"Fashes in the Flood" by Penny Dolan

Whenever fierce winds blow, as they have all this December, a particular ghostly ballad haunts me. “The Wife of Ushers Well” is set around one of the old quarter days, Martinmas which comes in late November. It has many other festival links, including its nearness to All Souls and All Saints, but it was also the start of the long Advent fast that once led up to Christmas. 

 

The Wife is definitely a ghost story. However, for me the tale doesn’t centre around the ghosts but around the recognisable rage of the main character, the wealthy widowed mother.

The get-rich scheme she set up for her family has gone wrong so badly and sadly that she turns that hatred outwards. 

This mother – or so it seems to me – dominates her three sons, sending them off on a journey where they will do her bidding and bring more riches back home to her. In her pride she forgets that the sea can be hungry but eventually she hears news confirming her beloved sons are drowned.What does she do then, this woman? What would you do if you sent your child off on an errand and something dreadful happened? She does what so many must wish to do. Almost like Lear, she calls all the winds and weather to witness her sorrow. She uses her mystical powers to hurl rain and floods across the land. It is never clear if this is witch-craft and magic or simply the elements responding to the intensity of her rage. At last, some other natural power hears. She knows her sons are coming home again and all is stilled. 

They do come, those ghostly sons, for one calm night. They seem gentle whispering souls. They know where they have come from and how soon their night by the fire will be over.  They witness their mother, in her haze of hurry and delusion, eager to have the fire well lit, eager for comfortable beds to be ready and that all is comfortable for her boys. She even makes sure – or so I read it - that the pretty sweetheart of a servant girl is there to lie beside him. When the cock crows and dawn comes, the three sons get ready to leave once more, knowing that when they depart this time, their sleeping mother’s grief will overtake her mind. 

Forget the white sheets and rattling chains and howling in the night of the traditional ghostly story. In this tale, it is the living grief that is horrific.

 

This is an English version sung by Martin Carthy, one of the great preservers of English ballad history, and a very different Appalachian version. Which do you prefer?

Meanwhile, for those who love to muse on the words alone, here is the text that tells it all for me. :

THERE lived a wife at Usher's well,
         And a wealthy wife was she;
She had three stout and stalwart sons,
         And sent them o'er the sea.

They hadna been a week from her,
         A week but barely ane,
When word came to the carline wife
         That her three sons were gane.

They hadna been a week from her,
         A week but barely three,
When word came to the carline wife
         That her sons she'd never see.

'I wish the wind may never cease.
         Nor fashes in the flood,
Till my three sons come hame to me,
         In earthly flesh and blood!'

It fell about the Martinmas,
         When nights are lang and mirk,
The carline wife's three sons came hame,
         And their hats were o' the birk.

It neither grew in syke nor ditch,
         Nor yet in ony sheugh;
But at the gates o' Paradise
         That birk grew fair eneugh.

'Blow up the fire, my maidens!
         Bring water from the well!
For a' my house shall feast this night,
         Since my three sons are well.'

And she has made to them a bed,
         She 's made it large and wide;
And she 's ta'en her mantle her about,
         Sat down at the bedside.

Up then crew the red, red cock,
         And up and crew the gray;
The eldest to the youngest said.
         ''Tis time we were away.'

The cock he hadna craw'd but once,
         And clapp'd his wings at a',
When the youngest to the eldest said,
         'Brother, we must awa'.

The cock doth craw, the day doth daw,
         The channerin' worm doth chide;
Gin we be miss'd out o' our place,
         A sair pain we maun bide.'

'Lie still, lie still but a little wee while,
         Lie still but if we may;
Gin my mother should miss us when she wakes,
         She'll go mad ere it be day.'

'Fare ye weel, my mother dear!
         Fareweel to barn and byre!
And fare ye weel, the bonny lass
         That kindles my mother's fire!'

