Folklore of Lincolnshire

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Authors: Susanna O'Neill

BOOK: Folklore of Lincolnshire
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C
ONTENTS

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Introduction

one The Devil and his Serpent

two The Wet and Wilds

three Black Dogs and Strange Encounters

four Giants and Heroes

five Things that go Bump in the Lincolnshire Night

six Witchcraft and Cunning

seven Yellowbelly Sayings and Superstitions

eight A Lincolnshire Year

Bibliography

Notes

Copyright

A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I extend my thanks to everyone who has helped and supported me during the writing of this book. I have met and talked to many interesting people along my journey and wish to name a few here.

Mrs Rose Cole, Caister, was especially welcoming and I would like to thank her for her kind hospitality and useful information.

I would like to thank the Boston Grammar School for their tour of the library and Beast Yard, especially Rowan Druce who was kind enough to show me around and supply me with interesting information, and also Paul Marsh, the head teacher, for allowing me to take photographs and use them in this publication.

I wish to thank Mr Arthur Franks for his help and wonderful collection of photographs and videos of the Haxey Hood game, which he kindly let me use in this book.

I am very grateful to the staff at Lincoln’s Museum of Lincolnshire Life, who gave me their time, and to Lincolnshire County Council who allowed me to photograph and publish the pictures of the witch artefacts they house at the museum.

Roger John Crisp deserves my thanks and a mention for the marvellous tour he conducted for me around the grounds of RAF Scampton. It was very informative and a lot of fun! Thank you also for allowing me to publish the photographs I took there.

The staff at Grimsby Central Library were very helpful and friendly, as were the staff at Lincoln Cathedral, especially Anne James, who helped me with dates and festivals. Kath Brown kindly sent me information concerning the Lincolnshire Stuff Ball, for which I was most grateful.

Thank you to Mrs Rogers from the Captain’s Table at Dogdyke for your stories and the gentleman from Beesby Cottages for your time and information.

Thank you also to the owner of the Abbey House at Swineshead for your directions and help, the gentleman at Horsington, the lady at Tealby who showed me where to find the Devil’s Chair, and the gentleman at Lower Burnham for his information about the well.

I would like to thank The History Press for allowing me to write for them and especially Beth Amphlett and Matilda Richards, who have patiently led me through the process.

Thank you to my brother James for his support and patience at being dragged round various historical sites. Also thank you to my friend Yann, for his continued encouragement, help and company along the way.

Most of all, thank you to Judy and Arthur O’Neill, without whom this book would never have been completed. Thank you for all your time, your proofreading, your ideas and input and, of course, your company through many trips around Lincolnshire. You are invaluable!

I
NTRODUCTION

When I was bound apprentice in famous Lincolnshire

Full well I served my master, for more than seven year,

Till I took up to poaching as you shall quickly hear,

Oh, ’tis my delight on a shiny night

In the season of the year.

As me and my companions were setting of a snare,

‘Twas then we spied the gamekeeper, for him we did not care,

For we can wrestle and fight, my boys, and jump o’er anywhere.

Oh, ’tis my delight on a shiny night

In the season of the year.

As me and my companions were setting four or five,

And taking on ’em up again, we caught a hare alive,

We took the hare alive, my boys, although the wood did steer.

Oh, ’tis my delight on a shiny night

In the season of the year.

I threw him on my shoulder and then we all trudged home,

We took him to a neighbour’s house and sold him for a crown,

We sold him for a crown, my boys, but I need not tell you where!

Oh, ‘tis my delight on a shiny night

In the season of the year.

Success to every gentleman that lives in Lincolnshire,

Success to every poacher that wants to sell a hare.

Bad luck to every gamekeeper that will not sell his deer.

Oh, ‘tis my delight on a shiny night

In the season of the year.
1

You will not meet a Lincolnshire-born native who has never heard of this old folk song, ‘The Lincolnshire Poacher’. Dating from the 1700s or earlier, it has become akin to the National Anthem for Lincolnshire and is still sung and quoted often today. Having a wealth of countryside and open land, coupled with the poor wages labourers received, Lincolnshire was ripe for poaching, even when it was a crime punishable by death! Not quite the happy-go-lucky past time the song suggests but certainly a poignant reminder of days gone by.

Lincolnshire is a fascinating county, rich with history, folklore, character and peculiarities, aptly summed up by John Betjeman:

Lincolnshire is…singularly beautiful and…a separate country. I would like to see it with its own flag and needing passports to get in.
2

One of the largest counties in England, Lincolnshire measures nearly 6,000 square kilometres. It is the county with the highest number of bordering counties, which include Leicestershire, Rutland, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, South Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. On the east, the North Sea runs its entire length and to the north it is bounded by the Humber Estuary.

Before 1974 it was divided into three regions: Holland, Lindsey and Kesteven, but after this date these three areas unified. The northern part, however, was given the title Humberside, but this was reversed in 1996 and the area became known as North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire.

