This is a group of miscellaneous tales, more likely to be remembered locally than to pass into the national body of folk-remembered stories, though ‘The Boar of Eskdale’ belongs also to the latter category.
No supernatural beast, this hound, but certainly one that gave the district for miles around a topic of conversation that lasted well beyond the span of its life.
One morning in the spring of 1810 a Cumbrian shepherd going out to his sheep on the fells above Ennerdale Water was met by a sight that every sheep-farmer dreads. During the night, his flock had been savaged by a sheep-worrying dog. It did not take the shepherd long to understand the seriousness of the threat that confronted him. A true sheep-worrier does not content himself with picking off one sheep and making a meal of it. Like a fox in a poultry yard, he seems to kill for the sake of killing, laying out half-a-dozen at a time, taking bites from still-living animals, tearing out jugular veins and carousing, vampire-like, on the hot blood of his victims.
The presence of such a canine-vampire in their midst is a great worry to hill farmers at any time; but a glance at the mangled remains of the dog’s feast told the first farmer that there was something out-of-the-ordinary about this one. The scatter of pathetic woolly corpses comprised the pick of his flock, the fattest, youngest and healthiest ewes and the most promising lambs.
Next night, it was the turn of another flock – and another – and another. Every farmer in the district was alerted, and all the usual means of tracking down and disposing of the raider put into immediate operation, but it soon became evident that they were up against something quite out of the ordinary, this time. Whatever it was that was taking the sheep, it had more intelligence and cunning than they were used to even in the most sagacious dogs they reared and trained.
For one thing, it never attacked the same flock on two nights together. There was simply no knowing where to expect its depredations next, for it ranged over wide distances and raided valley and fell flocks alike. His taste was only for the very best, so it was always the pick of the flock that fell to him, and never did a sheep he once attacked recover from it. The creature hunted only at night, and search as they might during the daytime, they could never get a clue as to the place where he was lying up.
Then, at last, one morning a shepherd caught sight of him at early dawn, running down a fine ram – which in itself is unusual. He was, said the shepherd, a very large, smooth-coated creature with a tawny hide like a lion patterned with dark grey, tiger-like stripes. Some said it was only a dog, and gave their considered opinion that it was a cross between a mastiff and a greyhound, though nobody in the whole region had ever heard of the existence of such a dog. Others opined that it was a supernatural beast, or at least an unnatural one, and no ordinary canine flesh and blood. In farmhouse and cottage, in inn and village shop, there was no other topic of conversation, as week after week went by, and still the killings went on. The old shook their heads in sad bewilderment, because for once their experience gave them nothing to go on, from which to offer advice to the sorely tried farmers and shepherds. The women, normally so calm and competent where any kind of animal was concerned, lost their imperturbability and started in superstitious fear at a sudden movement behind a wall in the dusk, or a shadow that they had never noticed before. As for the children, they went in terror of their lives, and clung to their mothers’ skirts in a way not at all in keeping with the normal ways of the sturdy young of the dalesmen.
The sightings of the brute at dawn continued, as shepherds kept up their vigil, but these only served to refresh wonder and renew fear. He seemed to be everywhere at once, travelling with amazing speed from one place to another far distant. The shepherds who reported the sightings agreed on two main points besides that of his actual appearances – he was never heard to utter a sound of any kind, and those who got near enough to him to set their faithful, intelligent collies on him all had the same experience of seeing their own dogs cringe with upraised hackles, for no ordinary dog would touch him.
The spring wore into summer, and the squads of watchers out on the hills at night grew in number and in vigilance. They manned every possible vantage point night after night, till they were all bone-weary and dispirited – and yet the brute managed to select his breakfast somewhere or other almost beneath the very muzzles of the guns lying in wait for him. The women grew hollow-eyed with staying up at night too, to cook for and feed men who had been out all night as well as all day on the fells, and demanded meals at unearthly hours. Children pined inside all the warm summer days, terrified to venture out to play or pick flowers, lest they should meet ‘t’girt dog’ and find that it had other tastes besides that for a fat lamb. It was obvious that more coordinated attempts would have to be made to deal with the situation.
