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The Dragon of Wantley: Rural Popular Culture and Local Legend

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2009

David Hey
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Extract

In one of the earliest issues of Rural History, Jacqueline Simpson urged students of Popular rural culture to examine local legends that centre upon some specific place, Person or object and which are a focus for local pride. Many of these are well-known tales which have been adapted, often in a humorous way, to local circumstances. Thus the seventy-odd stories of dragon-slaying which she has collected for Britain usually depict a local figure, not St George or a knight errant, as the hero. It is normally difficult, if not impossible, to explain how these tales began. The Dragon of Wantley, however, offers some unusual opportunities for delving into the historical context of a ballad that achieved national fame.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , April 1993 , pp. 23 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

Notes

1. Simpson, J., ‘The Local Legend: A Product of Popular Culture’, Rural History II, 1 (1991), 25–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I am grateful to Jacqueline Simpson for her helpful comments on this essay.

2. Gregson, Matthew, Portfolio of Fragments relative to the History and Antiquities, Topography and Genealogies of the County Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster (ed.) Harland, J. (London, third edition, 1869), pp. 151–2.Google Scholar Gregson claimed, incorrectly, that the hero of the ballad was from More Hall in the Lancashire hundred of West Derby.

3. The Dramatick Works of Henry Carey (London, 1743).Google Scholar

4. Carey gave Phillips the nickname Namby-Pamby, which has passed into general use.

5. Cartwright, J. J. (ed.), The Wentworth Papers, 1705–1739 (London, 1883), p. 539Google Scholar: Lady Strafford, 19 January 1738: ‘We was at Covent Garden Play House last night, my mother was so good as to treat us with it, and the Dragon of Wantcliff was the farce. I like it vastly and the musick is excessive pretty, and tho' it is a burlesque on the opera yet Mr. Handel owns he thinks the tunes very well composed. I conclude your lordship will go to it as soon as you come to town, for every body generally commends it and it has been acted 36 times already and they are always pretty full.’

6. Hunter, J., Hallamshire: The History of the Parish of Sheffield (ed.) Gatty, A. (London, 1861), p. 478.Google Scholar

7. Grigson, G., The Penguin Book of Ballads (Harmondsworth, 1975), p. 13.Google Scholar See also Watt, T., Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 1991).Google Scholar Randal Taylor's version of the ballad included a tune, but ballads were set to different tunes at various times.

8. A Ballet of the Manner of the Killing of the Serpent in Sussex, 09 1614.Google Scholar I am grateful to Dr Helen Weinstein for her helpful comments on the registration of ballads at Stationers' Hall.

9. Quoted in Wheatley, H. B., ed., Reliques of Ancient English Poetry … by Thomas Percy, D.D., Bishop of Dromore (London, 1827), vol. III, p. 279.Google Scholar

10. Simpson, J., British Dragons (London, 1980), pp. 118–19.Google Scholar The typical folk legend elements used in The Dragon of Wantley include spiky armour, the dragon's invulnerability except in one spot, victory by an unheroic trick, close tie-in with topography and with local landowners, and possibly the conversation between hero and dragon.

11. Hunter, , Hallamshire, pp. 478–9.Google Scholar Despite his interest in the ballad, Hunter surprisingly makes no comment on the heraldic dragon.

12. Quoted in Rev. Hunter, J., South Yorkshire, II (London, 1831), 331.Google Scholar Roger Dodsworth noted (some time between 1619 and 1631): ‘In Wharncliffe (a chase of Sir Frauncis Wortleley's) on a great stone nere the Lodge, wherin are cut 3 seates or chaires, in which rocke are ingraven thes wordes: Pray for the saule of Sir Thomas Wortelay, knight for the King's Body to Edward the fourthe, Richard third, Harry the VII and VIII, howes saules God pardon which Thomas causyd a house to be mad for this cas ne mydes of Wernclif for his pleasor and to her the hartes' bel, in the yere of our lord a thousand CCCCCX.’ He also observed that in the chase were ‘read and fallow deare and roo’, but he made no mention of the dragon legend; Clay, J. W. (ed.), ‘Yorkshire Church Notes, 1619–31 by Roger Dodsworth’, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, XXXIV (1904), 16, 88.Google Scholar

13. Wheatley, , (ed.), Reliques, p. 281.Google Scholar The same correspondent claimed that in the lodge he saw ‘the picture of the Dragon and Moor of Moor-hall’. If the Wortleys had such a picture, this supports the suggestion that the ballad was based on an older story. The correspondent was recalling a visit that he had made 40 years previously.

14. Hey, D., (ed.), The Hearth Tax Returns for South Yorkshire, Ladyday 1672 (Sheffield 1991), p. 91.Google Scholar Nor were any of the 86 householders in the township of Wortley named Matthew. A Mrs Northall was taxed on 4 hearths in the adjoining township of Grenofirth, and a Mr Northall was one of the Duke of Norfolk's woodwards in the early eighteenth century. A memorial in Wortley Church commemorates William Bland, keeper of Wharncliffe, who died in 1642.

