Hampshire and Isle of Wight Folk Tales Page 2
It was William de Breteuil’s job to ride to Winchester to declare the rights of William Rufus’ elder brother, Robert, to the throne. Robert was far away in the Holy Land, and William de Breteuil seemed in no hurry. He wandered to Winchester in a leisurely fashion, stopping off to have a drink here, a bite to eat there, a conversation over there, and a little flirtation just behind there. The Rufus’ younger brother, Henry, who was also at the hunt, galloped straight to Winchester and had himself proclaimed king before anyone could say, ‘whoopsy doopsy, the last king’s dead,’ after which William de Breteuil ambled in with an, ‘Oh dear me, I do appear to be too late. Hello Henry, a few lands and titles please.’
So, we have the story of the accident and the story of the assassination. But the Forest is a strange place – and there is another tale, a tale that lurks deep within the psyche of the Forest; and that’s the story of blood sacrifice.
Every version of the Rufus story is suffused with blood. In some versions of the story, he is said to have had a dream on the night before the hunt. There are two versions of this dream: in one version he finds himself entering an ornate church, gleaming with gold and fantastic paintings. As he gazes on them, the decorations fade away and the Rufus is in a plain, bare church – with the body of a man lying on the altar. The Rufus falls on this body, tearing at it with his teeth, desperate to swallow the flesh of the corpse. The corpse awakens, becomes Christ, and wrestles the Rufus, tearing his body open so that rivers of blood pour out and upwards, through the windows and door of the church, up into the sky, till they blot out the sun and the earth is plunged into darkness. In another version of the dream, devils come from hell to bleed the Rufus, like leeches. They tear open an artery and again rivers of blood spurt from his body and obliterate the sun. In many versions of the tale, the fleeing Sir Walter Tyrell washes his hands in Ocknell Pond, and on every anniversary of the killing, Ocknell Pond is said to turn as red as blood.
And there’s more blood!
The body of the Rufus lay in the Forest until Purkis the charcoal burner came along with his cart. (Purkis is still a Forest name; until recently, there was a quality butcher’s in Brockenhurst called Purkis. Sadly, it is now a convenience store.) Purkis hauled the body of the king onto his cart and transported it all the way to Winchester, along a route which became known as King’s Lane. A relic of this route, near Winchester, is said to be King’s Lane at Chilcomb, under Magdalen Hill Down. The body was said to have dripped blood all along the way, so that King’s Lane was a river of blood.
So another theory has arisen to explain the death of the Rufus; the theory that the killing was a ritual sacrifice. The killing took place on Lammas eve, Lammas being the festival of ‘the feast of the first fruits’, when bread was baked from the first harvest. The pre-Christian ancestor of Lammas was Lughnasadh, a festival where a ‘king’ was supposedly killed so that his blood would enrich the land. This theory suggests that the Rufus was part of a Mithraic cult, and was offering himself for sacrifice.
Historians debate the reasons for the death of the Rufus, and the debate is usually between the possibilities of a hunting accident or an assassination. The ritual sacrifice theory tends not to be taken seriously, and indeed I would think it highly unlikely that a gangster (and isn’t that what the forerunners of our royalty were: feuding, power-hungry families bearing all the characteristics of the Mafia?), a man interested in holding and maintaining power, would ever be likely to give his life for some abstraction. However, I’m a storyteller, as well as a frequent wanderer of the Forest, and this tale has never struck me as being simply about one historical incident. Stories can be subsumed by stories, and, in some seemingly historical accounts, there lie the shadows of more ancient legends.
Traditionally, the death of the Rufus was said to have taken place in Canterton Glen, in the north of the Forest. This is where there is a monument, called the Rufus Stone, erected in the eighteenth century to mark the site of his death. Historians, however, tend to believe that the Rufus was more likely to have died near Beaulieu or Brockenhurst, places in the Forest miles south of Canterton Glen. But Canterton Glen is a rather enigmatic place. Nowadays the A31, extending from the M27, thunders through the valley, but it is still a place with a strange feeling to it. Cantwaratun means ‘Farm of the Kentish men’, and ‘Kentish men’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘men from Kent’ – it means ‘the other people’, ‘those people’, ‘the strange people’ – and there are parts of the Forest that don’t always feel friendly. Vesey-Fitzgerald, in 1949, wrote about a time when he was a child and was lost with his sister in Oakley Inclosure, a piece of woodland on Sir Walter Tyrell’s route away from the death scene:
We certainly were not frightened, but I think we were both a little uneasy, I know that I was, for I felt during the walk the hostility of the Forest – and I have had that feeling once or twice since.
