Folklore of Lincolnshire

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Introduction

one The Devil and his Serpent

two The Wet and Wilds

three Black Dogs and Strange Encounters

four Giants and Heroes

five Things that go Bump in the Lincolnshire Night

six Witchcraft and Cunning

seven Yellowbelly Sayings and Superstitions

eight A Lincolnshire Year

Bibliography

Notes

Copyright

I extend my thanks to everyone who has helped and supported me during the writing of this book. I have met and talked to many interesting people along my journey and wish to name a few here.

Mrs Rose Cole, Caister, was especially welcoming and I would like to thank her for her kind hospitality and useful information.

I would like to thank the Boston Grammar School for their tour of the library and Beast Yard, especially Rowan Druce who was kind enough to show me around and supply me with interesting information, and also Paul Marsh, the head teacher, for allowing me to take photographs and use them in this publication.

I wish to thank Mr Arthur Franks for his help and wonderful collection of photographs and videos of the Haxey Hood game, which he kindly let me use in this book.

I am very grateful to the staff at Lincoln’s Museum of Lincolnshire Life, who gave me their time, and to Lincolnshire County Council who allowed me to photograph and publish the pictures of the witch artefacts they house at the museum.

Roger John Crisp deserves my thanks and a mention for the marvellous tour he conducted for me around the grounds of RAF Scampton. It was very informative and a lot of fun! Thank you also for allowing me to publish the photographs I took there.

The staff at Grimsby Central Library were very helpful and friendly, as were the staff at Lincoln Cathedral, especially Anne James, who helped me with dates and festivals. Kath Brown kindly sent me information concerning the Lincolnshire Stuff Ball, for which I was most grateful.

Thank you to Mrs Rogers from the Captain’s Table at Dogdyke for your stories and the gentleman from Beesby Cottages for your time and information.

Thank you also to the owner of the Abbey House at Swineshead for your directions and help, the gentleman at Horsington, the lady at Tealby who showed me where to find the Devil’s Chair, and the gentleman at Lower Burnham for his information about the well.

I would like to thank The History Press for allowing me to write for them and especially Beth Amphlett and Matilda Richards, who have patiently led me through the process.

Thank you to my brother James for his support and patience at being dragged round various historical sites. Also thank you to my friend Yann, for his continued encouragement, help and company along the way.

Most of all, thank you to Judy and Arthur O’Neill, without whom this book would never have been completed. Thank you for all your time, your proofreading, your ideas and input and, of course, your company through many trips around Lincolnshire. You are invaluable!

You will not meet a Lincolnshire-born native who has never heard of this old folk song, ‘The Lincolnshire Poacher’. Dating from the 1700s or earlier, it has become akin to the National Anthem for Lincolnshire and is still sung and quoted often today. Having a wealth of countryside and open land, coupled with the poor wages labourers received, Lincolnshire was ripe for poaching, even when it was a crime punishable by death! Not quite the happy-go-lucky past time the song suggests but certainly a poignant reminder of days gone by.

Lincolnshire is a fascinating county, rich with history, folklore, character and peculiarities, aptly summed up by John Betjeman:

One of the largest counties in England, Lincolnshire measures nearly 6,000 square kilometres. It is the county with the highest number of bordering counties, which include Leicestershire, Rutland, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, South Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. On the east, the North Sea runs its entire length and to the north it is bounded by the Humber Estuary.

Before 1974 it was divided into three regions: Holland, Lindsey and Kesteven, but after this date these three areas unified. The northern part, however, was given the title Humberside, but this was reversed in 1996 and the area became known as North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire.

This book will give the reader a glimpse of these secrets, of the traditions of old and those that remain, of the tales of indigenous giants, battles with dragons and brushes with the Devil himself. We shall walk with witches, bogles, ghosts and the infamous Black Dog, and laugh along at the Yellowbelly humour and curiosities, for there is a veritable feast to gorge upon!

Typical Lincolnshire countryside.

The Lincolnshire dialect is a wonderfully colourful tongue and, as with any others, once immersed into it, it is as easy to understand as your own.

Katherine Briggs relates as a moral the story of a young cock that crowed too loudly before his time and ended up being fed to the pigs. The fascinating thing about the story is that it is all told in dialect and is fantastic to read.

The study of folklore does not usually necessitate the study of dialect, but it can add another dimension to the meanings behind the stories for a deeper understanding. There are many books which list the numerous words, phrases and meanings of the varied Lincolnshire dialect, far too many to list here but as a taster and for interest I include a handful.

This wonderfully onomatopoeic tongue makes the language of the place come alive and fortunately for us, there are plenty of written samples. For instance, the
Lincolnshire Life
magazine gives examples of farmer’s dialect which illustrates some of these local words:

The great poet Alfred Lord Tennyson was born in Lincolnshire, at Somersby, where his father was a rector in 1809. Of the many poems he wrote, here is an extract from one, ’Northern Farmer’, in the Lincolnshire dialect: