Part 7

Having made all preparations, the heir started on his mission. Standing in midstream, he waited the onset of the worm. It came, and seeing its enemy, wound itself about him; but as it tightened its hold, the razors cut it into many pieces, which, falling into the water, were swept away by the current, and so were unable to grow together again. Thus the victory was won, and the bugle sounded; but the old lord, overjoyed at the thought of his son’s victory, forgot to let loose the hound, and ran himself to meet the conqueror. Here now arose a difficulty; the son would not be a parricide. He went again to the witch, and she told him that the only alternative was the doom that none of his family should die a peaceful death, to the seventh, or some say the ninth, generation. Tradition sayeth that this alternative was accepted, and that no head of the family died on his bed for several centuries after.

There are two stone figures of some antiquity preserved at Lambton Castle. One of these is apparently an effigy of our hero in the middle of the fray, only the worm has ears, legs, and a pair of wings. The other figure is a female one, and marked by no very characteristic features.

_The Sockburn Worm._

The legend of the Sockburn worm is very similar to that of the Pollard boar. It is recorded in an old manuscript that Sir John Conyers, knight, slew a monstrous and poisonous wyvern, or worm, which had devoured many people in fight, for the scent of the poison was so strong no person could stand it. But before making this enterprise,

[Illustration: LAMBTON CASTLE IN 1835.]

having but one son, he went to the church of Sockburn in complete armour, and offered up his only son to the Holy Ghost. The place where this great serpent lay was called Graystane. The gray stone is still pointed out in a field near the church. For more than six hundred years the manor of Sockburn was held by the singular service of presenting a falchion to the Bishop of Durham on his first entering the diocese, and it was the duty of the Lord of the Manor of Sockburn, or his representative, to meet His Grace at the middle of Sockburn Ford, or on Croft Bridge, which spans the River Tees, and after hailing him Count Palatine and Earl of Sadberge, to present him with a falchion, saying: "My Lord Bishop, I here present you with the falchion wherewith the champion Conyers slew the worm, dragon, or fiery flying serpent which destroyed man, woman, and child, in memory of which the King then reigning gave him the manor of Sockburn, to hold by this tenure, that upon the first entrance of every Bishop into the county this falchion should be presented." The Bishop, after receiving the weapon in his hand, promptly and politely returned it, and at the same time wished the Lord of Sockburn health and a long enjoyment of the manor.

This ceremony was last performed in April, 1826, when the steward of Sir Edward Blackett, the Lord of Sockburn Manor, met, on Croft Bridge, Dr. Van Mildert, the last Prince-Bishop of Durham. The tenure is mentioned in the inquisition post-mortem held on the death of Sir John Conyers in the year 1396. The falchion was formerly kept at the manor-house of Sockburn: the blade is broad, and 2 feet 5 inches long, and on the pommel of the weapon, which is of bronze, are two shields; on one side are the three lions of England, as borne by the Plantagenet monarchs from John to Edward III., and the eagle displayed on the other side is said to belong to Morcar, the Saxon Earl of Northumberland. This relic was also represented on one of the stained-glass windows of Sockburn Church. On a marble monument, placed to the memory of an old member of the Conyers family, the serpent and falchion were sculptured.

_The Pickled Parson._

The present rectory house at Sedgefield, erected by the Rev. George, Viscount Barrington, was preceded by a castellated edifice, which, after serving the purpose of a rectory house for some years, was burnt down in 1792. During a lengthened period previous to the destruction of the old house the inhabitants of Sedgefield appear to have been greatly disturbed by the visits of an apparition known as the "Pickled Parson," which, it was confidently declared, wandered in the neighbourhood of the rector’s hall, "making night hideous." Whose wandering shade the ghost was supposed to have been is explained as follows: A rector’s wife had the ill-luck to lose her husband about a week before the farmer’s tithes fell due. Prompted by avarice, she cunningly concealed his death by salting the body of her departed spouse, and retaining it in a private room. Her scheme succeeded, she received the emoluments of the living, and the next day made the decease of the rector public.

