The British are a most curious nation in many aspects. When a tourist from whatever continent comes to visit Britain the first conclusion he arrives at is how bizarre the people living there are. The main reason to their uniqueness will certainly lie on the surface: Great Britain is an island populated by the nation that had to grow up and go all the long way of its history alone being separated from the rest of the world by great amounts of water. This very characteristics turned them into not only a curious nation, but also an interesting and special one, whose history and culture are one of the richest in the world. And the water surrounding the island played not a minor part in its forming. So the British people respect and cherish their “watery” neighbour who from the earliest stages of their history up to now gave them food, drink, work, power, respect of other nations, wealth and after all entertainment. It inspired a huge number of stories, tales, poems, superstitions and prejudices and it has always been worshipped by the people.

The studies of the British culture and therefore understanding of the national character of the English cannot stand apart from the research of its important product – folklore. By culture we mean the result of the social activity of people. Every new generation historically brings its piece into the whole process of the development of culture of this or that nation; so culture collects the values expressed through different means: literature, architecture, music, sculpture, traditions, cuisine, etc. Cultural development of the nation is essential for the development of every person belonging to it, because his understanding and percepting of the world is formed according to the society he grows up in and is influenced by the norms and values of this society.

Arts in general are always meant to bring beauty into the life of people and educate them through it, make them better, kinder and wiser. National folklore is no exception in this sense. Even if it very often does not have a human being as the central figure it still bring forward ethical questions, studies human soul, its moral qualities. Accepting this aspect presupposes that we realize the educational side of the folkloric characters and understand what their creators wanted to tell us, or warn about, or what kind of an ideal they meant to form up. However, each folkloric hero or character is a mixture of a number of different qualities and its nature is not always clear and easy to interpreter. Therefore the aim and the meaning of a character should be searched for in just one side of its complicated semantics.

So the aim of this work is to make a research in the part of a rich field of the British folklore concerning British water world through the means of songs, poems, stories, legends, fears, superstitions, tales. With the help of this material we shall study the changes and development of the English character, language, history and culture.

  The field of the country’s economy connected with water was always a great concern for those who ruled it for they naturally attached much importance to it. From the times when the English society was being born and only beginning to take shape kings already would interest themselves in the conditions of trading across the sea. In the eleventh century Cnut on a pilgrimage to Rome took the opportunity of obtaining from the Emperor and other rulers he met there greater security and reduction of talls for his subjects, traders and others, travelling in their lands. Already in the eighth century an English merchant called Botta was settled at Marceilles, perhaps as an agent for collecting goods to be sold in England. The Viking rades of the late eighth and ninth centuries disrupted trade on the Continent, but Englishmen may well have taken part in the Baltic trade opened up by this time. At least, there is no reason to deny English nationality to a certain Wulfstan who described to King Alfred a journey taken to the Frisches Haff; he has an English name.

On the other hand, we hear of foreign traders in England from early times. Bede speaks of London as the “mart of many nations, resorting to it by sea and land” , and mentions the purchase of a captive by a Frisian merchant in London. But the strongest evidence for the amount of sea traffic in Frisian hands is the assumption of an Anglo-Saxon poet that a seaman is likely to have a Frisian wife:

Men from other lands came also. At the end of the tenth century a document dealing with trade in London speaks of men from Rouen, Flanders, Ponthieu, Normandy, France; from about the same date comes a description of York as the resort of merchants from all quarters, especially Danes.

The merchants and seamen plied an honoured trade. The poets speak with appreciation of the seaman “who can boldly drive the ship across the salt sea” or “can steer the stem on the dark wave, knows the currents, (being) the pilot of the company over the wide ocean” , and it was at least a current opinion in the early eleventh century that the merchant who had crossed the sea three times at his own cost should be entitled to a thane’s rank. The merchant in Aelfric’s “Colloquy” stresses the dangers of his lot:

  As we see people working in the sea or over the seas gained much respect in the society and were loved by others. But so much for the economical aspect. The water, as we already mentioned earlier, was one of the greatest attractions as a source of entertainment.

