'The Secret lies in the Thimble' by Karen Maitland

17th Century silver thimble
Photo: Llangefni

In my Jacobean novel Traitor in the Ice, one of my characters passes a secret note to another folded into a band and hidden inside a thimble. This method of passing secret or coded messages was frequently used in times of religious persecution during the Tudor period and probably for centuries before that, and was still being used during the 17th century English Civil War. A band of folded paper was easily concealed in a thimble, which, even in a room crowded with people, a woman could causally set on table for the recipient to pick up, or it could be slipped into a work basket. Even the decoration on the thimble itself could be used as a coded message.

But the practising of concealing things in thimbles has a much older origin and is linked to what the thimble has come to symbolise. 

Thimbles have been excavated from ancient Chinese sites dating as far back as the 206BC to 220CE, as well as from Roman sites, such as Herculaneum and Pompeii, buried when Vesuvius erupted in 79CE. 

Copper-alloy thimble ring c. 1400-1600
Found in East Sussex
Photo: Andy Stanley
The Portable Antiques Scheme/
The Trustees of the British Museum

In the Middle Ages, most thimbles made from brass or copper alloy and were used by men, women and children. For sewing coarse cloth, they used topless thimble rings, pressing the needle with the side of the finger, and for finer cloth and embroidery, they used bee-hive shaped thimbles. 

By Tudor times, the giving of elaborately decorated thimbles as a lover’s token or an occasion gift was well established. These were often engraved with initials, coats of arms, and mottos, or decorated with emblems in the forms of birds, flowers and animals. Queen Elizabeth bestowed thimbles studded with precious stones on her favoured ladies-in-waiting.

C. 1708, a child's silver  thimble
with machine made circular punch marks
Photo: Kult Adams, Bristol City Museum
The Portable Antiques Scheme/
The Trustees of the British Museum

In 1693, John Lofting, a Dutch thimble manufacturer set up a thimble factory in Islington, in London, England, before moving his production to Buckinghamshire to take advantage of water-power. He was able to turn out two million thimbles per year, such was the demand. 

But thimbles had become far more than tools for sewing, they had taken on symbolic meanings too. Traditionally, a ring, a coin and a thimble are baked into a wedding cake for guests to share. The person who gets a ring will find happiness. The one who gets the coin will become wealthy, but the one who gets the thimble with remain unwed, a ‘spinster.’ The same applied, if a girl was gifted three thimbles, presumably because that meant she’d had three suitors and had not settled for any of them. 

'First Sun' by Camille Martin (1861-1898)
Photo: Vassil
Museum of Fine Arts of Nancy

The more important meaning of thimble, though, was protection and good fortune. A thimble is one of the most common objects metal detectorists unearth in fields and gardens. Many were simply lost there. At harvest time, field hands often wore thimbles to protect their hands when binding straw, and women and children would join menfolk for the harvest, and continued to sew or mend while resting from the heat of the day. So many thimbles were probably mislaid. But some seemed to have been deliberately placed in the earth, and contain scrolls of paper, grains of cereals, hazelnuts, crystals, and pebbles, many found with scraps of cloth inside. Some of these clothes, of course, would have been rags used as padding to keep the thimble snug to the finger, but not all. 

Since thimbles symbolised protection, if a woman was anxious about a son going off to war, a daughter giving birth, or a lover on a sea voyage, she’d write their name on a piece of paper and tuck it into a thimble, which she’d then bury in the earth to protect them. If she couldn’t write, she’d use some scrap belonging to the person, such as a strip cut from a garment or a fragment of something they'd used, even a piece of a consecrated wafer from Mass.

Copper- alloy thimble c.1400-1600
Found on the Isle of Wight
Photo: Frank Basford, Isle of White Council
The Portable Antiques Scheme/
The Trustees of the British Museum

The thimble could also be used to protect the whole household from the plague, or as a prayer for a good harvest. So, while thimbles unearthed with a grain of wheat or corn in them can simply be the result of them being lost during harvesting, sometimes a grain of corn might have been put inside deliberately. 