Most of the better-off farmers kept a hound or two of their own, which they put together to form a handy if ragged pack for the ever-popular sport of fox-hunting. They got the pack together, and found their quarry. The tawny-grey beast sloped off in front of them, running with great speed and sagacity, and gave them a splendid run, apparently enjoying it as much as they were. Then, suddenly, he appeared to be tired of the game, and halting in his tracks, turned and faced his pursuers. The farmers then had the frustrating and humiliating experience of watching their prized hounds brake, scuffle and halt with raised hackles and bared teeth, while the stranger dealt with the foremost one so neatly and conclusively that the rest turned tail and waited for no more.
It was at this juncture that somebody suggested poison. Try everything’ had to be the rule. So carcases were duly prepared, and baits left temptingly here, there and everywhere; but what temptation were such cold collations to ‘an epicure used for so long to having his feasts still smoking hot with life’? He left them severely alone, and continued to pick and choose among the flocks at his leisure and pleasure.
At the end of July, it was estimated that already some two hundred prize sheep had fallen to ‘t’girt dog’. Flagging zeal must be whipped up again. A wealthy sheep-farmer offered a reward of ten pounds sterling to the man who could put an end to the robber. This brought a new brand of hunter into the field – the idle, good-for-nothing loafer who until now had regarded the farmers’ and shepherds’ woes as none of his business and, apart from giving unwanted advice, had stood aside watching the discomfiture of his betters in sardonic glee. But as he most probably had a gun, and knew how to use it when on his own poaching expeditions, he regarded himself as a very likely recipient of the £10 bounty. It was surprising how many of his kind there were, and with everybody else who possessed a gun of any sort, they took to the hills night and day – especially as some other worthy had the complementary idea of setting up a fund to supply food and drink to the valiant dog-hunters.
Tales of near-misses rose and passed from mouth to mouth over hill and dale, but still the raider picked off the fattest sheep when and how he liked, apparently getting bolder every day. Willy Jackson, for instance, when carrying a loaded gun (like everybody else in the district who could beg, borrow or steal one), suddenly looked up to see the dog-vampire regarding him calmly from the middle of the path only thirty yards away from him. So of course Willy whipped up the gun to his shoulder, and fired. As Willy said, you couldn’t trust guns to go off every time. His missed fire, and t’girt dog sloped off, as usual without uttering a sound.
On another occasion, thirteen men, all carrying loaded guns, trapped him in the middle of a field of standing corn. They closed in on him in a circle, guns cocked; but he chose his time, and suddenly made a dash for it between two of them, coming within five yards of one Will Rotherby. The sight of the beast at such close quarters completely robbed that worthy of all self-possession, so that he quite forgot to pull the trigger, but leapt sideways yelling, ‘Skerse! What a dog!’ – while the others, apparently, were more concerned with Willy’s behaviour than their mutual quarry. A little way off, in a copse, was a deaf old man named Jack Wilson, who perhaps had the most extraordinary adventure of all. He was very old, and bent with years of work, and had legs so bowed outwards at the knees that, to use country parlance, ‘you could run a wheelbarrow through ’em’. Jack was gathering sticks for his fire, and being nearly stone deaf, was quite unaware of the excitement close at hand, and the altercation aroused by Will Rotherby’s failure to fire. The dog, making off at its usual liquid speed, made straight for the bent old man, and dived between his distanced knees, neatly somersaulting him base over apex in the process, because of its own long legs and high back.
Jack averred afterwards, and continued to do so to his dying day in spite of all subsequent evidence, that what had caused his acrobatic turn was no dog at all, but a lion. Hadn’t he both seen and felt it?
