Now, the day was the 7th of July, and it was the day of the Feast of Thomas of Canterbury. In medieval times this was an important saints day, and thus important for The Old Way – which did, after all, lead to the holy city of Canterbury. The Overton Sheep Fair was always held round and about that date – perhaps it had always been a special date, even before the arrival of Christianity, some sort of a mid-summer festival. It was said that on that day the stones could talk.
It was a grating, grinding sound that woke the drunken drover.
‘How be you, Long Maggie?’ said a stone.
‘Oh, I spose I could be worse,’ replied Long Maggie.
‘I’m looking forward to a bit of a stroll,’ said another stone.
‘Not long to go, only another six months till Twelfth Night,’ said Long Maggie.
The drover, rigid with terror, pretended he was still asleep.
‘What be that stinking heap of rags and putrefaction that be lying in the middle of our circle?’ said a stone.
‘Some drunk human. I expect he comes from Whitchurch.’
‘Well, ’tis a good thing it’s not Twelfth Night, he might watch us walk down to the river for a drink, and steal our treasure.’
The drover was befuddled with drink and fear, but his ears pricked up at the mention of the word ‘treasure’.
‘Gold and silver
and precious stones,
Emeralds and rubies,
and drover’s bones’
sang a stone.
‘Iron and loadstone,
and blood from the sky,
And death to the thief
who comes wandering by’
sang another.
‘The treasure of Arthur
and Alfred and all,
And the skull of a thief
turned into a ball’
sang two more stones together.
‘A game of football
up on the hill,
With standing stones playing
and treasure there still’
sang another four.
‘And I’ll score a goal
and head it right in,
Amidst gold and silver,
and Cornish tin.’
sang the centre forward.
Well, the drover wasn’t listening to all the words – all he could hear was ‘treasure’, and ‘silver’, and ‘gold’, and ‘emeralds’, and ‘rubies’, and ‘Cornish tin’ – Cornish tin was once brought along The Old Way to the sea ports of Kent, bound for the Continent; it was the most useful of all.
Finally, after midday had passed, the stones stopped talking, and the drover crept away.
The next day he was back, with pick, shovel and grub axe. All day he dug and heaved under a stone: Long Maggie. Back he came, day after day, till he finally toppled the stone. In the pit where the stone had stood, he found a gold ring. It was a wondrous ring, but he had expected more.
‘Nothing else for it,’ he thought. ‘Sell the ring, and wait for Twelfth Night.’ Well, we know about Twelfth Night from the first chapter, it’s a special night when trees and stones walk, animals talk, and mulled cider is drunk by the gallon.
So – on the evening of Twelfth Night, the drover hid himself in a copse, up on the hill, next to the stone circle.
As the church clock in Overton struck the midnight hour, the stones started to judder and move, and then, rolling and crunching, they circled the fallen form of Long Maggie. Angry scraping sounds came from them, though they said no words, as they helped her upright; after which they started bumping down the hill towards the River Test.
The moon was full, the eyes of the drover were as round and wide as the full moon, and they were even wider when he saw the treasure glinting in the moonlight, for the top of the hill seemed to have opened. As the stones disappeared over the brow of the hill the drover darted forwards and started filling his sacks with treasure.
As he scrabbled at the treasure he saw a golden bell – a beautiful object, covered with elaborate patterns and engravings. He grabbed it, but put one hand inside to hold the clapper and stop it ringing. But grasp it as hard as he could, he couldn’t stop it from moving – firstly it vibrated a little bit, then more, then it started to swing from side to side, the drover’s hand was jerked from the clapper, and the bell rang out – loud and shrill upon the hill.
There was a growling and rumbling, and the drover looked up to see the stones surrounding the hole in the hill.
‘THIEF!’ groaned one.
‘ROBBER!’ creaked another.
‘BURGLAR, STONE-TOPPLER!’ growled Long Maggie.
… and they started to jump up and down, until the whole hill was vibrating.