Often too something red would be added – a red bead, rowan berry or red thread to keep what was inside safe, and ensure it couldn’t be taken by evil spirits to cause harm. In a curious blending of the two superstitions, some years ago, I was thrilled to be given two Victorian silver thimbles by an elderly lady, which were tied together by a red cord. But I was warned never to cut or untie the red cord or tie a third thimble to the cord, for fear of bad luck.

Right up until the 1940’s, the tradition was that if a wife of a famer or farmworker died, a strip of cloth cut from her dress would be stuffed into her thimble and thrown out on to the field where she had worked. If a corpse of a woman was proving difficult to get inside a coffin because of stiffness or size, it was said that if her thimble was cast into the coffin first, her body would follow easily.

A Nürnberg thimble
Cast brass 14th Century
Photo: Llangefni

So if you are lucky enough to dig up an old thimble in your garden, do check carefully inside it before you wash the mud out.

If want to discover more, a good starting point is thimbles (colchestertreasurehunting.co.uk). It has a fascinating piece on the history of European thimbles, including why ‘Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. sent spies to Nürnberg to steal the secret of the thimble making,’ together with some excellent photographs of thimbles found in fields and gardens, dating from 12th century onwards to help you date yours.

'In And Out The Dusty Bluebells' by Karen Maitland

In the last few weeks, people have been flocking to see the wonderful bluebell woods in Devon, where the carpet of flowers spreads beneath the trees like a violet-blue mist. I heard one visitor say, the bluebell wood was ‘an enchanting place’. They thought so too in the Middle Ages, but unlike the 21st century visitor, they did not mean it was beautiful, they regarded bluebell woods as places of sinister and dangerous bewitchment.

Bluebells were harvested as early in the Bronze Age, for the gluey sap which was used to fixed feathers to arrow shafts. During the Tudor period, bluebell sap was used as starch to stiffen muslin and the immense ruffs worn by the Elizabethans. It was used as a glue in bookbinding, because the poisonous sap also discouraged insects from attacking the books. In the Middle Ages, bluebells were thought to be a cure for leprosy, consumption, snake bites and spider bites. Bluebells could prevent nightmares if the flowers were threaded and hung over the bed. But whatever you needed bluebells for, you never went to collect them alone.

Photo: Dr Richard Murray

Bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta)

A child who picked bluebells alone would be spirited away by the fairy folk, never to be seen again. Even an adult who ventured into a bluebell wood by themselves was in mortal danger. They would be pixie-led, and forced to wander round and round, unable to find their way out, until they died of exhaustion, unless someone else entered the wood, thereby breaking the enchantment, and guided the bewildered victim home. Bluebells were known as Deadmen’s bells, because whoever hears them ringing, is listening to their own death knell and will be taken by a malicious spirit within weeks.

Pig trapped by his nightmares of goblins.

From 'The Fairy Caravan.' (1929)

Illustration by Beatrix Potter

The much-loved children’s author, Beatrix Potter, makes great use of these old superstitions in her only full-length novel for older children The Fairy Caravan (1929). In the novel, the circus characters have to travel through a small bluebell wood, Pringle Wood, and are warned not to eat anything they find there because they will never leave if they do. Even though most heed the warning, they still find themselves going round in circles for hours, until the pony pulling the caravan almost collapses with exhaustion. The pig, who naturally disobeys the injunction, is trapped in a hollow tree by his own hallucinations and is only finally rescued by the pony who protects himself with fern seed plaited in his mane, which was a amulet that medieval travellers used to render themselves and their horses invisible to evil spirits. The pony also asks the blacksmith to reverse his horseshoes. Again, people thought that by reversing your clothes and wearing a garment inside out you could break enchantment or a run of bad luck.

Pony searching the bluebell wood for pig.

From 'The Fairy Caravan' (1929)

Illustration by Beatrix Potter

Bluebells are highly poisonous, and when not in flower the bulbs can be easily mistaken for ramsons or wild garlic, which often grows in the same habitat, so the warning that you might never leave the bluebell wood if you ate anything there was probably sound advice.

Whenever I see a bluebell wood, I am reminded me of a circle game we used to play as children in the sixties.

"In and out the dusty bluebells,
In and out the dusty bluebells,
In and out the dusty bluebells,
Who will be my master?