The serious situation was now handed over to the regular packs of hounds and their experienced huntsmen. They entered into the sport with a will, and the dog certainly provided them with runs as good as any fox in living memory. In the way of fox-hunting districts, the accounts of each were remembered, discussed, enlarged, embroidered, and eventually turned into detailed folk-narratives in their own right. The distance covered in some was remarkable, as were the numbers of riders up and out. One morning, for instance, one run started when the hounds found on Kinniside Fell and chased their quarry to Wastwater, on to Calder, then on to Seascale – but by that time night had fallen, and the two hundred men who had set out had to break off pursuit because they could no longer see. A Sunday morning meet found him on the high fells, and the chase was on again. Down towards Ennerdale the horses thundered with the hounds in full cry, and down inside Ennerdale Church the congregation lifted their heads and listened, breaking off their responses as if struck dumb. The next moment the church was emptied, as every man who could, including the parson, the Reverend Mr Ponsonby, took to horse and joined in. On and on went the chase (though the parson was forced to quit from exhaustion) till the dog led them into Cockermouth. There, they ran into a most violent thunderstorm (some said, as a result of thus profaning the sabbath), and were all drenched to the skin. Nobody saw how or where the dog escaped to, but suddenly they had lost him – as indeed they did on another day when he took them from Ennerdale all the way to St Bees. On that occasion he was actually observed quietly and calmly slipping out of a garden, and following his weary and worn hunters home.
But all good things must come to an end, even the charmed life of so phenomenal a creature as ‘t’girt dog of Ennerdale’.
On 12th September 1910, he was sighted again in a field of corn. Hastily a large body of men with guns surrounded him, and he was wounded enough for the hounds to keep him in view, though they would not tackle him. They followed him down to the Enen river, and when the huntsmen arrived they found him bathing his wound in a pool, while the hounds stood off at a safe distance. A man called John Steed was first on the scene, but the hounds prevented him from getting a clear view of the prey, and the wounded beast was able to make one last bid for life and freedom. He went to ground in Eskat Woods, but was at last flushed out, and brought down by John Steed’s gun so that the hounds were able to finish him.
Thus ended a larger-than-life creature of the kind about which legends are made and tales recounted from generation to generation; not as the hero of the story, for that fame (as well as £10) went to John Steed – but as eight stones of dog carcase, and yellow-tawny hide striped with grey, in a glass case in Keswick museum.
This extraordinary but true story of queer doings in Cotswold country became the subject of a pamphlet and so was known nationwide – but to this day remains the ‘wonder’ that it was at the time, no explanation ever having been given.
Hard times there had been for everybody, rich and poor like, ever since the Civil War began; and though when it was over, the country in general had been able to settle down again, (though under severe discipline from Old Noll), Chipping Campden had not felt the last of its effects, as the following story relates.
In 1645, Campden House, the seat of Viscount Campden, was held for the king by one Sir Henry Bard and a garrison under his command. Bard, though a cavalier, had risen from the ranks, and was a hard, cruel, selfish and rapacious soldier. He had no intention of going without anything if his men could come by it by any means, fair or foul; and the raids he made among the poor in the area made him as many enemies among those who supported the king as among those who put their trust in Parliament, for as they said, they were left without ‘a Sunday shift of cloathes to their backs’.
In May 1645, however, the king, with Prince Rupert, left Oxford for Chester, to try to relieve the siege of that town. Passing within sight of Campden House, he sent word to Sir Henry Bard to draw off his men and join the army bent for Chester; and according to Bard, his orders were to make sure, before he left the house, that under no circumstances should the enemy be able to make use of it.
Bard, being the man he was, carried out the order to the letter, and just before marching out, his men put the mansion to the torch, and burned it to the ground – despite the fact that its owner, the third Viscount Campden, was fighting for the king somewhere else, and that Bard’s ertswhile hostess. Lady Juliana, mother of the owner, was thereby made homeless.
But Lady Juliana was made of tough stuff, and with the help of her steward, William Harrison, she carried on the estate, and weathered the storm. That she was a formidable woman of stern character is left in no doubt by her attitude when, fifteen years later, a most extraordinary nine days’ wonder of tragic proportions set the district agog.
William Harrison had by this time – August 1660 – worked for Lady Juliana in the capacity of steward for fifty years, and was now an old man, approaching seventy. His loyalty to the noble family was above suspicion, and as a result he enjoyed considerable comfort and was well rewarded. His wife, however, was, as described by a pamphleteer later, a snotty, covetous presbyterian’, puritanical and mean-minded, a supporter of the Parliamentary party. They had one son, Edward, and were able to keep servants of their own, among whom was a house-servant called John Perry.
