DISGRACE ON DARTMOOR The Mystery of Widecombe Fair

'And all the night long be heard skirling and groans' is the opening line of the final verse of one of England's most famous folk songs, Widecombe Fair. Substitute the word 'shrieking' for the more obscure 'skirling' and you get the idea: something unpleasant is going down.

Where is this chilling and unsettling noise coming from? It hails from the ghosts of a grey mare and seven shameful men out on the Devonshire moors. Why?

If only we knew. The song tells us that an old grey mare took sick and died whilst in the care of these local characters. Apparently it was a 'shocking affair', and the seven men had a 'horrid career'. We do have the names, however, of the Devon Seven. We also know who owned the tragic horse. Tom Pearce, Tom Pearce, lend me your grey mare . . . .

A dubious and reluctant Tom Pearce was persuaded to lend to this motley crew his horse as they wanted to go to Widecombe Fair. Yes, you've got it: all along, down along, out along lea. Clearly a lengthy old trek. So here are the names of our hopeful travelers: Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davey, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke. Oh yes, and of course: Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

Great names for a good, rollicking folk ballad? Absolutely. How fortunate, for it is almost certain they were real people. This legendary song unflinchingly points the finger of judgement, naming and shaming as it does so. And, thanks to research done by the Widecombe and District Local History Group, most of the characters in the curious cast have names which can be traced to families working or living in the Sticklepath and Spreyton area of mid-Devon in the early part of the nineteenth century.

The History Group also found a sign on the premises of the Tom Cobley Tavern in Spreyton indicating that the men set off from outside the pub to travel to Widecombe in the year of 1802. The pub is a sixteenth century building, and was probably known simply as The Tavern at the time in question.

Tom Cobley Tavern, Sprayton

There were more than a few Thomas Cobleys in the Spreyton area back in the day. The most likely for our purposes, in the opinion of the History Group, is the Cobley who died in 1844, aged 82 years. He was a Butsford man and is buried in Spreyton churchyard. But herein lies a problem: he would have been only forty years of age at the time of the trip to Widecombe Fair. Would he really have been known as 'Old' Uncle Tom Cobley? Surely a more likely candidate is his great uncle Thomas. He died in 1794 in Spreyton, and just to add to the mystery nobody knows where his grave is. This would mean of course that the sign conveniently found at the Tavern dating the trip to 1802 is bogus. That figures. It is too accurate, too precise and clear cut for a legend such as this. Further back in time, plus a lost grave, is far more in keeping with the mists of this particular mystery.

The intrepid History Group also found headstones across mid-Devon alloted to various Daveys, Gurneys, Pearces (or Pearses), and Stewers. Brewer is a common enough name in the area, and so is Whiddon or Whitton. And no shortage of Hawkes, by the way.

And so it is fair to assume that a gang of associates, probably livestock farmers or dealers, were up for the trip from Spreyton to Widecombe across the old country roads over the moors. Twelve miles would be the distance. And Tom Pearce was put on the spot. Were these guys his friends, neighbours or a bit of both? It is quite possible that whatever the relationship, the owner of the grey mare was made an offer he couldn't refuse. In other words, he daren't say no. And in handing her over, the poor old horse's awful fate was sealed.

So what can we assume may have caused the death of the mare? Obviously she could well have been exhausted, driven beyond her limits of endurance; thirsty, unrested, underfed and overworked by a bunch of bladdered chumps. But such a death, though terrible in itself, would surely not have created the dark controversy which underpins our famous ballad. Oh, no. It would seem that much more sinister deeds were afoot, out there between Widecombe-on-the-Moor and home. At the very least the song hints at gross maltreatment; further into the pit we could be looking at a form of ancient ritual. Whichever way one looks at it, Tom Pearce's cherished old mare was sacrificed out on the moors.

The wassailing folk custom called 'Mari Lwyd', Welsh in origin and commonly practised from two hundred years ago to the present day in the West Country, entails the use of a hobby-horse made from a horse's skull mounted on a pole. A ghostly white sheet covers the stick and anyone holding it. The wassailers knock on people's doors and demand entry, therein to receive food and drink. It's regarding as a celebratary ritual these days, lawfully participated in by all who are not stuck on their mobile phones. But it's spooky.

