In the twilight, when shadows deceive our eyes, or in the dark when all our ancient senses are particularly alert, we may literally see strange things. If we expect to see fairies, then fairies we will see; if extraterrestrials or demons or angels or just moving leaves, then we will see them instead; it all depends on a confusing visual situation and the expectations of the viewer.
Belief in fairies was waning by the time the genial vicars, who collected so many folk stories, walked the hills of Yorkshire. To admit to such a belief had become a badge of foolishness. That does not mean that it had not been widespread not so long before, or that it had actually died out. Fairies are jealous things and speaking of them has always been considered bad luck, especially where roads are dark and lonely; life was uncertain enough without fairy enmity. The tales of fairies we have are only the tales that ordinary people were prepared to tell someone ‘educated’ – there must have been many more!
THE FAIRIES OF ELBOLTON HILL
Nidderdale
‘Thoo’s niver going by Elbolton Hill? Well, watch out for fairies!’ Frank’s friend gave him a parting slap on the back and waved a cheery goodbye.
‘I’s not afeart. Never worry about me!’ Frank headed off into the spring night. It was ideal for walking; the moon shone as brightly as day; the scents of hawthorn and elder rose strongly in the still cool air. It was pure pleasure to be out in it.
As he walked, Frank hummed ‘Barbry Allen’, a tune popular in his village, but finding it too slow and sad to walk to, he switched and sang ‘The Bold Dragoon’ and was soon stepping out in fine style, no longer humming but singing with gusto. He loved singing and thought himself rather talented.
The dragoon with his broaden sword
He made their bones to rattle …
Before him the distinctive shape of Elbolton Hill rose up strange in the moonlight. Frank felt a little flutter of fear mixed with excitement. He remembered as a lad going down into Navvy Noodle Hole on the side of the hill, a place where everyone knew the fairies lived. He had done it as a dare and nearly been frightened out of his wits, but the fairies had not been in that day, and he climbed back out of the hole with nothing worse than a few grazes and a bumped head.
Some of his friends kept treasured elf bolts they had picked up near the hill, little leaf-shaped pieces of worked flint like arrowheads that fairies shot at cattle or people who annoyed them. If they hit you, you got sick; everyone knew that.
Frank’s granny had told him a lot about fairies, and despite all the dangers, he wanted to see them very much. He did not think that they were as evil as they were painted; after all, they liked music, dancing and merriment, so they were not so very different to him.
As he reached the footpath along the side of Elbolton Hill he stopped singing and walked along as quietly as possible. Who knew? Tonight might be the night he got his wish.
The bushes on the hill were very black, but a little way along he thought he could see a light that came from a source other than the moon. He stopped and listened hard. Yes! A silvery tinkle of music, a faint wash of laughter. He was in luck! Delighted excitement flowed through him. Slowly and carefully he approached the light, creeping along behind the tall drystone walls that bordered the path.
The fairies were holding a party in the centre of a big fairy toadstool ring (Frank was pleased to see that his granny had been right about that). There were little trestle tables set up, spread with many sorts of food and drink where fairies were enjoying themselves. Nearby there was a group of tiny fiddlers sawing away madly on tiny fiddles. They were playing such jolly reels and jigs that Frank’s feet started tapping almost by themselves. Some fairies were dancing to the music on their own, their little feet a blur as they leapt and twirled. There were a few couples, exquisitely graceful, swinging each other around as lightly as a sycamore key spins to the ground.
Frank settled down to watch, noting everything to tell his friends and family about later.
‘Wouldn’t the bairns just love it!’ he thought.
The fairies were all dressed in different shades of green, from the almost-black of cedar, through emerald and pea green to the palest eau de Nil. Their wings were transparent like those of a dragonfly, though not as stiff, flapping rather than buzzing.
Now the dances were changing; the fairies were joining together into rings and swirling in and out in complicated figures, rising into the air, swooping down, intertwining but never hitting each other, like gnats over a pool.
Frank watched open-mouthed, hardly able to distinguish the individual figures of the dances, though he was a good dancer himself. After a while, the company ceased leaping and went for more refreshments, though they showed no obvious signs of fatigue. They ate from silver plates and drank from golden goblets while a master of ceremonies spoke at length in a high little voice. He was apparently introducing the next event for soon a fairy woman came forwards and began to sing beautifully. Frank tried to remember the tune, though he could not understand the words. Afterwards a harper played music so haunting that tears trickled down Frank’s cheeks.
And so the entertainment went on; one after another of the fairies taking his or her turn. It reminded Frank of the sort of good evening he and his friends sometimes had at the pub – though rather more elegant, of course. Thinking about this he was suddenly filled with the desire to sing.
‘Happen they’ll like ‘The Bonny Bunch of Roses’!’ he thought, standing up. ‘Na’ then. Ah’ll sing a song if tha loikes!’ he cried to the little master of ceremonies.
Instantly he realised that he had made a mistake. The fairies began to buzz like a disturbed beehive. Then they rushed hither and thither in confusion, and, seeing Frank, they all rose up and flew at him, biting, kicking, pinching and throwing small stones as hard as they could.