Tipper-ipper-apper on your shoulder
Tipper-ipper-apper on your shoulder
Tipper-ipper-apper on your shoulder
I am your master now."

In some versions, they are called ‘dusky’ bluebells or ‘Scottish’ bluebells. There is much speculation about the age of this song. Some say that it refers to the hiring fairs that took place around April-May, but a group of country children in the 1900’s reported that ‘the master’ in the song was the sinister Fairy King, who like the pied piper, would lead unwary children dancing into the underworld, from which there was no return. This is probably not, of course, the original meaning of the game, but it is interesting that Edwardian children were still aware of the ancient superstition.

Other common beliefs were that if you placed a garland of bluebells on someone you wanted to question, they would be compelled to tell the truth. Perhaps the sweetest one is if you manage to turn one of the flowers inside out without tearing it, you will eventually win the one you love. Again, it is the act of physically reversing an object, which turns or reverse your fortune. The task also requires patience and gentleness, two qualities which might well help a young lad or lass win the heart of any future lover. Either that, or it took so long to master the art, you might well have stopped fancying the person by then, which solved the problem.

Witch Marks and Curses: The Rituals of Protection by Catherine Hokin

In the midst of all the Halloween madness around crazed-clown sightings (surely a PR stunt for the forthcoming Stephen King movie) and poor-taste celebrity costumes, my eye was caught this year by a request from Historic England for help with searching out some rather specialist graffiti. The patterns they are looking for date from between the the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, can be found on both homes and churches and may be marks made by the builders or occupants to deter witches.

 The Norfolk and Suffolk Medieval Graffiti Survey

We are a superstitious lot when it comes to guarding home and hearth.These marks (known as apotropaic from the Greek word for turning evil spirits away) are part of a long tradition of charms and curses stretching across cultures and centuries designed to keep homes and places of religious significance safe. The Japanese ofuda, charms written on paper and blessed at a Shinto shrine, date back to at least the seventeenth century Edo period. A nazar, a blue and white teardrop-shaped amulet, is a common sight outside homes across Turkey and Greece and is a legacy of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Chinese door gods, or menshen, have been displayed on the entrances to temples and homes since the pre-AD Han Dynasty and any self-respecting house in Ancient Egypt would be guarded by the goddess Bast, depicted as a black cat.

 Daisy Wheels in Stratford, Nicholas Molyneau

Apotropaic witch marks seems to be an English phenomenon and Historic England's treasure hunt request is directed particularly at secular buildings: although witch marks have been discovered on homes, these have, to date, been far less catalogued than those discovered at churches. So where do you look and what are you looking for if you decide to try and wean the teenagers of hunting for Pokemon? Witch marks of the type Historic England are hoping to catalogue are usually concentrated around entrance points such as doors, fireplaces and windows which are deemed as vulnerable to malevolent incursions. Marks can be in the shape of pentacles (sometimes lying on top of demons), inter-twined Vs and Ms for the Virgin Mary or, most commonly, compass-drawn hexfoils or 'daisy-wheels'. Whatever the shape, they do appear to share the characteristic of being formed from endless lines: apparently demons follow the lines and then get trapped, a plot device which a lot of films seem to have over-looked. Sites where marks have been found include Shakespeare's birthplace in Stratford, in roof beams at the Tower of London and carved into the timbers of a room prepared for a visit by King James I (a man obsessed with witches to an unhealthy degree) at Knole House in Kent. 

The scratchings are certainly intriguing although their association with deliberate attempts to ward off evil spirits is not a given: they could simply be marks made by masons to show how and where stones or timbers should be fitted or the product of apprentices learning the geometry needed for their craft. Perhaps, as with many superstitions, they started as one thing and became another. Whatever the truth of these marks, a belief has grown up around them that they exist as a protective measure, a belief it is not hard to understand in the context of communities living in genuine fear of witchcraft and in homes far darker than anything we can imagine in these days of instant light.  

