All you mathematicians will know that, provided all the cards are properly shuffled, the odds of the next hand also having a nine of hearts in it are the same as for the first. But those who play with the Devil’s Picture books are not mathematicians, at least the men at this table were not. To them it seemed impossible that the nine of hearts would turn up for a ninth time.
Tim was so sure he wagered a guinea that it would not. George, who had been losing all night, was not prepared to wager more than a shilling that it would. John opted out. The miller thoughtfully filled their mugs with ale wondering whether he would lay a bet of his own. He looked at the high colours of the others, their bright drunken eyes and shivered unexpectedly, despite the heat. Something was wrong somehow. He glanced around the room where the shadows cast by the leaping fire suddenly seemed ominous. The flickering confused him. For a moment he thought he … but no, no one was there.
‘Come on man! Art thoo in?’ He realised that the others were waiting for him. ‘Nay, lads, I’ll sit this’un out.’
John dealt the cards. George moved to lay his bet.
‘Put thy brass in thy pocket,’ said a harsh voice, just behind him. Everyone jumped and looked around. Awd Molly stood there, Molly Cass, named locally as a witch by giggling girls. Normally the miller, who did not hold with such foolishness, would have invited her over to the fire for a warm, but her sudden appearance, from nowhere it seemed, filled him with alarm.
‘Put thy brass in thy pocket,’ she said again to George. ‘Thy brass is not for him and his brass is not for thee.’ So great was her reputation for ferocity, that neither George nor Tim dared disobey her. They pocketed their money. Molly moved forwards to the table and stared hard at the backs of George’s cards, which lay there still unexamined.
‘George, thoo’s got it again. The nine. Tek up thy hand and see.’
George shrugged with an affectation of carelessness and picked up his cards. There, shining as red as drops of blood, was the ninth nine of hearts.
‘George, thoo’s hit it eight times already and the Old ’Un (the Devil) is in thee now. He’ll not leave thee till he’s got thee altogether! Thoo’s thrown away thy chance, so I’ve pitched it into the Swale. Now the Swale’s waiting for thee, George. It’s going to be thy bridal bed!’
The others stared at George whose ruddy face had paled. He forced a laugh. ‘What’s thoo blethering about Awd Molly? I’ve not thrown away any chance.’
‘Where is thy bride?’
George froze at the words. He knew that he had not treated Mary well, that he had been faithless, careless of her happiness and occasionally really cruel. Had something happened to her?
‘I’ll make it up to her. I’ll wed her straight away. Give me another chance.’
‘I’m not often in the mind to give one chance, let alone two. Go thy gate. Thy bride’s waiting for thee in a bed of bulrushes. Oh, what a bridal bed!’
George staggered to his feet, knocking over his chair. He stumbled past Awd Molly and through the door.
‘Good night, George!’ Molly cried after him. ‘All roads lead to the Swale tonight!’
His friends heard him crashing down the stairs and slamming the outside door behind him. Awd Molly hawked and spat scornfully into the fire. Then without a word, she turned and followed George downstairs.
When the miller heard the banging on his door the following morning he knew without being told that the news was bad. Sure enough, a carter bringing oats to the mill had seen something at the edge of the River Swale. He climbed from the cart to investigate. Lying together in a muddy bed of bulrushes were George and his poor Mary. The carter called for help but it was too late; they were both drowned and cold.
Had they met? Had she drowned herself first? Had his guilt led him to follow her? Had he murdered her and then committed suicide? There were no answers. Awd Molly might have had some but she held her peace and no one dared ask her.
Dales folk say that if you are brave enough to walk by the Swale at midnight you will see them in the water sometimes; first the girl, then the man, their pale bloated bodies drifting with the flow, slowly moving closer together.
OLD MOLLY AND THE CAUL
A lass if born in June with a caul
Will wed, hev bairns & rear ‘em all.
But a lass if born with a caul in July,
Will loose her caul & her young will die.
Every month beside luck comes with a caul
If safe put by,
If lost she may cry:
For ill luck on her will fall.
For man it’s luck – be born when he may –
It is safe be kept ye mind,
But if lost it be he’ll find
Ill-deed his lot for many a day.
(Fairfax-Blakeborough, 1923)
A baby born with a caul, or mask, over the face is lucky as long as the caul is kept safe. Such a baby will never drown and will grow up able to do many things that an ordinary person cannot – as long as they do not lose it. But the caul’s power is coveted by witches who are always trying to steal them.
Jane Herd was born with a caul of particular power. If she laid it on the Bible and spoke a name, that person was bound to come to see her shortly afterwards. Many were the strange things that she could do, but, being a churchgoing lass, she never used her caul for ill.
One day when she was using the caul she had the window open and a chance gust of wind blew it right out and away. Jane rushed to catch it but it was so light that she did not know in which direction it had been blown and so it was lost.
From that day on Jane’s luck turned. Her betrothed cancelled their marriage, she developed a nasty lump on her neck and her right knee began to hurt so badly that she could barely walk. People began to speculate as to what was causing the trouble and the consensus was that some evil person had hold of the caul and was using it to curse her.
