Folklore of Yorkshire (10 page)

It seems entirely plausible that prior to the growth of antiquarianism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the general populace sincerely believed that only giants could have been responsible for edifices such as prehistoric megaliths and Roman roads. Long after the knowledge of their construction was lost, these remarkable feats of engineering must have seemed beyond the capabilities of any normal-sized human. One writer on giant lore, H.J. Massingham, suggests this process may have actually started in the prehistoric period itself as the non-megalith building Celts of the Iron Age looked back on the work of the Neolithic and Bronze Age Britons with wonder and bafflement. Of course, it is a theory that is entirely impossible to verify.

Still, many commentators have regarded landscape-shaping giants as a direct inheritance from pagan belief, perhaps a corrupted remembrance of pre-Christian creation deities. This may possibly be true in the case of Wade, who seems to have been derived from a character common to Norse and Germanic mythology. The earliest reference to this figure is found in an eighth-century Anglo-Saxon poem called ‘Widsith’, although the majority of what is actually known about him comes from the ‘Saga of Thidrek of Bern’, which only survives as a thirteenth-century fragment. In these sources, he is a sea-dwelling giant who ascends to dwell on land and father the more famous Wayland the Smith.

However, by the late medieval period, the giant Wade seems to have been remembered in England not as a mythological demi-god, but a heroic warrior. Most of the stories attached to his name have been lost, although one is preserved in Walter Map’s twelfth-century work, ‘De Nugis Curilaium’, in which Wade is portrayed as a comrade of the eighth-century Mercian king, Offa, and together they repel a Roman invasion (despite the fact that by that time, Rome had long since lost interest in Britain). Otherwise, Wade only receives passing mentions in Geoffrey Chaucer’s fourteenth-century poems,
The Canterbury Tales
and
Troilus and Criseyde
, and Thomas Mallory’s fifteenth-century compilation of Arthurian legends,
Le Morte d’Arthur
.

Wade’s legend seems mostly to have died out with the Middle Ages in England, other than in the stories told around the North York Moors. Nonetheless, it seems unlikely that his persistence in the region represents evidence of an enduring Norse pagan heritage. These stories of Wade bear far more resemblance to the sort of narrative commonly found associated with other medieval heroes such as King Arthur and Robin Hood, who in local legend are often transformed into giants. As Katharine Briggs notes, ‘Often monstrous traits are attached to heroes, who sometimes seem to have changed from gods to heroes and from heroes to giants.’ Such similarities make it seem more probable that Wade’s North Yorkshire legend was a distortion of the popular medieval hero rather than a relic of the mythological figure.

It is often the case that giant legends derive not from the Viking occupation of northern England or earlier, as was commonly assumed by early folklorists, but from the medieval period. Giants were a popular civic mascot during the Middle Ages – possibly following their role in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘History of the Kings of Britain’ – and were frequently represented in architecture and their effigies displayed during pageants. Thus, Rombald was probably not a remembrance of the Old Norse giant ‘Raumr’ (meaning ‘big and ugly’) as some have suggested, but a corruption of Robert de Romille, the first Norman Lord of Skipton. Romille perhaps gave his name to the moor during his tenure and the legend of the giant Rombald was a back-formation created to account for the title long after its true origin had been forgotten by the local populace.

Another Yorkshire giant for whom a Norse origin has been suggested is the savage resident of Penhill in Wensleydale, whose legend is one of the most developed in the county. According to the story, this giant once owned all the land around Penhill which he used to graze his swine – the largest herd in Yorkshire and the giant’s primary source of his wealth. He took great pride in this asset and frequently spent his time riding amongst his swine, counting their number and rounding them up with his loyal hound, Wolfhead. However, the giant showed no fondness towards any humans in the neighbourhood and he was a great source of terror to them, often taking pleasure in letting Wolfhead harry their flocks.

