after mile, all day until evening.
At evening he came back to the place he had started, and fastened both ends of the leather strip to the same post.
And everything within the long loop he claimed as his hide of land. It was a huge estate indeed, in fact a small kingdom: the whole valley of the Dearne and many miles beyond it. The Saxons cheered, and hailed Hengest as king, and Hengest's brother Horsa clapped him on the shoulder.
'You have hooked a big fish today, brother,' he said.
'Then the Hook-land is what I shall call it,' Hengest replied, and the land he had taken he called England, which is Hook-land in the Saxon tongue. It was the first place in Britain that was ever called England and the name stuck. Hengest made England a kingdom for himself, and a homeland for his Saxons, and he built himself a great wooden longhouse over the ruins of Carconan: a place where a chieftain could feast with his warriors and heroes, and hear old tales told. He called it Thancaster, the Stronghold of the Leather Band, and it was the second fortress built on the hill where the rivers meet.
At first, Thancaster seemed to prosper; the gleam of its lanterns and the echo of its talk and music spread far and wide each night, across the river valleys.
All was not well for Hengest, however. For the native British hated him as much as they hated Vortigern. By themselves they could do nothing against him, he was so strong, but across the narrow seas, King Conan's descendants – their distant fellow-countrymen – were still ruling the Half-Silent Realm. They still spoke the British tongue, after their own fashion, and when word crossed the narrow seas that their old family fortress, Carconan, had been torn down, rebuilt by a Saxon ruler, and given a strange new Saxon name, Conan's heirs swore revenge.
And then there was war. Two princes of the house of Conan crossed the narrow seas to Britain. Their names were Aurel and Uther, and by right of descent from their forefather Conan Meriadoc, they claimed the throne of London and the whole island of Britain. They came with a great army, and the native British flocked to the princes' banners to swell their ranks. There was a British lord, Eldol of the Dragon-Hill, who swore that he would lead Hengest by the nose like a pig to the slaughter, with his own hands, before the two princes.
Vortigern the Thin was swiftly overthrown. He fled, and was hunted down and killed. Now at last it was time for the princes to face Hengest and the Saxons.
One evening, Hengest looked out from the gates of Thancaster, in his small new kingdom of England, and there he saw the British lords coming, darkening the horizons with their banners. He saw Aurel and Uther and Eldol and many others besides, great warriors whose names he did not know; and it seemed to him that from the ground beneath his feet he heard the sound of women's voices, mourning and weeping. He turned to his own generals and servants.
'Our enemies are coming for us at last. See how their banners darken the sunset; there will be battle tomorrow. I do not fear battle; war has been my life, and my living. But tell me, what are those voices? They seem to come from within the women's quarters, in the longhouse behind us. But their language is strange. There is no word of Saxon in it, and no word of British, as far as I can tell.'
But the Saxons could not hear the voices, or tell Hengest what they meant, and Hengest never learned. The following morning he went out to battle.
That battle was fought in the valley of the Don, in Belin's Field, where some say Mexborough now stands. It lasted for two days. On the first day, when Hengest went out to fight, he was smiling and laughing as he rode. But on the first day of battle the English line was broken, and Hengest fled. By the end of the first day, Hengest was hemmed in within the gates of Thancaster. He spent a tense and miserable night. Again that night he heard the voices, but he knew better than to tell anyone about them, other than his closest friends. When he ventured out to battle on the second day, his smile was gone, and he was frowning. The ghostly women's voices were still gnawing at his ears.
And there, in the turmoil of battle on the second day, Hengest met Eldol of the Dragon-Hill, and fought with him hand to hand. Eldol overthrew Hengest by sheer chance, and seized him by the nosepiece of his helmet. He chained him, and led him prisoner before the two princes, Aurel and Uther, as he had promised; and the proud princes smiled, and gave the word, and Eldol slaughtered Hengest in front of them.
Hengest's enemies laid him in a Saxon grave: an earthen mound, in the shadow of his own stronghold. Some say the grave-mound stands in the shadow of Conisbrough Castle to this day. Then they burned his longhouse, and left its ruins deserted, and made an end of his little kingdom of England, before returning to London. Aurel became king, and Uther was king after him. Uther's son, the great Arthur, was king after Uther's death. Arthur was the greatest king of the old days, and he kept the Saxons out of Britain.
For many years afterwards, no fortress or stronghold stood on the hills above the rivers. But, when Arthur was gone, the Saxons remembered Hengest's old kingdom of England with fondness. They came back in strength, and they conquered the most part of the island. They called their new country England, the Land of the Hook, as once Hengest had called his little hide of land; and then they began to call themselves English. So they call themselves to this day.
Today, a town has grown up around the hill where Conan's stronghold and Hengest's longhouse once stood. The town still bears Conan's name: Conisbrough. And to this day the castle has an eerie reputation. Many ghosts are still said to haunt it. Rumours of women in white, and other strange presences, echo in and out of the white stone walls and battlements on the grassy hill between the rivers.
