Hampshire Folk Tales for Children Read online

  Thank you very much.

  Yours faithfully,

  Emryn (King)

  Well, on receiving this letter, King Bradmond had Bevois flung into a dungeon, a dungeon that just happened to contain two rather venomous dragons. Bevois fought the dragons, but eventually, in the confusion of the fight, the dragons fought each other. Locked together, the dragons poisoned one another. There were times after that when Bevois wished the dragons had killed him, because he was locked in that dungeon for seven long years. He passed the time by writing several books, and composing music. Later on one of the jailers sold the manuscripts to a Viking trader, and he took them to Iceland. They are still there in a little museum in a small town by the sea.

  During his time in prison Bevois was mainly fed bran and water, which isn’t very nice, or very nourishing. On special days he was given better stuff, vine leaves stuffed with rice and mince, or kebabs with onion and nuts, but that was only on special days, so he grew thinner and thinner.

  At the end of the seven years, King Bradmond thought to himself, ‘Well, now Bevois will be weak enough for us to kill him’; and he sent two soldiers down to the dungeon to do Bevois in. Big mistake. Bevois had great reserves of strength – some of this he had inherited from his father, but a lot of it, and he would never admit the fact, was inherited from his mother. He bashed the two soldiers’ noggins together, and that was the end of them.

  It was night-time, so he crept out of his cell, grabbed the surprised jailer and locked him in with the two dead soldiers, nicked a horse, and galloped off.

  When morning came, and it was discovered that Bevois had escaped – you can imagine King Bradmond’s rage.

  ‘Catch him – get the rotten twerp – kill him,’ shouted Bradmond at his knights, and they all donned their armour and went off in hot pursuit.

  Bevois was weak with hunger, so they eventually caught up with him, just as he approached a great castle inhabited by a wicked giant. The giant had heard all about Bevois and thought to himself, ‘If I bash his brains out, King Bradmond will be pleased with me.’ So he rushed at Bevois, brandishing his mighty club. Quickly Bevois shouted, ‘Aha – my men will bring you down, you great, fetid lump.’

  The giant looked at the knights who were following Bevois, and bellowed, ‘So these are your men, useless-looking shower of ninnies. I’ll bash them first, and then I’ll flatten you,’ and he proceeded to bash all Bevois’ pursuers to bits. Bevois grabbed one of the soldier’s swords, and before the giant knew what was happening Bevois had chopped off his head. And that was that. Bevois then went into the castle and had dinner, which made him feel a lot better.

  The next morning he set off again – and now he was on a quest (knights like going on quests) and his quest was to find Josian.

  On the road he met a palmer. Now, a palmer is a pilgrim, and this man was on his way to Jerusalem – a place that is considered holy by more than one religion, something that meant the people of Jerusalem could flog all sorts of trinkets, but was always bad news when the members of one religion wanted the place exclusively for themselves.

  ‘Ho there, palmer,’ said Bevois. ‘What is the news? I’ve been banged up for some years, so I’m out of touch. What of King Emryn, and his daughter Josian?’

  ‘Oh, Princess Josian is married,’ replied the palmer. ‘She married King Inor.’

  Bevois felt a great sinking feeling in his heart.

  ‘She loves this King Inor?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh I shouldn’t think so,’ said the palmer. ‘We all know a princess has to do what her dad tells her. They say she loved this bloke called Bevois, but he went back to England. I think he came from some obscure dump called Southampton.’

  ‘Noooooooo,’ cried Bevois, and burst into tears.

  ‘There, there,’ said the palmer. ‘I didn’t expect to see a big tough fellow like yourself get so emotional; what’s up mate?’

  Bevois told him the whole story.

  ‘Tell you what, mate,’ said the palmer, ‘I’ll swap my special palmer’s clothes for your horse, then you can enter Inor’s castle dressed as a palmer, suss out what’s going on, and no one will know the difference.’

  ‘Nice one,’ said Bevois, ‘swapsies.’

  So they swapped the palmer’s clothes for the horse, and the palmer rode on chortling to himself, ‘I got a horse for some smelly old rags!’