On 16th August, the steward informed his wife that he was that day going to walk to Charringworth, about three miles away, to collect his lady’s rents from that district. Then away he went.
Evening came and he had not come home; and when dusk began to fall, even his waspish wife began to show signs of anxiety, lest something had happened to him on the way. So she called her servant, John Perry, and sent him off in search of his master.
Hours passed, but neither master nor man returned. When morning dawned and there was still no sign of either, the wife took counsel with her son, Edward, and they decided that it would be of no use at all to send another servant after Perry. The son himself would have to go, which he did.
Edward Harrison had not travelled more than a mile before he met John Perry, coming homewards alone.
‘Where have you been all night?’ asked the son, agitated that Perry had not been successful in his search.
John Perry was a stolid, reliable lad – ‘Looking for the master,’ he replied. ‘Looked everywhere, I have, far and near.’
‘Not far enough!’ said Edward. ‘Turn about and come back with me. Now ’tis daylight, we can ask from one house to another, and find where he was seen last.’
This they did, calling at each of the estate tenant’s houses in turn, and going from one to another till they reached Ebrington.
Yes, said the wife of the last tenant they visited, the steward had called there for their rent last evening. He had seemed tired after his long day’s work, and they had invited him to rest awhile. This he had done, leaving them later saying he was now going home. No one had anything more to add to this account, so Edward and Perry started back to Campden keeping to the path that the old man had most likely taken.
On their way back from Ebrington to Campden, they met a village woman in a state of great excitement.
‘Look what I have found,’ she said – and showed them a comb and a neckerchief stained with blood, which Edward recognized immediately as belonging to his father.
‘Where did you find them?’ he asked, dreading the worst.
‘In the furze brake just back yonder,’ she replied, and led them to the spot. They searched the furze brake high and low, and then extended their careful examination to the ground all round it. No further sign of the missing man came to light, nor any clue as to his whereabouts, living or dead. There was nothing to do but to return home to William’s wife (or widow) without tidings of her husband. Lady Juliana maintained a stoic silence throughout, though she had lost her faithful steward, and, presumably, her quarter’s rents.
Mrs Harrison, however, was not to be so easily appeased. Her suspicion was that there had been foul play, and that the perpetrator of it was none other than her own servant, John Perry, though he was to all intents and purposes an honest, if not a very quick-witted local lad with no grudge at all against his master. As neither Lady Juliana nor her son seemed prepared to lift a finger in the business, Mrs Harrison denounced John Perry, who was then brought before the nearest magistrate.
Here the boy was examined; but he told such a rambling, confused tale of how he had spent his time after leaving to look for his master that the magistrate could make neither head nor tail of it. So he decided to keep John in custody in case of further developments.
At the end of a week, when William Harrison had still not been found, John Perry suddenly announced that he now wanted to confess, and to make a clean breast of everything. The bench of magistrates sat, and John was brought before them to make his statement.
It was, he said, due entirely to the wickedness of his own mother, Joan Perry, and of his brother Richard. They had long been at him with suggestions that he should help himself to some of his master’s worldly goods, but he had always before resisted them. They had, however, at last worked upon him so much that he had agreed to their plan, and promised to keep an eye open for a good opportunity. That opportunity had come when he had heard that Harrison was to set out rent-collecting, for on his way home he would be carrying a good deal of money in cash. John had rushed home to rouse his mother and brother to action when sent out to find his missing master in the summer dusk.
They had accompanied him, and had lain hidden to waylay Harrison when he was nearly home. They had leapt out at him, strangled him, and taken from his pocket the bag of money. Then he, John, had taken the neckerchief and the comb to plant as false evidence in the furze brake at Ebrington, while his mother and his brother had lugged the body to ‘the great mill sink’ at Wallington, and there thrown it in. The details he gave appeared to be irrefutable, and on the strength of his statement, his mother and his brother were at once arrested.
