North Yorkshire Folk Tales

by Ingrid Barton

  The next morning the giant’s old servant was emptying the slop pail outside the kitchen when he heard a deep croaking. Looking up he saw two huge ravens circling the keep. Round and round they went until the servant was giddy. He was filled with fear, for he thought he knew whose ravens they were; he rushed to tell the giant. His master once more sat by the fire, muttering. The servant recognised the warning signs and he hovered uncertainly.

  ‘What is it?’ growled the giant. ‘Speak up man, don’t stand there gibbering!’

  ‘Ravens, Master. Ravens flying around the keep –’

  ‘Ravens? What do I care for ravens, you idiot?’

  ‘It’s a warning! Surely you know –’

  ‘A warning! I’ll give you warning, you idiot!’ and he aimed a vicious kick at the old servant that felled him to the ground. The giant kicked him again and again until he was tired.

  ‘Are you dead yet?’ he yelled, but there was no reply. The giant spat on the body and, picking up his great cudgel, marched out to await the men of Wensleydale and their children.

  But the old servant was not dead. He was badly hurt, but he knew what to do next. He hauled himself to his feet and slowly staggered out to the shed, where the wood and peat for lighting the fire was stored.

  ‘I’ve seen your ravens, my lord,’ he said to the sky. ‘I know you are with us!’ Then he began to fill baskets with peat. Nine baskets he filled and began, painfully, to drag them into the keep.

  The giant had not walked more than a hundred yards from his keep when he noticed something reddish lying across his path. He was filled with an unfamiliar sense of foreboding. As he got closer, he saw nine of his great boars lying dead across the path.

  A hundred yards further on there was another nine – and a little further yet, another.

  The giant ran now like a wild elephant, so furious that he foamed at the mouth, striking at everything he met with his cudgel. The huge veins in his neck and forehead stood out like hawsers, ‘By Thor! I shall kill every one of them! Smash their heads, beat their bones to flour, pull down their houses, and crush their wives and children! Wensleydale will become a desert!’

  The men of Wensleydale stood at the meeting place near the cliff, holding their young children in their arms. The children were afraid and many were crying.

  As the sound of the giant’s violent approach reached them they all trembled and some turned to flee, no matter what might happen to them. Suddenly the old man in the grey cloak stood before them. No one had seen him come and yet he was there, not exactly smiling but somehow comforting. Even the most fearful seemed to gain courage from his presence.

  As the giant appeared over the crest of the hill, he looked so powerful that no one thought he could be prevented from killing them all. Then the old man stepped forward and held up his staff – or was it now a spear? The giant stopped as dead as if he had run into a wall. Still he waved his cudgel.

  ‘I know you, Lord of the Gallows!’ he panted. ‘And I defy you!’ The watchers thought that he would strike the old man down but at that very moment two ravens appeared as though from thin air and flew close over his head. ‘Look!’ said the old man, pointing towards the hilltop behind the giant. He swung around and all of them could see a tall plume of black smoke mixed with roaring pillars of flame rising from the direction of the giant’s keep.

  ‘I did warn you!’ said the old man. He made a small gesture with his hands and the giant’s cudgel splintered and fell to the ground. The giant did not seem to notice, for his eyes were now fixed on something else, something that made them wide with horror. His mighty limbs began to tremble and his mouth fell open. He tried to speak, but could not utter a sound. To the astonishment of all the men of Wensleydale their enemy began to stumble backwards his hands raised as though to protect himself.

  Silhouetted against the smoke and fire, two figures were approaching. One was a girl, pale and slender, the other a great boarhound. Their eyes glittered and though they seemed solid enough their feet did not touch the ground. The girl held the boarhound on a leash, but his jaws slavered and his limbs strained as he tried to get at his former master. Back and back the giant staggered until he stood at the very edge of the cliff. Then, nodding briefly to the old man, the shepherd’s daughter loosed the hound. With one spring, Wolfhead leapt at the giant’s throat. Dog and giant went backwards over the cliff together.