The urge to guard against danger or ill-luck is part of the fabric of our buildings and some superstitions of the past still linger. Few of us, for example, would raise an eyebrow at a horseshoe nailed above a door, even if we no longer believe iron has the power to repel witches. Niels Bohr, the Danish scientist who basically sorted out quantum physics for the rest of us, had one on his house and, when asked if he believed it brought luck allegedly replied: of course not but I have been reliably informed it will bring me luck whether I believe it or not. It's a line of thinking many are probably still happy to follow, although I imagine most would draw the line at a horseshoe rather than employing the full range of charms available to our ancestors.

 Witch Bottle, Portable Antiquities Scheme

A fear of magic implies a belief in its power. While witch marks and horseshoes are visible signs that a house is protected, some of the other methods used were far more secretive, perhaps because they had 'magic' in their creation. Repelling a witch is one thing, to be accused of being one yourself in the doing would be rather unfortunate. The stoppered vessels known as witch bottles for example, which have been discovered bricked inside walls particularly in houses in East Anglia, could be classed as a form of magic fly trap. The bottles were intended to trap the witch who threatened the home-owner and contained mixtures of pins (to catch the evil), red wine (to drown it) and rosemary (to cleanse it away). If the identity of the witch was known, adding a personal touch, such as their urine or finger parings, made the magic doubly strong. Other, perhaps less dangerous, charms included fashioning the lintels over windows and doors from rowan wood and concealing shoes in the rafters and the hearth - this latter superstition apparently stemmed from the story of a priest in the thirteenth century who once trapped the devil in a boot. For the finishing touch, a mummified cat could be placed in the chimney breast - possibly an inversion of witchcraft as it uses the traditional witch's familiar to repel the danger.

Inverted name -  Norfolk Medieval Graffiti Survey

Protection is one thing but sometimes a stronger response to danger was required and charms gave way to curses. Examples of curses, essentially an inversion of magic/evil, have also been found in and around both church and domestic buildings. Curses which may be intended to direct the evil back at its perpetrator rather than merely block it do not need to be complex: witch marks have been discovered which are, apparently deliberately, incomplete, for example with a missing petal. Some curses, however, are very specifically directed: Roman-style curses in which the targeted person's name and the details of the damage to be inflicted have been found on church walls, including at Norwich Cathedral. The writing is corrupted, being inverted with the letters jumbled, hence the assumption that these are curses.

Many of us feel like we are currently living in dark days. Whatever the truth of these marks, and no matter how difficult it is to really 'read' their intentions, they offer a fascinating insight into a world where fear of external dangers was just as real and the need to guard against them perhaps no different to our gated communities and lives lived under the shadow of CCTV. If this has wetted your appetite, Matthew Champion's wonderful book Medieval Graffiti: The Lost Voices of England's Churches is a really good read.

Happy hunting...

The Green Children of Woolpit: Superstitions Past and Present by Catherine Hokin

There's been a bit of a trend on social media recently for parents posting back-to-school pictures of their offspring. I'm not sure a snap of my 21 year old lugging beer back to Manchester would be quite so edifying but his return to university did get me thinking about my study days (at the same place - many veils have been drawn). His last week at home was marked by much amusement over my
old (typewritten) history notes and thesis and a walk around our local area that showed how close our past really is to our present.

 Medieval Votive Objects Exeter Cathedral

My over-confident undergraduate ramblings were centred on politics, witchcraft and superstition in medieval England. The main thrust was the treatment of women but there was also a chapter on votive objects.These examples of medieval piety can be found at all the great 'tourist' pilgrimage stopping points across England and Europe and have their roots in practices stretching as far back as the human need to look at the world around them and search for answers to unsolvable problems. Votives can be separated into two kinds: 'thank you' objects for a prayer answered, often hearts stamped with the letters VFGA (Votum Fecit, Gratiam Accepit, a vow was made and grace was obtained); requests for help, particularly to cure sickness and in the form of wax figures or body parts.

This practice has not died out and votives can still be seen in Catholic countries and, perhaps more surprisingly, in Scottish woods.  

