The Book of English Folk Tales Page 7

  ‘What can yon clatter be?’ they asked each other, while the girls huddled together in fear. At last one of the lads voiced everybody’s thoughts.

  ‘Theer’s somebody or somm’at threshin’ in t’barn!’ They all listened, and at last Jonathan said, ‘Aye! That’s what yon is! Somebody threshin’, in t’barn!’ But he made no move to go and find out, and there was no other lad brave enough to volunteer. So they returned to their beds in awe and superstitious fear, but there was no more sleep that night. The steady thumping of the flail went on till the first rays of dawn broke in the east, and the noise stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Then Jonathan and his men crept cautiously to the barn door and looked inside. They could hardly believe the evidence of their own eyes. During the night, more corn had been threshed than any one of them could have managed in a day. They stood peering with astonished gaze, all thinking the same thing. At last Jonathan voiced the thought.

  ‘Not even Ralph himself could ha’ done more, nor better.’

  Next night, the unseen thresher was at work again, and Jonathan thought it wise to let well alone. By the time all the corn was threshed, they had got used to the noise, and slept through it; but from that time the invisible helper became a regular hand at the farm. In the spring he brought hay in; in summer he mowed, and in autumn he sowed. But at sheep-shearing time he excelled himself, dealing with whole flocks in a night, and leaving the fleeces so carefully rolled and packed that there was little for Jonathan and his hired men to do. There could be no doubt about it. Good luck had come to the farm.

  Now there were those who believed that all the work was being done by the ghost of Ralph; but there were many more who thought it could be put down to one of those tiny, brown, shaggy little mannikins all Yorkshire knew of, called hobs. Such hobs were usually friendly towards humans, and would always help rather than hinder, provided their wishes were attended to, and they were not deliberately made angry. As all the women could tell you, the surest way to offend a hob was to suggest that he should cover up his nakedness, for clothes of any kind hobs cannot abide. But they could be relied on to help, especially if they had special skills like the one at Runswick Bay, who lived in a cave called the Hob Hole. That one could cure whooping cough, when nothing else would.

  You just took the afflicted child to the mouth of the cave, and called out:

  Hob-hole Hob, Hob-hole Hob,

  My poor bairn’s gotten t’kin cough,

  So tak’t off! Tak’t off!

  And sure as fate, the cough would disappear within a day or two.

  Jonathan Grey was satisfied with his hob, whether it was the spirit of Ralph as well or not. When the hob had worked for him a goodish time, he discussed with his wife how they could reward the hob for all his trouble, without offending him. Jonathan’s wife was as wise as she was kindly, and suggested that a bowl of her best cream should be put in the barn every night. So they tried it out, and sure enough, next morning the bowl was empty.

  The hob stayed on, and the bowl of cream was never forgotten. In the course of time the old couple became quite well-to-do; but like everyone else, their time at last ran out, and they died. The farm passed on to their son, and still the hob stayed on, doing two men’s work every night for the wages of a bowl of cream. The farm continued to prosper throughout the lifetime of that generation, and the time came when it passed on again, this time to another Jonathan Grey. This Jonathan inherited the hob with the rest of the farm, and his wife, Margery, was as careful to set out the cream at night as her husband’s mother and grandmother had been.

  But nobody’s good luck lasts forever. There came a sad day when Margery died, in the full bloom of her womanhood, and left Jonathan desolate. It was only then that he discovered that Margery had done almost as much work about the place as the hob. Without her the dairywork never seemed to be done, the meals never on time, clean shirts and smocks never ready when wanted, and the children always ailing. After the worst of his grief had passed, common sense suggested that he should take a new wife. He had not much heart for the choosing of her, but before long Margery’s vacant place was filled.

  He soon found that his second wife was not the good manager Margery had been. Moreover, she was jealous, shrewish, and above all, mean. She scraped and saved, and grudged every mouthful the farm lads ate. Most of all, she grudged the cream set out nightly for the hob.