Joan Perry and her other son were apparently dumbfounded at this charge, and violently protested their absolute innocence of any knowledge whatsoever of the crime, or even of ever suggesting to John any idea of robbing a good master. They in turn denounced John as an unnatural son and brother, accusing him of desiring to bring harm to people whom he knew to be perfectly innocent of such thoughts, let alone such deeds. John stuck to his story, and when he was shown a length of string that had happened to be in his brother’s pocket at the time of his arrest, he identified it as the very cord with which Harrison had been strangled. So the whole Perry family were kept in custody, and an operation set up to drag ‘the girt mill-sink’ at YVallington. The thorough search there produced nothing helpful whatsoever; there was certainly no body, strangled or otherwise.
By now the matter was on everybody’s tongue, and it seemed the whole district was agog with the tale – except Lady Juliana and her son, the viscount, who held themselves aloof and took no part. But public indignation ran high, that an old man might not walk home in safety from Charringworth to Campden, and the worried local magistrates committed all three of the Perry family for trial at Gloucester assizes.
When arraigned before the judge, John Perry repeated his tale; but the judge appeared to be somewhat of a doubting nature, and refused to proceed with the trial until the body of the victim should be produced. He could not, he declared, try anyone for a murder of which no proof existed that it had, in fact, ever taken place. Nevertheless, the three Perrys should remain in custody, until the next assizes. In the course of time these came round again. The judge this time was a different type of man, his name being Sir Robert Hyde.
Before Sir Robert, John Perry told an entirely different tale. He declared that he must have been out of his mind when he made his confession, and said that he knew nothing whatsoever about Harrison’s death and that his mother and brother had never once mentioned robbing his master. Alas, it was now entirely too late. The judge was a choleric man, the chief of the accused was a perjurer who on oath had told two entirely opposing tales, and the mother and brother, though they knew themselves to be innocent, were now half prepared to believe that John was aware of more than he ought to be about the whole business.
Public interest in the case was by no means dead, and popular opinion began to take the line that there was more in it at every level than met the eye. The explanation was, of course, that Joan Perry was a witch, and that by her black arts and her connivance with the Devil, she had not only contrived to do away with William Harrison and hide his remains where no one could discover them, but had also enchanted her own son’s tongue so that he had no control over what he was saying. The family was poor and defenceless, and as far as Sir Robert was concerned they were all apparently expendable. He sentenced all three to be hanged on a gibbet to be erected within sight of the supposed crime.
So the relentless wheels of ‘justice’ turned, and a gallows was set up on Broadway Hill. The poor mother was the first to hang, watched by her two sons. Then came Richard’s turn. He made a last speech to the crowd gathered to watch the public execution, protesting his absolute innocence; then turning to his brother John, who was still waiting for his turn, Richard addressed to him an impassioned plea to save both their lives by making a clean breast of everything, and telling the whole truth now. John remained dumb, and Richard died.
Then John was brought forward, and standing under the gibbet with the noose already round his neck, he declared that he was entirely innocent, knowing absolutely nothing of his master’s death, or of what had become of him. But, just as the hangman turned him off, he cried out in a loud voice ‘You may hear more hereafter!’
Joan and Richard, being well and truly dead, were taken down and thrown into a grave at the foot of the gallows. The body of John was left hanging in chains from the gibbet, as an awful warning to passers-by.
And still the talk went on. What had John meant by his last words? Did he after all know something more than he had told? Why had Joan by her magic not averted the dreadful end of the whole family? Was she a witch? Or were they all being ‘witched’ by somebody else? (And though no one dared to say it aloud, there must have been some wonderment as to why Lady Juliana still said nothing, and did nothing, to attempt to save the victims.)
After three days of such talk, a young gentlewoman came forward, saying that she had great skill in witch-finding, and that she would know at once if Joan Perry had been a witch, provided that she could still view her corpse and find the witch-mark. Consent was given for this posthumous search and the grave at the foot of the gallows was opened. The body of Joan was taken out, and laid on the grass by the side of that of one of her sons, while the other still swung in chains above her. When all was ready the young gentlewoman approached, on horseback, to perform her grisly task. She rode up close to the gallows – but her horse, catching sight of Joan’s corpse, shied to the side and took her under the swinging body of John. Just as she passed under, his feet swung violently, and catching her just as the horse plunged, lifted her out of the saddle and precipitated her full length in the empty grave.