  3

  DRAGONS

  ON DRAGONS

  A fine clutch of eggs, probably laid by dragons from Scandinavian stories brought over by the Vikings, hatched out in North Yorkshire. The hatchlings settled across the county: Sockburn, Handale, Loschy Wood, Slingsby and Sexhow all have tales of dragons and their inevitable destruction by a variety of heroes. Unfortunately, the stories are so similar that one or two are quite enough.

  All the dragons appear to have been of a similar type – the sort that coils around a hill, snakelike with poisonous breath, rather than the fire-drakes found further south. (See Ragnar Lodbrok and the Founding of York for an early version.) Only one, the Sockburn dragon, could fly. One, the Loschy Hill dragon, whose story is given below, could heal itself by rolling on the ground (a feature borrowed from the Greek legend of Alcyoneus and Heracles). The Sexhow dragon had its skin nailed to the church door whence it was supposedly removed by that man-turned-myth, Oliver Cromwell.

  Their diet varied. Some just ate local people, some liked the daily milk of nine cows; one, fussy but a little conventional, preferred virgins.

  As for their killers, most go on to marry rich heiresses once they have removed the dragon; however, two heroes and their dogs are tragically killed by their dragon’s poisonous breath, though only after the dragon is safely dead.

  One dragon appears to be connected with establishing land tenure. It involved such a weird ceremony that I cannot resist including it briefly here.

  THE SOCKBURN DRAGON

  Northern Moors

  The manor of Sockburn, which lies just over the River Tees, had a troublesome dragon. Sir John Conyers was the hero ready to fight it. The Bowes Manuscript in the British Museum states that:

  The scent of the poyson was soe strong that noe person was able to abide it, yet hee by the providence of God overthrew it and lyes buried at Sockburn before the Conquest, but before hee did enterprise it (having but one child) he went to the churche in compleate armour and offerd up his sonne to the Holy Ghost, which monument is yet to see and the place where the serpent lay is called Gray Stone.

  The manor was owned by the Bishop of Durham and each time a new bishop was appointed whichever descendent of Conyers was alive at the time had to meet him in the middle of the bridge over the Tees and offer him an ancient sword with the following words:

  My Lord Bishop. I hereby present you with the falchion wherewith the champion Conyers slew the worm, dragon or fiery flying serpent which destroyed man, woman and child; in memory of which the king then reigning gave him the manor of Sockburn, to hold by this tenure, that upon the first entrance of every bishop into the county the falchion should be presented.

  The falchion (a thirteenth-century one that is now in Durham Cathedral), was then handed back. This tradition continued to be kept until the early nineteenth century (though it is possible there was a revival once in the 1920s).

  THE LOSCHY HILL DRAGON

  Hambledon Hills

  On Loschy Hill, above Stonegrave near Nunnington, there once lived a dragon. It was one of the poisonous kind, more like a snake than a winged firedrake. It dribbled poison across the land, breathing out plague and pestilence that killed man and beast. Fear spread over the whole area.

  During the day, it lay dozing, entwined in the trees of Loschy Wood, or curled around the hill itself. Then a young man might, dared by his friends, climb the hill a little way and, if he were brave enough and undaunted by the poisonous fumes, gaze with fear on the vomit-yellow coil of its hideous body. At night, though, it would rouse itself and, slithering on the slime trail o
f its own poison, set out to hunt. Benighted travellers or straying beasts might see wisps of a white vapour flowing around them and be filled with a strange weakness, before the dragon took them into its deadly embrace and the razor-sharp teeth struck.

  As it grew larger, its hunger grew greater. Soon whole flocks of sheep began to disappear, or a farmer would find his byre empty of cattle and nothing left but a trail of blackened and shrivelled grass across the field. A travelling ‘reddleman’ or tinker might arrive at the isolated farmhouse where he had been welcomed many a time before to find silence and dead dogs and a gruesome smell.

  But how to get rid of such a monster? At first, bands of irate farmers and peasants tried to drive the dragon out with flails and pitchforks. Many died in a few minutes. Those that were left, tried to burn the wood, but although the dragon had no fire of its own, it was of dragon-kind and what dragon ever feared fire?

  Next the knights began to come. They were better protected against the creature’s poison with their closed helms and steel armour, but the dragon merely killed their horses and crushed the life out of their riders before they could use their swords.

  People began to despair.

  Then Sir Peter Loschy, a knight whose lands were in nearby Nunnington returned from many years on crusade. He had hardly dismounted before his servants were telling him about the terrible dragon that had settled so near his lands.

  Now, Sir Peter was valiant, but he added a keen intelligence to his valour; he saw immediately that the usual approach to the dragon was doomed to failure. He had always been interested in blacksmithing – most knights were – and had spent many hours as a young man talking to his father’s blacksmith and armourer, or watching him turning hard iron into shining armour. The day after his return, he went down to the smithy to chat to his old friend whose son now did most of the work. They talked about the dragon.

  ‘Trouble is,’ said the blacksmith, ‘no armour is strong enough to withstand the crushing hug of the beast. It’s as strong as a mill wheel and so fast that you’re dead before you can get in a decent blow.’

  ‘Brute strength is no good,’ said the son, ‘it’s far stronger even than you, my lord!’

  Sir Peter thought for a moment. ‘If it’s so strong,’ he said, ‘perhaps there’s a way to use its strength against it. It doesn’t seem to have any of the usual weak spots.’

  ‘Suppose,’ said the son, thoughtfully, ‘just suppose that you could use its own strength to kill it by making it drive itself onto your sword.’

  ‘Or,’ broke in the smith, getting a little excited now, ‘suppose you wore a band of sharp spikes around your waist. Then when it tightened its coils …’

  ‘Or better still,’ shouted Sir Peter. ‘suppose I had knives –’

  ‘– Sticking out!’ added the blacksmith.

  ‘All over your armour!’ finished the son. They looked at each other.

  ‘That’s it!’ they chorused.

  Making the spiked armour was not an easy task. It had to be carefully designed and made so that the spikes did not break off under pressure. The three spent long evening hours together, drawing plans and occasionally shouting at each other. Finally, the design was finished and the blacksmith and his son set about making it. Neighbours came around to complain that the continual clinking and clanking of hammers kept them awake at night, but when they were told the reason for the noise, they bit their lips and went home.

  At last all was ready and Sir Peter, looking a little like an armoured hedgehog, set off for the dragon’s hill on foot (for he did not wish to risk his warhorse), and accompanied only by his dog, Tip.

  It was just as well Sir Peter was fit, for it was a steep climb in all that steel, but at last he began to hear a sound that chilled his blood, brave though he was: the sound of breaking branches and a low deep hiss as if the very ground were hissing. Tip began barking, and, before Peter even caught a glimpse of what was coming, the dragon, which had been sleeping in the trees above him, dropped its coils over his head. He was completely wrapped in the hideous, writhing, yellow body for a moment and then, as the coils drew together for the final squeeze, a shudder ran through them. A terrible howling came from dragon’s mouth as it stabbed itself on the countless razor-sharp knives of Sir Peter’s armour. Swiftly it released him, twisting and curling and bleeding as it slipped away. In an instant, Peter was pursuing it, sword in hand, striking as hard as he could. The sword bit deep into the flesh and the howling redoubled. The dragon was badly hurt, but not yet beaten, and as Peter leapt after it, it turned and reared up like a great cobra to strike down this impudent dinner. This time Peter was faster and, with a mighty two-handed double stroke, he cut through its neck and saw the horrible head bounce on the ground and roll away. The body thrashed about on its own, smashing small trees, but Peter, sure that he had finally rid the land of the monster, leaned on his sword to get his breath. Not for long! As he watched, the head rolled back across the grass and with a sort of a leap joined itself onto its body again. In an instant, before Sir Peter’s horrified eyes, the dragon was once more reared up snarling and prepared to strike.

  Now Peter had a true fight on his hands. Again and again he cut the dragon into collops, only to see, again and again, the severed parts roll on the earth and then join up again. Now the knight was getting very tired. Fear gnawed at him. His tired brain could only think of one thing: how to stop the pieces of dragon joining together. His situation was getting desperate when he had a sudden flash of inspiration. He whistled for Tip, who, like any sensible dog, had stayed out of a battle too great for him, but who had showed his support by barking.