Fishing, like hunting, was highly popular in England, but these were pleasures reserved for the nobility. In the twelfth century, when the kings had normally been so strong, they had claimed such oppressive fishing – rights that all the classes had united in protest. One of the demands of the rebels in 1381 was that hunting and fishing should be common to all; not only was this refused, but in 1390 Parliament enacted a penalty for one year’s imprisonment for everyone who should presume to keep hunting – dogs or use ferrets or snares to catch deer, rabbits, or any other game. Fishing and hunting, said the statute, was the sport for gentlefolk.

So this is a sketch or an outline of reasons explaining why our ancestors valued so much the rivers, lakes, seas of their land – and it is worth mentioning that their land abounds in all that – and why they respected the work of sailors, merchants or travellers. All this is important for the understanding of how it was becoming an inseparable part of their culture and how it is reflected in their culture.

What is folklore? Funk and Wagnall’s “Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend” (1972) offers a staggering 22 definitions, running to half a dozen pages. In recent years definitions have tended to be all – embracing in their simplicity: folklore is made up of “the traditional stories, customs and habits of a particular community or nation” says the “Collins Cobuild Dictionary” of 1987.

More specific definitions also abound; perhaps, folklore should be identified as the community’s commitment to maintaining stories, customs and habits purely for their own sake. (A perfect example of this would be the famous horse race at Siena in Italy: the p a l i o attracts many thousands of tourists, yet if not a single outsider attend, the people of the community would still support the event year after year) .

But what about those events or beliefs which have been recently initiated or which are sustained for reasons of commercial gain or tourism? Many customs are not as ancient as their participants may claim but it would be foolish to dismiss them as irrelevant. Some apparently ancient customs are, in fact, relatively modern, but does this mean they cannot be termed as folklore? The spectacular fire festival at Allendale, for instance, feels utterly authentic despite the fact that there is no record of the event prior to 1853. There are many other cases of new events or stories which have rapidly assumed organic growth and therefore deserve the status of being recognised as folklore.

Any work covering the question of folklore must be selective, but here we shall attempt to explore and celebrate the variety and vigour of Britain’s folklore concerning “waterworld” traditions, beliefs and superstitions. A wide geographical area is covered: England, Scotland and Wales with some reference to Ireland and other territories.

Entire books – indeed, whole libraries of books – have been written on every aspect of folklore: on epitaphs and weather lore, folk medicine and calendar customs, traditional drama and sports and pastimes, superstitions, ghosts and witchcraft, fairs, sea monsters and many others. While trying to cram much into little work I have avoided generalisation. Precise details such as names, dates and localities are given wherever possible and there are some references to features that still can be seen - a mountain, a bridge, a standing stone or a carving in a church.

Classic folklore belongs within the country to the basic unit of the parish. Most parishes could produce at least a booklet and in some cases a substantial volume on their own folklore, past and present. It would be a mistake, however, to think that rural customs, dance and tale were the whole picture, because there is a rich picture of urban and industrial folklore as well – from the office girl’s pre-wedding ceremonies to urban tales of phantom hitchhikers and stolen corpses.

In this age of fragmentation, speed and stress, people often seem to thirst for something in which they can take an active part. There is a need to rediscover something which is more permanent and part of a continuing tradition. By tapping into our heritage of song and story, ritual and celebration, our lives are given shape and meaning.

In some cases all we have to do is join in with an activity which is already happening; in others it will perhaps mean reviving a dance or a traditional play. But however we choose to participate, as long as we continue to use, adapt and develop the elements of our folklore heritage it will survive.

So this work may be regarded as an attempt to encourage us all to seek out the stories and customs of country, county, town, village, to understand and enjoy them and to pass them on.