  ‘Yon hob!’ she snorted, ‘fed on t’best o’ cream when t’rest of us is well-satisfied wi’ t’buttermilk! An’ tha’ canna be certain as ’tis hob that drinks it! Like as not ’tis t’cats, or t’rats, as leaves the bowl clean at morning. We’re like to be ruined, wi’ thy feckless ways.’

  Her husband listened, but he took no notice. As long as he was master, the hob should have his reward.

  Is a man ever master in his own house when he has a determined, nagging wife? When winter came, and the grass was poor, butter was scarce; and as it grew scarcer, so its market price went up, and every day the farmer’s wife grudged the cream for the hob more. One night when her husband was working late, she set out the bowl for the hob as usual; but it contained nothing but skimmed milk.

  That night, for the first time for generations, the sound of the hob at work was not heard. No corn was threshed, no harness mended, no wool carded, no spinning done. Spring came, but there was no hob to help with the haymaking, or with the sheep-shearing in the summer. The harvest came and went but the hob did no mowing, tying or carrying. This was bad, and the farm was suffering; but worse was to follow. Strange things began to happen. Churn as she might, the wife’s butter would never come. She tried everything she knew, but the cream only rolled itself into the tiny balls all farmers’ wives call ‘pins and needles’. She even tried putting a silver coin in the churn, but the cream refused to be turned into butter, while all her cheeses turned black with mould. Her hams became fly-blown as they hung in their bags from the rafters, and the sides of bacon so reisty they could not be eaten. Foxes stole the geese she was fattening for the Christmas market, and the cows went dry. Sheep got foot-rot, and pigs died of the fever that attacks swine now and then. For every piece of good luck in the past, there now seemed to be three calamities.

  Then the house became haunted. No longer did the steady thrum of the hob’s flail lull them into satisfied slumber. Instead, the house was filled with terrifying noises. It sounded as if a host of demons were throwing things in the kitchen, with the clatter of fire-irons falling, the banging of metal spoons on pewter plates and kettles, the crashing of falling crockery and the clanging of pansions and pails.

  From other rooms and the stairway issued cries and howls, drummings and thumpings, hollow groans and ear-splitting, blood-curdling screams, though never a thing was to be seen. Unseen hands snatched off the bed-covers, while candles snuffed themselves out. Furniture moved of its own accord, doors locked and barred themselves while opened gates in the farm-yard allowed animals to wander away to the trackless moors.

  No servants would stay in the house, nor labouring men help on the farm, so terrified were they of the daily (and nightly) happenings that no human agency could account for. Jonathan was at his wits’ end to make both ends and middle meet, and from being a happy, healthy, robust and successful farmer, he began to look old, worried and poverty-stricken, as indeed he was. He had long suspected that in some way his wife had offended the hob that had so helped his grandfather and his father to success; and after denying it forcefully for a long time, she at last confessed that she had once substituted skimmed milk for the bowl of cream.

  Then Jonathan was in despair, for he knew only too well what revenge an offended hob could take. He tried in every way he could think of to appease and propitiate the hob for the insult given by his wife. Nothing was of the least avail. At last, ruined in pocket, robbed of health and defeated in spirit, he decided that the only thing to be done was to leave the farm that had been in his family’s possession for generations back, and try his luck elsewhere.


  There was no one to help pack up the home now, except the family; but that was of no account, for there was little enough left to pack. All the goods there were went easily on to one farm cart, and the only horse left on the farm stood drooping between the shafts. Last to come out of the old stone house was the feather bed on which generations of Greys had been born and died. It was placed on top of all the other broken bits and pieces, and the old wooden churn, taken from the dairy, was set upright on its end at the back of the cart. The grudging wife climbed up, and sat on the feather bed, while Jonathan sadly took his seat and picked up the reins. Then with one last sad look round his now deserted farm, and a last despairing glance at his empty childhood home, Jonathan picked up the reins and clicked his tongue to the dejected horse. Slowly and mournfully the cart with its passengers made its way through the fields to the road, and there, at the first bend, Jonathan found himself face to face with one of his old neighbours. The man took in the distressing sight at one glimpse, but could scarcely believe what he saw.

