After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - England's Darkest Folklore

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

A spectral Black Dog with hellish eyes; a homicidal water spirit who drowns children; a mermaid who takes revenge on a vile cad. Maddy Pelling takes Anthony Delaney on a tour through the dark side of English folklore.Edited by Tomos Delargy. Produced by Stuart Beckwith. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hi, we're your hosts, Anthony Delaney and Maddie Pelling. And if you would like After Dark myths, misdeeds and the paranormal ad free and get early access, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello and welcome to After Dark. Now today, because we've been talking about folklore over the last month, we are talking about the dark side of English folklore. And to begin,

I'm not sure I'm paid enough for this, but we're going to start with a story from Maddie's childhood. childhood. Picture this. We're standing on the hillside, outside the Staffordshire town, where I'm from. It's a pretty enough place, though unassuming. As Jane Austen said, admittedly about another spot altogether, it's a place of little consequence, except to those fortunate enough to have grown up there. Today you'd describe it as a market town. Its architecture is mostly 19th century, a ring of imposing, though strangely beautiful, silk mills stand century around its centre, flanked by rows of terraced houses. There's history here, muddled over the years with a little rumour and myth-making

too. There's the church on the hill, supposedly sitting on miles of hidden tunnels, the purpose of which remains something of a mystery. There's the house in which the artist William Morris briefly lived, and a few doors down, another believed to have given respite to the Bonnie Prince Charles Edward Stuart during his march south from Scotland in the 1745 Jacobite Rising. Then there's a pub haunted by a headless woman quietened in death by a group of townsmen whose secrets she sold to the highest bidder. Then there's Petit France, a small area of streets transformed in the Napoleonic Wars to house French prisoners. Like any small town up and down the British Isles, its stories endure, shape-shifting

over time, handed down with fact and flourish alike. But from up here on the hill though, it all seems rather tame. Up here, on the wild moors that mark the convergence of three counties, Staffordshire, Cheshire and Derbyshire, it is bleak. Up here there are jagged rocks of the roaches and steep malignant gorges, there's a vast army training area and everywhere endless bracken and gauze growing in tangled knots and ready to snatch at the heels of the unwary traveller. In the distance there's Ludd's Church, a cave system believed by many to be the mythical chapel from the 14th century story of Ser Gawain and the Green Knight.

But that's not why we're here. We walk now, heads bowed against the wind, ascending, scrambling, climbing to the tip of a peak. It's not the view that has called us. Instead, up here, on the roof of the world, where the cloud has descended to meet us, is a pool. It looks out of place, oddly still, its waters no doubt deep. Livestock refused to drink from it, even though the nearest stream is far away down the valley. As a child, I remember being warned about this place. Do not come here. And never swim. The stories are enough to make even the boldest adventurer hesitate. You see, there's something in there. Something that lurks just beneath that glassy, unmoving surface. Hello and welcome to After Dark. My name is Anthony. And I'm Maddie.

And as I explained, we have been talking about folklore and the impact of folklore and how it impacts history and how history impacts folklore. But today we're looking specifically at the dark side of English folklore. We've already looked at Scottish, Welsh and Irish folklore and today it's the turn of England. So we are going to cover three stories. We're going to take you into misty peaks, down dark roads and into the rolling waves of the ocean shore. But let's start by asking Maddie if this town that she has so eloquently described has a Nando's. Like it sounds like a magical little fairy place. It absolutely does not have a Nando's.

I don't really like Nando's but I'm just trying to build up a more contemporary thingy of it. It's famous for its antiques market, there are antique shops everywhere, it's independent shops all the way. Does it have a Gales? What's a Gales? Stop. Okay. Now, where did you hang out as a teenager? Where were the like hangout spots? The park probably was the most exciting, there was not a lot going on. People will know the edge of this town from the 1995 Pride and Prejudice, which is why I put a Jane Austen quote at the beginning. There is a moment when Lizzie goes to Derbyshire and she stands

on this rocky outcrop overlooking the countryside. And it is not Derbyshire, it is Staffordshire. And those are the roaches, which are a set of jagged rocks just outside the town, named by the French prisoners who were housed there in the Napoleonic War. Is this the town where you grew up? Yeah, where I grew up. What's it called? Leek. Oh yes, you said that before, leek.

Like the vegetable. Okay, right. Well, there we go. Is it big or small? Smallish. Smallish. Yeah. Okay, right.