  In those days, castles, whether Muslim or Christian, always welcomed pilgrims, and they had special places where pilgrims could be fed. Sikh temples, or gurdwaras, still do the same thing today – whether they’re in England, India, or anywhere else.

  So Bevois sat amongst the pilgrims, and it was the Princess Josian herself who brought the food.

  ‘Don’t you know me?’ said Bevois.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she replied, ‘but you do look a bit familiar.’

  ‘I’m Bevois, Bevois of Southampton.’

  ‘That, sir, is a cruel and foolish thing to say, and anyway, if you were Bevois, I’d whack you one round the ear ’ole, because you disappeared off home.’

  ‘No – I’ve been in one of King Bradmond’s dungeons; your dad wanted me out of the way. I can prove who I am, take me to Arundel the horse.’

  Now Arundel was chained up in his stable because he would let no one ride him but Bevois or Josian, and when Bevois saw this he could have cried again. But as soon as Bevois entered the stable, Arundel whinnied, reared up, and broke his chains – and Josian knew that it really was Bevois.

  ‘I love you, Bevois,’ she shouted, ‘and I really don’t like King Inor. He is old and smelly, and won’t stop blowing off really stinky ones – let us fly from here.’

  And so they both leaped astride Arundel and galloped away, though not before seizing the mighty sword Mortglay.

  Well, they were long gone before anyone knew, and Arundel was the fastest horse in the land, so Inor had little chance of catching them. There were plenty of other dangers to face, though.

  As they rode down a rocky track through wild mountains, a mighty giant stepped in front of them. He was covered in bristles like a wild boar, and he snorted and grunted.

  ‘Not another one,’ thought Bevois.

  ‘Ho there,’ boomed the giant. ‘I am the mighty Ascupart, and this is my valley – Ascupart Valley. No one passes this way without a scrap.’

  ‘One day,’ thought Bevois, ‘I’m going to have a valley named after me, and maybe it too will be a dodgy place, but for now – I must battle this giant.’

  Bevois dismounted, and drew his great, shining sword, Mortglay. The two of them set to in a mighty battle. The giant wielded his club, but Bevois was faster, though Mortglay wasn’t exactly a small sword. After fighting for three days the two of them were exhausted, and Josian was really quite bored with watching them. Bevois and Ascupart both fell on to their backs, and Josian poured some of their precious water over Bevois’ face. ‘Now’s your chance,’ she whispered.

  Bevois, dragging his sword, staggered across to Ascupart, and lifted the mighty Mortglay, ready to chop off the giant’s head.

  ‘That’s enough,’ shouted Josian. ‘You don’t have to actually kill him. Spare him and let him come with us, he’ll be handy in a fight.’

  ‘Lady,’ said Bevois, feeling a bit miffed, ‘he may betray us.’

  ‘Listen, Bevois, I gave you that sword, and I’m saying don’t kill him.’

  ‘I’ll second that,’ said Ascupart from the ground. ‘You really wouldn’t want to upset the lady. Spare me, and I’ll be true to you.’

  ‘Then rise, and live,’ announced Bevois rather grandly, whilst Josian raised her eyes to the sky – like you do when someone is being a bit of a fancy-pants.

  So off they went, until they came to the Mediterranean Sea. There was a ship in port, and Ascupart shouted, ‘Ahoy there, mateys, have you got room for a lady, a bloke, a horse, and – um – a giant?’

  ‘Only if you’ve got the money,’ the captain shouted back.


  ‘I’ve got a few quid,’ bellowed the giant. ‘Send us a boat.’

  ‘Not likely,’ shouted the captain. ‘I don’t like the look of you.’

  So Ascupart picked up Arundel, and put him under one arm, then he picked up Josian and Bevois and put them under the other arm, and waded out to the ship.

  ‘You’d better take us,’ said Ascupart to the captain, ‘or it’ll be the worse for you’.

  ‘Um, all right then. We’re going to Venice.’

  ‘Oooh, that’s nice,’ said Bevois, ‘I’ve always wanted to go to Venice. We can then have a walk across the mountains and go and see my uncle, who is Archbishop of Cologne. It’s rather a long walk, but it should be very scenic, and no doubt we can have a few adventures on the way.’