  ‘Heigh-oop, Jonathan lad!’ he exclaimed. ‘Tha’ canna ha’ coom to this, surely! What art thee about, man?’

  Jonathan replied heavily, ‘Aye, but it has coom to this! We’re flitting!’

  Then, to everyone’s great consternation, a strange, queer, husky voice from the cart growled loudly and distinctly, ‘Aye! We’re flitting!’

  With a sinking heart Jonathan turned in his seat, and looked over the cart; and there, sitting crosslegged on the upturned churn, was the oldest, ugliest, hairiest little man that could ever be imagined. His brown wrinkled body was entirely naked, but the bulging eyes in his overlarge head glinted with wicked, malicious glee, like sparks struck from granite. And while the farmer and his wife remained in dumbfounded silence, the hob let out a shriek of cackling laughter, and rocked to and fro in his vengeful mirth.

  Then Jonathan, knowing himself utterly beaten, began to pull on the reins to turn the cart around. ‘Aye, we’re flitting,’ said Jonathan, ‘but if thou art flitting wi’ us, then we’ll e’en flit back again, for ’tis all one to me now.’

  And it was.

  The Farmer and the Bogle

  The little people may be clever, hut they do not have a monopoly of wit. Though the farmer and the hogle are in dispute, for once it is the farmer who comes off best – a most satisfying and comforting conclusion to people so much at the mercy of agencies (such as the weather) that they cannot control and can only comhat hy endurance and dogged mother-wit.

  There was a bogle, so they say, who was forever getting up to tricks to pester the life out of farmers.

  But there are farmers and farmers. Jack was a farmer, though not one of the well-breeched sort who could afford to ride about while other folk did all the work. He was only a peasant farmer whose family had been scraping a living out of a few fields of grudging land since before the Romans came. He lived with the soil on his boots, the smell of it in his nose and the feel of it on his hands.

  Hard living breeds hard men. Jack was both hard and shrewd, and a tough customer when it came to doing a deal, as the bogle found to his cost when he picked Jack for his next trick.

  Every peasant farmer wants to increase his holding, and Jack was no exception. Next to his little parcel of land was a field he had had his eye on for many a year, knowing that when the present owner died it would have to come into the market. So when this happened at last, he was ready with his savings and before long the business was done and Jack was home again in his tiny cottage, sitting by his hearth well satisfied with his bargain.

  He rubbed one work-hardened clenched fist round and round in the open palm of his other hand, and stared into the bright orange eye of the fire as he contemplated future harvests on his new field.

  That’ll bear well, come harvest, now it be mine,’ he said, speaking aloud to himself, as he often did.

  ‘It beant thine, though,’ answered a growly voice from the other side of the fire.

  Jack looked up, and shook his head in case his ears were playing tricks on him. Then he shook it again, to make sure he was seeing straight. Sitting cross-legged in the old wooden chair at the opposite side of the hearth was a bogle – a tough, dried-up, weather-beaten little chap with a face as brown and wrinkled as old leather and a thatch of grey hair like an old mare’s mane. Jack knew by his size he must be a bogle, for he was no more than half a man in height.

  ‘It beant thine. Jack,’ says the bogle again. ‘It be mine. It’s been in my family for ever and a day.’

  ‘It’s mine now,’ Jack replied, gathering his wits together at last. ‘It’s bought an’ paid for, and I’ve got the papers to prove it.’

  ‘Papers!’ snorted the bogle. ‘What’s papers got to do with it? They don’t prove nothing! That field belonged to my family when the moon was made of green cheese, donkey’s years before such as you lived on the earth at all.’

  Jack had never actually seen a bogle before, but he’d heard about them since he was a child. They were crafty little creatures, and it didn’t do to get on the wrong side of them. He needed time to think.

  ‘If it’s your field, as you say,’ Jack said, ‘how is it that it has been farmed so poor this many-a-year?’

  ‘Simpleton! Numbskull!’ says the bogle, laughing. ‘The other chap wouldn’t agree to my bargain, so he never got a proper harvest at all.’ The crackling laughter leapt up the chimney like a cloud of sparks from a crumbling log, while the bogle displayed two rows of yellow teeth as old as the hills, and as sound.

