2
The Devil and St Dunstan
• Mayfield •
How many miles to Babylon?
Three score and ten.
Can I get there by candle-light?
Yes, and back again.
If your heels are nimble and light,
You may get there by candle-light.
Traditional poem
The Devil called Sussex his home. Here he felt his skills were appreciated. He could make the fields wave with golden corn, the sea churn with silver fish and the sun break through the clouds.
People treated him with respect.
Farmers tipped their hats, ‘Mr Lucifer, you burnish* nicely – bring your fiddle to our festival!’
Fishermen whistled, ‘Brother Beelzebub, you’re a bettermost* sort of chappie – no flies on you!’
Sailors sang, ‘Mr Diabolas we’re Dutch Cousins.* Cheers!’
But churches were being built, and with the building of churches came changes. Nobody danced beneath a midnight moon, nobody raised their tankards to a whisky-wet dawn. Everybody went to bed early to be up for Sunday Mass.
One morning, the Devil stood outside Mayfield Church, a little wooden building with a crooked spire, and asked himself, ‘What is that boring, drawling, moaning coming from inside? Is that supposed to be singing?’
Curious, he stood there picking the fleas from his tail and plucking the gravel from his hooves.
The singing stopped and his folk – farmers, fishermen and sailors – tumbled out down the path and into the sunshine. The Devil bounded to meet them but they ducked their heads and turned aside as a baldy old man in a brown robe with a rope around his waist came striding towards him holding a cross.
‘Now, now, Old Nick, Old Scratch, Mr Grim, you listen to me! I am St Dunstan of Mayfield and I command you! Away!’
The Devil had never heard himself addressed in such a fashion. Old Nick? Old Scratch? He wasn’t old! He didn’t have a single white whisker. Mr Grim? Only last night he had laughed so hard and so high he shattered the windows of Telscombe Manor.
‘I can see I’m not wanted!’ he huffed, and left.
That night he returned to Mayfield, leaned his hairy back against the church, puffed himself up till he was as tall as the crooked spire, lifted his elbows, thrust them back and crack! The church splintered and fell.
But St Dunstan was a builder and a blacksmith as well as a saint and the next day he rolled up his brown sleeves, hauled bricks, forged iron and made the grey-stoned, red-roofed church, St Dunstan’s, which still stands in Mayfield High Street today.
The Devil was cross. His horns, his hooves and everything in between tingled like a match, the second before it bursts into flame.
He decided to give St Dunstan a scare. He shaved his furry face, powdered his cheeks, reddened his lips and sprayed himself with perfume. Then he put on a pretty straw hat to cover his horns, a pretty long dress to hide his furry legs, and laced a pretty pair of boots around his hooves. As he tottered towards Mayfield, he picked a big fat flower.
She/he knocked at St Dunstan’s forge and peeped round the door.
St Dunstan was looking very serious. He was sweating from the fire and his brow was black with smoke.
‘Hello, Mr Thaint,’ lisped the Devil in a high girly voice. ‘Would you pleathe thing me a likkle thong? I do tho love your thinging! Pleathe! A hymn!’
St Dunstan saw the pretty girl and put down his tongs. ‘Of course, child! Sit down.’
The Devil sat down and crossed her pretty boots.
St Dunstan cleared his throat and began to sing in a slow serious voice that went on and on and on. And on.
Soon the Devil was bored. ‘Stop it!’ he shouted. He threw off his hat, wiped off his lipstick, ripped off his dress and ran towards St Dunstan holding the big, fat flower in front of his eyes just as St Dunstan had held the cross that Sunday morning.
‘Now you listen to me old holy sock, stop your monkey business. I am the Devil of Sussex and I command you! Away!’
The Devil began to puff himself up into the scariest shape he could think of: flaming red skin, flapping red wings, sharp red teeth and a tail that split into a thousand forks.
But St Dunstan didn’t move. He smiled a slow, smug smile and began,
‘Now, now …’
‘Don’t! Now! Now! Me!’ shouted the Devil. ‘I’ll smash your church into rubble!’