  THE WATERY WORLD Not a single town or village in England is situated more than a hundred miles from the sea, except for a few places in the Midlands, and most of those in Wales and Scotland are nearer still. The coastline lies for thousands of miles, with a host of off-shore islands ranging from Scilly to Shetland and Wight to Lewis. It is hardly surprising then that our long and eventful maritime history is complemented by a rich heritage of nautical stories and superstitions, beliefs and customs, many of which continue to affect our daily lives – even oil rigs, very much a twentieth – century phenomenon, have tales of their own. Inland water, too, are the subjects of stories which echoes the folklore of the coasts and seas.

  BENEATH THE WAVES Many tales are told of submerged lands, and of church bells ringing ominously from beneath the waves. Between Land’s End and the Scilly Islands lies a group of rocks called The Seven Stones, known to fishermen as “The City” and near to which the land of Lyoness is believed to lie, lost under the sea. There is a rhyme which proclaims: Between Land’s End and Scilly Rocks Sunk lies a town that ocean mocks.

  Lyoness was said to have had 140 churches. These and most of its people were reputed to have been engulfed during the great storm of 11 November 1099. One man called Trevilian foresaw the deluge, and moved his family and stock inland – he was making a last journey when the waters rose, but managed to outrun the advancing waves thanks to the fleetness of his horse. Since then the arms of the grateful Trevilian have carried the likeness of a horse issuing from the sea. A second man who avoided the catastrophe erected a chapel in thanksgiving which stood for centuries near Sennen Cove.

Another area lost under water is Cantre’r Gwaelod, which lies in Cardigan Bay somewhere between the river Teifi and Bardsey Island. Sixteen towns and most of their inhabitants were apparently overwhelmed by the sea when the sluice gates in the protective dyke were left open. There are two versions of the story as to who was responsible: in one it is a drunken watchman called Seithenin; in another, Seithenin was a king who preferred to spend his revenue in dissipation rather than in paying for the upkeep of the coastal defences.

A moral of one kind or another will often be the basis of tales about inland settlements lost beneath water. For example Bomere Lake in Shropshire – now visited as a beauty spot was created one Easter Eve when the town which stood there was submerged as a punishment for reverting to paganism. One Roman soldier was spared because he had attempted to bring the people backto Christianity, but he then lost his life while trying to save the woman he loved. It is said that his ghost can sometimes be seen rowing across the lake at Easter, and that the town, s bells can be heard ringing. There is another version of the same story in the same place, but set in Saxon times: the people turn to Thor and Woden at a time when the priest is warning that the barrier which holds back the meter needs strengthening. He is ignored, but as the townsfolk are carousing at Yuletide the water bursts in and destroys them.

There is a cautionary tale told of Semerwater, another lake with a lost village in its depth. Semerwater lies in north Yorkshire not far from Askrigg, which is perhaps better known as the centre of “Herriot country” , from the veterinary stories of James Herriot. The story goes that a traveller – variously given as an angel, St Paul, Joseph of Arimathea, a witch, and Christ in the guise of a poor old man – visited house after house seeking food and drink, but at each one was turned away, until he reached a Quaker’s home, just beyond the village: htis was the only building spared in the avenging flood that followed.

One lost land off the Kent coast can be partially seen at high tide: originally, the Goodwin Sands were in fact an island, the island of Lomea which according to one version disappeared under the waves in the eleventh century when funds for its sea defences were diverted to pay for the building of a church tower at Tenterden. The blame for that is laid at the door of a n abbot of St Augustine’s at Canterbury who was both owner of Lomea and rector of Tenterden. However, sceptics say that Tenterden had no tower before the sixteenth century, nor can archaeologists find any trace of habitation or cultivation of the sands. Even so, the tales continue to be told; one of these blame Earl Godwin, father of King Harold, for the loss of the island. He earl promised to build a steeple at Tenterden in return for safe delivery from a battle, but having survived the battle, he forgot the vow and in retribution Lomea, which he owned, was flooded during a great storm. The Sands still bear his name.

