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    Cumbrian Folk Tales
    Cumbrian Folk Tales
    Cumbrian Folk Tales
    Ebook166 pages5 hours

    Cumbrian Folk Tales

    By Taffy Thomas

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    About this ebook

    These engaging folk tales from Cumbria were collected as fragments that the author has brought back to life. Shaped by the natural world, local customs and generations of chattering, these traditional tales reflect the unique Cumbrian wit and wisdom. Herein you will find intriguing accounts of Hunchback and the Swan, the Screaming Skulls of Calgarth, the Millom Hob Thross, Hughie the Graeme, Cumbrian Crack, and Billy Peascod’s Harp. They will make you want to visit the places where they happened and meet some of the characters that feature in them. Including charming illustrations from the local artist Steven Gregg, this captivating collection will be enjoyed by readers time and again. Taffy Thomas has lived in Grasmere for well over thirty years, and is a highly experienced storyteller with a repertoire of more than 300 tales. In the 2001 New Year Honours List he was awarded the MBE for services to storytelling and charity, and in 2010 was appointed as the first UK Storyteller Laureate.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateNov 30, 2011
    ISBN9780752478517
    Cumbrian Folk Tales
    Author

    Taffy Thomas

    TAFFY THOMAS is a professional storyteller who gives around 300 storytelling performances across the country each year. One of the UK’s most loved storytellers, he was made an MBE in the 2000 New Year’s Honours List for services to storytelling and charity. In 2000-2011 he became the first laureate for storytelling, a role created to promote the power of stories. Taffy is the artistic director of the Northern Centre for Storytelling in Grasmere and the author of three collections of folk tales for The History Press. He lives in Grasmere, Ambleside.

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      Cumbrian Folk Tales - Taffy Thomas

      publications.

      LONG MEG

      Near the village of little Salkeld stands the stone circle that comprises the Neolithic monument called Long Meg and Her Daughters. Older than Stonehenge, it is completely unspoilt by modern commercialism: visitors can walk up to it and view it, and neither the resident cows nor the local land owner seem to mind.

      Many years ago, in the village of Little Salkeld in the Eden Valley, there lived a woman by the name of Margaret, although folk called her Meg. Meg kept the old religion, which is to say she was a witch. She had many daughters and brought them up in the old religion. The village priest knew he had a coven of witches nearby, but didn’t interfere provided they didn’t practice their religion on the Sabbath. Likewise, Meg and her daughters respected the priest’s religion and maintained a distance.

      The witches had two main annual celebration days, namely Halloween and the Summer Solstice. A problem only arose if either of these dates fell on a Saturday, for if the witches didn’t cease their activities by midnight, they would be straying onto the Lord’s Day. One summer, the priest noted that the Summer Solstice was due to fall on a Saturday. He went to Meg and pleaded with her to finish their celebrations by midnight. Meg assured him that she herself would, but that her daughters were now teenage girls and that teenage girls can be rather wilful. However, she would do her best to persuade them to conform. Knowing he could do no more, the priest returned to his church.

      Meg called her daughters to her to plan the following Saturday’s Solstice celebrations, and asked that those celebrations be finished by midnight. The daughters of course complained vehemently, and the problem was not resolved. On the Saturday evening, Meg and her daughters were dancing in a field just above the village. As the hands of the clock passed 11.30 p.m., Meg approached the musicians, paid them and called for one last dance. At the end of this dance the musicians and Meg proceeded down the hill towards the village. Coming up the hill in a long, black cloak was a stranger with a fiddle under his arm. If the wind had blown this cloak aside, Meg might have noticed a cloven hoof. The stranger approached the dancers and asked if they were in need of a musician. Mischievously, Meg’s daughters paid him a bag of gold. The stranger took out his fiddle and started to play his music, as though the very hounds of hell were at his heels. And with a whoop, the daughters danced wildly in a circle. They were still dancing when the church clock struck midnight. In the church, the priest heard the sound of the party continuing and dropped to his knees in prayer. There was a flash of light and the dancers were all turned to stone, including Meg herself, who was just outside the circle, heading for home.