With a ‘Rooooooooar!’ he ran out the door. St Dunstan followed, grabbing a pair of red-hot tongs from his forge. As the Devil leaped towards the church, St Dunstan leaped towards the Devil and before he could bish, bash, bosh the church and grind it to gravel, St Dunstan clamped the blazing tongs onto the Devil’s nose.
‘Show your face in Sussex during daylight again and you’ll be done for. The darkness is where you belong!’
‘Rooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooar!’ went the Devil and bounded over the black and white tudor houses of the village and across the fields, landing a mile away in a stream where he plunged his nose into the water.
‘Hissssss!’ went the tongs and fell into the flow.
Since that time it’s been called the ‘Roaring Stream’ and sometimes it still runs red in memory of St Dunstan’s iron tongs even though they didn’t stay there very long, because the saint, ever thrifty, came and fetched them back.
The forge in Mayfield is now shut but St Dunstan’s tongs still hang in Mayfield convent, where you can see them to this day.
* burnish – in Sussex dialect this means ‘to look well’.
* bettermost – meaning ‘superior’.
* Dutch Cousins – meaning ‘best friends’.
3
The Secret Guardian of Sussex
• Rye •
As you’ve not got your cedar bow,
Your arrow and your string,
I’ll fly to the top of yonder tree,
And there I’ll sit and sing.
Traditional poem
The Romantic poet Robert Southey visited Rye in the summer of 1792. He stayed with his friend Tom at Mountsfield, a grand house with turrets and arched windows.
One evening, the poet was walking alone in the gardens when he came to a grove of oaks. As he pushed back the branches, he saw a pool with the full moon shining on the water.
‘How darkly, deeply, beautifully blue!’ he muttered poetically.
A second later he screamed and ran back through the trees, across the lawns and into the house. He burst in as dinner was being served.
‘I have to tell you, Tom! The pool in your grounds … I saw a creature in it! Half beast, half man!’
‘You’re a poet,’ said Tom affectionately, ‘you imagined it!’
The young girl who was pouring the wine neither looked up nor spilled a drop. ‘I don’t think so, Master Tom. That’ll be the Secret Guardian of Sussex. My grandma saw him once. She must have told me his story a thousand times!’
Tom moved to the fireplace, inviting the girl to sit down and tell the tale, just as her grandmother had told it. She began.
Once upon a time, Old Man Druid was walking through the forest. The wind razzed his grey curls. The sun warmed his bent back. He sang in time to the birdsong as he picked herbs for potions and berries for breakfast, putting them in a cloth bag which he wore over his shoulder:
Cuckoo coo,
Shake the dew,
Ever, ever,
Ever new!
A squirrel ran up his leg and stole a crust of bread from his pocket. When the skylark started singing, the old man laughed, waved his stick and did a crazy kick-foot dance. He was making for a special pool. He wanted to watch the moon rise in its clear waters. He wanted to be with the wild ponies and spotted deer as they came to drink. The journey would take him all day but it would be worth it. The pool had a magic that even Old Man Druid hadn’t fathomed.
Many miles away, across the Downs, a hunter called Bullseye was tracking a stag with a broad back and branching antlers. It
was the finest he had ever seen. All day he followed the white flashes of its tail as it bounded, making waves through the wheat fields. Although the stag’s ears beat forwards and back and his nose twitched, he still hadn’t smelled the hunter who trod softly, keeping the wind in his face so it would blow away his scent.
It was said of Bullseye that he could hunt using sound alone, that once he had aimed his arrow at a deer, it was as good as supper. He never missed a target. He only ever took one shot and timed it perfectly. That moment was coming; he could feel it.
The stag arrived at a pool as the sun was beginning to drop. It lowered its head to drink. On the opposite bank, Bullseye notched an arrow. Only when the stag half lifted his head and looked right at him did he fire. The arrow slammed into the trunk of an oak next to the creature, spooking it so that it galloped away. He had missed! Was it a gust of wind? Was it a trick of the light? Or was he losing his powers?