One day he was indulging in this cruel pastime, he encountered a young shepherdess named Gunda, who implored him to desist before he destroyed the flock and ruined her family. At first the giant merely laughed at her pleas, but after a while he began to notice how attractive this girl was and started to make advances towards her. Profoundly discomfited by this attention, Gunda fled, but this only made the giant more determined and he congratulated himself on having found such a pretty quarry to hunt. Of course, the girl’s speed was no match for Wolfhead and the hound eventually brought her down. As he did so, however, Gunda managed to lay her hands on a large rock and struck out at the beast, causing it to yelp and slink back to its master. This action so angered the giant that he strode forward and with a single blow from his spiked club, slew the girl as she lay helpless.

Penhill rising above Wensleydale, home of a legendary giant. (Phil Roper)

As news of his deed spread through the district, resentment towards the giant began to fester even further and sometime later, as he was riding amongst his herd, the giant noticed that one of his precious swine was missing. Up until this point, Wolfhead had been his only living friend, but with this discovery, the giant turned on his faithful dog, roundly abusing it for its failure to protect his property. With a vicious kick, he sent the hound out to search for the missing animal but thereafter it would not return to his calls. Instead, it sat on the edge of the woods, just out of range of the giant’s missiles and howled plaintively in the direction of the castle.

At length, the giant himself discovered the lost boar, pierced by an arrow and lying dead in the undergrowth. He was so incensed by this outrage that he demanded every man and boy in the neighbourhood capable of wielding a bow assemble outside his castle. The giant ordered them to give up the person responsible for killing the swine but when nobody came forward, he told them that they must assemble there again at sunset the following day along with their wives and children, and if he still did not have the culprit, he would kill the lastborn male of every family. Upon hearing this threat, an old man known as the Seer of Carperby stepped forward from the crowd and warned the giant that if he left the castle tomorrow with evil in his heart, he would never again enter its walls – alive or dead.

The giant initially laughed off this prophecy but he was secretly perturbed. When morning came the next day, one of his few loyal retainers told the giant that he’d dreamt nine ravens had circled the castle and alighted on its battlements before cawing nine times. The ancient retainer thought it must surely be an evil omen and advised the giant not to follow through with his threat to the local children. However, this infuriated the giant who beat his old servant for daring to voice such dark thoughts and then left the castle intent on brutalising his neighbours into submission. After the giant had left, the bleeding and resentful retainer summoned his remaining strength, gathered together all the peat, straw and furniture he could find in the castle and built it into a great pyre.

Meanwhile, as the giant progressed towards the spot where the local villagers were assembled, he discovered another nine of his boar felled with arrows. This drove the giant into a bloodthirsty rage and he swore that unless those responsible came forward, he would slaughter every man, woman and child right there on the hillside. But as he ranted, the Seer of Carperby pointed to the plume of black smoke now rising from the giant’s castle. Observing that the prophecy had come true, the giant was aghast but as he turned to slay the Seer, an even more unnerving sight met his eyes. Before him stood the apparition of the shepherdess he had so callously murdered, holding Wolfhead on a leash. The giant stepped back in horror as Gunda released the hound and it leapt at its former master’s throat, so driving the tyrant over the edge of a nearby cliff to his death.

Much has been claimed for the legend of the giant of Penhill. Its collector, Richard Fairfax-Blakeborough, believed it to be descended from ‘the sagas of the Norsemen’, whilst a later commentator thought it represented evidence of a lost chalk hill-figure created during the Bronze Age. However, neither of these hypotheses seem to be supported by the narrative itself: the tale has little in common with the Norse sagas and it is certainly unlikely to be as old as the Bronze Age. Rather, the story appears to preserve a distorted memory of a cruel local landowner, possibly an early Norman lord who was excessively harsh in his prosecution of forest law in the Forest of Wensleydale. Under such law, an offender could be executed for killing any game animal (such as a boar) and it was so deeply unpopular that veiled criticisms survive in many medieval texts.

