Hampshire Folk Tales for Children Read online

  HAMPSHIRE

  FOLK TALES

  FOR CHILDREN

  HAMPSHIRE

  FOLK TALES

  FOR CHILDREN

  MICHAEL O’LEARY

  ILLUSTRATED BY SU EATON

  For Eddie and Alice

  First published in 2016

  The History Press

  The Mill, Brimscombe Port

  Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

  www.thehistorypress.co.uk

  This ebook edition first published in 2016

  All rights reserved

  © Michael O’Leary, 2016

  The right of Michael O’Leary to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 6935 2

  Original typesetting by The History Press

  eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

  CONTENTS

  About the Author and Illustrator

  1 The Apple Tree Man

  2 The Burley Dragon

  3 The Wherwell Cockatrice

  4 Bevois of Southampton

  5 The Dismal Danes

  6 The Plague

  7 The Blacksmith of Twyford

  8 Lovey Warne and the Trip to Jerusalem

  9 Pompey, the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

  10 The Stones of Rotten Hill

  Bibliography

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR

  Mike has been a professional storyteller for over twenty years, but has been telling stories since he was a toddler, when he claimed that the puddle on the floor was created by the wind. He collects stories from under stones, behind walls and wherever he happens to fall over them.

  Su is a New Forest-based artist, hurdy-gurdy player and performer with Hand to Mouth Theatre. She has endeavoured to weave a creative way through life, illustrating her experiences – and sometimes those of other people – along the way.

  1

  THE

  APPLE TREE

  MAN

  As this is a book of folk tales, I would like to start by explaining to you what a folk tale is. The trouble is, I’m not really sure.

  I think the best way to put it is to imagine someone telling a story to their children, and then those children grow up and tell the story to their children. Then they grow up, and … on and on through the generations. Some bits of the story might remain the same, whilst others change like Chinese whispers.

  (Chinese whispers. Do you know the game? You sit in a circle and someone whispers a sentence to the person sitting next to them. It goes round the circle, and when it gets back to the beginning again, everyone hears how the sentence has changed.)

  The trouble is, I’ve just told you that a folk tale is something old, or at least a story from some time ago, but I’m about to tell you a story about something that happened to me. But then, I suppose, I am old – and it did happen a long time ago; back in the 1970s.

  Back then I had black hair; it’s white now, and given that I’m 63 years old you may think that’s not surprising. But the thing is it turned white when I was still a young man in my twenties, and it did it overnight. In the evening it was black, and in the morning it was white. I’ll tell you what happened.

  I worked as a greenkeeper – that is, I worked on a golf course, cutting the grass, putting in drains – all sorts of jobs. When I started there we were building the golf course. I never really understood golf, but I liked working outside in the open air. In some ways, though, it struck me as a shame that land that used to be a farm was being turned into a golf course, but then I suppose I was part of that process too.

  Now – next to the golf course there lived an old man called Jim Privet; he was 96 years old, and he’d worked on that land, when it was a farm, for all of his life. I loved to listen to the stories he used to tell about how life had changed in the Hampshire countryside over all those years.

  Jim lived in a red-brick Hampshire cottage with roses growing around the front door, and the cottage was next to Sandy Lane. Sandy Lane was a sunken lane. This means that people had walked along it, and hauled their carts along it, for years, for generations, and over time it had sunk below the ground. Trees and bushes and brambles grew along the sides, and sometimes they met at the top, making the lane feel like a tunnel. That’s why people sometimes call them ‘holloways’, which is short for ‘hollow ways’.

  Jim never could get used to some of the new farming methods. Whilst he was working on that farm, farmers started using more and more herbicides (weedkillers), and more and more insecticides (insect killers), and Jim used to have to spray them on to the crops. When the nozzles – the little holes that the spray came out of – got blocked up, Jim would put the end of the sprayer into his mouth and blow through it in order to clear them. This was a very bad idea. The herbicide and insecticide got into Jim’s lip and started to rot it away. Jim had to go to the hospital in Winchester and have his lip cut off. They then pulled the skin up over his gums, because he didn’t have any bottom teeth left. This gave Jim’s face a pointy, distorted look. Jim used to wear an old-fashioned hat, he had big, bushy eyebrows, and he used to smoke a pipe, containing very strong tobacco. You could smell when Jim was coming down the lane because you could smell the tobacco smoke.

  My mate, who everyone calls Digger, lives at the end of Sandy Lane, and he says that sometimes, when he’s walking the dog in the evening, he smells the tobacco smoke. He turns round, expecting to see old Jim, then thinks, ‘Jim’s been dead for more than thirty years.’ Digger says that Jim’s ghost still walks Sandy Lane, still smoking that pipe. I think Digger is pulling my leg, because he always did like teasing people and making up stories, but you can still sense Jim’s presence in the lane.

  Anyway, one evening back in the 1970s, Jim and I went for a pint of beer or two at a pub called the Wheatsheath. It was late when we wandered back down Sandy Lane. At that time I lived in a caravan with my wife Cathy. In order to get back to the caravan I had to climb over a gate, and walk through an orchard – lots of old apple trees. Behind the orchard there was a pond called Basil Gamblin’s pond, because it was owned by a farmer called Basil Gamblin. It was a bit of a dreary old place, all surrounded by elder bushes.

