Haunted Yorkshire: Ghostly Tales from God’s Own County
Cover – Design by Mauricio Villamayor, illustration by Mag Ruhig
Frontispiece – Mag Ruhig
Introduction, headnotes and acknowledgements – Elizabeth Dearnley
The night is darkening round me – Emily Brontë
The Boggart of Hellen-Pot – Sabine Baring-Gould
The Striding Place – Gertrude Atherton
The Garside Fell Disaster – L. T. C. Rolt
Maiden in the Moor – Elizabeth Dearnley
The Happy Children – Arthur Machen
Corstophine – E. F. Benson
Natural Remedies – Andrew Michael Hurley
Madam Crowl’s Ghost – Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Beckermonds – Phyllis Bentley
All the Dead Dears – Sylvia Plath
Concerning a Wonderful Encounter between a Ghost and a Living Man in the Time of Richard II – ‘A Monk of Byland’
Gilbert – Charlotte Brontë
The Trainer’s Ghost – Lettice Galbraith
The Gytrash of Goathland – Michael Temple
Stories of the Craven Dales – T. Q. M.
Melsh Dick – F. W. Moorman
The Deadfall – Ted Hughes
Notes and tidbits
Cover and frontispiece:
The design here was inspired by scenes in Arthur Machen’s story ‘The Happy Children’ (or rather an imagined scene following on from what the narrator witnesses). The alternate option, featuring a barghest atop a rocky moorland outcrop, became the frontispiece. The depiction of the barghest came directly from ‘Stories of the Craven Dales’, wherein there is interesting imagery about it having concentric rings in its eyes.
Most wobbling tale award: The classic spookiness of ‘The Boggart of Hellen-Pot’, the stickiness of ‘Natural Remedies’ and the dread of ‘Maiden in the Moor’ are all wobbling in their own ways, but I think the tale which has stuck with me the most is ‘The Deadfall’ by Ted Hughes, for its unexplained weirdness and the perspective of a child enchanted and afraid of the wilderness and its spirits while camping, which feels very tangible.
That said, it is hard to pick favourites from Elizabeth’s selection, which is brimming with some of my favourite kinds of tales, in which folklore has been cleverly reinterpreted by skilled writers. Elizabeth is always good at pairing up the older tales with some intriguing modern selections, and the Plath story is another highlight here, lent a strange extra dimension by the inclusion of the Ted Hughes tale. Here are some more scattered notes on specific stories…
Melsh Dick – F. W. Moorman
After a boy is lured into the woods by a mischievous fairy, I enjoyed seeing the humble squirrel becoming the source of terror in this one, especially since goblin and evil-fae stories often position the fairy creature itself as the main threat to their unlucky victim. F. W. Moorman doesn’t hold back with the dialect of the narrator in the nested tale, but I think it does help sell the folkloric nightmare that unfolds here.
Moorman was a dedicated folklorist, researcher and poet, holding the post of Professor of English Language at Leeds University (before one J. R. R. Tolkien assumed the role following Moorman’s untimely death). Moorman’s poem ‘The Dalesman’s Litany’ became a popular folk song – that link takes you to the rendition from Tim Hart and Maddy Prior’s 1968 album Folk Songs of Olde England Vol. One. Apparently Moorman claimed that Beowulf may be a work of Yorkshire literature based on the possibility of Geat settlements, which is very intriguing. Researching this writer with Elizabeth made me feel like there’s more to unpack in his work. Like Sabine Baring-Gould, his deep interest in cataloguing folk material and adding to the tradition with his own art makes me feel some affinity for him.
Concerning a Wonderful Encounter… – ‘A Monk of Byland’
‘A Monk of Byland’ is how M. R. James referred to the writer of this medieval story in his note on the transcription of the Byland Abbey ghost stories in 1924. If you’re intrigued to read more of these tales, Nina Zumel has made a pleasingly presented website building on work that David Mimno had been doing on github. You can also read the stories directly from volume 27 of Yorkshire Archaeological Journal (1924), courtesy of Archive.org.
At one point in the story, the narrator says:
And when he conjured the she-goat she fell prone upon the ground, and rose up again in the likeness of a man of great stature, horrible and thin, and like one of the dead kings in pictures.
Firstly, she-goat. Excellent (and interestingly the gytrash of Goathland also manifests as a giant goat, in the Michael Temple story). Secondly, M. R. James speculates that this ‘dead kings’ reference is an allusion to the theme in medieval illustration of the ‘Three Living and the Three Dead’. I like this. It feels very modern somehow to throw out a visual reference in this way, like a meme for fellow monks, especially for a time when access to art and illustration would have been far less widespread. The monks of Byland Abbey would of course have been educated in the symbolic themes in the art of manuscripts and illumination (and would have been creating new images themselves, drawing on some of these established conventions). Maybe it’s just the familiarity which is endearing, inviting us to feel like one of the brethren. ‘Ah yes, brother, I know those big dead kings. I have painted a great many.’
Maiden in the Moor – Elizabeth Dearnley
When I was chatting to Elizabeth about her own story in the collection, she described how the found-material aspects of it were inspired by her own cassette tape projects with her sister when they were younger. Apparently they used to listen to them in the car as a family, and one of them (A-side: Nightmare Murder, B-side: Haunting Stories) effectively boiled down to the two of them screaming dramatically for half an hour or so.