  And that’s just what they did.

  Well, after a lot of adventures, they eventually arrived in Cologne, and Bevois’ uncle said, ‘You two had better get married, you obviously love each other, and people are going to get a bit cross if you hang around together all this time without being married. That sort of thing might have been all right in classical antiquity, but it’s the Middle Ages now, and we’re much more modern.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Josian, ‘that is a little bit of a problem – I already am married.’

  ‘WHAT? Aaargh! That really is very naughty,’ shrieked the Archbishop of Cologne, ‘Who are you married to?’

  ‘King Inor.’

  ‘Ah – you’re a Muslim then?’

  ‘Yes, indeed I am.’

  Now, neither Muslims nor Christians took a lot of time out to examine what their religions really meant, and neither respected the other’s marriage vows.

  ‘If you become a Christian,’ said the archbishop, thinking he could add another name to his list, ‘we won’t count your marriage to King Inor, and you can marry my nephew.’

  Well, Josian didn’t like the idea – it felt like a betrayal of everything she was brought up with. But then she thought about her father marrying her off to someone she didn’t love, of how he’d tricked Bevois, and about how it was really all about these blokes and their endless politics, and nothing really about religion at all.

  ‘It wouldn’t make any difference if I was Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, or whatever religion those doddery old druids I keep falling over in the forests have,’ she thought. ‘Really, it’s all just words: like stories.’

  So she agreed to become a Christian.

  Then the archbishop turned to Ascupart the giant.

  ‘You too must be baptised a Christian,’ he said, ‘and we have built an especially large font to christen you in.’

  ‘You can get stuffed,’ roared Ascupart, ‘I’m not becoming a Christian for no one,’ and he picked up the font and dropped it over the archbishop’s head. They could all hear the archbishop shouting from inside the font: ‘Let me out, let me out!’

  ‘It’ll take a while for all the priests and monks to get him out of that,’ said Bevois – and turning to Josian, he said, ‘Let’s get wed in Southampton, in Saint Michael’s Church – but this means I’ve got some business to attend to.’

  So, accompanied by many soldiers from Cologne, they set off for England. Before they left the soldiers sprinkled themselves with holy water from Cologne Cathedral, which meant that Bevois’ army was known as the Eau de Cologne.

  They travelled west to the coast of France, from whence they took a ship to the Isle of Wight.

  On the Isle of Wight, whom should they find but Sir Saba.

  ‘Ever since I refused to kill you, Bevois, the Lady Murdina and Sir Murdure have turned against me. They heard that you were alive in the East, and they vowed to kill me. So I fled to Wight, and I have many trusty men with me. Southampton has become a tyranny; they have built a mighty stadium for terrible sacrificial sports, and have invited in Scandinavian mercenaries to build great market places in which the citizens are forced to buy the most useless goods, and so many have fled across to the Island.’

  And so it was that the Eau de Cologne gang joined the Island crew, and they all sailed to Southampton and attacked the surprised Sir Murdure.

  There was a massive battle. It ranged from the village of Sholing across to the village of Millbrook, over the sea to the Isle of Wight, and back again. Finally, in the midst of battle, Ascupart the giant caught hold of Sir Murdure, and hurled him into a spiky hedge to the east of Southampton. That is where Sir Murdure met his end – which is why the place of Sir Murdure’s death has ever since been known as Hedge End.

  As for Murdina – she let out a terrible scream and threw herself into a deep, dark pool, a terrible place full of water dragons and monsters, known as Shirley Pond. The water sizzled and steamed as she sank beneath the surface, and continued boiling and bubbling until it was cooled by ice from a place nearby, known as the Ice House.

  And so it was that Bevois returned to Southampton, and Bevois and Josian ruled Southampton, and it is said that they ruled wisely and well.

  Hundreds of years ago everyone knew stories about Sir Bevois. They wouldn’t always be the same – everyone had their own versions, and no doubt everyone thought that their own version was the ‘proper’ one. Shakespeare, in the play Henry VIII, when describing a fabulous scene, said that it was so impressive that you’d almost believe ‘that former fabulous story’ about Bevis (who in Southampton is known as Bevois). So these stories were known to be great exaggerations used by the common people.

  Southampton laid particular claim to these stories, possibly because of the popularity of a fourteenth-century written romance called Bevis of Hampton, Hampton being the old name for Southampton. Mind you, there was an ancient monument called Bevis’s Grave on top of Portsdown Hill, overlooking Portsmouth, and another in Arundel in Sussex (same name as the horse), and another ancient monument called Bevis’s Thumb, near the Hampshire-Sussex border at Compton. I guess that there was a much older story that just got adapted by the writer in the fourteenth century, just as I’ve adapted it now – though that fourteenth-century romance is my main source.

  Another ancient monument, called Bevis’s Tomb, was on top of a hill called Bevois Mount, then just outside Southampton. This got swallowed up by buildings as the city expanded. But the Bevois story is there in the place names of Southampton. There is an area of town called Bevois Town (with a school called Bevois Town Primary School), there is a road called Bevois Valley; and this is all around the hill that, before it all got built on, was known as Bevois Mount.

  There is a street called Ascupart Street, and an old tower called Arundel Tower – though it can be a bit draughty at times, so people sometimes call it Catchecold Tower.

  In the middle of Southampton there is an old gateway called the Bargate – it was the medieval entrance to the city – and in it there are two old paintings, one of Bevois, and one of Ascupart. I love the fact that even though people have forgotten the stories, the names are still there in the fabric of Southampton.

  The sword Mortglay, however, is not in Southampton; it is in Arundel Castle in Sussex. I reckon that they nicked it, and that the people of Southampton should all march to Arundel Castle and demand it back.

  5

  THE

  DISMAL

  DANES

  PART ONE

  THE DANESTREAM

  The Danes figure quite a lot in the folk tales of Hampshire. The Danes were Vikings, and they spent much of the ninth century raiding the Saxon kingdom of Wessex. What is now England was then comprised of different countries, and Hampshire was not only part of Wessex, but contained the capital, Winchester. During this time the Danes were busy setting up their own country in England; a great slice of land stretching from what is now Cumbria in the north-west, right down to the east coast as far as London. This country was called the Danelaw.

  I wonder, sometimes, if some of those old dragon stories are really about the Vikings, because didn’t the Vikings have dragon heads carved on the prows of their longships? In a lot of
folk tales the dragons guarded hoards of treasure, and not only did the Vikings love plundering for treasure, the Saxons would often have to give them treasure to buy them off – please, take the money and go away!

  Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know – but I do know a story about a stream called the Danestream, and that the story has got a dragon in it.

  The Danestream is located at the south-western corner of the New Forest; it rises at a place called Bashley, after which it flows down a valley between the villages of Ashley and Hordle, then out to sea at Millford.

  I do love the names of these villages in the south-west of the New Forest:

  Bashley, Ashley,

  Tiptoe, Hordle,

  Boldre, Bransgore,

  Burley and Sway.

  If you say them out loud, it’s a poem!

  It is said that sometimes the water of the Danestream runs red – and the reason given isn’t because of red soil, but because it flows with the blood from a great battle that took place near Bashley. I don’t know about that – but here’s the story:

  Once upon a time a great dragon came to the village of Bashley, and ravaged the surrounding countryside. We have already seen that dragons were rather fond of ravaging, and that no one can go out and farm the land and generally earn a decent living whilst dragons are thundering around the place, burning the crops and flame-grilling the cattle.

  So the people called out to the king to come and help them, and the king was none other than Alfred the Great, and he had his court in Winchester.

  So King Alfred girded on his sword, mounted his great steed, and rode down to Bashley, ready to do battle with the fearsome dragon. The dragon roared, the king shouted his battle cry, they charged at each other, and the king sliced off the dragon’s head. The trouble was, though, that after Alfred chopped the dragon’s head off, it grew two more – and when he chopped them off, it grew four more, and then it was eight, and then sixteen, and so on, with the king’s sword arm getting more and more tired.