_The Picktree Brag._

Picktree, near Chester-le-Street, is famous for two reasons--first, because it was the home of the heroine of the popular song, "Ailsie Marley," and, secondly, because it was the haunt of one of those mischievous goblins known as the Picktree Brag. Sir Cuthbert Sharp gives an account of the apparition, as told by an old woman of respectable appearance, of about ninety years of age, living near the spot, probably at Pelton. The old woman said: "I never saw the Brag distinctly, but I frequently heard it. It sometimes appeared like a calf with a white handkerchief about its neck, and a bushy tail. It came also like a galloway, but more often like a coach-horse, and went trotting along the lonnin, afore folks, settin’ up a great nicker and a whinney every now and then; and it came frequently like a dickass, and it always stopped at the pond at the four lonnin ends, and nickered and whinnied. My brother saw it like four men holding up a white sheet. I saw then sure that some near relation was going to die, which was true. My husband once saw it in the image of a naked man without a head. I knew a man of the name of Bewick that was so frightened that he hanged himself for fear on’t. Whenever the midwife was sent for it always came up with her in the shape of a galloway. Dr. Harrison wouldn’t believe in it, but he met it one night as he was going home, and it ’maist killed him; but he never would tell what happened, and didn’t like to talk about it, and whenever the Brag was mentioned he sat tremblin’ and shakin’ by the fireside. My husband had a white suit of clothes, and the first time he ever put them on he met the Brag, and never had them on afterwards but he met with some misfortune; and once when he met the Brag, and he had his white suit on (being a bold man), and having been at a christening, he was determined to get on the Brag’s back, but when he came to the four lonnin ends the Brag joggled him so sore that he could hardly keep his seat, and at last it threw him off into the middle of the pond, and then ran away, setting up a great nicker and laugh, just for all the world like a Christian. But this I know to be true of my own knowledge, that when my father was dying the Brag was heard coming up the lonnin like a coach and six, and it stood before the house, and the room shaked, and it gave a terrible yell when my father died, and then it went chatterin’ and gallopin’ down the lonnin as if yeben and yerth was comin’ together."

These northern ghosts or goblins have been very well described in the following verse attributed to Ben Jonson:

"Sometimes I meete them like a man, Sometimes an ox, sometimes a hound, And to a horse I turn me can, To trip and trot about them round. But if to ride My backe they stride, More swift than wind away I go; O’er hedge and lands, Through pools and ponds, I whirrey laughing, ho, ho, ho!"

NAME-PLACES IN THE DURHAM DALES

BY WILLIAM MORLEY EGGLESTONE

When Julius Cæsar conquered Britain, he found the island peopled by Celts--a branch of the great family of nations called the Aryan, or Indo-European, which spread over the world from Central Asia. The Western branches, which rolled in successive waves over Europe, included the Celts, who, according to the Greek traveller Pytheas, were in the fourth century before the Christian era quite at home in Britain, for he there saw growing in the fields corn which the farmers took in sheaves to the barns, in which were threshing-floors.

In Weardale, situated in the western and mountainous part of the county of Durham, and surrounded by brown and heath-clad fells, the ancient Briton lived in the limestone caves, and hunted in the oaken forests. In the Wear Valley, near Hamsterley, and about seven miles east of Stanhope, there is a remarkable relic of the ancient Britons. This ancient fortification--like many other works constructed by the Britons of old, such as the Dene Holes of Essex and the Cliff Castles--has its name, and is called The Castles. The treasure of Heatheryburn Cave, at Stanhope, consisted of bone knives and pins, boar tusks, bronze and jet ornaments, spearheads and bronze celts, with prehistoric human skulls, showing considerable activity of the natives who manufactured and formed the various rude implements. Apart from these landmarks, there have come down to us in names of places the Celtic roots the _ray_ and the _tay_, which we find in Lang Tay, the name of a small but long tributary stream of water in Burnhope; and in Reahope, a tributary hope to Stanhope, and which empties its waters into Stanhope Burn, a tributary of the River Wear.