15. Notes and Queries, third series, IX (London, 1866), 29.Google Scholar

16. Wheatley, , (ed.), Reliques, p. 283.Google Scholar

17. Hunter, , South Yorkshire, II, 338.Google Scholar See Public Record Office, E/310/178/34–23 for the case in the Court of Exchequer (1595). For the dispute before the Ecclesiastical Court at York see Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, York, CP. G. 2384, CP. H. 285, 286, 1280, 1281. See also Hull University Library, DDBM/7/4 and Sheffield Archives, Wh. M. 93.

18. Hunter, , South Yorkshire, II, 332Google Scholar; Craven, M., A Derbyshire Armory, Derbyshire Record Society, XVII (1991), 19.Google Scholar A George Blunt, gentleman, was one of the lessees of Conisbrough Park in 1634 (Public Record Office, C3/409/39).

19. Hey, D., ‘The Parks at Tankersley and Wortley’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 47 (1975), 109–19Google Scholar; Hunter, , South Yorkshire, II, pp. 308–9.Google Scholar In 1379 Elizabeth, the widow of Nicholas of Wortley, Chivaler, was assessed at 20s. poll tax, one of the highest rates in the wapentake of Staincross.

20. Hunter, , South Yorkshire, II, 310–14.Google Scholar

21. Ibid., p. 329. Hunter commented that, ‘The inscription has suffered something by its long exposure to the weather, from which, however, it is now protected. In the seventh line there is a various reading in copies which were taken when it was more legible than at present. Some have it “for this case in mydyst of:” and it is impossible to decide from the present appearance of the stone what may be the true reading.’ See note 12 for Roger Dodsworth's reading in the first half of the seventeenth century, the earliest transcript that we have.

22. Ibid., pp. 330–1; Hunter, , Hollamshire, p. 3, note.Google Scholar

23. Butcher, L.H., ‘Archaeological Remains on the Wharncliffe-Greno Upland, South Yorkshire’, Transactions of the Hunter Archaeological Society, VII, pt I (1950), 38.Google Scholar The survey also yielded much evidence of Mesolithic and Romano-British settlement.

24. Brown, W. (ed.) ‘Yorkshire Star Chamber Proceedings’, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, XLI (1909), 178–81.Google Scholar

25. Hunter, , South Yorkshire, II, 316Google Scholar; Sheffield Archives, Wh. M. 70.

26. Sheffield Archives, Wh. M. Maps 2.

27. Sheffield Archives, Wh. M 48; transcribed in Rev. Eastwood, J., History of the Parish of Ecclesfield (London, 1862), pp. 493–507.Google Scholar

28. Eastwood, , Ecclesfield, pp. 36, 73–5, 162, 314–17, 439Google Scholar; Gatty, A. S., Registers of Ecclesfield Parish Church, Yorkshire, from 1558 to 1619 (London, 1878), p. 19, note.Google Scholar

29. Hunter, , Hallamshire, p. 97.Google Scholar

30. Meredith, R. (ed.), Calendar of the Arundel Castle Manuscripts (Sheffield City Libraries, 1965)Google Scholar, Talbot Letters, 2/43; Hunter, , Hallamshire, p. 73.Google Scholar

31. Talbot Letters, 2/144.

32. Hunter, , Hallamshire, p. 431.Google Scholar The reference in the court rolls could not be traced by Eastwood, nor can it be found today.

33. Sheffield Archives, ACM SD416.

34. Eastwood, Ecclesfield, pp. 188–90Google Scholar; Gatty, , Registers, p. 139Google Scholar, note. Lord's descendants were buried in the same grave as late as 1729.

35. Sheffield Archives, Wh. M. 93. The defendants had the active support of Mr John Savile, lord of the manor of Thurlstone within the parish of Penistone.

36. Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, York, CP. G. 2264, 2266, 1637Google Scholar; Hull University Library, DDBM/7/4. The case was transferred to the Court of Common Pleas.

37. Hunter, , South Yorkshire, II, pp. 332, 338Google Scholar; Public Record Office, E310/178/34–23.

38. Borthwick, , CP. H. 285, 286.Google Scholar The case involved tithes of oats, rye, wheat and hay in Gunthwaite.

39. Macdonald, Lady of the Isles, The Fortunes of a Family (Edinburgh, 1927), pp. 58–9Google Scholar; Hunter, , South Yorkshire, II, 332, 338.Google Scholar

40. Mackerness, E.D., Somewhere Further North: A History of Music in Sheffield (Sheffield, 1974), pp. 3–5.Google Scholar See also Watt, T., Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1500–1640 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 30Google Scholar on the professional troupes of interlude players who travelled from one noble household to another.

41. Sheffield Archives, Wh. M. 103(4).

42. ‘The Journal of Mr John Hobson, late of Dodworth Green’, Surtees Society, LXV (1875), 253Google Scholar: ‘31 May 1726: At Warncliffe lodge, where they are erecting a new building, within which they bury underground a stone with an inscription now illegible, said to be, Pray for the soul of Sir Richard Wortley, who builded a lodge here in the year 1510.’

43. Sheffield Archives, Wh. M. 23.

44. Sheffield Archives, Wh. M. 49.

45. Hunter, , South Yorkshire, II, p. 331.Google Scholar