Jenny Green Teeth. We've established that. Tell me about Yeah. Okay. Right. Jenny Green Teeth. We've established that. Tell me about her. So. I've never heard of her, by the way. So this is a myth that I grew up with.

And if you grew up in Lancashire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, anywhere sort of North Midlands going upwards in England, you probably have heard of her. She is, well, she is described by friend of the pod, Ronald Hutton, professor, as one of those homicidal spirits. She is someone who lurks in particularly stagnant water. She hides out in pools like the one that I described, which was- Don't we all hide out in pools? Wow. Okay. I thought this was going to be a therapy session about my childhood. Turns out it's Anthony confessing to something very sinister. So yeah, she's kind of a freshwater

fairy slash mermaid essentially, but not of the pretty kind. she's quite fearsome looking. And the idea of her is that she is lurking just beneath the surface. And if you go into any water that is still or that has kind of scum or weeds on top, that's kind of where she lives and she will drag you down and drown you. And she's used as a warning, particularly for children, actually. And it makes total sense. Don't go into that stagnant, disgusting water you might drown. I have an image of her, which I'd like you to describe. This is from a 1970s illustrated book called Fairies by Alan Lee. And I'm going to tell you a bit more about Alan Lee in a

second, but describe it first. So this is Gollum in drag, essentially. And by drag, I mean in a wig, although it's probably her natural hair. I shouldn't be so disparaging. I mean, she's half bald in this picture. She is. It's receding, bless her. But she is, yeah, just think Gollum. That's the easiest way to kind of describe it. Now, the kind of more interesting thing is in the top right hand corner of this image, we have the feet of a child and she's obviously coming out of the water to grab that child. And all around is this kind of stagnant murk that you're talking about, Maddie. And then on the kind of the grassy part, we have twigs and branches and the roots of trees. So it's quite an earthy image. In fact, the thing is essentially all green. So it's very earthy.

It's very swampy and it's very like of the depths kind of. So it's quite scary. She is swampy, isn't she? It's interesting that you compare her to Gollum because Alan Lee is famously an artist that illustrated the Lord of the Rings and other Tolkien works. Oh, I didn't know that. He had, I believe, a lot of influence then on the films. So if you look at his illustrations for Lord of the Rings, you can almost see the films and they took such kind of inspiration from that. So yeah, it's kind of interesting to me that she looks like Gollum. She is thought to be quite ancient. And there are theories that she comes maybe from broader ideas of sort of British nature goddesses that she's associated with

places, particularly water that might have been considered portals to another world, that she might even be associated with human sacrifice. Now I will say that Jenny Greenteeth herself only starts to get written down in the 19th century. I was going to say Jenny is a 19th century name for me. That's where that's coming from. The interesting thing is that in those 19th century accounts, she's described as being in these stagnant ponds, but also in canals. And I think thing is that in those 19th century accounts, she's described as being in these stagnant ponds, but also in canals. And I think that's so interesting when you think about the North of England in the 19th century and industrialization and these canals springing up,

you know, where I'm from in Staffordshire, just a little bit south of Leek is Stoke-on-Trent and that is still today absolutely riddled with these canals that would have been used to take the pottery, from the famous potteries there. And you get the same across Manchester. And they probably have an Andos. They probably do in Stoke. And Jenny Greenteeth. But come here. Okay, so this is really basic, but I'm intrigued by it. We have Jenny, female name, young girl name almost, like something, there's an innocence to the name Jenny. I'm

saying these things, I don't know anything about this, but it's just my reaction to it. Then Green Teeth is so bizarre a choice, it's monstrous, but it also kind of has intention with the name Jenny, like do we know where this name comes from, or is it just literally a 19th century kind of invention? I don't think we do. The other kind of mutation of her, if you like, comes with parents warning not only about, you know, don't go and swim in this pond, but also brush your teeth, children. Stop. Yeah. So there's something there. And again, I'm thinking about the 19th century kind of

disease ideas of Victorian cleanliness. If actually she comes out in those anxieties as well, it's quite interesting. But yeah, yeah I think her name she's sort of quite fairy-like Jenny sounds yeah innocent yeah cute but then green teeth yeah sounds frightening and sharp and rotten I think one of the most striking things about your opening narrative was when you were talking about kind of being above the town and you're talking about like the place and the landscape and you're looking down the place and the landscape, and you're looking down, and there's what I now know are called the roaches. I didn't know that before. And then you have the lake, and you have these geographical settings. And we've talked about this in the other episodes on folklore, about how these settings are