The Roman power seems to have been extended to Weardale, for the two Roman altars found at Bolihope and Eastgate, and the denarii found at Westgate, prove that this lead-mining dale was well known to those ruling and wall-building people.

Soon after the Romans left, the Anglo-Saxons--including the Jutes, the Saxons, and the English--established themselves along the eastern coast of Britain, and these tribes of the Teutonic family took a firm grasp of the land, and planted the roots of the English nation.

Though little more in the early Saxon period than a dense forest, in which wild animals and ancient Britons found shelter, Weardale ultimately became an Anglo-Saxon district, influenced by the blending of the Scandinavian element in dialect and names of places, owing to its proximity to the Danelagh on the south, and the Norwegian settlement in Cumberland on the west. The whole of the Palatinate appears to have remained Saxon through the Danish rule except the northern banks of the Tees. We know little of Weardale at this period. Situated amidst mountains, and lying next the Strathclyde, it was probably as much Celtic as Saxon; but the division of counties, however, was made in 953 by the Saxon Edred, or Eadred, and the Weardale people would know their county, for, on the bleak and heather-clad fell of Burnhope, the limits of the Palatinate is marked by a pile of stones, called "eade stones"--evidently King Eadred’s stones--the boundary established by that Saxon monarch. Weardale and Teesdale, however, under the power of the Normans, were destined to be turned into desolate wastes; yet, as we shall see, the Saxon names of places survived the desolation of fire and sword.

If we examine the names of places in the Bishopric of Durham a century or so after the Danish rule had ceased and the Norman rule had been established, we shall find a large percentage of Saxon suffixes. In the Boldon Buke, A.D. 1183, there are some 151 names of manors, wards, vills, etc., in which, with a few other names in charters of about the same period, we have 45 endings, or suffixes, in 175 names of places. The Anglo-Saxon test-word, _ton_, figures in no less than 34 of these principal names of places: as Darlington, a settlement of the Deorlings; Stockton, the stockaded town; Haughton, the haugh town; Morton, the moor town; Norton, the north town; Essington, the home or settlement of the Essings, as the Herrings gave a name to Herrington. Of the other Saxon suffices we have: _ley_ 25, _burn_ 14, _don_ 8, _worth_ 6, _ford_ and _ham_ 5 each; and the Celtic _hope_, common in the Anglo-Saxon North, occurs 8 times. Thus, 8 endings take up 105 of the names of places in Boldon Buke, the remaining 70 names having 37 endings. The Danish test-words, _by_ and _thorpe_, only occur once each--Killerby and Thorp. These names do not show that the Vikings made permanent settlements north of the Tees. In Teesdale we find in Domesday Book, A.D. 1086, Lontune, Mickleton, Lertinton, and Codrestune, having the Saxon ending _tun_ or _ton_; but though the names of these places were English, the places themselves were, or had been, belonging to a Dane, for they were then in the hands of Bodin, and had formerly been Torfin’s--a person named from the Scandinavian god Thunder, or Thor. Hundredestoft and Rochebi have the Danish _toft_ and _by_, and, like many other names, such as Thorsgill and Balders Dale, point to the influence and power of the Scandinavians and their heathen worship in the neighbouring dale of the Tees.

In the five northern counties, Worsaae returns Danish-Norwegian place-names in the following order: Westmorland 158, Cumberland 142, Durham 23, Northumberland 22, and Yorkshire in its three Ridings 405. The ending _by_ occurs 167 times in Yorkshire, and _thorpe_ 95 times; whilst 7 of each are ascribed to Durham, and but 1 of the latter only to Northumberland. Yorkshire, however, on a closer inquiry, shows over 250 names of places containing the element _by_, and over 160 of that of _thorpe_, the former predominating in the North and West, and the latter in the East and West Ridings. Of the 83 names ending in the Norwegian test-word _thwaite_, as mentioned by Worsaae, 80 occur in the northern district, Yorkshire 9, Lancashire 14, Westmorland 14, and in Norwegian Cumberland 43, whilst there are no _thwaites_ in Durham or Northumberland. The evidence adduced from names of places thus goes to prove that the Angles of Durham and Northumberland, though under the yoke of the Danes during the ascendancy of the Scandinavian power, have, from their first settlement, continued on their adopted soil through all the vicissitudes incident to the descents of the Britons from the western mountains, the inroads of the Picts and Scots, the ravages of the Vikings, and the subduing marches of the powerful William of Normandy.

