On the Legendary Traditions of the County of Durham, particularly those connected with its Ancient Families.
By William Hylton Longstaffe.
No. II
[…] Let us now examine carefully the traditions anent to that most famous goblin of this class which has become popular enough to cause Sam. Roxby to introduce it in a melo-drama intituled The Cauld Lad of Hilton.
He was seldom seen, but was heard nightly by the servants who slept in the great hall, the scene of his pranks being the kitchen. Partaking of the perpetual crackiness of the family he haunted, he amused himself by throwing an orderly kitchen into complete confusion, breaking plates and dishes, turning tables over, and hurling the pewter in all directions with immense satisfaction, strongly resembling a Brownie that infested another old house in the county (whose locality I decline to specify, not having any wish in these sketches to depreciate property), and that had a fancy for waving the bed curtains of sickened maidens to and fro’, and made noises as if all the tables in the house were tumbling over.
Again, one of the names which Gervase gives to his goblin folletas (the modern French follet, a diminuitive of the old French fols, fou), signifies the little madcap, and may refer both to his simplicity and his pranks. The follets of Gervase haunted generally the houses of country people, whence neither holy water nor exorcism could expel them. They were invisible like the Cauld Lad, and also, like him, made known their arrival by throwing about stones, and wood, and even the pots and kettles.
One night, however, a happy discovery was made. The kitchen by some accident had been left in disarray, and in the morning the servants found that the lad had modified his labours to the circumstances. The apartment was neat as an old maid’s parlour, and, of course, a practice attended with such a happy result was adopted ever after.
Still notwithstanding the good nature of this poor harmless creature, who like the Scotch Brownies took a pleasure in discharging the task which he thought would be acceptable to the family, he was considered a somewhat uncanny sort of labourer, and the servants resolved to banish him from his long-loved haunts. But like the sparrow, who said,
Oh no! —- I won’t make a stew, And my giblets shan’t make you a little pie too,
the Cauld Lad had an inkling of their intentions, and was frequently heard to exclaim in the dead of the night, in melancholy strain, the following consolatory stanzas: –
Wae’s me! Wae’s me!! The acorn is not yet Fallen from the tree, That’s to grow the wood That’s to make the cradle That’s to rock the bairn That’s to grow to a man That’s to lay me.
However he counted without his host, for, the offer of anything beyond a slight dish of something to drink, infallibly causes the disappearance of a Brownie for ever. On one occasion a Brownie, in an interesting emergency, mounted his master’s best horse, swam the Tweed in flood, and recrossed it with the midwife en croupe, (nearly killing the horse, by the way); he then found the lingering domestic who was only drawing on his boots and horsewhipped him right sore. The master imprudently rewarded this important service by the present of a green coat which he understood the Brownie wished, and lost his faithful sprite for ever. The Hyltonians adopted similar measures.
A prescriptive right to the kitchen fire is a cherished possession of these “lubber fiends.” The Portunes of Gervase joined in the house labour, and as their only reward claimed a share of the warmth from the evening hearth, at which they would appear as soon as the doors were shut, warming their aged limbs (for they appeared like very small men with aged countenances) and eating meanwhile little frogs, which they drew from their bosoms and toasted on the embers. They talked with great freedom, and so did the Brownies, for one night, when some Scotch servants protracted their vigils to an unreasonable hour, the Brownie appeared at the door, and warned them to bed “Gang a’ to your beds, sirs, and dinna put out the wee grieshoch” (glowing embers).
In like manner, the anonymous Durham sprite before alluded to, thought nothing of telling the establishment “to go to bed,” and Milton’s fiend in “L’Allegro,” – “stretch’d out all the chimney’s length, Basked at the fire his hairy strength.”
But to my tale. The Hylton domestics laid a green cloak and hood before the kitchen fire, and sat up watching at a prudent distance. At 12 o’clock the sprite glided in, stood by the glowing embers, and surveyed the garments very attentively, tried them on, seemed well satisfied with the figure he cut, and frisked about for some time in great delight, cutting several summersets and gambadoes. Milton’s fiend vanished “ere the first cock his matin rang” but the Lad was so charmed that he stayed in his friskings till he heard the first cock, when he twitched his mantle tight about him, and disappeared with the usual valediction:
Here’s a cloke, and here’s a hood. The cauld lad o Hylton will do no more good.
Another version of the story is that the Cauld Lad being colder than usual one night asked the cook for the cloke and hood to keep him in decent temperature, and she laid them accordingly for him the next evening. The following morning there was found written on the table:
I’ve taken your cloke, I’ve taken your hood. The cowed lad of Hylton will do no more good.