And, meanwhile, far away across the narrow seas, long after his death, King Conan is still getting his way. His language, the British of the ancient Britons, is still spoken in his old Half-Silent Realm of Little Britain, or Brittany. The language is still called Breton by many who know nothing of the ancient bloodshed behind the name; or its old brotherhood with those who dwell between the two rivers, the Don and the Dearne, in the very shadow of the ruins of Carconan on the Don.
The strongholds of the Don Valley are among the oldest settlements in South Yorkshire. Wincobank was an Iron Age hill fort; the Romans fortified nearby Templeborough. These places have long evoked a sense of ancient mystery and splendour. Rumours abounded of buried treasure at Wincobank, and a widely quoted prophecy dating from 1662 states that:
When all the world shall be aloft
Then Hallam-shire shall be God's croft.
Winkabank and Temple-brough
Will buy all England through and through.
Following the end of Roman rule, Celtic British rulers reasserted their power, but soon faced Saxon encroachments; some fled in exile to Europe, but a British kingdom of Elmet, based around Leeds, endured for some time. The legends of Conan and Hengest, told by medieval writers, including Layamon and Geoffrey of Monmouth, reflect this Dark Age turbulence, but picture its action lower down the Don Valley, towards Conisbrough, the major urban centre of their own day. St Peter's church, Conisbrough, begun in the eighth century, is reckoned to be the oldest building in South Yorkshire, and contains an extraordinary twelfth-century carving of the legend of St George and the Dragon, within which sharp eyes will glimpse the familiar features of a foliate head, the famous 'Green Man'. Geoffrey identifies Conisbrough as the site of Hengest's death, close to the site of the battle at Maes Beli ('the field of Beli', said by some to be Mexborough; we have called it Belin's Field). Hengest's trick with the leather hide is a very common and widespread folk tale motif.
Elizabethan antiquarians such as William Camden and John Speed reproduced Geoffrey's story. Edmund Gibson's expanded 1722 edition of Camden's Britannia reports that a mound, 'said by tradition to be the burying-place of Hengist', was still to be seen before the castle gates. The idea was taken up by later antiquarians, including Surtees (quoted by Eastwood), and the Naylor brothers, while a 1931 pamphlet refers to a 'Hengist's Grave' nearby 'between Sprotborough and Melton on the Hill'.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from South Yorkshire: Folk Tales by Simon Heywood, Damien Barker. Copyright © 2015 Simon Heywood & Damien Barker. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title,Dedication,
Map of South Yorkshire,
Introduction,
1 Beginnings,
• Carconan on the Don,
• The Battle of Brunanburh,
• Deadman's Hole,
• The Black Raven,
2 The Forests,
• The Forest of Elmet,
• Roche Abbey,
• Barnburgh: Cat and Man,
3 Robin Hood of Barnsdale,
• Robin Hood's Birth and Outlawry,
• Robin Hood and Guy of Gisburn,
• Robin Hood and the Potter,
• The Gest of Robin Hood,
4 Monsters and Miracles,
• St Francis of Conisbrough,
• The Dragon of Wantley,
• St William of Lindholme,
• Lindholme Willie,
5 Legends of the Halls,
• The Homecoming of Leonard Reresby,
• Haworth Hall,
• The Green Lady of Firbeck Hall,
• The White Deer of Parkwood Springs,
• The Madness of Thomas Wortley,
6 Legends of the Roads,
• The Hangman Stone,
• Swift Nick Nevison,
• Swift Nick's Name,
• Swift Nick and the Highwaymen,
• Swift Nick's Death,
• Swift Nick's Praise,
7 Sheffield Household Tales,
• The Farmer and His Man,
• The Old Man at the White House,
• The King in the Forest,
• The Woodsman and the Hatchet,
• The Broken Pitcher,
• Hob Thrust,
• The Card Player and the Devil,
• Simmerdale,
8 'Lighten i' the Morning': South Yorkshire Life,
• Laughton-en-le-Morthen,
• The Swallow's Nest,
• Hell Hole, Whiston Meadows,
• The Natives of Whiston,
• William Lee of Sheffield,
• Blind Stephen,
• Tommy Taylor of Kimberworth,
• Aron Allott of Thorpe Hesley,
• The Vicar of Cawthorne,
• Betty of Dore,
• Two–Nowt,
• Martha and Albert,
• Gorgonzola,
• Potatoes,
• The Grocery Trade,
• Pickling in Thorne,
• Simmie and the Cart,
• The Kilkenny Devil,
• Nesbitt and the Snowman,
• The Lamb in the Crib,
9 'Tomorrow for Thee': South Yorkshire Death,
• The Ghost Army of Roche Abbey,
• The Abbot Monk of Conisbrough,
• Hickleton Church,
• Jasper the Whistler,
• The Thieving Milkmaid,
• Thorpe Hesley Boggart,
• The Ludwell Wife,
• The Grey Lady of Auckley,
• Aston: the Rectory Ghosts,
• Sheffield: The Campo Lane Barguest,
• Old Moult,
• Firbeck Ghosts,
• Mary on the Black Pig,
• Cortonwood Pit,
• The Ghost of Wath Main,
• A Bier of Stones,
• Born Again, Never to Die,
• The Three Sisters,
Selected References,
Copyright,