often the birthplace of these tales, because we're trying to fill that landscape almost. And Jenny obviously seems to be one of the people that is, or one of the entities that is filling that landscape. But that's only one of the places that you mentioned there. There was quite a collection. So let's take us to another part of this folkloric landscape with a character I'm a little more familiar with. And this is because of our shared love of the Brontes. And we're talking about a black dog called Guy Trash. Maddie, tell me a little bit more about him. While walking alone one evening, Jane is climbing over a stile when she hears a sound. A rude noise broke on these fine ripplings and whisperings, at once so far away and so

clear. A positive tramp, tramp, a metallic clatter, a horse was coming. And as I watched for it to appear through the dusk, I remembered certain of Bessie's tales wherein figured a North of England spirit called a Guy Trash, which in the form of a horse, mule or large dog, haunted solitary ways, and sometimes came upon belated travellers as this horse was now coming upon me. It was very near but not yet in sight when in addition to the tramp tramp I heard a rush under the hedge and close down by the hazel stems glided a great dog whose black and white color made him a distinct object against the trees. It was exactly one form of Bessie's guy trash, A lion-like creature, with long hair and a huge head.

It passed me, however quietly enough, not staying to look up with strange, preter canine eyes in my face as I half expected it would. The horse followed, a tall steed, and on its back a rider. Oh, I am transported. I love it. We both love the Bronte so much. I actually can't tell you how much I love Jaynet. Like I love, I love, I love, I love Jaynet. Have you ever been to Haddon Hall where like every adaptation is filmed? No. Me neither. And I'm desperate to get... No, well neither have I. So, I have nothing to say. If you're listening Haddon Hall, we

would love to come. Yeah, please do. Is this a folkloric monster of which you've heard? Well the term Guy Trash specifically, I mean I have read Jane Eyre, I don't remember that word specifically, but this kind of black dog thing, yes, in the English landscape specifically. I'm aware that it has other iterations before this Yorkshire iteration, and we'll talk about the Yorkshire landscape as well, because I think it is so evocative in Bronte's writing. But talk me through some of those other iterations before Guy Thrash. Yeah, so there are lots of different versions of a black dog that appears in the landscape. Now, some of them are friendly, they're protective, they're a good thing to see, depending on

where you are in the country, interestingly. Others are a portent of really bad violent, horrific things to come. So it sort of depends. And I think you can kind of, you know, choose your player to a certain extent. Guy Trash is one name for this creature, but it is also known as the Bar Guest. In Yorkshire in particular, it's called that Padfoot. Any Harry Potter fans out there? And then there's the Black Shuck. Which I've heard of that. Yeah. So in East Anglia, this is a really historic story. We have this tale in, which is recorded in 1577. So there is actually historical documentation of this story of

a village in Suffolk where there's a huge storm and a big black dog with these red burning coal like eyes burst into a church. It attacks some people who were just having a quiet time praying. It then runs over the wall of the churchyard, goes to another village, another church miles away, almost appearing at the same time. So it's kind of, you know, it's moving through the landscape in a supernatural way. And in the second church, it claws the door of the church. And today you can go and see these deeply carved claw like marks into the church. And they have been there for centuries. And so, you know, the local story is that these are caused by this big black dog and you can go to the Black Shuck Festival today. They

have, it's amazing. I've only ever seen it online, but they have someone kind of puppeteering this giant black dog and it's, you know, there's all these different performances and storytelling things. There's like a parade or just? There's all kinds of events. And I mean, again, if you want to sponsor us, we will happily come. Maddie's looking for a trip out of this podcast. She's like, I'm off, put me on a train. This is making me want to travel talking about these different landscapes. So that yes, there are loads of different versions. And the earliest recorded example of a phantom dog comes in a