  Jim and I stopped by the gate, which had a stone post at one end, and a stone post at the other end. I probably shouldn’t say this, but I piddled on one stone post, and Jim piddled on the other stone post. Drinking beer always makes you piddle a lot.

  Well, after that we were leaning on the gate and talking about this, that and the other, when Jim said to me, ‘Have you ever heard tell about wassailing the orchard?’

  No – I hadn’t.

  ‘Years ago,’ Jim continued, ‘on Twelfth Night everyone used to go up to the orchard at midnight. Twelfth Night is twelve nights after Christmas, the old New Year. We’d make a lot of noise, we’d fire shotguns into the air, we’d bang pots and kettles together, and we’d ring bells. Then we’d get some cider, the drink made out of apples, and we’d pour it around the roots of the big tree in the middle of the orchard, that’s the tree that everyone used to call “The Apple Tree Man”.’

  ‘What was all that for?’ I asked.
>
  ‘It was to drive the evil spirits out of the orchard, to bring good luck, and make sure that when next autumn came there’d be good, juicy apples growing on the trees.’

  I found all this really interesting, because I like to hear the old stories. But then Jim said a strange thing.

  ‘Whatever you do, nipper,’ – Jim called everyone that was younger than him ‘nipper’, and given that he was 96 years old, that was everyone except Mr Baker, who was 102 and lived down in Wickham – ‘Whatever you do, nipper – don’t take the shortcut through the orchard tonight. It’s Twelfth Night, and it’s midnight. No one has wassailed the orchard for years and years, so if you go through there tonight, you’ll upset the Apple Tree Man.’

  Now, I thought that Jim was joking. He was worse than Digger for pulling people’s legs.

  ‘Yeah, all right Jim,’ I said, ‘but you know that’s my shortcut home.’

  ‘I’m not joking, nipper,’ he said, ‘no one has wassailed the orchard since the 1920s. A lot of the men never came back from the First War, and the custom died out. So if you go through there tonight, you’ll upset the Apple Tree Man.’

  Well, I still thought that Jim was joking, so I repeated, ‘Yeah all right Jim, but you know that’s my shortcut home.’

  Jim suddenly got really angry: ‘You nippers!’ he shouted. ‘You think you know it all – go on then, find out for yourself’ – and he went stamping off down Sandy Lane in a very bad mood.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I thought. ‘I didn’t want to upset him. If I knew he was going to react like that, I would have taken the long way home. Oh well, he’s gone now, so I might as well take the shortcut.’

  So I climbed over the gate and started to walk through the orchard.

  It was a neglected orchard, which means that no one really looked after it any more. Usually people have ‘thinned the trees out’, which means that they’ve removed some branches in order to make room for other branches to grow, but these trees hadn’t been worked on for years, and they were all twisty and tangled. There was a bit of a breeze blowing, not a strong wind, just a breath, but the branches were creaking and groaning.

  Then I got up to the big tree in the middle of the orchard – that’s the one they call the Apple Tree Man. Apple trees have got rough, knobbly trunks, and there are always knot holes that look like ancient faces.

  ‘Oooh,’ I thought, ‘this is spooky – come on, don’t be silly, just keep walking.’

  So I did.

  Then I had that feeling that we’ve all felt one time or another. The feeling that there was someone behind me, watching me. This was when I felt something grasp my shoulder – and when I looked at my shoulder I saw something that looked like a hand; and yet … not a hand; it was all knobbly and gnarled like the branch of a tree.

  Slowly – slowly – I looked round. I found myself looking straight into the face of the Apple Tree Man. I don’t know what you would do, but I’ll tell you what I did. I SCREAMED.

  I turned, and I ran and I ran and I ran, with my hair standing on end. When I got to Basil Gamblin’s pond, round the back of the orchard, what did I see? Lots of black cats flying around on broomsticks. So I SCREAMED again, ran across the fields, and back to the caravan.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter with you?’ said Cathy. I couldn’t answer; I just sat there for an hour, gibbering. It took another hour for my hair to stop standing on end, but when it did – it had turned white. So if you ever meet me you’ll see that my hair is white, and that will prove to you that this story is not a fib. You see, unlike Digger or Jim Privet, when I tell stories, they are always true.

  2

  THE

  BURLEY

  DRAGON

  In the New Forest (which isn’t new at all) there is a village called Burley. Burley is a popular tourist spot, and is full of shops selling all sorts of ‘witchy’ stuff: witches’ hats, broomsticks, mini cauldrons, cuddly witch toys, crystals, and the like. This is all because a lady called Sybil Leek lived there in the 1950s; she used to be on the radio (we called it the wireless in those days) talking about witchy things, and she used to write books about spells and suchlike. She walked around the village wearing a long black cloak and with a jackdaw on her shoulder. As you can imagine, this attracted a lot of interest. Some of the villagers didn’t like it, but others thought they’d be able to make a few quid out of this, selling stuff to the tourists. Sybil Leek got fed up with the place and went to America, but now Burley is full of witchy shops, and I think that it’s all good fun – though it would be a great shame to just go to the Burley shops, and not into the forest itself.