The only person Jane could remember seeing in the street on the day her caul disappeared was Molly Cass, but she had been so far away that it seemed impossible that she could be the culprit. There was only one thing for it – she would have to consult the wise men of Bedale. Master Sadler and Thomas Spence had great names in those days as healers and solvers of uncanny problems. No doubt there was a doctor somewhere in the neighbourhood, but doctors were expensive and not really trusted by local people. No, it was the wise men that would have the answer.
Nervously Jane went to see them. They made mystic signs around the lump and the bad knee. Then they told her of certain secret ingredients she was to bring to them at midnight the following evening.
When she arrived at the appointed time, a fire of wickenwood (rowan, the sovereign against witches) had been kindled on their hearth and the ingredients she had brought were solemnly boiled together in a great pot, which she had to stir with a wickenwood rod until a thick black smoke began to rise from it. Jane was told to inhale the smoke nine times; coughing and retching she did her best. Then, still holding the rod, she had to place her other hand on the Bible and repeat the following question: ‘Has —— got ma caul?’ (Inserting the name of anyone she suspected.) After a minute Master Sadler said, ‘No, she is free!’ and Jane had to go on to name another suspect.
Name after name she suggested with no result, but the moment she mentioned Molly Cass the pot boiled over and there was such a terrible smoke and stench that they all had to run into the backyard. There they disturbed Molly herself, standing on a settle and peering through a crack in the shutters! They all three grabbed her and forced her into the smoke-filled room. She coughed and shouted and wheezed, but to save herself from suffocation she was finally forced to confess that she had the caul. Gasping she promised to return it.
Jane was not very forgiving. She and the wise men locked Molly in the stable with a wickenwood peg fastening the door so that she could not break out. The next day she was ducked nine times in the mill race.
For sure she was a queer awd lass
As mean
as muck, as bold as brass.
I mean t’awd witch, awd Molly Cass
At lived nigh t’mill at Leeming.
ABOUT MOTHER SHIPTON
Nidderdale
Close to the Dropping Well in Knaresborough is a small gloomy cave said to have been the birthplace and home of the famous prophetess, Mother Shipton. Both cave and well have probably been regarded as sacred for many hundreds of years, but she herself appeared on the scene much more recently, probably in the seventeenth century, when the earliest mention of her can be found in chapbooks.
Celia Fiennes, an early tourist in North Yorkshire, wrote a description of the Dropping Well in the 1690s, but failed to mention Mother Shipton, so it seems her fame had not yet become widespread. Celia had clearly not read the version of Mother Shipton’s life and prophesies by one Richard Head (1684), which, complete with a description of her hideousness and an imaginative sixteenth-century back-story, was about to become the generally accepted orthodoxy.
It may be that his version is based on folk memories of a real person, but no evidence for her existence has ever been found. However, by the eighteenth century, Head’s account of Ursula Southeil, the hideous but gifted seeress who married a Mr Shipton and prophesied the downfall of Cardinal Wolsey, was firmly ensconced in the public imagination, her prophesies conveniently proved true by all being about events in the past.
Real people sometimes become legends, but imaginary people can also sometimes acquire the status of reality. People wanted Mother Shipton to exist, and so exist she did – and still does, at least in the popular imagination. She has certainly enhanced Knaresborough’s tourist credentials over the centuries. In the xenophobic eighteenth century, Mother Shipton’s big advantage was that she was English, unlike Nostradamus – a genuine visionary – whose prophesies her own were said to rival.
Subsequent editors of Mother Shipton’s prophesies could not resist the opportunity of inventing new ones, all intended to ‘foretell’ topical events of the day. Charles Hindley, for example, admitted that he had added some verses in his 1862 edition, including a supposed prophesy of the Crystal Palace and the Crimean War:
A house of glass shall come to pass
In England, but alas,
War will follow with the work
In the land of the pagan and the Turk.
Whatever Mother Shipton’s existential status, she remains one of Knaresborough’s important tourist attractions, and a visit to her cave and the Dropping Well an interesting, if expensive, experience.
There are many stories told of her but my favourite is the one that follows.
MOTHER SHIPTON TEACHES A LESSON
Mother Shipton had become such a celebrity in Knaresborough that people would not leave her alone. She could not stick her long warty nose out of doors without a crowd gathering around her asking ill-mannered questions.
Finally, she could bear it no longer. ‘Time to teach them a lesson,’ she thought.
One of her neighbours, a rich man of the town with a fine house, had invited some local bigwigs to a breakfast party. Mother Shipton watched them in her magic mirror, muttering under her breath.
The party got off to a good start. The tables were laden with chops, steaks, eggs, ham and all the things that the wealthy used to eat for breakfast in those days. The guests seemed to get on well. They ate, drank and chatted merrily. After a while, however, the atmosphere began to get more hectic. One man began to laugh loudly. When asked what the joke was, he pointed to the dignified old gentleman sitting opposite him. Instead of a ruff he appeared suddenly to be wearing a necklace of juicy pork faggots! Everyone began to laugh at him as well, but the first man’s smile was wiped off his face when his hat was whisked off and replaced by a pewter chamber pot. His frantic efforts to remove it made the young lady opposite him laugh so much that she nearly split her stays. Unfortunately for her she soon found that she could not stop laughing but was forced to continue, getting redder and redder. How infectious laughter is! Soon the whole company was laughing so uncontrollably that the tears poured down their cheeks.