A typical Mari Lwyd hobby-horse

So is the Mari Lwyd a credible scenario for Widecombegate? Frankly, it's doubtful if the rag-tag bunch of Bank Holiday Hooligans would have been able to get their act together for such a task. But the sacrifice of a horse, particularly in the West country, is a form of ritualistic paganism that goes way, way back in time. And sadly, it probably goes on still.

There is a famous illustration (see top of blog), and many versions of it, commonly associated with this whole affair. Ostensibly comic in intent, it depicts all the named men sitting on Pearce's mare at the same time. The implication is that these lazy dunderheads all clambered on the mare's back and tried to save themselves a long and tiring walk. And the burden, unsurprisingly, was too much to bear.

But these were bawdy times. and bawdy jokes abounded across all walks of society. Look again at the drawing and you will see the men are inevitably sitting rather too snugly together. What is our artist hinting at here? And what are we supposed to to say to a suggestion (albeit an illustrated one) that all these men rode the horse? Double-entendre or what?

Something unseemly undid Tom Pearce's mare, and one of the gang, or more than one, snitched to someone back at base. There could have been no song written in this way without inside information. And with the law not getting involved, it was down to a balladeer to seek redress for the poor horse and its owner by telling it how it was. Without, exactly, telling it how it really was.

The great thing about folk music, with its great tradition of social conscience, is that it makes us think. In this case, it might be better just to enjoy the song.

Ian McLagan

 

Sad news indeed. Ian 'Mac' McLagan, who initially found fame with the sixties group the Small Faces, has been suddenly taken from us after suffering a massive stroke.

McLagan's talent and contribution to rock music must never be underestimated. The small Faces swiftly became the top selling band of the mid-sixties due to a string of vibrant singles, including All or Nothing and Itchycoo Park. When the band's outstanding vocalist, Steve Marriott, left to form Humble Pie, Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood stepped in and a new band, The Faces, was born.

Rod Stewart's determination to forge a solo career to run alongside his role with the Faces inevitably brought about tensions, but these were temporarily put aside when McLagan, Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones and Ron Wood all opted in to play on Stewart's albums. Stewart's big breakthrough as a solo artist was doubtlessly instigated by the classic Maggie May, put out from the album Every Picture Tells A Story as a double A-side with Reason To Believe. Here we must look at McLagan's unbelievable artistry to truly judge the success of these two songs.

Much has been made of the novelty value and inspirational deployment of a mandolin on Maggie May. Certainly it played a big part in setting the mood. But when we listen with care throughout the whole of the recording, it is Ian McLagan's magnificent organ playing which underpins the whole of the performance. One is reminded of the huge importance of Al Kooper's organ riff on Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone, which Dylan immediately enthused about on hearing Kooper's off-the-cuff interjections after each line of the chorus. Such things can make or break a recording: McLagan's beautifully balanced and intuitive lines flow in, out and across the song like the brush strokes of an artist determined to do justice to his canvas. You can't teach somebody how to do that. You're just glad he's there for you on the day.

The role of the organ is even more prominent on Reason To Believe. It's a tough song to sing, full of seemingly false stops and tricky starts. McLagan saves the day and the song almost single-handedly; it is a masterclass from a master craftsman.

Ian McLagan's death came just as I had finished reading his excellent autobiography, All The Rage. What particularly impressed me as I was reading was the fact that here was a man who, along with many others, had contributed so much and yet had had to suffer so many bad calls from an industry well known for its business chicanery. Yet McLagan spoke with no bitterness about various agents, managers, fellow pros and sundry hangers-on who had tried and tested his fortitude. He could have been far more scathing, but he concentrates instead on telling of a life lived to the full on the cutting edge of rock and roll in its heyday, and that taking the rough with the smooth is maybe the way to go in a world that promises no favours to those who venture into it to roll their own throw of the dice.

Rock music has lost a gentleman and an artist. His family and friends have lost much more. Rest in peace, and thank you for the music.

King of the Buskers

Two years ago this month one of the great individuals of British music sadly left this world. Self-styled 'King of the Buskers', Donald Eric Partridge did what he had always said he would: he sang until he dropped.

A street performer through and through, this enigmatic maverick was spotted in the mid-sixties busking outside a London cinema by a record producer and taken into a studio. He had his band with him: that is, he had a bass drum strapped to his back, a tambourine belted under his arm and a cymbal seemingly hidden miraculously out of sight. To complete the one-man-band rigmarole he wore a harmonica harness to carry mouth organ and kazoo. Oh, and he had voice to go with it all. And what a beautiful noise he made.