  Maybe, though, Burley should really be associated with dragons rather than witches – because there is a dragon story there that is much, much older than all that witchy stuff.

  This story is set in a ‘Once upon a time’ sort of a time – and in that time a dragon lived on top of Burley Beacon. Burley Beacon is a ridge of land overlooking the Avon Valley – rich fields and farmland spread along the banks of the Hampshire Avon, a river that flows along the western edge of the New Forest.

  The dragon would hunt for his food in the forest – he’d catch hedgehogs, rabbits, badgers, owls and foxes – just a blast of fiery dragon breath and he’d bring them down, ready cooked. Hedgehogs were the nicest, providing he opened them up and sucked the meat out from between the spines – but a dragon would have to eat ten of them to have as much as a snack. I mustn’t exaggerate the size of a dragon – modern authors and film-makers tend to portray them as being as big as mountains, but I’ve seen dragon fossils at Marrowbones Hill, which is on the eastern side of the forest near Foulford Bottom, and they don’t get much bigger than a large bull. Mind you, if you have a fire-breathing dragon, as big as a bull, charging at you out of the woods, or swooping down at you from the sky, then that really must be terrifying enough; they don’t have to be the size of a jumbo jet.

  For a dragon, a badger made a much better-sized meal than a hedgehog, but badgers don’t taste very nice – the meat is strong and rank, and the smell is rancid.

  What the dragon liked best was wild boar. Wild boars are huge, so they make a most satisfying meal – and they taste wonderful. Hog roast with crackling, and if you’ve never tasted wild boar flame-grilled with dragon fire then I’m afraid you’ve missed a treat.

  There was a problem with wild boars, though – they were liable to fight back. Not only were they huge, sometimes even bigger than a dragon, they had razor-sharp tusks, massive, powerful heads and jaws, and they were covered in sharp bristles.

  The Burley Dragon had experienced a lot of trouble from wild boars. In spite of his advantages – being able to fly and breathe fire – they had sometimes thundered out of the trees so fiercely and fast that they’d caught him a proper thump before he’d had time to react – and those tusks were even capable of piercing dragon scales. One particular boar, a huge monster of a beast, had started to take grim pleasure in tormenting the dragon, and had once caught him unawares by charging in from behind and butting him with such force that the dragon wished he was able to blast fire out of his bottom. It almost felt that he had – he was certainly unable to sit down for a month.

  The dragon really wasn’t very brave – well, creatures that have scales and that can fly and breathe fire generally don’t need to be brave – and it started to think that hunting wild boars was much too risky, but there was nothing else that really made a decent meal.

  One day, as it sat on Burley Beacon, gazing out over the Avon Valley, it started to wonder about those green fields full of sheep and cattle. You see, it didn’t normally leave the New Forest. All around the edge of the forest there is an invisible line called ‘The Perambulation’ – and New Forest dragons never crossed it. They didn’t know why, they just knew that they shouldn’t.

  The dragon was suffering from indigestion after eating a particularly rancid, partially flame-grilled badger. As he gazed wistfully at the sheep and cattle in the fields, wondering what the
y tasted like, there was a whole lot of crashing and grunting, and that enormous wild boar came charging out of the forest, head down, tusks pointing forward, intent on giving the dragon’s bottom a particularly nasty wallop.

  ‘That’s it,’ thought the dragon, ‘I’ve had enough – stupid forest, stupid wild boar, stupid, rancid badgers. I’m off,’ and he spread his wings and soared up and away from Burley Beacon. He crossed the perambulation of the New Forest and nothing happened, nothing seemed to change.

  ‘This is great,’ he thought, so he swooped down over a field and ate a sheep. It was delicious. So he ate two more.

  Then he lay down on his back, burped, flapped his wings lazily, and had a snooze.

  He woke up to the sound of shouting, so he raised his head and saw lots of peasants, standing behind a hedge, swearing at him and waving pitchforks, prongs and assorted agricultural implements in a very angry manner. He looked at them and roared (and it was only a little roar), and they all turned tail and ran away.

  ‘This is easy,’ thought the dragon, and flew back to Burley Beacon – circling it a few times to make sure that the wild boar was gone.

  Well, after that he continually raided the farm, which was called Lower Bisterne Farm. It just seemed so easy. He discovered that beef was delicious too, in a different way to mutton – but the pork – oh that was the best. The pigs would grunt and try to fight back a bit, but they were nothing compared to a wild boar, and they were so soft and tender – and the crackling: it was simply divine.

  As for the humans, well they always ran away and hid. He caught and ate one once, but it was disgusting and tasted of wee-wee.

  Then the dragon started to experiment. If you glided over the banks of the Avon and skimmed off a whole load of water mint, and put it on to a sheep after giving it a blast of fiery breath, it greatly enhanced the taste, as did horseradish with the cows. Best of all, though, was to shake the apples off the trees in the orchard, and eat them with the pigs. That was just so delicious it made the dragon’s claws curl.