Like a cloud in the summer sky, the stag floated over fallen trees and leapt across streams, impossible to catch.
‘I never miss!’ The hunter beat his palm against his forehead. ‘I am Bullseye! I can hit a target by sound alone!’ At that moment, he heard rustling in the bushes. Determined to prove himself to himself, Bullseye snatched his bow, shut his eyes, opened his ears and fired.
Shwoooooooo – pah.
He heard it strike! A wild grey pony fell from the thicket, an arrow in her chest. From it ran a line of blood. A foal broke from the cover of the bushes to be with her mother. She nuzzled, wanting milk. The mare staggered into the pool leaving the foal at the water’s edge.
Bullseye walked towards them. The foal shied. She wanted to bolt, but couldn’t leave her mother behind. Not knowing how to get close without scaring off the creature, the hunter slumped on a rock. They stayed like that, with the mare in the water, the foal unable to leave, skittering beside the water’s edge, Bullseye sobbing, unable to approach.
Hours passed. Looking at the moon in the water, Bullseye jumped. He’d seen the reflection of a tall man standing in silence behind him. He turned to look. The man wore a pale robe and his white hair hung to his shoulders.
Old Man Druid had arrived at the pool, but instead of seeing animals drinking peacefully, he saw only an injured mare and her broken-hearted foal.
‘You deserve to cry,’ he growled at Bullseye. The mare was wading deeper and deeper into the pool. The water was up to her neck now.
Bullseye lowered his head and covered his eyes.
The old man poked him with his gnarled stick, ‘The question is, what will you do about it?’
‘Anything. Anything to make it right!’ Noting the bag of herbs across Old Man Druid’s shoulder, his eyes widened. ‘You’re a druid, a healer! You know nature’s secrets. Save the mare! Please!’
‘There is only one way. And the cost to you will be great.’
‘I’ll do anything.’
Old Man Druid nodded. ‘A life is flowing away. To save it, a life must be given. If it hadn’t been for your arrow, this mare would have survived another twenty years. Will you give her twenty years of your own?’
Bullseye thought about his hut, the skins and knives, the fireplace which in winter warmed just him. He had no family. From when he opened his eyes in the morning to when he shut them at night, his only thought was of killing. ‘Yes,’ he replied.
Out of his bag, Old Man Druid took dried herbs and a small clay cup. He mixed the herbs with water and spoke strange words at the moon.
‘Drink,’ he said.
The hunter glugged the bitter, grainy contents, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and walked towards the mare. As he entered the water, he could feel his colour draining and his flesh melting into a white mist, which drifted towards her, pouring into her nostrils and swirling down her throat. He began to sink
Down
Down
Down
On the bank of the pool, the druid hit his stick on the ground. Bullseye’s heart beat with the power of a horse. The mare began to breathe heavily and Bullseye felt her breath was his own. Clambering out of the pool, he grabbed rocks and reeds with his hands. One leg. He was so heavy! Heave and stamp! Two legs! There was so much of him – in the pool he’d been light! Three legs? Heave and stamp! Four legs?
Bullseye looked down and saw that his chest and arms were his own, muscled and tanned, but his legs were covered with hair and hooved. He twisted round and saw that he had the body of a horse, the back legs of a horse, the swishing tale of a horse – a mare, because the little foal ran to his side and nuzzled. Bullseye was now a Centaur. He flicked his long grey tail.
Old Man Druid did a little skip. ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘You’ll have twenty years as a Centaur. You can be both mother and father to this foal.’
He opened up his cloth bag to share the last of his berries and nuts, then he, the foal and Bullseye the Centaur settled beside the pool to watch the stars.
At first light, the three of them began to wander towards the Downs. ‘Let me carry that,’ said Bullseye, walking alongside Old Man Druid and taking his bag. Together they collected apples for breakfast, with the foal cantering and bucking around them.
From that day on, Old Man Druid often met up with the Centaur and his foal. They fed hungry squirrels, mended broken wings and took care of motherless cubs and calves. Sometimes they went to the little hut that had belonged to the hunter and warmed themselves by a fire. The foal grew up and had children and grandchildren so that there was often a herd of horses travelling with them.