'Rosie', his own composition, smashed into the charts at number 4 in March 1968. Three months later he followed it up with a number 3 hit, 'Blue Eyes'. They were two of the most memorable records of the day, and all this at a time when pop music was at its peak. Raw talent . . . you can't beat it.

But Don Partridge was more, much more than a sixties hit maker. His restless spirit transcended all the trappings of the mad mod times and quite frankly he was happier busking on the streets. His manager said he was unmanagable: he just did what he wanted to do. This included grabbing a handful of fivers and throwing them onto the fire. Money, he declared, was not going to take over his life. Money came and money went. Don nearly went too, one day, when he decided to jump off Hammersmith Bridge dressed and billed as the 'Birdman of Ealing'. Here was a character to be reckoned with, if not managed. Thankfully, he was a born survivor.

Inevitably, Don Partridge and stardom gradually parted company. He said he had always made good money on the streets, and he took the voluntary steps from appearing on Top of the Pops (a memorable performance of Blue Eyes is available on You Tube) to drifting across Europe and back to Britain as a street performer.

I first saw Don Partridge at a Folk night at Broughton Astley Village Hall, some five years after his time in the TV spotlight. It was an event organised by a friend of mine, who had come across Don in other folk clubs in Leicester; I rather impertinently enquired of my friend out of curiosity about Don's fee for his appearance. All Don had asked for was a bottle of whisky. Now that's what I call style.

The next time I came across him, Don was performing with a couple of pals in Leicester Market, dressed as a highwayman. Never had a three-cornered hat sat so suitably on a head of wild brown curls.

I finally got a chance to talk to the man himself in 1987. He was back in Leicestershire at the time after a spell in Stockholm. He was living on a canal boat somewhere not too far from Gilmorton, and for several weeks Don graced the lounge of the Crown Inn with a Saturday night turn. By this time, he had taken to playing sitting down, leaning against a wall and using the drum at his feet. One night I waited for my chance and followed him to the bar during his break.

He was very approachable. Softly spoken, polite, he was certainly not playing on past glories. Among other things he told me that his back couldn't take the strain of having the drum strapped to it any more. It seemed to make sense. After all, he wasn't twenty-five any more!

He would always acknowledge me during those few happy weeks at the Crown. But I knew when to back off: he was there to do a job, and not get hassled by people wanting to hear 'Rosie'. That song, for some reason, was a sore point. He never played that song, anywhere, anytime. Every week some well-meaning person kept shouting for it, and in the end he just said, very gently, 'I haven't got the voice for it any more.' He had got the voice, of course, but it was his choice and finally the message got through. No 'Rosie', no asking why. Fair play.

Don Partridge was a man who stayed true to himself, as much as any man can. He eschewed fame and fortune and a steady regular life and instead opted to live as a free spirit. In many ways, that is what the spirit of the sixties was supposed to be about; but this individual actually played the cards of the game where so many others fumbled and dropped them so readily.

Don Partridge was sixty-eight when he died of a coronary attack. He had sung his heart out for the people of the streets, here and all over the world.

A visit to a poet's grave

I'd put it off for too long. After reading Jonathan Bate's excellent biography of the poet John Clare, I had determined to go to Helpston and see for myself the final resting place of the man they had called the 'Peasant Poet'. One fine spring day, I finally made it.

'A Poet Is Born Not Made' is the inscription on one side of Clare's distinctive gravestone. Sadly for John, when he was born the world was already turning into a place so unsuited to his talents and temperament that it eventually drove him into the confines of a lunatic asylum for most of his adult life.

John Clare was born in 1793 in Helpston (then 'Helpstone') in the county of Northamptonshire. The borders of the shires have altered since that time and the village now nestles just inside Cambridgeshire, a few miles from Stamford. He was born into poverty but lived a happy childhood life with his parents and siblings. His love for nature compelled him to write about it almost obsessively, and eventually his poems were discovered and promoted by an influential Stamford publisher with contacts in London. Clare became famous almost overnight, rather in the way that his great idol Lord Byron had a few years before.

Clare met and mixed briefly with the literary lions of London. But he remained a country lad at heart, and his loyalties and responsibilities to his roots held him back when others might have gone forward. Never a man of robust health, the conflicts and tensions of his situation virtually broke him. Instead of a happy and successful life, John Clare found only physical hardship and mental anguish.