  Jack thought he understood.

  ‘What’s your bargain, then?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s better,’ said the bogle. ‘I can see as you are going to be more sensible than that other fellow. Why – it’s my field. You do all the work, and we share the harvest between us. How’s that?’

  ‘Well,’ said Jack slowly, ‘I’m not afraid of a bit of hard work, if I get a fair deal at the end. I’ll do the work, and we’ll split the crop. Is it a deal?’

  ‘Done!’ said the bogle.

  Jack thought it would be a sorry day when a man like him couldn’t get the best of such a bargain.

  ‘What’ll you have, then, first year?’ he asks the bogle. ‘Tops or bottoms?’

  ‘O, tops, of course,’ answers the little man, getting off the chair and standing on his short, bandy legs looking up at the farmer. ‘I’ll ha’ the tops, and you ha’ the bottoms. That’s as fair as fair can be, I do declare.’ And away he went on his little short legs, leaving Jack scratching his head and thinking hard.

  So Jack tilled the ground, and sowed it, and up came as good a crop as heart could wish for. Then the bogle came again, to collect his first year’s rent.

  ‘Let’s see,’ said Jack. ‘If I remember rightly, we agreed that you should ha’ the tops, and me the bottoms.’

  ‘That’s so,’ said the bogle.

  ‘Ah! Well, you’ll find a fair-sized heap o’ turnip-tops all ready for you just inside the gate,’ said Jack.

  Then the bogle could see that he’d come out the wrong side o’ the bargain, and he wasn’t at all pleased.

  ‘What about next year?’ he growled, cracking the joints of his fingers one by one.

  ‘What about next year?’ said Jack. ‘What’ll you have, tops or bottoms?’

  ‘Bottoms,’ said the little bogle. ‘This year you can have the tops, and I’ll take the bottoms.’

  ‘Just as you like,’ replied Jack. ‘It’s all one to me.’

  So when the autumn came, he prepared the field again, and planted barley. Up came the crop, as good a stand of corn as ever met a farmer’s eye.

  At harvest time, along came the bogle again to claim his share.

  ‘Tops mine, and bottoms thine, this year. That was the bargain, wasn’t it?’ said Jack.

  ‘It was so,’ nodded the bogle.

  ‘Then you’d better see about carting off the roots and the stubble,’ said Jack. ‘I threshed the ears last week.’

  Well,
that bogle really was put out by being got the better of twice in a row.

  ‘Next year,’ he says to Jack, ‘you’ll sow that field with wheat, and we’ll divide the standing crop.’

  ‘Done,’ said Jack, ‘on condition that you help with the reaping.’

  The bogle thought that would be a good way of making sure he wasn’t done down for the third time.

  When the harvest time came round again the bogle appeared, to make arrangements for the reaping.

  ‘We’ll have a match,’ said the crafty bogle, who was proud of his age-old skill with sickle or scythe. ‘We’ll mow half the field apiece, and the winner takes all!’

  Jack looked at the little fellow, and agreed to take him on. ‘It’ll take a fair bit o’ reaping,’ said the farmer. ‘There be a mort o’ docks in it. Which side of the field will you have?’

  ‘I’ll have the far side,’ said the Bogle. ‘Docks are of no account to me. I was using a scythe when such as you were tadpoles in the weeds.’ So they set a date for the mowing match.

  Then Jack went off to the blacksmith’s, and ordered a lot of thin iron rods. When he got them he took them and planted them upright among the sturdy wheat straw on the far side of the field.

  When the set day arrived, along came the squat little bogle with his bandy legs and his strong arms, carrying an ancient scythe over his shoulder; and along came Jack, carrying his scythe in the same way. Then they honed their blades to put a fine edge on them, gave the word, and set in. Jack bent his back and began to mow, taking in huge swathes with a steady, swinging rhythm like the experienced reaper he was; away on the far side the little bogle swung his razor-sharp blade in powerful curving sweeps as well – till he met the first iron rod – and then another – and then another. Every time he hit one, it brought his blade up sharp, and he thought it was a tough old dock root.