I’ve known that feeling in Canterton Glen, but I wasn’t feeling a little uneasy – I was frightened: I was walking in the Forest without map or compass – indulging in the directionless walking that usually finds me ‘pixie-led’, wandering in a circle. I had no idea where I was, but as night fell I put my sleeping bag down amidst pine trees, and fell asleep without too much trouble. In the early hours of the morning, I was awoken by the cold – not surprising when sleeping rough, even in August; but this was different, this cold came from inside me, from in my bones, and it told me that things weren’t right. When I poked my head out of the sleeping bag, it was as if I was looking through night-vision binoculars – everything seemed red and slightly glowing. I pulled my head back into the sleeping bag, like a child hiding his head under the blankets, and when I finally looked out again everything had gone back to darkness. Later in the morning, I continued walking and heard the noise of traffic from the A31. I took my life in my hands and crossed the dual carriageway, found myself at the Rufus Stone, and saw the Sir Walter Tyrell pub – only then did I realise I was in Canterton Glen.
So it is that I think there is a much older story in Canterton Glen than the death of King William Rufus. Stories are slippery things, and they are quite capable of updating themselves, or attaching themselves to historical incidents.
Contemporary descriptions of William Rufus suggest that he may not have had red hair at all; his hair may have been straw-coloured. However, monks writing after the event, with an agenda based on the dispute between Church and royalty, and knowing full well on which side their bread was buttered, would easily have fitted their story into the oral narrative of the Forest. These stories of the Forest stretch back in time – to when there was still blood in the soil, and where something ancient and terrible was lurking, should you be unlucky enough to feel it.
THE WHITE STAG
Some of the Forest stags reach quite a size; it has been suggested that they can be larger than those of the Scottish Highlands. The stag is an iconic emblem of the Forest – but the greatest emblem is that of the white stag. The white stag, or white hart as it is known in pub names throughout the country, has long been a symbol of the otherworld, and the sight of it is said to portend that some important person is about to enter the otherworld. Whilst I don’t wish death on anyone, I’d love to be able to say that I’ve seen the white stag – but I haven’t. A number of times, wandering down the upper part of the Rhinefield Drive in the moonlight, I’ve almost convinced myself that he’s standing in front of me – but I fear I was moonstruck, and not entirely unaffected by a few pints recently downed in the Royal Oak in Fritham.
The white stag appears in many stories, and the shape-shifting of a human into a deer, and vice versa, is a common motif in stories worldwide; however, in this story the deer shape-shifts into a wild boar, which was once one of the more fearsome inhabitants of the Forest, and a much more formidable quarry for a hunter than a deer.
In the village of Burley, deep in the Forest, there lived a verderer called Robert. Verderers were administrators of the forest law set in place by William
the Conqueror, so Robert had some power. Also in Burley lived Robert’s sweetheart, Mathilde. The love between them had the approval of Mathilde’s father, for Robert was an important young man, but it was still necessary to be discreet, so the couple would meet in the evenings in a forest glade outside the village. This glade was known as a ‘lawn’ – and how suburban that sounds now – but actually ‘lawn’ is an old Forest word for a grassy clearing in the trees.
They used to walk there separately, and, separately, they’d pass a hovel in which lived an old woman. She would always be at the doorway stirring her cauldron, and both Robert and Mathilde would avoid her gaze because her expression was so malevolent, so full of contempt and hatred, that they’d rather not have to recognise its existence.