[…]
Still, non obstante all the cloke and hood doings, the Cauld Lad has a posthumous history. The “Cauld Lad’s room” was ever deserted save when the Castle in the last Baron’s palmy days was full of company, and within the last century many persons worthy of credence, heard at midnight the Cauld Lad’s unearthly wailings. Indeed to this day some think he may be met with.
An old quondam inhabitant of this most uncanny Castle used to tell fearsome tales about his doings. One night she saw the Cauld Lad (“aye – that was the night, Sir”) – looking in between some shutters which did not fit close. – “Well, and what was he like?” – “Why, Sir, he hadn’t a head.” Headless phantoms are so common, that I need not comment upon them, but how they can look into a room is a mystery.
William Howitt was also told at the Castle that the Lad had no head. Some twelve years ago, old Mrs Fitzpatrick, the keeping of the castle, was collecting subscriptions for laying the Cauld Lad. It seemed that a priest once exorcised him for some years, and nailed as many nails in a door as the number of years was for which he had laid him. The last nail was about to drop, and the “very ancient woman” was dreadfully alarmed for the consequences. The rhyme “Wae’s me!”&c., mayhap relates to this matter rather than the cloke and hood story.
A Dr. Wood once rented the Castle for a school, and his scholars revived by their practical jokes all the antique traditions. Long after the cloke experiment, servants one after another deserted the house from frights they had received, especially a dairy-maid, who fell in love with richest milk and cream, and saluted them with mickle more than “kisses three.” One day she had been sipping with a spoon from various pans, when the Cauld Lad suddenly but invisibly bent over her shoulder, and said “Ye taste, and ye taste, and ye taste, but ye never gie the Cauld Lad a taste!” Whereupon she dropped the spoon, in a mortal fright rushed from the house and never again would cross its threshold.
There seems some connection in the Lad’s remark with the stories about his fraternity: – “how the drudging goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn, That ten day labourers could not end.”
Formerly every family in the Shetland Isles was haunted by one of these useful spirits, to whom they gave slight offerings, thus some when they churned or brewed, poured a little milk and wort through the hole of a stone called the Browny’s stone. Below the three chapels in the Island of Valay, Martin mentions a flat thin stone, called Brownie’s Stone, upon which the ancient inhabitants offered a cow’s milk every Sunday. The dish of cream was indeed the Brownie’s usual guerdon. King James in his Daemonology mentions how “some were so blinded as to believe that their house was all the sonsier, as they called it, that such spirits resorted there.”
The idea of a labouring sprite has thus been traced from the 12th century or earlier to the present day, but in both the Hylton and anonymous sprites of Durham, a modern murder and ghost story have been grafted on the older superstition. […]
The Hylton lad’s origin is told in a very manifold manner. Hutchinson mentions a record which I have not seen. “7th Fox. pardon of Sir Will. Hilton, of all murders, misdemeanors, &c.” Surtees hints that the story may originate in the fact recorded in the following inquest:-
Before John King, coroner of Chester Ward, at Hilton, 3 Jul, 7 Jac., 1609. Inquest on view of the body of Roger Skelton, there lying dead. The Jurors present that Robert Hilton, of Hilton, gent., the day and year aforesaid, between the hours of 8 and 9 in the forenoon, cutting grass (a then lordly occupation, it would seem) with a syth of the value of 20d. which he held in his hands as the said Roger was standing behind, unfortunately with the syth point struck upon the right thight of the same Roger one mortal wound 1 inch long and 2 inches broad, of which wound the same Roger, that same hour, in that place, died, and that by this cause and none other, &c.
“Nevertheless,” says he, “I strongly suspect that the unhousel’d spirit of Roger Skelton, ‘whom in the hay-field the good Hylton ghosted,’ took the liberty of playing a few of those pranks, which are said by writers of grave authority, to be the peculiar privilege of those spirits only who are shouldered untimely by violence from their mortal tenements: – Ling’ring in anguish o’er his mangled clay, The melancholy shadow turn’d away, And follow’d through the twilight grey – his guide.
A free pardon for the above manslaughter appears on the rolls of Bishop James, dated 6th Sept., 1609.”
One of the popular origins of the apparition is that it is an unfortunate domestic, whom one of the old chiefs of Hylton slew at some very distant period, in a moment of wrath or intemperance. The Baron had, it seems, on an important occasion, ordered his horse, which was not brought out so soon as he expected; he went to the stable, found the boy loitering, and seizing a hayfork, struck him, though not intentionally, a mortal blow. The story adds, that he covered his victim with straw till night, and then threw him into the poind, where the skeleton of a boy was (in confirmation of the tale) discovered in the last Baron’s time.