Chronicle from 1154. And this is a story of a pack of hunters and hounds that are sort of, they're described as black and big eyed and loathsome. But it's in the sort of later medieval period onwards when you get this one singular dog appearing to people. It often appears on the road to travelers. And there's that warning you're told of whatever good, bad or indifferent. Yeah. Well, yeah. And you know, you think about Jenny Greenteeth is potentially a warning of I do often think about Jenny Greenteeth. All the time. I mean, I certainly did growing up, you know, we were we knew not to go into that

pool. And that's kind of a warning about the landscape about water. This feels like you got to think back to, I mean, we're talking about a huge span of history, certainly from the medieval times to the 19th century, when when Charlotteonte is writing, that travel in that big time period was dangerous, that it was slow, that you would certainly in the 19th century be taking a carriage, there was dangers in terms of robberies, all kinds of threats. It's giving wilderness. It is giving wilderness. It's like you're going through this road, there's probably a bit of a dirt road,

you don't know what's in the dark looming hills either side of you. It's a warning of what nature holds potentially. Yeah, and the versions that we get in the north where this this stock is called Guy Trash or The Bar Guur Est often come in these landscapes in Lancashire, in Yorkshire where there are big expanses of you know, think about the Yorkshire Dales, the Yorkshire Moors or down where the Brontes were around Haworth, you know that there are these big stretches of open wilderness and the dog for some is this threatening thing in this big open landscape, but for others it's almost like a companion that's going to lead you where you're going.

That's with you, yeah. And when we meet her in Jane Eyre, of course, she thinks she's seeing the guy trash, the bar guest, but she's actually seeing Mr. Rochester's dog pilot. Yes. Also your dog. Yeah, I've said many times before on this podcast that my dog is named after Mr. Rochester's barguesty dog, Pilot. Is he terrifying? No. He's an old golden retriever. Absolutely no threat. I will say my other dog is a big black scary dog.

Ah, she's not scary. She's just enthusiastic. Enthusiastic. But no, she's scary. But she's a big black dog. Yes, she is named after a servant in Wuthering Heights. She'll hump big black dog. Put that out there. She's a scary dog. I mean, don't, yes. But yes, she is named after a servant in Wuthering Heights. So, she'll hump you to death. She is made of muscle and spring and she will leave the ground and levitate at head height before you realize that you're about to be like slammed in the face. Can I ask two questions?

Is it about my excellent career as a dog trainer? It is. A, yes and B, no. I want to know one thing. No, I want to know two things. One, does the dog always look the same? Because there's this description of being black and white sometimes, and then there's just black. Are there any other physical characteristics? Question one. And question two, barguest. That's an odd, what's the inference there? So the dog is usually described as large. Now, large for whatever period of history you're talking, you've got to think also, but this is kind of a history of dogs, right? That there aren't set breeds until the 19th century. And so you've got kind of lap dogs

for people, but then- It ain't that. No, it ain't that. And then you've got sort of big hunting dogs, dogs for protection. Um, and that's more the kind of thing. So it's, you're not necessarily picturing a breed of dog, but just a huge hound, a wolf. Yeah, definitely. Um, it is usually described as black. Now in, in Jane Eyre that we heard that it's described as black and white because it is a real dog, because it's, it's pilot Rochester's dog. So I think that's more where the white colouring is coming in. In terms of size, it's described sometimes as the size of a calf or sometimes of a donkey. So this is

a big animal, right? This is not your standard Labrador. And also that it has these unusually large eyes that are described sometimes as as big as saucers, which I love that description because it says so much about the material culture of the 19th century, right? That saucers are like the go to measurement. It's also sometimes described as having two heads, which I don't like. I'm not into it. So we'll just... Mind you, isn't that there's that dog in Harry Potter that has three heads that guards

something or other, I don't know. Yeah, but that's Cerberus, the dog of the underworld. That's more from classical mythology. Excellent. You learn stuff every day. It's also described as, this is a bar guest, not Cerberus, as having a chain around its neck. Sometimes it's dragging the chain.

And I love this idea that it's kind of almost like it's escaped from someone. Yes. Or it's under someone's control or something. Yeah. And also that it's accompanied by like a clinking sound. And that's what, you know, Jane absolutely describes that in the extract that we heard from Charlotte Bronte, the noise of the horse coming towards her and the rider, and also this dog and this kind of metallic clinking coming out of the dark in this landscape where there should not be metallic clinking, there's only nature, there's earth and wood and grass and you've got this ghostly. It's ghostly and it seems like a sort of a threat that shouldn't be there that is something

other than the place that you're in. I think of all the folkloric creatures that we've spoken about in the series, I think the black shark, the bar guest, the guy trash is the scariest one. I think it's genuinely frightening. I think it's really evocative of all of them. I can see the plainest. There's something in that. So the bar guest term, the bar guest name in particular is really interesting. So in the North of England, ghost was pronounced guest and bar is thought to mean town. So town guest, town ghost.