The giant of Penhill falls into the second category of giant found in English folklore: the murderous ogre. Many of these legends display characteristics which suggest they derive from the medieval period. Indeed, a few seem to have been created to stress the knightly credentials of local landowning families and in this respect have a great deal in common with many dragon legends (
See
Chapter Three). These stories even have similar legendary relics in church architecture. For instance, in the All Saints’ Church at Wighill near Tadcaster there is a tomb which bears the effigy of a knight and on one side, the grotesque carving of a head. Although the monument is no older than the seventeenth century, local legend has interpreted it as the burial place of a famed giant-killer – the carved head on its side representing that of the monster he slew.

The legend describes how the district was being terrorised by a giant of Turkish origin who lived on a small island off the coast and came ashore to feast on children. Such was the giant’s notoriety, a reward for its execution was offered by the king himself. Nobody dared take up the challenge but a young lad named Stapleton, who sailed out to the island and confronted the monster. After a lengthy struggle, the giant succeeded in knocking Stapleton to the ground, but as it moved to deliver a final blow, the boy thrust his sword through his adversary’s armpit and so mortally wounded the brute. He finished the job by decapitating the giant and carrying its head back to the king as evidence of his victory. Stapleton was rewarded with the Manor of Wighill, which his family owned for many generations thereafter.

A legend attached to Sessay in the Vale of York seems to have performed a similar function, explaining how a particular family came to own land in that district. Thomas Parkinson gives a particularly vivid description of the giant that once plagued the people thereabouts:

He was a huge brute in human form – legs like elephants’ legs, arms of a corresponding size, a face most fierce to look upon with only one eye placed in the midst of his forehead; a mouth large as a lion’s and garnished with teeth as long as the prongs of a hayfork. His only clothing was a cow’s hide fastened across his breast, and with the hair outwards; while over his shoulders he usually carried a stout young tree, as a club for offence and defence. Now and then he made the woods ring with demoniacal laughter; now and then with savage, unearthly growls.

The villagers attempted to band together to drive their tormentor out, but invariably lost their resolve at the last moment. It was not until Sir Guy D’Aunay of Cowick Castle in South Yorkshire came to Sessay that the giant finally met its match. He had come to visit Joan Darrell, daughter of an old friend of his father’s, to ask for the girl’s hand in marriage and admitted that this was primarily in the interests of a union of their families’ estates. Miss Darrell admired Sir Guy’s honesty and being a canny individual, replied that if the knight could slay the giant that so persecuted her tenants and left her servants unwilling to enter the wood to collect kindling, then she would assent to his request.

In addition to its taste for small children and local farmers’ livestock, the giant liked to steal sacks of meal from the local windmill which it used to mix with the blood of slaughtered animals to create a grisly porridge. Hearing of this, Sir Guy staked out the mill and sure enough after a while, the giant came along. Made wary by the size of the ogre, the knight bided his time, spying on his quarry from the trees. His caution was soon rewarded for as the giant reached through an upper window of the building to snatch a sack, the wind changed direction and one of the sails of the mill struck it on the head, sending the colossus sprawling to the ground. Seizing the opportunity, Sir Guy ran over and drove his sword through the giant’s single eye. His marriage to Joan Darrell followed shortly afterwards and the D’Aunay family came into possession of her Sessay estates.

A very similar legend is attached to the village of Dalton nearby, and the parallels are so pronounced, it seems that the two tales must stem from the same source. However, whilst the Sessay narrative is a typical medieval charter-legend, the Dalton story is inverted, with a commoner as the hero and may well have represented the vernacular form of Sessay’s gentrified myth. Dalton’s giant was similarly cyclopic and a mill also features in the legend. But whereas the Sessay giant stole from the local mill, the Dalton giant resides in one and uses it to grind meal from human bones to bake into bread. It spared only one victim from this fate: a young boy who was captured on Pilmoor and kept as a servant to help with the milling.