      They do say that if you visit that circle and count the stones and twice reach the same number, the stones will come to life and chase you down the hill. On many occasions I’ve counted, but never twice reached the same number.

      In the nineteenth century, Colonel Lacey, the local landowner, found the stones an inconvenience, and issued his workmen with black powder and instructions to blow the stones sky-high. The men placed a small keg of black powder under each stone, and ran a trail of powder from each barrel to the centre of the circle. It was a fine, clear night with no threat of bad weather. They put fire to the fuse-trails and watched it creep towards the barrels. Just before the flame reached the powder kegs, astonishingly, the sky was split in half by thunder and lightning. In terror, the workmen rushed in and stamped out the flames, preserving the stones as they are today – a remote magical stone circle older than Stonehenge, which you can visit and attempt to count twice … at your peril!

      AIRA FORCE

      On Valentines Day 2000 I told this legend at Aira Force, by firelight, to a group of locals who half knew the story. My version was informed by Ken Ratcliffe, a National Trust ranger. At the end of the story, Patterdale Mountain Rescue illuminated the 100ft silver waterfall with their searchlight. A legend indeed out of the land.

      It was before my time, before your time, but it was in somebody’s time that a beautiful young woman lived in Lyulph’s Tower, above Ullswater. Her eyes were as blue as the bluebells that grow in Bill Riley’s wood. She fell hopelessly in love with the gallant Sir Eglamore. Her love was requited and they soon became betrothed. Sadly, the drums were beating and he had to go to war, as men have done since time immemorial, leaving fair Emma to manage as best she could. He tried to still the flow of her tears by promising to return.

      After many weeks, Emma heard that her love had perished in battle. The grief hurled her into a black pit of depression. Her health began to fail and she started a nightly round of uncontrolled sleepwalking. She was engaged in one such perambulation at the very moment Eglamore returned, alive, from the wars to be reunited with her. Seeing her drifting by towards the beck, he gently approached and tapped her on the shoulder, expecting nothing less than a warm welcome.

      Seeing Eglamore beside her, she presumed it to be his ghost, and was so shocked that she stumbled, slipped on some wet rocks on the bank of the beck, and tumbled over a precipice and down the waterfall. The gallant knight scrambled down the rocks and dragged his true love to the edge of the pool. Tragically, she died in his arms. He was so grief-stricken that he fashioned a shelter in a cave on the edge of the pool at the foot of the waterfall, and dwelt there for the rest of his sorrowful days. He lived there as a hermit, and Wordsworth later wrote:

      Wild stream of Aira, hold thy course

      Nor fear memorial lays

      Where clouds that spread in solemn shade

      Are edged with golden rays!

      HUNCHBACK AND THE SWAN

      This is one of my favourite stories. It was gifted to me by the renowned Scottish ‘traveller’ storyteller, Duncan Williamson, on many occasions when he visited my Lakeland home. Duncan couldn’t recall his source of the story, but believed it to be a North Country tale that belonged here. I have told this story to folk by Grasmere Lake, only to notice two resident mute swans swimming towards us to listen. Now that’s magic!

      On the fellside near the lake in Grasmere is a little thatched cottage, and many years ago in that cottage lived a hunchback – an old man with a hump on his back, an old man so ugly that the people in the village would have nothing to do with him. Furthermore, the hunchback was completely mute. His only friends were the animals of the forest. So sometimes, when he went collecting sticks, he was followed by a line of animals – the weasel, the rabbit, the badger, the fox and, flying overhead, the robin and the wren.The hunchback also had one very special friend – a swan who lived down on the lake. He so loved that swan that he called her his ‘lady of the lake’. Sometimes the swan waddled after him and he’d half turn and stroke her beautiful curved

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