And so there's something there about, you know, sort of clinking of chains. It is very ghostly. It's a phantom. It's a spectral being. And I suppose the threat of it, even though it's this huge scary beast, and you know, you've got to think this this potentially comes from at least the medieval period where there were bigger predatory animals out in the landscape. There were wolves, there were bears. By the 19th century, by the time Bronte

sort of writing about this, and it's Bronte's plural, and we'll get to that in a minute, that it's not just Charlotte who's interested in this idea, that it's kind of not so much the physical threat of this animal, it's not going to attack you, that it is, if you do see it as a threat, because of course, some people do see it as a friendly thing, but if you see it as a threat, it's a sign of things to come, which is a very sort of ghostly function, right? It's a kind of typical thing of, typical function of seeing a spirit that is not necessarily going to physically hurt you, but it's telling you it's a warning that things are going to come and it's almost a curse. I sort of love that.

And I do I do think it's genuinely frightening. Yeah, I think the ghostly nature of it, the clanking of chains, the appearing out of nowhere, the following you potentially, these eyes following you, like that's quite terrifying in many ways. But let's talk about one of my favourite friends from the past, Branwell Bronte. And he, if you don't know, is the brother of the famous sisters. And it's his early childhood writings wherein we find Guy Trash to begin with, right? Yeah, so the Brontes are so fascinating in terms of their childhood. You know, we know Emily Charlotte and Anne today for their novels. And as you say, Bramwell is kind of a figure

that's fallen to the wayside a little bit. But their childhoods are so full of imagination and gothic darkness, really. We know that the four of them, that is the three sisters and Bramwell together wrote and created these these imaginary worlds and they were really interested, for example, in the Napoleonic Wars and kind of creating all these different heroes and they sort of had this shared imaginative space that they all contributed to. And in Bramwell's writing as a child, he talks about the guy trash and he's sort of fascinated with the landscape being haunted and of course for anyone who's been to Hauer you know that is a place that is deeply full of ghosts. I will say I once went on a weekend when I was

teenager me and my mum went and she's obsessed with the railway children it was all filmed around there and so we did railway children stuff and we did Bronte stuff and we had like the best weekend I've ever had. And it was so much fun. And I remember going for, I must not have had a glass of wine, but we went to a bar. I mean, I think I was about 15. I was a drunk nine year old. Oh, 15. Okay. No, it was about 14, 15. But I remember we went to like probably the one bar in Howarth. It's a tiny little village on this really steep hill. And we were walking

back to the place we were staying and it was kind of, since we'd been in the pub or bar, whatever it was, this mist had descended. Mm. Yeah. Which it often does around us. I want to go now. I know. And we were walking back and we saw this creature come out of the mist. Huh? And it was, we did, we, the only way I can describe it is it was like if a dog and a fox had combined and it wasn't

with anyone and we were both, we both saw it and we were both like, what is that? Stop. Yeah. And was it someone's pet? Was it just a really weird dog? No, but hold on. Did you figure out what that was? No, it just sort of walked off into the mist and we were like, oh, time to go back to the hotel.

It was so amazing when it rains in Howarth. It's just so nice. Although I will say it's slippy because it's just Victorian cobbles everywhere. We need to do an episode in this as well because in Howarth, talking about slippy, that's what triggered this memory. It was so impoverished in the 1970s when the Brontes were there that the ground started to shift in the graveyard and you know famously the juices from the bodies in the graveyard started to flow down the hill because the graveyard is up at the very top and you know it was intermingling with the water supply and it was literally killing the inhabitants.

Not for the Brontes though who lived in the Parsonage at the top of the hill with their own clean water supply as they waved at everyone below, dying of cholera. Yeah, it's that town, well, village is not a town even. It's just full of history and folklore. And so well preserved. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But yeah, I potentially saw the barguest. I feel like talking of childhood therapy, that's a memory I've carried around and not really aired before. So this is an exclusive. I'm not qualified to deal with this Maddie, you're going to have to go somewhere else

with this. No, no, I can't. On that note, shall we move on? Let's move on Maddie. We've been talking a lot in these episodes about the resurgence of interest in folklore across the British Isles and Ireland, not just in England. And it just so happens that one of our listeners of the podcast is the celebrated artist who is obsessed with folklore, Ben Edge. I love Ben's work. And he has spent the last decade travelling Britain and observing its folk traditions.

He is an artist and a writer and he goes along to these events, paints a picture of what he's seen, what he's taken part in and he's written about it and you can see his pictures in a book called Folklore Rising, which I really recommend, it's really great. We spoke to him and we asked him what he thinks about this resurgence in folklore and why it's still so relevant today. So, as I've seen it, you know, I've been documenting it now really for about 10 years, travelling around the country, filming, visiting, interviewing people. And I think what's happened really since Covid, I would say, is people were forced to experience their immediate environments in new ways. So I think people started to really fall in love all over again with where

they live. There's been a resurgence of interest in standing stones, for example, and there's something about getting out and seeing a standing stone that makes you enjoy and romanticise your country in a new way. And it's the same with the folk traditions. They plug you into this feeling that you're part of a lineage of something, something much bigger than yourself, the seasons, nature, and it just makes you feel hope. And it also gives you a way of kind of reclaiming a sense of national identity that you can be proud of. Each folk tradition and custom you visit is slightly different, but it also has overlapping interesting connections.

So I think that really makes it really vibrant and exciting in this kind of capitalist age of monoculture, where all high streets feel the same. But yet, if you look a bit under the surface, you realize that actually there's so much to celebrate and so much culture that's there and never really gone anywhere. And I think the resurgence is a new wave of people that didn't have access to that in their everyday lives growing up.

And they're kind of reclaiming it. And what's more exciting than that, this idea that people are reclaiming something that was always theirs, that they had kind of lost through no fault of their own. So what I'm taking from what Ben just said there is don't concentrate so much on the Nandos, Anthony. There are more individual... Absolutely. No, but that was really interesting. And I think like, and quite beautiful actually in a way, in that this falling in love with your local area and with your surroundings and letting it connect

you to letting these stories and this folklore connect you to those places in a more meaningful way. I like that. And especially, you know, in our modern age now, we're so concerned with the environment, with nature, with our relationship to that landscape. And I think telling stories about it is a way to bring that to life and to kind of give us a sense of investment in that part of the world around us. Yeah, I love what Ben said there. You have one more narrative for us before we go, but before your narrative, I just want to lead us in to give you a hint of what this would be, because this is from my favourite childhood cartoon and it goes, look at this stuff, isn't it neat? Wouldn't you think my collection's complete?

Yes, we sing now, the album coming soon. The Cornish didn't invent the concept of the mermaid, but they did make it their own. There was once a young woman called Selena who lived in a village in North Cornwall among the up and down lanes that plunge down to the ocean's waves. As a young girl, Selena had fallen into a deep pool one day. Her mother saved her from it,

but from then on, there was something different about her daughter. She was drawn to the ocean and was reluctant to go to church. Her appearance altered, and she became more and more beautiful with each passing year. When the Squire's unscrupulous nephew, Walter Trove, saw her, she was, to him, irresistible. It wasn't long before another change came over Selena's body. She was pregnant. When her time came, Walter was not there, and she died in childbirth. The villagers said that spirits attended her in her final hours. Years later, Walter was stumbling home along the shore, wild, drunk, when he heard beautiful

singing. There was Selina. He took her by the arm and she embraced him. With a kiss on his head, she told him he would be with her till death. At this, Walter panicked and begged to be let free, but the creature kissed him on the lips and said in a voice that was not Selina's, give me back my dead. For this was the mermaid mother of Selina, and with a crash of lightning great waves came galloping in.

Walter and the mermaid were carried out to sea, where she and the other merfolk tossed the dying man around in revenge for his cruel misuse of their Selena. Tossed him around? What's a bit much? Jesus. It's like, like, it's like food. They're like seals, like throwing food around. Yeah. But listen. He's like a little They're like seals, like throwing food around. But listen.

He's like a little rag doll on the waves. We're going to come back to this in a second, but I love mermaids. I used to want to be one. I've told... It was the fork in the red hair for me. No, it was the tail. I told this before. My granny made me a tail, remember? Oh, I'd forgotten this. She's dead now, but grannies are so often dead. It's not that big a deal. But she made me...

I'm not that big a deal. Well, you know, she was like. Oh. But she had. Sorry, Granny Delaney. She had. Oh, it was Granny Delaney. Well done. Oh. She had, yeah, she made me a green tail because of Ariel, like because of the little mermaid. Of course. Well, then you have something in common with.

Ariel. With Ariel, but also a 19th century vicar in Cornwall. That is not surprising. Are you surprised that I have something in common with a 19th century vicar? I am not. Absolutely not. I'm obsessed this man. Reverend Hawker, look him up, he wrote the Cornish national anthem. He collected ghost stories. He literally went around writing down ghost stories people would tell in the local area in Cornwall, on the north coast of Cornwall in the 19th century. I have stayed in his cottage which is on the edge of the shore.

It is there's no phone signal. There's no there's well there is electricity, but there's no Wi Fi or anything in the cottage. I can have a go though. Landmark Trust is amazing. It's amazing. It's so haunted. He excommunicated he was really eccentric and he had all these animals that would follow him around.

He had like a donkey they'd bring into the house and he had dogs. Oh, cute. He excommunicated his cat for mousing on a Sunday. He's so eccentric. Now he, the two things that, well, one you definitely have in common with him, maybe not the other one. Okay. He built himself a little hut on the side of a cliff in Cornwall and would sit doing

opium in there looking out at sea. Okay. Wild. That's not the one I have in common with. And it is the smallest national trust property in Britain. Stop it. It's amazing. Jesus. Is it all down in the same place? Yeah. Yeah. Near Buda in Cornwall on the North Coast.

The thing that you have in common though is that he used to dress as a mermaid, he used to sit out on the rocks. I see. And the locals would be like, ah, sure there's the vicar. Yeah. Dressed as a mermaid. Totally normal. Love him. Yeah. No, see, I never, because we didn't live by the sea, so I didn't have the rocks. I had, there was a lake. Okay. So I just was kind of like rolling into the lake.

And of course you couldn't go to a pool because Jenny Green Teeth would get you. Well, I couldn't go to the pool because I'd be absolutely mortified. Well, I wasn't mortified, but I'm sure like my parents would have been mortified. I was there going, I don't know, I'm wearing a green tail. This is it. This is the dream. You were just singing the Disney songs as you went. I love this view so much. I never had the purple bra though. And I really did want it. I was like, I want the purple shell bra. The shell bra. Perfect.

She didn't, she didn't knit me that. I love this view. What I will say is that in the story we've just heard, mermaids are really scary. They are not the pretty, cutesy, flouncy Disney version. In this story, they are deadly. Yeah, yeah, they sound vicious. Yeah, yeah, and there's this kind of interesting tension between the land and the sea and this idea. And we found this in our Scottish episode with selkies as well, the strange seal-like creature that shed their skin, that mermaids, like in The Little Mermaid, can come ashore and they can live human lives.

But there's always that pull back to the ocean. And if you betray that in some way, if you try and stay on the land or keep someone else who's meant to be in the sea from the land, you will be punished for it. You will come a cropper. And I think, you know, if you go to Cornwall in particular, along the coast of the whole British Isles, but certainly in Cornwall, it's such a violent bit of coastline there. The reverend that we were talking about, you can go to the church where he was based and there are mass graves of people he buried who were shipwreck victims. It's brutal along there, that people would just

wash up on the beach. And of course you get smuggling and wrecking along that coast as well. So this is a deadly place and you can see why there is almost like a personification of that danger in a way. Right. We're going to finish here, but dear landmark trust, if you want to drop us an email on afterdark at historyhit.com, me and Maddie and the After Dark team want to go down to, where is it? Buda and Cornwall. The little valley where the cottages are is called Coombe. Okay. I need to see this mass grave and I will wear my mermaid tail for YouTube. And that, what more of a fitting, and I want to see this mass grave. This is too good. It's

too good to, so Land trust, send us an email. Please do. Now listen, if you are a listener or a viewer on YouTube, you can also send us an email to the same address as it happens, afterdark at historyhit.com. Thank you so much for listening or watching. If you have enjoyed this, do give us a five star review wherever you get your podcasts. And we want to say thanks for listening to the whole four episodes of the folklore collection of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. It's been a really interesting exploration, I think.

And I think it's really interesting to think about how these things sit alongside and complement histories in those areas and how they've informed them and how they've kind of come up against tension with them. Thank you for listening and we'll see you again soon.