It may be observed en passant that there is a slight anachronism here, as Aldborough was not so called until the Saxon age, and Boroughbridge did not come into existence until after the Conquest. But that is a matter of not much consequence in a legend.
The stones which were thus intended to "ding down" the King's city were miraculously intercepted in their flight, falling and fixing themselves firmly in the earth between the city and the fords over the Ure (Boroughbridge), where three of them, still called "The Devil's Arrows," may be seen at this day.
[The Giant Road-Maker of Mulgrave.]
The stately Castle of Mulgrave, now the home of the Phipps family—Marquises of Normanby—was built by Peter de Malo-lacu or de Mauley, in the reign of King John. Cox says, "he built a castle here for his defence, which, from its beauty and the grace it was to this place, he named it Moultgrace, but because it proved afterwards a great grievance to the neighbours thereabouts, the people, who will in such cases take a liberty to nickname places and things by changing one letter for another—c for v—called it Moultgrave, by which name alone for many ages it hath been and is now everywhere known, though the reason thereof is by few understood." A previous castle, with the barony, had been held by the de Turnhams, and the last male heir, Robert, having died without issue male, the barony and castle were inherited by his only daughter, Isabel, who, as was then the law respecting heiresses, became a ward of the Crown, and her hand at the disposal of the King. This Peter de Malo-lacu, or Peter of the Evil Eye, was a Poictevin of brutal and ferocious character, who was made use of by King John as the instrument for the murder of his nephew Arthur, for which piece of service he rewarded the murderer with the hand of the fair Isabel, with her inheritance.
But long before the de Mauleys and the de Turnhams, a noble Saxon family were lords of the surrounding domain, and dwelt in a castle on an eminence here, about three or four miles from the seashore at Whitby. Leland says (temp. Hen. 8), "Mongrave Castel standeth on a craggy hille, and on eche side of it is a hille far higher than that whereon the castel standeth. The north hille on the topp of it hath certain stones, commonly caul'd Wadda's grave, whom the people there say to have bene a gigant and owner of Mongrave." And Camden, "Hard by upon a steep hill near the sea (which yet is between two that are much higher) a castle of Wade, a Saxon Duke, is said to have stood; who, in the confused anarchy of the Northumbrians, so fatal to the petty Princes, having combined with those that murdered King Ethered, gave battel to King Ardulph at Whalley, in Lancashire, but with such ill-sucess that his army was routed and himself forced to fly. Afterwards he fell into a distemper, which killed him, and was interred on a hill here between two solid rocks, about seven foot high, which being at twelve foot distance from one another, occasions a current opinion that he was of gyant-like stature."
It is with this Duke Wada that we are concerned. He appears to have been a Saxon, or rather an Anglian noble of considerable consequence in the kingdom of Northumbria, and to have taken a conspicuous part in the political movements of that troublous period, when, as Speed narrates, "the Northumbrians were sore molested with many intruders or rather tyrants that banded for the soueraintie for the space of thirtie years." He was a man of gigantic stature and a champion of redoubtable energy in war, dealing death around him and cumbering the field with the bodies of those who had fallen beneath the blows of his ponderous mace. He was indeed a true son of Woden in all respects, excepting that he had relinquished the hope of banqueting in the halls of the Walhalia, and appropriating the skulls of his enemies as drinking vessels; for through the influence of St. Hilda's Abbey of Streoneshalh, in the immediate vicinity, he had adopted the tenets of, if he did not regulate his life altogether according to, the principles of Christianity.
Now Wada was a married man, and had a helpmate of stature and proportions corresponding with his own. They were a well-matched couple, and seemed to have lived together in a state of ordinary connubial happiness, there being but one thing to disturb the even tenor of their lives, and that was that the lady had to go in all sorts of weather across a moor to milk her cows—a long and dreary journey even in summer, along the rough and stone strewn trackway, but more especially in winter, when the snow was frequently knee deep, and the bitter blasts of the north-east wind came careering over the sea and sweeping with relentless fury across the bleak and shelterless moorland.