Note: Have been triply cursed - by Blogger, by power cuts when editing, and by the Carthy "Ushers Well" video vanishing from all searches. Feel the Carline Wife is alive and still cursing . . . Off to put up boughs of fending greenery,

May you have a much happier and more contented time this Christmas!:

www.pennydolan.com 

A Boy Called M.O.U.S.E, published by Bloomsbury Childrens Books

A BENEVOLENT SPIRIT by Adèle Geras

There will be only one illustration in this post. There will be no names, only initials, in the manner so beloved of old-fashioned ghost story tellers.

First, a word about my own attitude to phantoms, spirits and revenants of every type. While I may not believe in them, I do think they're a wonderful resource when you're writing fiction. One of my very first books was Letters of Fire, long out of print, which was a collection of supernatural tales.



One story (and it provides the image on the cover of this edition) concerns a boy who goes on a school trip to Lancaster Castle. The memories of everything that has happened in that place through the centuries are very strong. I felt them when I visited the place myself and it was this feeling that inspired the story called 'Billy's Hand.' The castle is thick with history, which is a kind of haunting. I do firmly believe in atmospheres attaching to buildings because the past is always with us. I've felt it and I'm sure many of my readers will know precisely what I mean.

But in the whole of my 67 years I've never seen anything spooky. This in spite of having friends (one in particular, when I was at University) who routinely claimed to see figures reflected in mirrors, felt chilly on just that landing and so on and so forth.

One night, though, about half a dozen years ago, I travelled to a picturesque part of the country and spent a night as a guest of...let's call her L. Her house is beautiful and also extremely old. In the hall, there's a window and on one of the panes, a name appears. It's been scratched on the glass, maybe by a diamond, in (L thinks) the 18th century. The whole name is there but let us call her - for it is a woman - Mrs W.

When L showed me to my room, she mentioned Mrs W and assured me that she was a most benevolent phantom. All she did, it seemed, was tuck sleepers up in the bed, in the very bedroom I was to sleep in. The room was blissfully comfortable. I was tired. I'd had a glass of wine and some food with L. I didn't feel in the least spooked. Nevertheless, when I turned the light out, I decided that it was better to be safe than sorry. So I said, aloud: "If you're there, please tuck me in very gently because I'm really tired and want to go straight to sleep."

This would be a much better story if I had been tormented all night long. As it was, I slept like a log and Mrs W either tucked me in so gently that I didn't feel it, or else decided to be peaceful on that particular night.

Before writing this post, I checked with L. I phoned her to see if she could shed any light on Mrs W and her activities. We spoke for about ten minutes and L produced more and more evidence to show that Mrs W was indeed a presence in that beautiful house. Mostly, it seems, she confines herself to bedrooms. She rearranges furniture. People feel as though she's there in the bedroom with them. Some do indeed get the tucking-up treatment. There's a part of the house which isn't a bedroom, but a passage on the way to the bathroom that some members of the extended family like to avoid when they visit. L was adamant that her mother, a very sensible and sceptical woman in every way, had felt the presence of Mrs. W as had L's children and L. herself. I hasten to add that L. is as sensible and practical and intelligent a person as you could wish to meet. She told me that one friend of hers, a man she described as a 'sensitive' had actually seen Mrs W going up the stairs to the bedroom...he was standing in the hall at the time and had read her name on the glass just a moment or two before...

I hadn't been haunted but Mrs W is still with me. I like to think of why she's in bedrooms tucking people in....that could be the beginning of a story.

TALES OF THE PAST: Penny Dolan.

The drive was always a kind of journey into the past. The road leads up and along a ridge of moorland, skirts the reservoir that sits like an overfull saucer above the Aire Valley and its sprawling industrial towns. Eventually, the route drops down steeply and joins the old level road, now edged by pebble-dash semis, occasional newsagents, tyre fitting services and one room hairdressers.

I turn left through open gates and there, fronted by a large pond - treacherous in snow - stands a seventeenth century manor house. This is East Riddlesden Hall, owned by the National Trust and where, occasionally, I told stories to young audiences.