Frank was a big tough Yorkshireman, used to the vicious biting cleggs and clouds of midges on the moors, so he was not much damaged, but he was dismayed at breaking up the party and worried that he would hurt the fairies as he tried gently to bat them away from his face. Almost by accident, his big hand closed over a particularly persistent one. It was too good an opportunity to miss; he thrust the struggling creature hastily into his pocket.
‘It’ll be summat to show to t’bairns!’ he thought guiltily as, in a few long strides, he crossed the fairy ring and reached the path again.
The fairies followed him for a while, presumably shouting insults and threats after him, for he could hear their tinkling voices all the way down the hill.
He reached home with great excitement. Who else had ever caught a fairy? He imagined displaying it to everyone – maybe even showing it at the fair! He could see the sign now: ‘Never Previously brought before the Public! Frank Metcalf and his Amazing Flying Friend!’ See the Queen (or the King if the fairy should turn out to be male) of the Fairies Dance!
He’d have a little crown made!
His children were all asleep in bed but he insisted on them being woken up. Then he held them still yawning but spellbound with an account of his adventures on Elbolton Hill.
‘And now!’ he said, wishing that he could conjure up a drum roll. ‘I’ve got summat that’ll amaze you all … It’s a real fairy what I caught tonight!’ He put his hand into his pocket, but when he drew it out … there was nothing there!
6
MYSTERIES
FOUNDING STORIES
Imagine a world with no safety nets: no pensions, no benefits, no NHS. To be poor in that world is to always walk a tightrope. As long as you can work, you can eat. If you cannot work, you instantly become reliant on the kindness of others to keep you alive. You can beg, or steal, or borrow from you neighbours, but you have become a dropped stitch in the fabric of your community.
This is why monasteries, whose duty it was to provide food and medical care for the poor, were so important in the Middle Ages: they were the only reasonably reliable source of help apart from your neighbours or family members who were often as p
oor as yourself.
The north of England was impoverished compared with the fertile south where rich landowners could afford to give more charity. In the harsh conditions of much of North Yorkshire, famine was a familiar visitor, but northern lords by tradition had to put much of their money into weapons and soldiers in order to combat Scottish raids, which often came as far south as York. Henry VIII’s destruction of the monasteries was felt much harder here than further south.
It is hard to know how well Christianity was understood by illiterate Yorkshire peasants at the time, but its simpler tenets, at any rate, provided an essential mental security against the evils of the world. The image of the monastery represented continuity and stability in the brief hard life of a peasant. The magic words of the priest, the magic substance of the Mass, the magic holy water that could heal the sick were the poor’s own strong weapons against the enemy that stalked behind their left shoulder, waiting to pounce.
Whatever criticisms people might have had of individual degenerate monks, love and respect for monasteries as institutions was widespread. Stories illustrating the holiness of the local monastery were important for local prestige and it was natural to enhance their glory by ascribing supernatural aid to their original founding. Two of such stories follow.
THE WHITE BIRDS
Hambledon Hills
Once there were some monks at Byland Abbey, who set out to find a place to build another monastery. They were Cistercians, vowed to live in the inhospitable and barren parts of the earth. With nothing but a strong faith that God would show them the perfect place to plant their new home, they wandered many many miles. They remembered how faithful monks had carried St Cuthbert’s body for years until they were shown the right place to bury him. There they had built an abbey and now Durham with its great hilltop cathedral was famous.
When night came the Byland monks slept, wrapped in their robes, in the thorny shelter of some whin bushes high on a lonely hillside.
That night their leader and future abbot had a dream. He saw a woman walking towards him leading a little boy by the hand. The woman was astonishingly beautiful and it worried the monk that she was alone in such a desolate place.
‘Lady,’ he said, ‘what are you doing alone here in this barren spot with such a young child?’
She smiled and said, ‘I am often to be found in deserted places. I have come from Rievaulx to Byland and now I am going to a new monastery.’
The abbot-to-be felt a lifting of his spirit. ‘Lady, we too are of Byland and are seeking a place to found a new holy house, but we do not know this land and are wandering like blind men. Of your courtesy show us the way to this new monastery you speak of.’
‘You were once of Byland,’ she replied, gravely, ‘but now you are of Jervaulx.’ She turned to the little boy and asked him to be the monks’ guide. ‘For I am called away …’ and with that, she vanished.
Then in the dream – though it felt more real than any dream – the abbot rose up with his monks and prepared to follow the little boy who, before setting off, first pulled a branch from a nearby tree. The monks walked behind him for what seemed like hours until at last in a beautiful green valley the boy stopped and thrust the branch into the ground. Straightaway it began to grow and as it did birds began to fly to it. At last it stood tall and fair and filled with little white birds who sang sweetly. The child turned to the monks. ‘Here shall God be adored for a while!’ he said and as he spoke he changed, filled with glory, becoming the radiant Christ child who blessed them all.