Lincolnshire has a reputation for remoteness and mysteriousness, for being somehow semi-detached from the rest of England and not quite in the swing of modern life, a place where old ways are preserved and old secrets kept.
3

This book will give the reader a glimpse of these secrets, of the traditions of old and those that remain, of the tales of indigenous giants, battles with dragons and brushes with the Devil himself. We shall walk with witches, bogles, ghosts and the infamous Black Dog, and laugh along at the Yellowbelly humour and curiosities, for there is a veritable feast to gorge upon!

An enquiry after a person’s health is usually one of the opening gambits in a conversation: but have you noticed that Lincolnshire folk will rarely admit to being well? Usually their reply will be ‘I’m really no-matters’ (in indifferent health). On a good day they may answer ‘I’m fair to middlin” or ‘I’m meggerin’ oop now,’
by which they mean they’re getting better. ‘I’ve a bad keal an’ I keb soa much at night and feel reeal al-ovverish’ (a cough, short of breath and shivery); ‘I’ve hed a bad bout of mulleygrubs and can’t git shutten on it’ (stomach ache).
4

Typical Lincolnshire countryside.

The Lincolnshire dialect is a wonderfully colourful tongue and, as with any others, once immersed into it, it is as easy to understand as your own.

Katherine Briggs relates as a moral the story of a young cock that crowed too loudly before his time and ended up being fed to the pigs. The fascinating thing about the story is that it is all told in dialect and is fantastic to read.

Yaller-legg’s cock’ril liv’d i’ runt yard wi’ owd white cock ‘at was his feyther, an’ red cock liv’d o’ steäm-hoose side o’ yard. An’ won daay, when owd cock’s sittin’ crawin’ upon crew-yard gaate, cock’ril gets up an’ begins to craw an’ all.

‘Cock-a-doodle-doo.’ Says owd cock. ‘Kick-a-ee-a-ee,’ says cock’ril: he couldn’t craw plain yit, he was ower yung.
5

The study of folklore does not usually necessitate the study of dialect, but it can add another dimension to the meanings behind the stories for a deeper understanding. There are many books which list the numerous words, phrases and meanings of the varied Lincolnshire dialect, far too many to list here but as a taster and for interest I include a handful.

Aist
: are you?

Albins
: perhaps or unable

At-nowt
: on no account

Batterfang
: a heavy blow

Blash
: nonsense

Bo’d
: a bird

Bo’n
: burn

Chelp
: cheek, cheekiness

Dacker-down
: slow-down, if someone was going too fast

Darkilings
: twilight

Dossent
: was to not dare to do something

Eadily
: insufficiency

Fogo
: a nasty smell

Frangy
: lively

Fun
: found

Gaain
: near

Harr
: a sea mist

Kelter
: rubbish

Ivey-skivy
: to create uproar

Jorum
: a large amount

Larum
: a worthless story

Mawps
: a daft person

Nosker
: large

Owd-hunks
: a mean person

Pag
: to carry another on your back

Quick-sticks
: immediately

Raatherly
: seldom

Scrudge
: to squeeze

Slap
: to spill something

Tiddy
: small

Upskittle
: to knock something over

Vaals
: presents offered to servants

Wong
: to low land

Wottle-days
: working days

Yetten
: eaten

Here lies Jimmy Lang

Kilt by Death’s stang,

They brake his boäns

Wi sticks an’ stoänes

His carcas they did mang

We many a batterfang.
6

This wonderfully onomatopoeic tongue makes the language of the place come alive and fortunately for us, there are plenty of written samples. For instance, the
Lincolnshire Life
magazine gives examples of farmer’s dialect which illustrates some of these local words:

Lawks a massey me! Farming has changed since I was a bairn! Few folk these days ‘addle their keep’ as ‘higglers’ (men who keep horses and work them for hire), waggoners or garthmen (who look after and feed animals). ‘Addlings’, not ‘earnings’, were wages; ‘earnings’ or ‘hearings’ was rennet used for cheese making!
7

The great poet Alfred Lord Tennyson was born in Lincolnshire, at Somersby, where his father was a rector in 1809. Of the many poems he wrote, here is an extract from one, ’Northern Farmer’, in the Lincolnshire dialect:

Dosn’t thou ‘ear my ‘erse’s legs, as they canters awaäy?

Proputty, proputty, proputty – that’s what I ‘ears ‘em saäy.

Proputty, proputty, proputty – Sam, thou’s an ass for thy paaïns:

Theer’s moor sense i’ one o’is legs nor in all thy braaïns.

Woä – theer’s a craw to pluck wi’ tha, Sam: yon’s parson’s ‘ouse –

Dosn’t thou knaw that a man mun be eäther a man or a mouse?

Time to think on it then; for thou’ll be twenty to weeäk.

Proputty, proputty – woä then woä – let ma ‘ear mysén speäk.’
8

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