Superstitious as the country folk were, they could not but regard this as some further omen that all was not as it should be. The young lady concerned retired from the case, however, so Joan and Richard were re-buried and eventually the gossip dwindled to subdued muttering. The tragic tale was at last relegated to a yarn for the winter firelight, or with which to regale strangers who asked about the presence of the gibbet on Broadway Hill.
And so two years passed. Then, one evening in the autumn dusk as the widow of William Harrison was preparing for her evening meal, the door of her house opened – and in walked her husband, large as life.
Like grass rippling before an east wind the news of his return swept from house to house and from village to village, till it reached Gloucester, where, as it happened. Sir Robert Hyde was once again in session at the assizes. The rumour reached the judge’s ears. He was told that it had been brought to town by a man who had actually seen the resurrected steward with his own eyes. The judge flew instantly into the most passionate fury, and calling his servant, sped him to find the witness and bring him to the court at once. The servant was successful in finding the man, who went willingly enough to tell Sir Robert what he knew, but he was given no chance; before he could open his mouth the judge poured down a tirade of wrath upon him for disturbing the peace, and committed him there and then to jail. History does not relate the rest of that innocent participant’s fate.
William’s return caused excitement and consternation everywhere, it seemed, except on the Campden estate. There he was simply reinstated into his old job, and calmly took on his life again where he had left off. Others – in fact, everybody else – wanted to know where he had been for two whole years. What he told his wife and family, no one will ever know; but the story he put about for public consumpton was colourful to the point of being preposterous, and set tongues wagging again from one end of Gloucestershire to the other.
What had happened, he said, was as follows. He had been trudging home with Lady Juliana’s rents in his pocket when three horsemen suddenly loomed up out of the dusk, set upon him, bound him, and carried him off on horseback.
They travelled eastward across the country day and night till they reached the port of Deal, in Kent. There they sold him to a ship’s captain, and left him aboard the ship. (Remembering that he was, at the time, already seventy years of age, one can but wonder why the ship’s captain was ready and willing to pay cash down for such a bargain!)
The ship put to sea almost at once, and voyaged for about six weeks, during which time, it appears, Harrison made the discovery that other kidnapped prisoners were also on board. Then came the day when their vessel was attacked by Turkish pirates, and after a battle, they were boarded. The Turks seized the kidnapped prisoners, and bore them off to their own ships, where they were stuffed into the hold and had no idea in which direction they were proceeding. However, they came to land at last, where William was sold again, as a slave, to a Turkish physician. This worthy, who lived ‘close to Smyrna’ was already eighty-seven years of age, and had, it seemed, once visited England – which accounted for the fact that he was able to converse with his aged English slave. The new slave was given the task of keeping his Turkish master’s still, and as a reward, was allowed ‘a solid silver bowl, double gilt’ to drink out of.
In this manner, he passed two years. Then his aged owner died, and the resourceful though aged Harrison took the opportunity to run away. He made his way successfully to the coast, bearing with him his drinking bowl, which turned out to be lucky for him. A vessel lay in port, with sailors from Hamburg standing watch. He approached them, and bribed them with his silver-gilt drinking bowl to stow him away on their ship. (It would be interesting to know in what language this transaction was carried out.) The ship was bound for Lisbon, at which port the stowaway in time duly arrived. He got ashore there without being detected, and almost at once had another extraordinary stroke of luck. He made the acquaintance of a fellow Englishman, whose heart was so wrung with compassion at his tale that he offered at once to pay his passage back to England, and promptly secured it. So from Lisbon back to Dover William came as a free man, and from Dover he set off to walk to Gloucestershire, arriving home two years older but apparently no worse in any other way for his incredible adventure.