When the abbot awoke, he sprang up with joy and told the others his dream. He led them unerringly to the green valley he had seen in it and there, by the River Ure, they began to build their new monastery. They called it Jervaulx (meaning Ure valley).
In time Jervaulx Abbey became great and powerful. Surprisingly, it was famous for its horse breeding and its Wensleydale cheese as well as its piety. Its glory came to an end when Henry VIII closed it and hanged its last abbot for treason after the Pilgrimage of Grace. His name remains, beautifully engraved into the stone of his cell in the Tower of London: ‘ADAM SEDBAR: ABBAS IOREVALL.’ But the ruins of his abbey also remain, carpeted in flowers and still full of the singing of birds.
THE LOAF OF BREAD
Harrogate area
The River Skell flowed through a wilderness of rocks and trees. There had once been religious foundations in the valley, but Viking raids destroyed them all and the folk who had once lived there had fled long years before. It was in just such deserted places that the Benedictine monks of the twelfh century delighted to live, abandoning the troublesome world for a life of peace, abstinence and prayer.
Richard, the prior of St Mary’s Abbey in York had tried hard to revitalise the religious spirit of his monastery. There was a feeling abroad at the time that monasteries, once the abode of truly holy men, were becoming increasingly degenerate. Richard’s efforts were not successful enough to satisfy twelve of the most critical monks. Having got permission from the archbishop, they left the monastery to found a new monastery on the deserted banks of the Skell where they hoped to follow the rule of their founder, St Benedict, more strictly.
It was winter when the twelve monks arrived at the Skell. They were completely without any form of shelter and the only thing between them and the bitter east wind were seven yew trees. (It is said that two still stand.) They had some basic tools, so with great labour in the freezing wind and hampered by the short days they managed to build a simple hut against the bole of a great elm tree.
Food was scarce – less than scarce – for what food could they find in the barren winter fields beyond dry grass and elm bark? Somehow, they survived that first terrible winter and their very tenacity attracted others to join them. The next spring they laid out fields, moving many rocks and trees, and began the hard work of cultivating the earth. A small group of wooden monastic buildings began to rise, but the monks were still dirt poor and short of food. It is to be hoped that they did not regret their choice to leave York!
One day a traveller knocked at the door. When the porter opened it, he found a man weak with hunger collapsed outside. ‘Food! For the love of Christ!’ he begged.
The porter was in a dilemma, because he knew that there was practically no food in the place. ‘I fear we have nothing to give you, my poor son,’ he said.
‘For our sweet Saviour’s sake give me a loaf of bread or you will see me die here at your feet!’
In desperation, the porter went to the abbot and explained the situation. ‘We have only two and a half loaves left and we need those for the carpenters and the other workers when they come back from work.’
‘Well,’ said the abbot, ‘we can’t begrudge a loaf of bread to a starving man! One and a half loaves will have to be sufficient for us lucky people who are not yet starving.’
The porter took one of the precious loaves to the traveller, who blessed the monks fervently as he at last began to fill his empty belly.
There were only a few mouthfuls of bread for each of the monks who had been working and nothing at all for those who had not, but filled with the happiness of having helped a stranger in trouble, they did not complain.
A few hours later, there was another knock on the door and the porter opened it to find two men with a large cart standing outside. From the cart came the intoxicating smell of fresh bread.
‘Sir Porter,’ said one of the men, ‘the Lord of Knaresborough Castle, Sir Eustace Fitzhugh, hearing that you are short of food, has sent you this cartload of bread.’
The monks all rejoiced and praised God, believing that He had seen their plight.
It was from this time that Fountains Abbey, as it became known, began to flourish until at last its fame spread throughout the region and it became rich and powerful. The twelve brave founders were always honoured, but whether those that followed in the years after them, as the abbey grew ever richer, were as holy or as ascetic is less certain.
SEMER WATER<
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Dales
Raydale at the head of Wensleydale is a place of kelds (springs). Their wild waters, flowing from the mysterious limestone caverns that lie beneath Wither Fell, Addlebrough and Stalling Busk, break out into many little becks and flow into Semer Water, one of the few lakes in the Dales. There are waterfalls too, sparkling in the sunlight, white in the rain showers that rush up the valley. It is a hard place in winter, though, when the roads are icy and the tracks over the hill are as treacherous as the peat bogs they skirt.
On one such winter’s day, an old beggar was slowly making his way towards the entrance of the prosperous town that lay in Raydale valley. Where he had come from, why he was travelling, even what his name was, is not told in the story. Perhaps he himself had forgotten these things in a hard life. Or perhaps he was not what he seemed …
He stopped before the first small cottage he came to and approached the door. Before he had even raised his hand to knock, however, it was opened by a woman holding a broom in her hand. ‘What do you want?’ she asked suspiciously, taking in his way-worn clothes and rag-covered feet.
‘A drink of water, missus?’ the beggar asked humbly.
‘What’s wrong with beck water?’ she demanded. ‘Get along with you!’ She slammed the door before the beggar had time to tell her that the becks were all frozen over.
Slowly he moved on up the main street.
North Yorkshire Folk Tales Page 9