Yet worse was to follow, for scores of ships and the lives of some 50 000 sea farers have been lost on the Goodwins, and ill-fortune seems to dog the area. For example, in 1748 the “Lady Lovibond” was deliberately steered to her destruction on the Sands by the mate of the vessel, John Rivers. Rivers was insanely jealeous because his intended bride, Anetta, had foresaken him to marry his captain, Simon Reed. The entire wedding party perished with the ship in the midst of the celebrations, but the remarkable thing is that the scene made a phantom reappearance once every fifty years – until 1948, when the “Lady Lovibond” at last failed to re-enact the drama.

Another fifty - year reappearance concerns the Nothumberland; she was lost on the Goodwind sands in 1703 in a storm, along with twelve other men – of - war, but in 1753 seen again by the crew of an East Indiaman – sailors were leaping in to the water from the stricken vessel though their shouts and screams could not be heard.

The Nothumberland was under the command of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, to whom is attached a further tale. Three years afterwards, the admiral’s flagship, the Association, was wrecked on the Gilstone Rock near the Scilly Isles. The fleet was homeward bound after a triumphant campaign against the French and some maintain that the crews were drunk. But the story which Scillonians believe to this day is that a sailor aboard the flagship warned that the fleet was dangerously near the islands, and that for this he was hanged at the yardarm for unsubordination, on the admiral’s orders. The man was granted a last request to read from the Bible, and turned to the 109 psalm: “Let his days be few and another take his place. Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow” . As he read the ship began to strike the rocks.

The admiral was a very stout man and his buoyancy was sufficient to carry him ashore alive, though very weak. However, official searches found him dead, stripped off his clothing and valuables, including a fine emerald ring. The body was taken to Westminster Abbey for interment, and his widow appealed in vain for the return of the ring. Many years later a St Mary’s islander confessed on the deathbed that she had found Sir Cloudesley and had “squeezed the life out of him” before taking his belongongs. The hue and cry had forced her to abandon the idea of selling the emerald, but she had felt unable to die in peace before revealing her crime.

A commemorative stone marks the place where the admiral’s body was temporarily buried in the shingle of Porth Hellick, on St Mary’s Island. No grass grows over the grave.

  THE WRECK OF THE RAMILIES Many hundreds of shipwrecks have their own songs and stories. Although the Ramilies, for example, was wrecked well over 200 years ago, tradition perpetuates the event as clearly as if it had happened only yesterday. In February 1760 the majestic, ninety – gun, triple decked ship was outward bound from Plymouth to Quiberon Bay when hurricane – force winds blew up in the Channel and forced the captain to turn back and run for shelter. Sailing East, the master thought he had passed Looe Island, and had only to round Rame Head to reach the safety of Plymouth Sound. In fact the ship was a bay further on and the land sighted was Burgh Island, in Bigbury Bay. The Promontory was Bolt Tail with its four hundred foot cliffs, and beyond lay no safe harbour at all, but several miles of precipitous rocks. As soon as the sailing master realised his mistake the ship was hove to, but the wind was so violent that the masts immediately snapped and went overboard. The two anchores that were dropped held fast, but their cables fouled each other, and after hours of fierce friction, they parted and the ship was driven to destruction on the rocks.

Of more than seven hundred men on board only about two dozen reached safety. Led by Midshipman John Harrold, they scrambled up the cliffs, by pure luck choosing the one place where this was possible. Next day a certain William Locker travelled to the scene to try to find the body of his friend, one of the officers. Locker himself would have been aboard the “Ramillies” but his lieutenant’s commission had come from the admiralty too late, arriving just a few hours after she had sailed. He found the shores of Bigbury Bay strewn with hundreds of corpses, their clothing torn away by the sea’s pounding, their features unrecognisable. The village nearest to the scene of the wreck was Inner Hope, and some there still maintain that a Bigbury man aboard the “Ramillies” pleaded with the captain to alter course; but he was clapped in irons, and went down with the ship. They say that only one officer survived because others were prevented from leaving the stricken vessel.