Well, what does one tell for such a gig? The problem with history is that real life stories often aren’t story-shaped, as all writers of fiction know, and there were experts in the house who could describe all the objects better than I could.

I had read guidebooks on the property, but I also spent ages wandering around the Hall musing and imagining, trying to find objects that interested me, and to work out what, for children, was different “then”. What would develop historical awareness?

The venue itself wasn’t the easiest to clothe with children’s tales. East Riddlesden Hall was built by James Murgatroyd, a wealthy clothier, in 1642. Although there were Royalist symbols on one of the walls and a priest’s hiding hole, the family also became known for “profanity and debauchery”.  The Hall is said to be the inspiration for Gilbert & Sullivan’s gothic opera “Ruddigore”, and is haunted by the ghosts of several wives, lovers and visitors who met sad or violent ends.  Not quite light fun, and in practice, one ghostly story per family session is enough. Small horrified faces at one’s knee are worrisome as are outbreaks of bawling. Ghost stories needs both shaping and rationing.

So I chose and adapted tales that highlighted some aspect of life at the time, embroidering the tales with emphatic historical descriptions. I included the blowing out of candles and lanterns; the turning of spits over the fire and the weary back from crops that must be planted and gathered; I gestured the gathering of herbs, flowers and fevers; the putting on of fur-lined cloaks and shawls, of gloating over petticoats and finery; I listened for horses, carriages or carts, and ordered servants, true or mistrusted, to bar the door against the dark.

My tales, however, were mostly folk tales.  The Hall contains important embroidery and fabric. So I chose The Three Spinners - a variation of Rumpelstiltskin - where the plot works out extremely well for the reluctant bride. As a clumsy child, I adored that tale and the three ugly aunts.

I offered Mossycoat, where the mother races to stitch the daughter a coat in time for her to escape from the dreadful pedlar, even as she steals all the fine dresses he’s brought her. No quick trip to Top Shop for that young Mossycoat.

Occasionally I used a tale that might have been heard in the house:  the bold brave Molly Whuppie. Her retort to the Giant “Once more, twice mor, I’ll come to Spain,” always suggested the time of the Armada, when England was at war with Spain.

I did make my own variation of the Riddlesden “ghostly rocking cradle” legend. The ailing mother lies alone in her four-poster bed, the house emptied of servants by sickness, but is calmed by seeing her child’s cradle rocked by a mysterious old lady who she takes to be her absent husband nurse.  A kindly ghost felt omewhat happier for young listeners than a spooky stranger by the bed!

If the group seemed older, I might mention the need to check who it was your family wanted you to marry, moving into another favourite tale, Lady Mary & Mr Fox. Somehow, the hints of gambling and new money always make it feel very “Restoration” to me.

There was always the fun of telling the story of King Charles escaping by hiding in a big tree, which might have been a little like the one we were under – and then I’d watch their eyes look upwards.

There were other stories of course. I always tried to introduce each one by referring to some item or place in the house, making it clear that what I was telling were “only fairy tales.”

The original idea was to tell stories at different points in the house. However some rooms and staircases were so small that regular visitors found it hard to squeeze past the bundle of children and parents. Besides, one or two of the volunteer guides also felt the enthusiastic tales disturbed the ambience of “their” rooms. So I was moved outside.

During spring and summer visits, I told stories out on the lawn, under the huge mulberry tree.  The weather was always uncannily good, as if it was an enchanted garden. I carried my small basket of props, my storytime bell - of a size to be heard anywhere in the garden – my notice board, giving the session times and settled myself on the broad bench ready to start.

I spent a few magical times there, including Halloween tellings in the big tithe barn. Then one autumn, the lovely lady who organised my story-times moved to a distant site. A new person took over that post, and from then on, invitations came there none.

I believe I was supplanted by someone dressed in an overlarge “character” costume. So very much more believable than stories.