The drover gave a scream of terror as the top of the hill fell in upon him – and then drover and treasure – disappeared into the earth.
‘Well,’ said Long Maggie, ‘I don’t want to stay here now, Rotten Hill is ruined for me.’
… and so off they set – the stones bumped, thumped and ground their way along The Old Way – all the way to Stonehenge. The stones of Stonehenge, however, were a bit snooty and full of themselves, what with their lintels and capstones and famousness and wotnot, so the stones of Rotten Hill left The Old Way and lurched up to Avebury, because they knew that there was a village called West Overton there, so the stones reckoned that they had come from East Overton. Avebury didn’t seem quite the place for them, though, a bit overcrowded, so they followed Woden’s Dyke, a great long earthwork now called the Wansdyke, into Somerset.
Eventually they arrived at the place where stood their long-lost cousins, stones they hadn’t seen for ten thousand years – this was a place called Stanton Drew – and there they stayed.
At Stanton Drew, below the hill,
If they’re not gone,
They stand there still.
As for the Overton Sheep Fair – with the decline of sheep farming, and mechanisation, and the development of road transport, it eventually died out.
However, in the year 2000 it was reinvented by some imaginative, committed and stalwart Overton people. I know this because I told stories there – it is a fair that now takes place every four years, and I’ve been to every one. So – depending on when you are reading this, the next one will be in 2020, or 2024, or whenever! You can probably count better than I can. I’m always there, telling tales, so look out for me and ask me for a story, and, by the way, if you go for a game of football on top of Rotten Hill – keep your eye on the ball.
I would be much obliged if you would also tell your parents to buy me a pint. Thank you very much.
And here we come to the end of the book: from Twelfth Night to Twelfth Night.
If you take any of these stories and tell them to someone else, I would be delighted. I don’t mean read them aloud, though that is also fun, but tell them from memory. Don’t try and learn them, like an actor learning lines, but tell them your own way and in your own words. You’ll forget all sorts of bits, but then you just put in your own ideas, and the story changes, and becomes yours. Then, you can start discovering other stories; there are loads more folk tales in Hampshire, and millions in the rest of the world.
Then, you too will be a storyteller. I’m getting a bit old now, and keep going to sleep when I’m in the middle of telling a story, and sometimes people throw things at me to wake me up. We need to see some new, young storytellers, storytellers who can stay awake and not start snoring in the middle of a tale.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
Beddington, Winifred G., and Christy, Elsa B., It Happened in Hampshire (Hampshire Federation of Women’s Institutes, Winchester, 1937, revised 1948)
Dickens, Charles, The Uncommercial Traveller (First published 1861)
Ekwall, Eilert, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names (Oxford University Press, 4th revised edition, 1960)
Foss, Michael (ed.), Folk Tales of the British Isles (Book Club Associates, London, 1977)
O’Lea
ry, Michael, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Folk Tales (The History Press, Stroud, 2011)
Thoms, William John, Gammer Gurton’s Famous History of Sir Bevis of Hampton (Wiley and Putnam, New York, 1846)
Thoms, William John, Gammer Gurton’s Famous History of Sir Guy of Warwick (Wiley and Putnam, New York, 1846)
WEBSITES
Andover Museum
hampshireculturaltrust.org.uk/andover-museum
Jack the Painter
porttowns.port.ac.uk/dead-men-telling-tales
Lovey Warne
www.thenewforestguide.co.uk/history/new-forest-smugglers/
Michael O’Leary
www.michaelolearystoryteller.com
www.facebook.com/Michael-OLeary-Hagstone-Storyteller-196027053927350/?fref=ts
Overton Sheep Fair
overtonsheepfair.co.uk
Su Eaton
su-eaton.co.uk
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Many activities of the Society are available to all, such as locating storytellers on the Society website, taking part in our annual National Storytelling Week at the start of every February, purchasing our quarterly magazine Storylines, or attending our Annual Gathering – a chance to revel in engaging performances, inspiring workshops, and the company of like-minded people.
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Hampshire Folk Tales for Children Page 9