Most of the bodies were washed ashore at Thurlestone, a few miles to the west. There used to be a depression in the village green which marked the place where many of the seamen had been buried in a mass grave; this has now been asphalted to make a carpark. Then in the mid – 1960s a child digging in a sand dune found a bone. He showed it to a man on the beach who happened to be a doctor and identified it as human. Further digging revealed the skeletons of ten men, small in stature and buried in five – foot intervals -- perhaps these had been washed up after the mass burial. No scrap of clothing or equipment was found, and finally the bones were thrown into a lorry and consigned to a rubbish tip. Even though two centuries have elapsed since their deaths, one feels that the men of the “Ramillies” deserved better. The ship still lies six fathoms down in the cove which has borne her name since 1760, and Wise’s Spring on the cliffs is called after one of the seamen who scrambled ashore with the tiny band of survivors.

  PORTENTS OF DISASTER Great pains are taken when first launching a vessel so as to ensure good fortune, and one of the most important portents is the ritual bottle of champagne which must break first time (the liquid may be a substitute for the blood of a sacrifice) . It is interesting that the various ships to bear the name “Ark Royal” have always been lucky; for example when the World War 11 vessel sunk there was minimal loss of life. The original ship dated from Elizabethan times and had a crucifix placed beneath the mainmast by the captain’s mistress; this apparently secured the good fortune for all her successors. On the other hand there are vessels which seem perpetually unlucky, some even jinxed and quite incapable of escaping misfortune.

Brunel’s fine ship the “Great Eastern” was launched in 1858 after several ominously unsuccessful attempts. She ruined the man in whose yard she was built, and caused a breakdown in Brunel’s health – he died even before her maiden voyage. And despite her immense technical advantages, she was never successful as the passenger - carrying vessel.

In 1895 she was in port in Holyhead. When the “Royal Charter” sailed by, homeward bound from Australia, the passengers expressed a desire to see her and their captain was only too pleased to oblige. However, the ship strayed off course and a wild storm blew up. The ship was wrecked, with great loss of life. Some of the trouble was attributed to the story of a riveted and his boy who were said to have been accidentally sealed to the famous double hull. Unexplained knockings were heard at various times but although searches were made, nothing was found. When the vessel was broken up at New Ferry, Cheshire, in 1888 it was rumoured that two skeletons were discovered, their bony fingers still clenched round the worn – down hammers which had beaten in vain for rescue.

The “Victoria” was commissioned on Good Friday, the thirteenth of the month – and if this were not ill-luck enough, the fact that her name ended in ‘a’ was considered another bad sign. In 1893 she sank with heavy losses after a collision during the manoeuvres in the Mediterranean off Beirut, and interestingly, various things happened which indicated calamity: two hours earlier a fakir had actually predicted disaster, and at the time of the collision crowds had gathered at the dockyards gates in Malta, drawn by an instinctive apprehension of impending doom. At the same time during lunch at a Weymouth torpedo works the stem of a wine glass had suddenly cracked with a loud retort; and in London’s Eaton Square the ship’s Admiral Tryon was seen coming down the stairs at his home. He was in fact aboard the “Victoria” , where he survived the impact but made no effort to save himself. As he sank beneath the waves he is said to have lamented: “It was all my fault” – and so it was, for he had given the incorrect order which led to the collision.

Generations after her loss the “Titanic” is still a byword for hubris. In 1912 the “unsinkable ship” struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage and went down with 1 500 passengers and crew. Again, a variety if omens anticipated the disaster: a steward’s badge came to pieces as his wife stitched it to his cap, and a picture fell from the wall in a stoker’s home; then aboard the ship a signal halyard parted as it was used to acknowledge the ‘bon voyage’ signal from the Head of Old Kinsale lighthouse – and the day before the collision rats were seen scurrying aft, away from the point of impact. After the calamity Captain Smith, who went down with the ship, is rumoured to have been seen ashore.