The night before their wedding, Robert and Mathilde separately passed the old woman on their way to their tryst. As Robert approached the old woman’s hovel, he saw something incredible. There, fondly nuzzling the old woman, was a huge stag, a white stag. She spoke to it, using strange, guttural words, and it responded, breathing on her, and scratching its antlers on the wall of her hovel.
‘Leave the beast alone,’ shouted Robert, on seeing such an abomination, ‘it is the king’s property.’
The insult to him wasn’t just the fact that a commoner was communing with one of the king’s fine beasts, but that it was such a vile and lowly commoner. The old woman turned and glared at him, and there was an ancient depth of hatred in her eyes. The stag turned and bounded off into the forest. Robert walked on, and was soon met by Mathilde. In that glade they talked about their future, and the love they felt for each other. Robert held Mathilde in his arms and they forgot about the old woman, and the superstition that it was bad luck to meet on the eve of a wedding, and that feeling of hostility that sometimes exuded from the Forest.
Mathilde was the first of the two to walk back to the village. As she approached the hovel, the old woman was standing in the middle of the lane, glaring straight at her. That stare, in all its hostility and hatred, burnt itself into Mathilde’s brain, and she had to run round the old woman, and all the way back to the triangular green that marks Burley. That terrible glare haunted her dreams all that night.
As Robert approached the hovel, he noticed that the door was shut and there was no sign of the old woman. He couldn’t admit to himself that he felt relief, but he felt that he was passing that hovel for the last time after one of his trysts with Mathilde, and it was so good that the old woman wasn’t there. But then he saw, staring at him from an alder stump, the biggest black cat imaginable – and if the old woman’s stare was malevolent, the cat’s stare was positively malignant. Robert stared back at the cat, and then SCHPLATT, it gobbed the most disgusting flob of mucus straight into Robert’s face. He screamed and clawed the vile stuff from his eyes, but his eyes still burned. The cat leaped from the alder stump and was gone before he could reach for a stone to hurl at it. At home, he washed his face as many times as water could be fetched for washing it – and then it was the morning of the wedding.
The wedding passed by successfully; the priest did his work, the musicians were playing, and all were dancing on the green. But then there was a shout – and the wedding party all looked at the edge of the forest trees, and there, watching them, the sun behind it, was an enormous white stag. It is hard to gaze into the sun, and the stag seemed to shimmer and change – perhaps it never had been a stag – instead it was a huge wild boar, foaming at the mouth, and charging towards them.
With shouts and screams the wedding party scattered, but the boar focused on the bride and pursued the screaming young woman round the green. It was Robert who threw his coat over the boar’s massive head and leaped onto it, clinging to its neck. It screeched, a terrible noise in between a squeal and a roar, tossed the verderer over its head, and gored him to death with its tusks. It was a white stag, rather than a boar, that bounded off into the woodland.
A vengeful wedding party marched to the old woman’s hovel, but she was already dead. On the face of the corpse was a smile – the first time that any of the appalled wedding party had ever seen an expression other than that of hatred on the face of the old woman of Burley.
THE BISTERNE DRAGON
Wild boars may not be the only creatures to charge out of the woods, with the sun behind them. It has been known to happen with dragons. There were once dragons lurking all down the south coast of England – the Saxon Shore. In Sussex they used to call them knuckers, and they lived in bottomless ponds. The Bisterne dragon, however, being a more honest and straightforward Hampshire sort of a dragon, preferred the airy heights of Burley Beacon. From there, it was possible to swoop down onto the farms and water meadows of the Avon Valley, which runs down the western edge of the Forest.
A bully often likes to focus on a particular victim, and the Bisterne dragon focused on Lower Bisterne Farm. At first, the residents were able to appease it by leaving out a bucket of milk each day – but paying protection money never works in the long term, and the dragon got greedier. It already had a taste for flesh, and why hunt the Forest when cattle was there in the green fields of the Avon Valley, just for the taking? Soon the dragon had caused uproar from Crow to Winkton, and Lower Bisterne Farm was nearly broken. It was then that the landowners and farmers knew they had to hire a lone hero to battle the beast, and so it was that they hired Sir Maurice de Berkeley.