 The Fairy House

 Doonhill Fairy Trail

The Doonhill Fairy Trail, just outside the town of Aberfoyle, seems at first sight to be a whimsical thing. The first marker you meet as you follow the signs to the trail is a cutely carved house and a whole collection of little fairy figurines and pixies dotted about the tree roots. So far so tongue-in-cheek and we were quite giggly by the time we reached the fairy clearing at the top. What greeted us there was very unexpected and enough to quieten our mixed and, let's be honest, cynical group. The whole glade was covered in rag trees, something I had read about in my early research but never seen. These votive sites have an ancient history in Scotland and Ireland and many similarities with the medieval Christian practice of asking for aid in times of trouble: strips of cloth, sometimes from the sick person's clothing or from cloth used to wash the affected part, are tied to the tree and, as the rag disintegrates, the affliction is meant to fade away. We spent quite a while in the glade, it is hard not to, reading the messages accompanying the ribbons and what was particularly fascinating was the range of beliefs addressed, sometimes fairies and more traditional religions implored in the same small letter. Writers of historical fiction, myself included, often say that people don't change, times do - standing in that clearing, feeling years of human helplessness in the face of an uncontrollable world stretching from the present to a very distant past, there was no arguing with the truth of that.

 Battle of Mortimer's Cross

Some superstitions stay just that, some get unpicked by history and explained. The three suns which apparently appeared in the sky at dawn on the morning of the Battle of Mortimer's Cross in 1461 can be explained nowadays as the meteorological phenomenon known as a parhelion: a pair of bright spots appearing horizontally on each side of the sun, often with a halo-like glow. To the soldiers waiting to fight it was simply frightening; to the Yorkist leaders it was a wonderful propaganda opportunity, a living symbol of the Holy Trinity and proof that God was on their side. I am currently researching the twelfth century, a time when 'pagan' beliefs and stories were still closely inter-woven with the Christian teachings that had overlaid them. A prevailing belief was in an underworld inhabited by 'faerie folk' - an 'otherworld' reached through caves or underwater which existed side-by-side with our world and could intrude into ours, eg. at midsummer. The folk who lived here were often thought to be green-coloured and the colour green frequently appears in myths such as the Green Man and the Arthur stories.

 The Sussex Wolfpits

In the middle of the twelfth century, during the chaotic civil war period known as The Anarchy, it seems the faerie world wandered into ours. Two near contemporary chronicles (the Historia rerum Anglicarum and the Chronicum Anglicanum) report the story of two children found wandering in Thetford Forest near the village of Woolpit, by the wolfpits which give the village its name. The boy and girl had green skin, spoke a language no one could understand and wore odd clothing. The children were taken to the house of Richard de Calne where all attempts to feed them failed until the children found some bean pods which they ate, continuing to eat only these for many months until they could be induced to eat bread and other foods. This added to the mystery surrounding them as beans had associations with food eaten by the dead. When the children eventually learned English, they talked of living in a dark land where the sun never shone and everything was green. The boy died within a year of being found but the girl survived and has been, possibly, identified as Agnes Barre who worked as a servant for de Calne and eventually married a royal official, Richard Barre. The Chronicum Anglicanum describes her as "very wanton and impudent" but this may simply be to underscore her strange heritage as faeries were commonly associated with lascivious behaviour.

Woolpit

In 1998, historian Paul Harris put forward the theory that the children were Flemish, hence the strange language, had fled into the forest after their parents had been slaughtered and lived there, either in the dark undergrowth or in the miles of ancient mine workings in the area, until they were found. Some of his reasoning about the children's Flemish origin has been questioned but what I found interesting was his explanation for the children's colour. When they were found, they were very malnourished and only recognised bean pods, which they would have encountered variations of in the forest, as food. His theory is that the children were suffering from what was known at the time as 'green-sickness' or what we know today as hypochromic anemia which is caused by a diet very deficient in iron and protein and causes the skin to have a markedly green tinge. Given that the chronicles state that both children, once they began to tolerate a wider range of food, lost the green colour and turned pink, this seems like a logical explanation. Not green children then, just very sick ones.

The superstitions of the past are fascinating things as is the science that unpicks them. The lesson of the Doonhill Fairy Trail, however, suggests that even our increased understanding of the world can't totally unpick us: scratch the surface and we're all still mentally throwing salt, crossing our fingers and wishing.

HISTORY IN THE MAKING, by Vanora Bennett

Being a part of history in the making is never comfortable. 