One cause of the “Titanic” disaster is said to have been an unlucky Egyptian mummy case. This is the lid of an inner coffin with the representation of the head and upper body of an unknown lady of about 1000 bc. Ill-fortune certainly seemed to travel with the lid – first of all the man who bought it from the finder had an arm shattered by an accidental gun shot. He sold, but the purchaser was soon afterwards the recipient of the bad news, learning that he was bankrupt and that he had a fatal disease. The new owner, an English lady, placed the coffin lid in her drawing – room: next morning she found everything there smashed. She moved it upstairs and the same thing happened, so she also sold it. When this purchaser had the lid photographed, a leering, diabolical face was seen in the print. And when it was eventually presented to the British Museum, members of staff began to contract mysterious ailments – one even died. It was sold yet again to an American, who arranged to take it home with him on the “Titanic” . After the catastrophe he managed to bribe the sailors to allow him to take it into a lifeboat, and it did reach America. Later he sold it to a Canadian, who in 1941 decided to ship it back to England; the vessel taking it, “Empress of Ireland” , sank in the river St Lawrence. So runs the story, but in reality the coffin lid did not leave the British Museum after being presented in 1889.

The former prime minister, Edward Heath, in his book “Sailing” (1975) revealed that he too had experienced the warnings of ill omen. At the launch of the “Morning Cloud 1” the bottle twice refused to break, and at the same ceremony for the “Morning Cloud 111” the wife of a crew member fell and suffered severe concussion. This yacht was later wrecked off the South coast with the loss of two lives, and in the very same gale the “Morning Cloud 1” was blown from the moorings on the island of Jersey, and also wrecked. Meanwhile, the Morning Cloud 11” had been launched without incident and was leading a trouble free life with the Australian to whom she had been sold.

As recently as December 1987 a strange case came to light as a result of a Department of Health and Social Security enquiry into why members of a Bridlington trawler crew were spending so much time unemployed. In explanation, Derek Gates, skipper of the “Pickering” , said that putting to sea had become impossible: on board lights would flicker on and off; cabins stayed freezing cold even when the heating was on maximum; a coastguard confirmed that the ship’s steering repeatedly turned her in erratic circles and in addition, the radar kept failing and the engine broke down regularly. One of the crewmen reported seeing a spectral, cloth-capped figure roaming the deck, and a former skipper, Michael Laws, told how he repeatedly sensed someone in the bunk above his, though it was always empty. He added: “My three months on the Pickering” were the worst in seventeen years at sea. I didn’t earn a penny because things were always going wrong” .

The DHSS decided that the men’s fears were a genuine reason for claiming unemployment benefit, and the vicar of Bridlington, the Rev. Tom Wilis, was called in to conduct a ceremony of exorcism. He checked the ship’s history, and concluded that the disturbances might be connected with the ghost of a deckhand who had been washed overboard when the trawler, then registered as the “Family Crest” , was fishing off Ireland. He sprinkled water from stem to stern, led prayers, and called on the spirit of the dead to depart. His intervention proved effective because the problems ceased, and furthermore the crew began to earn bonuses for good catches.

  SAILORS’ LUCK Sailors used to be very superstitious – maybe they still are – and greatly concerned to avoid ill-luck, both ashore and afloat. Wives must remember that “Wash upon sailing day, and you will wash your man away” , and must also be careful to smash any eggshells before they dispose of them, to prevent their being used by evil spirits as craft in which to put to sea and cause storms.

Luck was brought by:

• tattoos
• a gold ear-ring worn in the left ear
• a piece of coal carried
• a coin thrown over the ship’s bow when leaving port
• a feather from a wren killed on St. Stephen’s Day
• a caul
• a hot cross bun or a piece of bread baked on a Good Friday