  ‘Take it away!’ Peter shouted, hitting a section of dragon towards Tip with his sword. Tip got the idea immediately and leapt forwards, seizing the bloody chunk. He raced off towards Nunnington and dropped it on holy ground near the church, then raced back to his master. It was a slow business, whittling the dragon down piece by piece. Both man and monster grew weaker, but still they tried to kill each other with all their remaining strength. Tip himself grew tired, dragging the heavy lumps all the way to Nunnington.

  At last, the head alone was left. Tip wearily took the great thing with its dimming eyes and protruding tongue, and dragged it slowly away.

  Sir Peter tore off his helm and sat down on the bloodstained ground. He was so tired he could scarcely lift his head. He was nearly asleep when, after a long time, Tip returned.

  ‘We did it together!’ said Sir Peter. ‘Come here Tip, you good dog, you faithful dog!’ Tip came up to him, tail wagging. He enthusiastically licked Sir Peter’s face as his master gently patted his head.

  But what was this? Suddenly Sir Peter began to cough, to choke and clutch at his throat. He looked down at Tip’s mouth still red with the blood from the dragon’s tongue, the dragon’s poisonous tongue!

  ‘Oh Tip!’ he gasped. ‘You have killed us!’

  Swiftly the dragon’s poison poured through his veins like an icy river; the last thing he saw in this world was his faithful dog, also falling … the dragon’s last victim.

  In Nunnington church there is a worn effigy of an unknown knight lying peacefully, his feet resting on his faithful dog. Ancient tradition says that this is the burial place of Sir Peter Loschy and the loving dog that unknowingly killed his master.

  4

  CREATURES OF THE NIGHT

  Granny sits in the inglenook of the fire with the cat in her lap. All around her snuggle her grandchildren on their little stools, warming their hands on evening bowls of bread and hot milk. It is Halloween and they want scary stories.

  Sarah, the eldest, finishes her supper and puts down her bowl. ‘Granny, why don’t you tell us about the creatures of the night?’ Granny pretends she can’t remember. ‘Yes you can,’ Sarah persists. ‘You know a list of them. It starts with Incubus, then there’s Suck – Suck –’

  ‘Succubus. You don’t need to know about those – not yet anyway!’

  ‘What else?’
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  ‘Nightmare – surely you don’t want to hear any more.’

  ‘Yes we do! Go on!’

  Granny puts on her serious face. ‘Well, alright then. I suppose it can’t do any harm to warn you. There’s Grim, Kirkgrim, Padfoot, Bogle, Gytrash and the worst of all …’ The children wait in delicious suspense, though they know the answer. ‘Bargest!’

  ‘Tell us about Bargest, Granny!’ whispers the smallest, milk dripping off her spoon .

  ‘Yes!’ shout the boys. ‘Why is Bargest the worst?’

  ‘Well –’ Granny keeps them waiting, lighting her old pipe with a burning stick. She puffs for a while but the children know better than to hurry her now. ‘It’s the worst because …’ Puff, puff, puff.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘DEATH FOLLOWS IT!’

  Gasps, not all pretended, from the group. Granny nods grimly, but Tom, the clever clogs, has to put his oar in. ‘You don’t always die when you meet it thought, do you? What about that feller from …’

  ‘Oh, so you’re the expert now, are you? Well, those who’ve actually been listening will recall that I said “death follows it”, not “you die if you see it” – though …’ adds Granny in her most sinister voice, ‘that happens often enough. No, Bargest is a warning of death, either to you or someone you know, someone dear to you!’

  ‘Is there one round here?’ wavers little Sophie.

  ‘No, honey,’ Granny says quickly. ‘It’s found in lonely places, like moors or empty crossroads. You’ll never see one round here. Our farm dogs ‘ud get it, wouldn’t they?’ The boys are clearly disappointed by this.

  ‘I’d like to see one, anyway,’ says Jack stoutly. ‘I’d put it on a string and bring it home to eat Sophie!’ More shrieks and a few tears this time. Sarah slaps Jack and comforts Sophie. Granny lets her get on with it. She stares into the fire, puffing away at her pipe.