I learned that in my previous life as a foreign reporter, covering the various coups, conflicts, and crises that afflicted the people whose countries I was working in.

In those days I was usually in a foreigners’ bubble (with my finances and livelihood protected, a safe place to live, and a British embassy down the road), so I was a bit less bothered than everyone around me by whatever shock news was in the headlines that day. But still, there was something both utterly gripping and utterly boring about having to live through whatever the crisis was, in real time, rather than look back on it through a book or film.

It felt as though time itself started behaving in unpredictable ways when a crisis set in.

First it would race along – and someone’s career or life or a whole country would be gone before you’d had time to draw breath. But then things would slow agonisingly down. The rest of the story always took so long to unfold. You’d need to wait for the next day, or week, or month, for the next instalment, resignation, currency collapse, invasion, or whatever. 

And you’d need to fill the hours by worrying through the night, or fretting with friends about what would happen next, or doing the ironing or making breakfast, all the time itching with the enforced passivity of not being able to fast-forward to the happy-ever-after bit where it all finally gets sorted out.

I have since discovered, on starting to write historical novels, that one of the ways in which being a fiction writer is incomparably superior to being either a journalist or a person actually living through a public crisis is that you never need to live through the boring bits. You’re looking back, so you are in control of time, and have the power to just jump your characters from one speeded-up action moment in history to the next. The slow times are left out as if they never happened – at most, abbreviated to three dots.

Now, I think it’s safe to say most people in this country haven’t personally experienced major historical crisis, even if historical novelists do it vicariously all the time. But living through the past few weeks of Brexit Britain keeps reminding me of how bewildering time can feel when you’re in the grip of one - when reality starts doing that speeding-up-and-slowing-down thing, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

First came the time-flashing-forward bit. On referendum night, my very political teenager, who’d wanted to watch the whole vote-counting drama play out and the result be announced, finally conked out at 4am. We woke him up at 8 and told him that Britain had voted for Brexit and the Prime Minister had just resigned. “WOTTT,” he said disconsolately. He’d only been asleep for four hours, yet he’d missed the moment when his world had changed.

“Now what?” he said, once he had recovered. We couldn’t tell him. We didn’t know, any more than anyone else. And, for all the millions of words spoken and written about it in the weeks since, we’re none the wiser now. Because now we’re in the slow-motion bit. Waiting.

I think part of what felt so bleakly funny about the cropper Boris’n’Gove came more recently was the speed with which it happened. No need to wait for a punchline, it was on us almost before we’d heard the beginning of the joke. 

Another quick thing happening at last, hoorah! At last, something we could understand without waiting forever to get to the end of the story! At last, a break in the tension! 

I think part of the belly-laugh the nation gave was in sheer relief.

But it's worn off. Slo-mo is back. I’ve returned to fretting on Facebook and scouring the papers for clues, omens and portents, waiting for the next convulsion in the bigger real-life drama. 

I can’t help feeling that I’m behaving as foolishly as those fearful or exultant crowds that get an occasional three-line mention in historical novels, frantically checking out the comets or mumbling superstitiously about giant fish in the Thames while, centre stage, Henry VIII shrugs off Wife One and pulls out of Rome. 

But I can’t help it. Time – real time, not the time we novelists have the luxury of rearranging in our work – is hanging heavy on my hands, just as it did on those people’s. There is history in the air. And there’s nothing else to do.

Vanora Bennett's website

NIGHTJAR AKA THE GOATSUCKER, by Jane Borodale

‘Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-notes unvaried,

Brooding o’er the gloom, spins the brown eve-jar.’ George Meredith

Caprimulgus europaeus

It’s an obvious thing to say, but some aspects of the past are utterly gone. But every now and then we’re lucky enough to get a fleeting, unexpected taste of what the past might have been like, a tiny hint or reminder – what the painter Winifred Nicholson might have called ‘glimpses through’. I had one of those moments yesterday, when I heard a nightjar.