When Clare died in 1864, a thoughtful patron saved the poet from being buried in a pauper's grave in Northampton Asylum. The body was brought back to Helpston, where it was buried in the village churchyard alongside the grave of his parents. The suffering was over.

John Clare and his work is now being appreciated more than at any time in the past. The proprietor of the public house next to the church told me that tourists from all over the world, including Japan, come into his establishment and ask about this ill-fated but much admired genius.

I decided to take lunch in that most hospitable and unpretentious of pubs. The landlord led me into the long room which was now the dining area but was once the very room where John's coffin was laid out on the night previous to his burial. A more restful and peaceful atmosphere I could not have wished to come across. As I visited the church a little while later and read the inscriptions both on Clare's grave and that of his parents, it became clear to me that at least the poet had had one stroke of good fortune, albeit at the end of his life. He had come back home.

I am - yet what I am, none cares or knows;

My friends forsake me like a memory lost:

I am the self-consumer of my woes-

They rise and vanish in oblivion's host

(John Clare, LINES: "I AM")

Statue of an enigma

In the Castle Gardens, Leicester, stands a wonderful statue of Richard III. The commission was carried out by James Butler, RA, and was erected in 1980. Repeatedly vandalised in the early days, it was transferred from its initial site to a less exposed part of the Gardens. This turned out to be an inspired move, for the interference ceased. From the new location, only yards away from Bow Bridge, it now directly overlooks the very route on which Richard led out his army westwards from the city on the morning of August 21, 1485, to locate and do battle the following day with the usurping forces of Henry Tudor.

This striking piece of work encapsulates so much of the drama and desperation associated with Richard III. It depicts the king on the verge of defeat, his clothes torn from his unprotected arms as he stands with his dagger gripped in one hand and his battle crown raised in the other. The face, a picture of searing anguish, searches to the heavens in this final moment of regal defiance.

There is no hint of deformity in this sculpture. Nor is there any evidence of Shakespeare's 'bottled spider'; no 'ugly and unnatural aspect' to furnish it. Those who wish to see such time-honoured peculiarities must look elsewhere. Here is the portrayal of a man with strong, regular features; here stands the warrior king, courageous to the last in his spirited defence of the realm. It might be argued this is how Richard himself would have hoped to have been remembered by the world at large. We know, these many years after his brutal death at Bosworth Field, that such a hope has not been fulfilled.

Shakespeare's play, Richard III, is the riveting masterpiece that brought the poet popular acclaim. Alas for Richard, it almost certainly cast its subject into eternal damnation. Posterity had been served up the epitomical arch-villain and it wasn't going to let it go. The great actors of succeeding generations faithfully rallied to the Shakespearean cause, right through to the 20th century when Laurence Olivier's stupefying interpretation gave the world the definitive article.

It is faintly ironic - some would say fitting - that the Leicester statue not only oversees Richard's path out of the city to battle, but also his awful and ignominious return in death and defeat. Perhaps in the irony we can see a kind of balance of the noble and ignoble aspects of this enigma. Perhaps, if we look hard enough at the statue and have the inclination on the day, we might even sense something of the heart-rending nature of the human condition.

Pic: (c) P Taylor

The Pub Quiz . . . Brains Trust or Battleground?

The game was on. Half a dozen teams of keen keen quiz freaks with eyes down were ready to go. Those who had a pencil chewed on it vigorously; others abused their fingernails instead. Yes, it was going to be serious stuff, and one thing I didn't need was a repetitive urge to go to the toilet.

But there it was: a bad problem to have at the best of times, but during a pub quiz? Dangerous. Yes, I'd sunk a beer beforehand, and I was having another one now. But I didn't normally need to keep going to let it all out again. A bug? Nerves? The onset of a terminal disease? No idea . . . but I needed to go. And it was only the third question of Round One. Could I really leave my longsuffering friend and team mate on her own to cope with the early questions? Or any questions, come to that. Our record at such events, admittedly with just the two of us making up a team, was unimpressive. In fact, if we had been allowed to be in a league we would have been relegation material with no hope of applying for re-election. We were the Accrington Stanley of the quiz scene; the Bill and Ben of The Big Night Out.

Standing up to go to the gents, I immediately hit a problem. We were squeezed in a corner and I had to get past the 'spreading for England' legs of a nasty-looking guy from a neighbouring but not neighbourly team. Five in their squad, yet they still felt it necessary to field a hard-man in defence to block the opposition breaking through for a Jimmy Riddle.