The master of the house, who had been in the kitchen getting more ham, came running to see what was causing the hilarity. As he got to the door, he was stopped by a violent blow on the head. Feeling his head with his hands he discovered, with a gasp of horror, that he appeared to have grown a pair of cuckold’s horns so enormous that no matter how hard he tried he could not get them through the door. The effect on his guests was predictable; they were now cackling so hard that some of them actually rolled off their chairs onto the floor, sweaty-faced and howling with merriment.
Now Mother Shipton, sitting in her cave, clapped her hands. Instantly all laughter at the party ceased as if it had been turned off. Hilarity was replaced by total silence. Suddenly no one felt in the least amused. A moment later, they heard the noise of mocking laughter begin again but it was not theirs. They looked around; there was no one in the room but themselves. A hundred invisible people appeared to be finding them hysterically amusing.
Now the guests became frightened. Muttering excuses to their host, they called for their horses and began to run down the stairs to the courtyard. The magic followed them; hard little apples began to pelt them, thrown by invisible hands. The horses were brought, neighing and kicking, by frightened servants. The guests quickly mounted up but their troubles were not yet over for the moment they settled in their saddles ugly little women appeared behind each one, sitting on their cruppers and holding whips in their hands. With these, the women beat the horses so fiercely that they galloped home as though the Devil himself were after them.
No one was hurt, but all were very angry. It did not take them long to work out who to blame.
‘It was the magic of Mother Shipton! We want her summoned to answer for her witchcraft!’ they shouted at the local magistrates.
The punishment for witchcraft in England in those days was death – not by burning (that was only done in Scotland) but by hanging. Still, death by any method is to be avoided! Mother Shipton was summoned before the magistrates and duly appeared. She did not deny her responsibility for the strange happenings, but said that she had merely been demonstrating what it was like to be the subject of continual jokes, insults and unwelcome attention.
‘Just leave me alone or I’ll do it again!’ she threatened.
What judgement the magistrates would have passed on her will never be known, for at that moment she suddenly got bored with the whole thing and cried out at the top of her voice, ‘Updraxi, call Stygician Helluei!’ whereupon a dragon flew through the window and carried her away in a clap of thunder …
8
YORK STORIES
York stories could fill a book on their own, especially if you add all the ghost stories for which the town is famous. Here are a selection, starting with one of the oldest.
RAGNAR LODBROK AND THE FOUNDING OF YORK
There was a man living in Denmark called Ragnar. He was big and strong, a great warrior.
There was a powerful king of Denmark called Herrud who had a very beautiful daughter called Thora Fortress-Hart.
One day Herrud gave his daughter a little jewelled snake. He used to give her a present every day because he loved her so much. He had made her a beautiful bower to live in surrounded by a fence. Thora liked the snake and put it in a small box on top of a piece of gold. Next day both the snake and the gold had grown a little; a month later, the snake and the gold had grown a great deal. Soon the snake was too big for the box but curled around it. It went on growing. Eventually it grew so large that it was too big for the bower and it lay encircling it, with its tail in its mouth. The pile of gold on which it slept was huge. Now it became very difficult to deal with as it ate an ox a day and threatened harm to anyone who wanted to go into the bower, except for Thora. People were afraid of it because it had become very poisonous.
The king declared that whoever killed the serpent would marry his daughter and get the big pile of gold
as her dowry.
Ragnar heard about this. He had shaggy, hairy clothes made, breeches and a cape. He boiled them in tar. That summer he sailed to the place where King Herrud’s hall stood. He put on the shaggy clothes and rolled on the beach until he was covered all over with sand. Then he went to find the serpent and they fought together. The serpent fought fiercely but it could not bite through the shaggy tarry garments and the sand hurt its mouth. In the end, Ragnar was able to stab it with his spear. The serpent’s boiling poisonous blood spouted out and hit him between the shoulderblades, but the clothes protected him from all harm.
This was how he acquired the name Ragnar Lodbrok (meaning hairy breeches).
King Herrud was very pleased to find such a good warrior. He was happy to honour his promise and so Ragnar married Thora, and received all of the serpent gold. He began to have a great name all around Denmark. His fame even reached as far as England. The gold attracted many warriors to join his war-band.
When the couple had been happily married for some time and had two sons, Thora fell ill and died and Ragnar grieved for her.
There was a beautiful woman called Aslaug. She was the daughter of Sigurd Dragon’sbane and Brynhild the Valkyrie. She was the wisest woman of her day. Ragnar married her and they had five sons. They were called Ivarr the Boneless, Bjorn Ironsides, Hvitserk the Swift, Rognvald and Sigurd Snake-in-the-eye. They grew into fine warriors; as soon as they could wield swords they went off with their men to win gold and conquer towns as far away as Italy. It is said that they even wanted to conquer Rome, but decided the distance was too great.
North Yorkshire Folk Tales Page 12