The country people, however, have other ideas of the Cauld Lad. The woman who showed Wm. Howitt the house, on arriving at a certain chamber, pointed to a cupboard over the door, and said, “that is the place where they used to put the Cauld Lad.” He replied, “to which he used to retreat, you mean.” “No, no,” reiterated she pertinaciously, “where they used to put him.” In her story, he was a boy, that on some account had been treated cruelly, and kept in confinement in this cupboard, where, no doubt, says he, in the winter, he acquired the unenviable epithet of the Cauld Lad.
The Lad had no head! and Howitt states that a lady well acquainted with the language and superstitions of the north opined that his true name was the Cowed Lad, (and it must be confessed this is the usual pronunciation near Hylton) that is the lad with his head cut off, or at least with his hair cut very close, for so in Northumberland they call a person so disfigured, “Why, how they have cow’d ye,” and this view would take the murder to a sword rather than a scythe or fork.
Another interpretation is that it means the Cow-land or Cow-herd lad, i.e. the Baron’s cow keeper. Cold is, however, the more likely word: cowd is only a dialectic synonym of cold or cauld, in the same way as Boldon is pronounced Bowdon. Cauld is cold, dead, the cauld lad is, therefore, the dead lad agreeing with the superstition. We learn in Relation 16 of Glanvil’s Collection that the hand of a ghost is as “cold as a clod,” and in the celebrated ballad of William and Margaret are the lines: “And clay-cold was her lily hand, That held her sable shroud,” – an unusual variation from the usual white covering of ghosts; while in Northumberland “caud deed,” cold dead, is a very common redundancy.
A more marvellous narration still is that one of the Miss Hyltons once fell in love with the lad when living, at the whilk, the Baron, when he found the pair in the Cauld Lad’s room was so irate that he locked her up in the closet and fed her there on bread and water – in fact at last starved her to death. The Cauld Lad was murdered for the transaction, and left his indelible blood spots on the floor of the apartment. This grossly improbable story is oddly connected with the family portraits at Hylton, which consisted of a series of short round companionable looking faces. The last Baron, in a suit of blue and gold, occupied the panel above the fire-place in the deserted dining-room, a fair flaxen-haired, pleasant looking gentleman, with a mild composed countenance and the blue eyes of the Saxon. All the portraits bore a striking resemblance to each other. One in particular represented a lady, young and handsome, of whom, strange to say, there was presented another portrait exhibiting her in a state of mental derangement. “Oh! I am altered since you saw me last, And time has written strange misfeatures on my cheek; that rosy blush lap’t in a lily veil, Is now with morphew overgrown and pale.” – These two remarkable pictures are stated in popular belief to have represented the Cauld Lad’s ladye-love.
The Cauld Lad is said to have existed in earthly wise at a much more recent date than is generally supposed. Old Mrs Booth, of Monkwearmouth, who died aged 70, some 20 years ago, said that the Cauld Lad was living in her great grandmother’s time, and from what I have been able to make out in the Hylton country, he was in truth nothing more than a domestic fool, (which the family always kept up even to the last Baron,) who continually pestered the establishment with his fooleries.
One day, when the river was very high, three gentlemen on horseback opposite asked the Lad who was standing on the Hylton side, if it was fordable, he replied Yes. They then asked if anything had passed before on that morning, and he again answered Yes.They took the ford and were almost lost, and when the Baron who soon found out from the horsemen’s description who the offender was, asked him why he said Yes, he composedly replied that “he had seen ducks swim across that morning!”
He grew so mischievous in throwing away his clothes that they at last buttoned up his jacket behind, and one day seeing an old family greyhound with bones standing up along its back like buttons on a coat, he stopped, looked, and dolefully said, “Times are sair altered wi’ thou and me, poor beast, sin’ we were baith buttoned up behind.”
One day the Baron came in drunk, became most exasperated at some misdemeanor of the Lad, and throwing his huge bootjack at his head killed him in the very chamber which Howitt mentions, and where he had so often been closetted for punishment, in testimony whereof divers stains of blood, like Lady Gerard’s at Darlington, appear unto this day. I also heard the hayfork and stable version of the tragedy, but then how does it account for these wonderful stains so credible to the credulous.
It will be remembered that the last and most jolly Baron was one of the latest gentlemen in England who kept a domestic fool. On one occasion on his return from London, he quitted his carriage at Hylton Ferry, and amused himself with a homeward saunter through his own woods and meadows; at Hylton foot bridge he encountered his faithful fool, who staring on the gaudily laced suit of his patron, made by some false suthron tailor, exclaimed, “Wha’s fule now?”
[…]
Durham County Advertiser, 1st December 1848.