Folklore of Yorkshire by Kai Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

purposes endured in West Yorkshire well into the twentieth century. In 1971, when the landlord and regulars of the Old Sun Inn at Haworth complained that their pub was being haunted by a disembodied voice, a local advised them to have a head carved and place it above the threshold. The landlord acted on this recommendation and an archaic stone head was fitted above the porch. Sure enough, the supernatural disturbances ceased and the head remains in place today. Even where the apotropaic function of such carvings has been forgotten, there is evidence that they are still being fashioned as part of a self-conscious revival of the vernacular architectural traditions of the region. Thus, however old the tradition may be, it may thrive for many years yet.

THREE
D RAGONS AND S ERPENTS

    T oday, we tend to think of dragons as mythical creatures that belong to the same category as demons, fairies and other such impossible entities. Their legends seem equally fanciful and their natures similarly super-natural. However, it is clear that our ancestors lacked any such association. As veteran folklorist Jacqueline Simpson notes in her study of the subject, ‘There is no connection between dragons and those sites which are traditionally regarded as haunted, sinister or demonic, such as graveyards, gallows and gibbets, places where murders and suicides have occurred and so forth … Dragons were not categorised as part of the eerie world of supernatural spirits and demons that lurk in haunted, evil places.’
    Whilst they may have thought dragons to be extinct in our own country, previous generations seemed to have had no doubt that such flesh-and-blood creatures had once infested the land and perhaps endured in certain remote parts of the globe. Nor was this belief confined to the uneducated classes; even scholarly commentators affirmed the existence of such beasts, as evinced by Edmund Topsell in his 1608 work, The Historie of Serpents ,or Ulisse Aldrovandi’s Serpentum et Draconum of 1640. Prior to the greater understanding of natural history which developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this is not entirely surprising. Dragons are referred to in both Biblical and Classical sources, and such textual authority was once sufficient to endorse the truth of a matter.
    Similarly, until palaeontology developed as a scientific discipline, the bones and fossilised prints of dinosaurs seemed to provide material evidence for the former existence of dragons. Indeed, until the fossil sequence was properly delineated and it became clear that dinosaurs were not contemporaneous with early humans, some writers wondered if dragons might not have been a race memory of those great reptiles. The issue was further compounded by the numerous fakes which were once displayed by travelling fairs and the like. Known as Jenny Hanivers, these specimens were actually dried sea creatures modified to resemble all manner of fantastical creatures, including dragons, but also mermaids, angels and devils.

    Castle Hill above Huddersfield, once home to a treasure-guarding dragon? (Kai Roberts)
    Of course, tales of dragons have a long and illustrious pedigree in Britain. Known to the Anglo-Saxons as ‘wyrms’, dragons seem to have been a significant motif in their culture and an important portion of the eighth-century epic poem Beowulf revolves around an archetypal example of the beast. This treasure-guarding dragon has become the dominant image of the dragon in Western culture, probably through its use by J.R.R. Tolkien and subsequent assimilation into fantasy fiction. However, the dragons of English local legend rarely conform to this treasure-guardian type and beyond a few hints here and there, it seems as if the Anglo-Saxon tradition did not survive in the popular consciousness much beyond the Norman Conquest.
    The hints which exist are tantalising but not conclusive, primarily stemming from the notoriously unreliable study of toponymy. For instance,