He moved his knee and let me through . . .this time. When the urge to empty the blighted bladder struck again six questions later his attitude changed. The knee stayed put, eye contact was avoided. My polite but hesitant 'excuse me' went unheeded, and a different sort of game was on. My need to go forced a sudden surge of courage through the system. I decided to knock his leg out of the way and worry about it on the way back. As I stood at the urinal, with the feedback from the quizmaster's equipment whistling in under the door and in and out of the hand-drier, I seriously considered sacrificing a cosy but faltering relationship with my female friend by making a solo dash for the exit. But no: she had got the car keys.

A deft sidestep and a snake-like wriggle saw me back into my seat unharmed. Had I missed anything? Yes, we both had - for the answer sheet remained blank except for a ludicrous stab in the dark from my pal, which was clearly wrong and misspelled to boot.

It was toilet time again within minutes. And this time the irresistible force was met full on by the immovable object. He wasn't budging. Old ladder-legs of the Awkward Squad was holding fast. I sat back down with the awful truth dawning upon me: he thought I was cheating. Yes, there was no other explanation for me being kept prisoner in my seat. The suspicion had arisen among this team of deadly serious dunderheads that I was going out to get the answers from somewhere by using my mobile phone.

'They think I'm cheating', I whispered.
'I know', she said.
'But I wouldn't do that!' was my angry but hushed reply.
'Pity', came the disappointing but unsurprising response. The pairing, for quiz purposes or indeed any other, had always been a dubious one.

Half-time came and the bolt for the boys' room was not graceful. It looked bad, for sure. The same suspicions would have crossed most quizzers' minds, for one reason if no other: Quiz Nights had become a war zone. Of late, wherever the venue, there always seemed to be a public argument over at least one question per round. Always grunts and groans, always a sad air of edgy competition without the sportsmanship. Backstabbing was becoming a discipline more skilfully applied than that of knowing the answers. And the greater the cash prize, the more childish and begrudging was the attitude.

Sadly, some people do actually go outside during a break to get a bit of help. And for those too idle to shift themselves from the spotlight of shame to carry out the skulduggery, a bit of sneaky texting under the table does the trick. Blatant, deplorable but quite common. No wonder the need to answer the call of nature can be readily misconstrued as the need to go and make a call to a knowledgeable phone-a friend.

The final straw came for me on another, later occasion, when a vicious argument broke out between the female captain of a team and the quizmaster, also a woman. A Coronation Street-style confrontation was upon us. The bone of contention was this: was Penfold of the children's TV programme 'Danger Mouse' a hamster or a gerbil? Blows were nearly exchanged. The disgruntled, red-faced team leader was still insisting as she led her troops out at the end that 'He was a GERBIL'. Oh no he wasn't, missus. Not according to the quizmaster, who quite rightly stood her ground. Shamefully ignorant of the answer myself, I was delighted to learn when I got home and checked out the answer on the computer that the quizmaster was correct. Hooray for hamsters! Hooray for the rule of law!

Pub Quizzes are good, really good, for the trade and the customers when and if they are both run and observed correctly. But time and again they are scrubbed from the 'What's On Tonite' board. The beleaguered quizmasters, destined to be forever subjected to Indoor Entertainment's equivalent of 'The Referee's a Bastard', try their level best and in return get little thanks and much criticism for their efforts. It shouldn't be like that. Is the 'win at all costs' syndrome that has burrowed its way so deep into life going to ruin such a worthwhile pastime? Hopefully not, providing there are still a few pubs left standing in this sceptered isle. But in the end it comes down to Joe Public. Does he care enough to play the game, and in the right spirit? Only he has got the answer to that one.

Market Bosworth Station steams back to life

The Battlefield Line that runs a heritage service between Shakerstone and Shenton gained a middle stop when Market Bosworth Station opened for passengers on Saturday for the first time in 80 years.

Volunteers from the Shakerstone Railway Company have been working valiantly for months to repair and renovate the disused station, which was hit by a vicious arson attack in 2008. Two steam trains from the GWR pulled into the platform on a beautiful Gala Weekend morning to strike a blow for triumph over adversity.

My article on this event will be appearing shortly in Heritage Railway magazine. I got some pretty fair photographs and managed to do it all without tripping over my anorak. Steam on!