The tale was obviously as full of improbabilities as a colander is full of holes, but his true whereabouts during the two years of his absence never did come to light. No public question of his honesty or credibility was ever raised. He had been a worthy and respected citizen before he disappeared, and once reinstated into the Lady Juliana’s service with no questions asked, he became once more, and continued to be till he died, a worthy and respected citizen. The awful consequences of his absence, whether it was voluntary or forced, seemed never to have been held against him by anybody.
There were two other consequences of his return, however. One was that the body of poor John Perry was taken down from the gibbet, and what was left of it given a Christian burial, since it had been proved beyond all doubt that he was no murderer after all. The other was that a few days after her husband’s return from the supposed grave, his ‘snotty, covetous, presbyterian wife’ hanged herself in her own kitchen.
As to why – well, as a man called Wood wrote in his journal when recounting the event at the time, ‘the reader is to judge’. In other words, one man’s guess about the truth of the whole affair is as good as any other’s, but the story has endured, a wonder for three hundred years and more, instead of the nine days proverbially allotted to such disturbances of the rural English peace.
The association of the ceremony concerning ‘The Penny Hedge’ at Whitby with the huge boar of Eskdale has caused this tale of medieval England to be remembered and known more widely than many others of the same type.
There was a time, way back in years past, when all the Forest of Eskdale belonged to the monks who lived in St Hilda’s monastery at Whitby. The abbot there was a proud and powerful man, so they say – one who kept his monks in order, and who wouldn’t put up with any trespassing on his lands or his rights. He was a friend of the king of that time, and he ruled his own bit of Yorkshire as if he were a king himself.
But the hunting in Eskdale Forest was good, and the knights who lived thereabouts couldn’t see why it should all belong to the abbot. They very often had good sport there, with nobody much the wiser.
Then tales began to get about concerning a huge old boar that had given a lot of them a good chase and several nasty injuries before giving them the slip as well. It was bigger than any wild boar they’d ever set eyes on before, so clever and so ferocious that even to see it was nearly enough to put a man off his aim; and try as they might, nobody had ever succeeded in wounding it, let alone being able to claim the credit of killing it. It was a challenge Yorkshire men of spirit simply could not resist.
The forest was wide, and apart from the few peasants tending their swine on the outskirts of it, and the huntsmen engaged in the chase now and again, few people were to be seen there. So when one of the monks of Whitby decided to become a hermit, and spend the rest of his life by himself praying and praising God, he begged the abbot to let him leave the monastery and set himself up with nothing but a little hut of his own among the trees in the depths of the forest. The abbot gave his consent, and away the monk went. He built himself the simple little dwelling he had dreamed of, and added to it a tiny chapel, so that he could kneel at the altar hour after hour to say his offices and pour out his prayers.
One October day, when the trees were gold and the sunlight was golden and men felt it was good to be alive, three local knights set out on the chase, and decided to go after the boar in Eskdale forest. There was William de Bruce and Ralph de Piercie, but the third must have been a man of less importance, because nobody has bothered to remember his name.
They had good sport, and very soon had the luck to rouse the famous boar from its lair. Experienced huntsmen they were, all three, and they pursued it with all the skill and courage they could muster. The sound of their horns rang loud through the trees, and their hounds baying with excitement made a real uproar. Several times the men came within striking distance of the beast, and at last they managed to stick it with their spears; they could see the boar was severely wounded, but it still managed to get away, and ran squealing among the trees.
The hullabaloo of men shouting, dogs baying, horns sounding and the boar squealing reached the ears of the hermit, where he was kneeling before his altar in the tiny chapel. Getting up from his knees, he went to the door of the chapel and opened it wide, to see what was causing the racket. Coming straight towards him was the most horrible beast he had ever seen – the great old boar, enraged with pain, with blood streaming from its sides and dripping from its mouth and nostrils. Its blood-shot eyes were fixed right on him, and its huge tusks were lowered as if it were going to charge. The poor old hermit retreated inside his chapel and ran towards the altar, but he wasn’t quick enough to shut the door. He was standing with his back to the altar when the breast crashed through the door, and rushed towards him. When it reached him, it stopped in its tracks and stood gazing up at him as if it were pleading with him, and then sank down at his feet as quiet as a backyard pig might have done. The hermit could hear the huntsmen getting closer. The hoofbeats of their horses, and their yells told him they were nearly upon him. He leapt over the panting animal, and ran to the door just as the huntsmen reined in their horses, while the hounds stood pointing and baying their heads off at the scent of their quarry coming from the chapel.