After twenty years they returned to the pool. It reflected blue sky, gold sun, and green leaves, but only Bullseye truly understood the magic beneath the ripples.
‘Are you ready to change back into a man?’ asked Old Man Druid quietly.
The Centaur circled, swishing his tail. Finally, he looked into Old Man Druid’s eyes.
‘I am … not. I’ve left killing behind. I prefer to protect life. How long can I remain the secret guardian of these woods?’
Old Man Druid smiled. ‘No one has ever seen a Centaur die. You can take care of Sussex for as long as there is a Sussex to take care of. But should you get tired, come back to this pool, or any pond in this county, and you’ll revive!’
Having finished her story, the serving girl stood up, saying to the poet, ‘That’s what he was doing, Sir, refreshing himself in the pool. It’s hard work being the Secret Guardian of Sussex and he’s been doing it for centuries! And on that note, I’d better get on!’ She began to clear away the plates, singing to herself:
Cuckoo coo,
Shake the dew,
Ever, ever,
Ever new!
Whistling swan,
Skylark song
On and on and
On and on!
4
Puck and the Dancing Shoes
• Lewes and Rottingdean •
The fair maid who, the first of May
Goes to the fields at break of day
And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree
Will ever after handsome be.
Traditional poem
It’s me! Some call me Puck! To rhyme with luck and muck. I’ve bucketloads of both! I like to squelch with water beetles, fly with bats. You can’t catch me! I’m the whisper in the wooded Weald, the sparkle on the sea. Some call me Pook to rhyme with spook and fluke. I’m the Ghost of the Chalk Hills, the Trickster of Tricks. I’m such a jammy dodger I always roll a six! I’m Hob to rhyme with Rob, Robin to rhyme with Goblin. I’m Robgoblin! I’m also Sprite, Fright, Tickle, Fickle, Dynamite, Meteorite, Traffic Light: alright, that’s enough! Call me what you like. I’ve slipped on a sunbeam, skidded on the dew, run fast as a fox to be here with you to tell a true story. I’ll puff it out and onto the page! May it land with a hint of lavender, a gust of sage. Here we go!
We People of the Hills keep out the way of you humans. Who knows how long you’ll last? We’ve been here forever and will go on till never you mind, b
ut from time to time there’s one of you we take a shine to. Most of you don’t see us. You only see what you expect to see and we’re easy to miss. My normal height is not much taller than your middle finger. I choose speed not size, my wings are hypersonic, a shimmer behind my shoulder bones. And I’m muscled. I leap from roof to roof, tree to tree, cliff to sea. You can’t catch me. Well, not normally.
I was once fond of a boy who kept his eyes open and saw me straight away. He was fast. He made a catapult from a branch of hazel and a whistle from a twig of elder. I totally trusted him until he grabbed me one afternoon as I was sunbathing on a leaf and put me in a jar with his pet insects.
I was so furious, I couldn’t stop myself saying the Bigging Spell:
Stamp one!
Stamp two!
I’m big
Like YOU!
I increased in size as quick as you can flick a flick book. The jar smashed, the boy cried out, but I was gone with a whizz, like a stone shot from one of his catapults. I heard the glass cut his cheek and he bleared* for a week, which was a shame. I never went back to him again. No one pickles the Pook that is Puck! Besides, it took me days to shrink back to a size comfortable for flitting.
It wasn’t long after that I met May. She was walking down Rottingdean High Street singing to herself. May was a dreamer. If I landed on her head she would take me for a Sussex Blue butterfly; if I zoomed in front of her eyes she would glint* a dragonfly. She would never put me in a jar because she didn’t notice much by way of seeing, instead she loved smells and sensations.
She loved the honey-dust-hay and leather smell on the neck of the shire horse called Sultan. She loved the tang-salt, blossom-white, sea smell on the head of her baby brother Joe. And she loved to dance. ‘La!’
Sussex Folk Tales for Children Page 2