Salutations All!

Here’s a Derbyshire fairy tale from SO Addy’s, the collector of local stories. This is a story is said to have originated in the Derbyshire town of Eckington and in true fairy tale tradition it’s thought that this story was a morality tale told to young children.

It tells of a young girl with a golden cup. One day, her mother told her that she was going out and that the girl could while away the time playing with the cup. The girl asked a servant to get the cup for her from a cupboard, but the maid was too busy. The girl kept asking the servant over and over again whether she could have her cup.

But what happened next? The servant, infuriated with the girl’s constant nagging, murdered her and buried the girl’s body under one of the flagstones in the cellar. The mother returned later that day and asked the servant where her daughter was. The servant claimed that she’d not seen the daughter in hours. The mother looked for a while but couldn’t find her.

Now, I’ll let SO Addy finish off the tale in his own words:

Then the mother was deeply grieved, and she sat up all that night and all the next. On the third night as she sat alone and wide awake she heard the voice of her daughter outside the door saying, “Can I have my golden cup?” the mother opened the door, and when her daughter had repeated the question three times she saw her spirit, but the spirit vanished at once, and she never saw it more.

Salutations All!

 

Hayfield, Derbyshire

                Here is another report from SO Addy. This is taken from his book, Household Tales, published in 1895. In Hayfield, Derbyshire during the 16^th century, all the dead about the old village chapel rose in unison. Despite the date, it is more likely that this was a mass grave for flood victims that are recorded as being buried in 1754 in a letter written by Reverend Dr James Clegg, the minister of nearby Chapel-en-le-Frith. Here’s what the good reverend had to say:

… on the last day in august, several hundreds of bodies rose out of the grave in the open day… to the great astonishment and terror of several spectators. They deserted the coffin, and rising out of the grave, immediately ascended directly to heaven, singing in content all along as they mounted thro’ the air; they had no winding sheets, about them, yet did not appear quite naked, their vesture seem’d streak’d with gold, interlaced with sable, skirted with white, yet thought to be exceedingly light by the agility of their motions, and the swiftness of their ascent. They left a most fragrant and delicious odour behind them, but were quickly out of sight…

                This might be an exaggeration or even an outright fictionalisation by a member of the clergy to enforce the idea of the resurrection in a sermon. If it is true, an exaggeration or an old fiction that’s gone down into local legend, then what can I say, it’s still fun.

                I would like to finish this article with a bit of vampire folklore. Similar occurrences have happened throughout Europe – and other areas of the world – throughout recorded history. People have been curious about the whys and wherefores of the dead reappearing above ground. All I can say for certain is that after death, it’s common for a body to bloat up with its own gases. Thus, drowned and forgotten bodies rise to the surface of their watery grave and in mass graves where numerous corpses swell, it’s possible for the surface of the ground to rupture and the dead underneath to break forth.