The huntsmen, sweating and angry, asked if he had seen the boar.
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘It has taken sanctuary in here, in the Lord’s house.’
‘Get out of the way then, and give us leave to finish it off,’ said one of them.
The hermit shook his head. ‘You cannot break the laws of sanctuary in God’s house,’ he said. ‘I’ll have no killing here.’
‘Sanctuary,’ said another, scornfully. ‘It isn’t a man in there! It’s only a beast. It is ours, anyway, because we know we wounded it. Out of the way, baldhead!’
The hermit stood firm. ‘Beast it may be, but it is not yours. It is God’s creature, and has yielded itself to His, and my protection. You shall not come in!’
‘Out on you, for a prating old fool,’ said another one of the knights, scarlet with rage, and raising his spear in threat.
‘Out on you for cruel, heedless sinners!’ replied the priest, and stretched out his arms across the door to bar their way.
Then the three men lost their tempers altogether and their reason as well and began to strike furiously at the helpless hermit. They cut him down where he stood, till he was only a bloodstained heap at the door of his own little cell, and then they rushed inside. The boar was dead. They had been cheated of their kill after all.
They cursed and stamped with fury, until suddenly their passion cooled, and it came over them just what they had done. Their quarry was dead, but so was the hermit. They were in a mort of trouble themselves now, because they knew they could expect no mercy from the Abbot of Whitby.
‘Sanctuary!’ gasped one of them, wheeling his horse.
‘Where?’ asked the others.
‘Scarborough!’ And away they went, as fast as ever they had followed the chase, towards Scarborough, where, if they could but get into the church, they would be safe for forty days. After that, they would either have to submit to the king’s justice, or abjure the realm, according to whatever the coroner decided; but there would perhaps be time in forty days for powerful friends to help.
The noise of the chase had, it seems, reached other folk’s ears, and it was not long before the brothers at Whitby were told what had happened to the hermit. They went out to bring in his body, and found that though he was mortally wounded, he was not yet dead. So they carried him back to the monastery, where he told his story.
The abbot was more than angry. He made up his mind that there should be no question of mercy for the three knights huddled in the church at Scarborough, once the days of sanctuary were over. They were murderers, and what is more, murderers of a holy man of God. There could be only one penalty, and that was death. The abbot appealed to the king, whose ‘crowner’ would hear their case. He demanded that the crowner’s decree should be an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a death for a death.
But the hermit, in spite of all the skill of the monks, was dying. He asked to see the abbot, and with his last breath pleaded for mercy and forgiveness for his killers.
‘I follow my Master,’ he said. ‘Didn’t He say, on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?” Grant me the lives of these three; but make a condition that they do a yearly penance, for the rest of their lives, so that they don’t forget.’ The abbot agreed to please the dying man, and the hermit died content.
So the penance was fixed, in this way. Every year, at Ascensiontide, while they lived (and their successors for all time after them) they had to enter the forest at sunrise, and receive from a servant of the abbey ten stakes, ten stout poles (stowers) and ten branches (yedders) apiece, all cut with a penny knife. Then each had to take the load upon his own back to the sands at Whitby, and there at low water each had to build a hedge. Each stake had to be a yard from the next, and they had to yedder them with yedders (that is, intertwine them with branches), and so stake each side of the hedge with stout stowers that the hedges would stand firm for three tides without being washed away.
‘This they, and their successors, shall do for ever in memory of their crime; and the better to call this deed to remembrance, one shall sound a horn, and another cry, “Out on you, out on you, out on you!” And if they, or their successors, fail thus to build a hedge that shall withstand three tides, the lands they now hold shall be forfeit to the Abbey of Whitby.’
Such was the abbot’s penance, and so it was performed.