Northumbria, as of old, may be divided into two provinces in respect to its place-names--Deira, the district of the Danes, and Bernicia, the district of the Angles, the central boundary-line being the River Tees. The Norse _beck_ and Anglo-Saxon _burn_ distinctively mark this line between these districts in the upper reaches of the valleys of the Wear and Tees. The mountain-range from Burnhope Seat, at the western confines of Durham, eastward to Paw Law Pike, forms the south division between the parishes of Stanhope in Weardale and Middleton in Teesdale. The principal tributaries of the Tees, on the south of this ridge, are _becks_, whilst those on the Wear side are _burns_. In Weardale, at the north-western extremity, Scraith _Burn_ and Langtay _Burn_ contribute to Burnhope _Burn_. On the Tees side, rising within half a mile or so of the above burns, Ashgill _Beck_ contributes its waters to Harewood _Beck_. Farther eastward we have Harthope _Burn_ on the Weardale side, and Harthope _Beck_, which runs into Langdon _Beck_, on the Teesdale side, both streams rising on Harthope Fell, and within a few yards of each other.

Continuing eastward, we find several _becks_ on the southern border of the county of Durham. In 1672 a Teesdale stream was named Raygill Burn, having the Celtic _ray_, the Norse _gill_, and the Saxon _burn_. In the adjoining parish of Wolsingham, in the Wear valley, nearly all the tributaries are named _becks_ in the Ordnance map, but these are, with one or two exceptions, originally all _burns_. In an old document of Queen Elizabeth’s time we find in this parish, Wascrow _Burn_, Westerharehope _Burn_, Hadderly Clough _Burn_, Houselop _Burn_, Bradley _Burn_, Collier _Beck_ and Ells _Beck_. There do not appear to be more than two _becks_ in this parish, Ells Beck and Holbeck, the latter a small runner near Holbeck House, the home of the Craggs family, one of whom was the Right Hon. James Craggs, Secretary of State.

In the Wolsingham names of streams that of Wascrow is generally now called Waskerley; its real name, however, appears to be Westcrau, from _crau_, a crag or rock, and _west_; or its adjectival component might be _wæs_, water. Houselop is Ouselhope, the hope of the _Ousel_ or _Ouse_, Welsh _wysg_, Erse _uisge_, water. Ouse is a common river name.

Having so many Anglo-Saxon names of places in the eastern part of the Bishopric of Durham, it is natural to suppose that the settled families of the Angles would send offshoots along the banks of the Wear, up into the dale where the river had its source. Wolsingham--the Saxon metropolis of Weardale, for its ancient manor included the whole of the Wear valley westward--is the _ham_ or home of the sons or descendants of a family of Franks, represented in Kemble’s English settlement names in Wælsingas, and in the German Walasingas, a family who probably settled in the South of England and sent their sons to the North, for Durham, according to Taylor, contained no original Anglo-Saxon settlements.

East of Wolsingham but a few miles is Witton, the _ton_, or town of witness, Anglo-Saxon _witena-gemot_. North of Weardale lie Hunstanworth and Edmundbyres, so the dale of the Wear is surrounded by towns having the Anglo-Saxon suffixes, _ton_, _ham_, and _worth_, except the Danish _byre_ of St. Edmund.

