Over Fen and Wold

by James John Hissey

Then we gleaned some particulars of old Lincolnshire folk-lore. Here, for example, is an infallible charm to get power over the Devil, I mean “Samuel.”

CHARMS

On St. Mark’s Eve, precisely at twelve o’clock, hold two pewter platters one over the other, take these to where bracken grows, hold the platters under the plants for the seeds to drop in, then you will find that the seeds will go right through the top platter and be caught in the one below; upon this “Samuel” will appear riding on a pig and tell you anything you want to know. Here is another charm. Kill a hedge-hog and smear two thorn-sticks with his blood, place these in a hedge-bottom and leave them there for fourteen days, if not moved meanwhile you will have your wish. I give these two charms as a fair sample of others, and I think they will well suffice!

Leaving Wispington, we came in about half a mile to a spot where four roads meet, a burial-place for suicides in times past, and reputed to be the centre of Lincolnshire. Then driving on we reached Horsington. In the register of burials here is a notice of “Bridget Hall buried in her own garden A.D. 16.” She lived at Hail Farm near by, our friend told us, and directed in her will that she should be buried in her own garden, and that her body should be laid north and south, as she considered it “too Popish to be buried east and west in a churchyard!” Some years ago the then occupier of that farm, we further learnt, on digging a drain in the same garden came upon a skeleton lying north and south; presumably that of Bridget Hall.

In the vestry of the church here, according to our informant, used to be preserved in a box a strange relic of other days and ways, in the shape of a brass collar by which poor unfortunate lunatics were chained to a wall. Where the collar has gone no one seems to know or care; however, it has disappeared, to the grief of antiquaries. “Though I cannot show you the collar, I can still show you something curious and interesting,” said our friend. Whereupon he went into the churchyard, and after some searching plucked a thistle; this did not seem anything wonderful to us, not being botanists, but he pointed out to us that it was peculiarly marked with unusual gray lines all over. This, we were informed, is called the “Holy Thistle,” or “Mary’s Thistle,” and it used to be grown by the monks at Kirkstead Abbey a few miles away, and even until a few years ago specimens thereof might have been found in the fields that now surround the abbey ruins, but the farmers had rooted them all up. Arthur Thistlewood of the Cato Street conspiracy was born here at Horsington, we learnt, his real name being Burnet. The birthplace of still another famous man had we come across!

Next we drove on to Halstead Hall, an ancient building set back some way from the road, showing signs of its former importance, but now, like so many other ancient halls, converted into a pleasant farmstead. The hall was moated, but the moat has been drained dry; the house is famous locally for a daring and a remarkable robbery committed there in 1829,—an event that still affords subject for the country folk to talk and enlarge about, at least we heard a good deal about it. The house, we understood,

AN “ANTIQUARIAN DAY”

was broken into by a band of robbers who tied up the men-servants in a stable, first gagging them; and then locked up the family and the maids in a store-room. After this they sat down in the hall and feasted; the repast over, they leisurely collected all the silver plate and money they could find, and quietly departed. Three of the band were afterwards captured and hanged at Lincoln; one of them, a certain Timothy Brammer, when on the scaffold, kicked off his shoes, as he declared, to falsify the prophecy of his friends that “he would die in his shoes”; the doing of this appeared to afford him a grim sort of satisfaction. Then by the hamlet of Stixwold we returned to Woodhall Spa after a very interesting “antiquarian day.”

We left Woodhall Spa regretfully, and upon mounting our dogcart to resume our tour the genial landlord of the Royal Hotel and most of the guests thereof, whose acquaintance we had made during our too short stay, came to the door to bid us goodbye and a prosperous journey,—yet we had only arrived there a few days before, perfect strangers in the land! Truly we had paid our modest bill, notwithstanding which we left in debt to the landlord for all his kindness to us, for which no charge was made!

It was a cloudy day; the barometer was falling; the wind blew wild and warm from the west. “You’ll have rain, and plenty of it,” prophesied one of the party; “better stay on till to-morrow.” The temptation was great, but if we dallied thus on the way at every pleasant spot we should hardly get home before the winter, so we hardened our hearts and drove away. The rain did not actually come down, but we noticed great banks of threatening gray storm-clouds in serried ranks gathered on the low horizon that foreboded ill, with an advance guard of vast detached masses of aqueous vapours, wind-woven into fantastic forms. The sky-scape at any rate was interesting. “It looks stormy,” exclaimed we, to a man, in response to a polite “Good-morning” he bade us as we passed him by. “It do look so,” replied he, “but we won’t get any wet worth speaking of whilst this wind keeps up.” This was reassuring. We have generally found country folk more reliable about the immediate future of the weather than the falling or rising of the barometer, for local conditions are often an important factor in the case and modify the barometer’s forecast.