Sir Maurice covered his armour with bird lime – bird lime is very sticky and is usually made from holly bark – and this is very relevant to the New Forest. In the Forest, there is an abundance of holly and ‘of all the trees that are in the wood the holly bears the crown’. It is at midsummer that the holly king overpowers the oak king, and at midwinter that the oak king overpowers the holly king; moreover, holly is associated with the element of fire – most suitable when doing battle with a dragon. And yet Sir Maurice was a lone hero – a dragon fighter – and he’d come all the way from Gloucestershire, so I reckon his bird lime was made from the bark of the wayfaring tree.
Sir Maurice sprinkled the bird lime with broken glass, and, with his two mighty dogs running before him, he set forth to do battle with the dragon. These two dogs were capable of bringing down the mightiest of beasts, but the dragon contemptuously tore them apart and spat out the sundered canine corpses as being quite unfit for dragon consumption.
Then Sir Maurice was alone, facing the terrible Bisterne dragon, and, whilst the landowners, farmers, and peasants of Hampshire skulked in their homes and barns, the terrible battle commenced. All day the battle continued – the foul, evil-smelling beast wrapping its coils around the knight, and screeching with pain as the broken glass tore at its scales. Finally, Sir Maurice was able to sever the head of the beast, and, as the green blood burnt into the soil, he staggered from the field of battle, a broken man. He died soon after; the injuries that had so badly damaged his body seemed unable to heal. What was worse, though, was the trauma of battle – for this had eaten deep into his soul, and the mark of the dragon could never be washed away.
Now, if you travel down the B3347, you will, at Bisterne, come across a Dragon Lane, and it’s very tempting to link that with the story. But Dragon Lane is probably named after the now sadly defunct George & Dragon Inn – though maybe the pub name had a connection with the local legend, who knows?
Hallam Mills lives in Bisterne Manor House, and the legend is part of his family tradition – which gives him the sort of connection and feeling for the story that I always find so important. He tells me that the battle took place in Dragon Field at Lower Bisterne Farm (now private land), and to me this has to be the place. On the wall of Bisterne Manor House (which is a private house), there is a stone carving of a dragon between fiery beacons; there is also a coat of arms with a dragon crest, and in the centre is the Berkeley Arms. Looking protectively out over the entrances of the house are two stone dogs – great mastiff-type dogs – and these are always said to commemorate the two dogs killed by the Bisterne drag
on.
The fiery dragon is very much part of English folklore. There are all sorts of esoteric hypotheses connecting dragons with dragon lines across the countryside, and cosmic energy and mystical vibrations and the like. I do like a hypothesis put forward by Hallam Mills though – and it’s a hypothesis that brings us back to the wild boar.
Wild boars – great beasts beloved of the Norse gods Freya and Freyja; great beasts called razorbacks by the Americans. Imagine a rabid wild boar thundering out of the edge of the Forest, a dazzling sun low over the trees. Imagine the jaws of the boar flecked with foam. Imagine two dogs, if not killed by the boar, slinking away defeated, soon to be rabid themselves. Imagine the milking stool upset and clattering – a bucket of milk would be of no avail now against a manic, enraged beast, tormented by rabid hydrophobia. Imagine screams and clamour and terrible danger. Imagine a brave knight bringing down the terrible beast – but not before the rabies virus had already begun to work on his central nervous system.
JUMP TO GLORY JANE
The dragon stories continue round the fringes of the Forest, particularly the south-western fringe, through all those gloriously named villages: Sway, Durns Town, Birchy Hill, Golden Hill, Ashley, Bashley, Tiptoe and Hordle. Say those names aloud and it’s a poem!
It has been said that Hordle means ‘Hoard Hill’, and that buried somewhere beneath today’s bungalows is a dragon hoard, and very probably a sleeping dragon. However, folklore doesn’t necessarily refer to a mythical past, and in the area around Sway and Hordle there’s a story dating from the nineteenth century that takes us up to the present.
Peterson’s Tower at Sway is really quite ugly. The first time I saw it was from Tennyson Down, on the Isle of Wight, looking across to the mainland. I couldn’t work out what that tall finger at the edge of the Forest was, or why I’d never come across it before.