I’d just gone out to shut the henhouse for the night and was watching a bat flicker across the open space between the hedge and wood. Dusk in May is so deliciously fresh – every evening a little longer, a little more promisingly nearly-summer, and here was a nightjar as well – what a bonus. Tantalisingly, I had to wait for quiet stretches between the noise of passing traffic to listen properly to this strange voice from the past, calling from a time when such things were plentiful in the countryside…

The European nightjar (Caprimulgus europaeus) is a nocturnal summer visitor from warmer places. Although on the increase again, they number just over 4600 breeding pairs in the UK.

It isn’t hard to understand why this modest, reclusive, mysterious bird became associated with the uncanny. Its associated myths pre-date Aristotle, who recorded them, and throughout Europe folklore insisted that the nightjar stole milk from goats’ udders – earning it the name Goatsucker, by which it’s known in many places, from Spain to Russia. Other country names in Britain include ‘Flying–toad’, ‘Fern-owl’, ‘Night-hawk’ and ‘Moth-owl’, which seems exactly right, given that it must surely be the nearest thing to a moth one could ever see in bird-form.

Infrequently seen as they sleep during the day (unless you stumble upon a female sitting on her eggs on the ground), but its appearance lends itself easily to legend. The nightjar has wide, black eyes that shine like a cat’s if caught in torchlight. It has camouflaging, mottled brown feathers like lichen, or a reptile. Its pink gape opens very wide for swallowing large moths, craneflies, chafers and dor-beetles, and the beak is surrounded by bristles, presumably to more efficiently hoover up supper on the wing.

It looks, in short, like a cross between a cuckoo, a moth and a catfish. It is very agile in flight, and has a peculiar serrated middle claw which it uses for preening.

It is also called ‘Corpse Fowl’ and ‘Puckeridge’ – nightjars were also wrongly accused of pecking the hides of cattle and causing the disease called puckeridge (a condition caused by the warble fly which lays its eggs under the skin’s surface).

Naturalist and curate Gilbert White (1720-93) in his Hampshire parish of Selborne often recorded the presence of nightjars or fern-owls, and noted:

‘The country people have a notion that the fern owl … is very injurious to to weanling calves … [but] the least observation and attention would convince men that these birds neither injure the goatherd nor the grazier, but are perfectly harmless and subsist alone on night insects. … Nor does it anywise appear how they can … inflict any harm among kine, unless they possess the powers of animal magnetism, and can affect them by fluttering over them.’

He says ruefully that:

‘It is the hardest thing in the world to shake off superstitious prejudices: they are sucked in as it were with our mother’s milk … and make the most lasting impressions, become so interwoven into our very constitutions, that the strongest good sense is required to disengage ourselves from them.’

In Yorkshire nightjars were said to be the souls of unbaptised children, condemned to wander the world forever.

Poets love the nightjar, occupying as it does that crepuscular, liminal half-place between day and night where changes happen. Dylan Thomas mentions it in his poem ‘Fern Hill, and Wordsworth describes it like this: ‘The Night-hawk is singing his frog-like tune/ Twirling his watchman’s rattle about.’ (Though he later changed the lines to the rather vaguer: ‘The buzzing Dor-hawk round and round is wheeling.’) Poet and naturalist Charlotte Smith (1749-1806) wrote, ‘While, by the lingering light, I scarcely discern/The shrieking night-jar sail on heavy wing.’ John Clare (1793-1864) mentions it frequently.

The warm undulating churring of its song sounds almost mechanical, like an old Singer sewing machine, or a spinning wheel; or crickets. John Clare described it in a letter as ‘a trembling sort of crooing noise’. The male call is the churring one, at 1,900 notes per minute, which it can sustain for several minutes at a time.

To hear it for yourself, click here to go to a sample recording (Xeno-canto: Sharing Bird Sounds From Around The World).

Listening to the nightjar’s song in the field produces a peculiar sensation – as if the ground itself were vibrating inside your head, almost felt rather than heard, and very hard to pinpoint in terms of location – the nightjar seems to throw its voice like a ventriloquist. If you didn’t know what it was, or if you were fairly steeped in superstition as a way of life, your blood might well momentarily run cold with the eerieness of it. It’s a fabulous, spooky bird. If only there were more. Bring back the nightjar!

Can anyone think of any other wild creature so unfairly maligned?


www.janeborodale.com