Along the banks of the Wear, three miles west of Wolsingham, is situated the village of Frosterley. Here early settlers appear to have had an abode on the banks of the river. The present name of the village is evidently derived from the forest or foresters of the Bishops of Durham, who resided here to manage the great forest westward, but the Scandinavian personal name, Frosti, is worthy of consideration. There appears, however, to have been a far earlier settlement here. A very small enclosure near the river-side is named Bottlingham, but not a vestige of a settlement remains, and the name of the small plot of ground is all that is now left. Bolihope, a tributary valley to the Wear, and which empties its burn into the river a hundred yards or two below the place under consideration, was called, in Bishop Bec’s time, Bothelinghopp. In these two names we have the _hope_ and the _ham_ of some Anglo-Saxon settlers, named Pottel, which by the law of interchange might become Bottel. Bodvulf, who died in 655, was canonized, having founded the monastery of Ikano. This saint’s relics were dispersed, hence several churches are dedicated to St. Botolph, and Bottlebridge is St. Botolph’s bridge. The old chapel at Frosterley was, according to tradition, dedicated to St. Botolph, and close to the chapel site there is Bot’s Well, a name which would appear to confirm the local tradition in respect to the dedication.

Stanhope, too, with its Anglo-Saxon initial syllable _stan_, a stone, and Celtic _hope_, had an older settlement in all probability than the present town, which takes its name from the adjoining Hope, which is full of rocks or stones. At the west end of Stanhope town there is a small stream called Allerton Burn, which gathers its waters near Allerton Riggs, lying north-west of Stanhope. The stream joins the Hope Burn, near Stanhope Hall, but where is Allerton? which is, or was, the _ton_ or town beside the allers or alders, or more probably the enclosed place of some Saxon named Alder or Ealder, from Anglo-Saxon _ald_, old, and _hari_, warrior. The site of this place was most likely near Allerton Bridge at Stanhope Hall, and this old hall residence--the seat of the Fetherston-halghs, from the days of King Stephen--probably represents the spot which we are in search of; it occupies a tongue of land between the confluence of the Allerton and Stanhope Burns.

Seven hundred years ago, persons bearing the Saxon names of Osbert, Ethelred, Meldred, Goda, Aldred, Collan, and others, held lands at Stanhope, and did service under the Bishops of Durham.

Considering the close proximity of the principal Danish settlement in England, that of Yorkshire, it would not be surprising if an inquiry into local names of places revealed the fact that the followers of Odin’s prophetic raven had left a footprint of some value in the Durham dales. The most remarkable, if not unique, footprint of the adventurous Northmen is preserved in the word _thing_, pronounced _ting_, which in names of parishes and places points out the localities where the Vikings, in their days of rule, held their outdoor national assemblies, and promulgated their national laws.

When the daring Northmen touched the shores of England, subdued in the year 867 Northumbria, and set up Inguar, the first Danish King, as ruler, they brought with them, and implanted, their traditions and customs.

In Weardale there is a Thimbleby Hill, on the south side of the Wear, opposite Stanhope, and if the Danes were in this dale for the purpose of assembling a _thing_ or council, this hill is the one above all others which they would have chosen. It has on the top a considerable flat, and it overlooks Stanhope Town on the north, commands a most excellent view down the valley eastward, and up the valley westward, whilst to the south lies a rising heath-covered ridge. The position of the hill would at once recommend itself to the Danes, who always took care to have their national courts held in places which would be free from surprise; and it is possible that Shield Ash represents the shealings of ash bows, erected for the accommodation of those attending the court. Stanhope is in Darlington _Wapentake_, which word is Danish, and each wapentake had its court or _thing_. Presuming that the Danes held a council at Stanhope, they do not appear to have established themselves to any extent; but, as we find the Danish _toft_, as in Toft Well, and a place in Bolihope, named in Hatfield’s Survey Turpenstanes, the boundary stones of _Thorfinn_, a Danish personal name, and that in A.D. 1183 persons holding the Scandinavian names of Russell, Thore, Arkil, and a son of Turkill, held lands at Stanhope, it would not be a matter of surprise if a Danish council did take place in Weardale, which is situated so close to the Danish district, and which was under the rule of the first Danish King in England.

One of the most striking instances of the Norwegian element in Weardale, is what was fifty or sixty years ago the "national" winter sport of the dale. This was _skeeing_, the national sport of Norway. Within the memory of a few of the oldest inhabitants no snowy winter passed in Weardale without this sport being practised to its full extent.