Folklore

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A St. George.

W. B. Gerish

To cite this article: W. B. Gerish (1901) A Hertfordshire St. George., Folklore, 12:3, 303-307, DOI: 10.1080/0015587X.1901.9719636

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0015587X.1901.9719636

Published online: 06 Feb 2012.

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Download by: [University of California, San Diego] Date: 28 June 2016, At: 21:53 Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 21:53 28 June 2016 COLLECTANEA.

A HERTFORDSHIRE ST. GEORGE.

DRAGON legends are, I think," somewhat: uncommon in the eastern and southern parts of . • Perhaps the dense woods and morasses formerly existing in the northern portion' of the kingdom, in which all kinds of wild beasts could find a "refuge, may-have produced "such stories in greater, abundance and detail. In the church,of Brent Pelham, or Pelham Sarners,1 Herts, a small village situated about ten miles from, Bishop's Stortforid arid five from : , is a . semi-effigial monumental slab, thus described (1631) in Weever's Funeral Monuments. In the North Wall of this Church lyeth an antient Monument of Stone, wherein a Man is figur'd, and about him an Eagle, a Lyon; arid a Bull, all having Wings; and a fourth of the. Shape of an Angel; as" if they should represent the four Evangelists; under the. Feet of the Man is the Cross Fleurie, and under the Cross a' Serpent." "Simple and beautiful, as' these symbols' are,",says our most recent county historian, Mr. .Cussans (1872), i\they have given rise to the most.absurd,traditions. The most popular.is,.that Piers Shonkes" [in whose memory the monument is said'to have been erected] was a mighty hunter, and was'always accompanied in his expeditions by one attendant and three favourite hounds, so swift of:foot that.they.were, said to be,winged, and are so

' Brent Pelham, or Pelham Arsa, from a fire which destroyed it in the reign of Henry 1.5 Pelham Sarners, from the name of a grantee of the ..Bishop of London shortly after the date of Domesday. These' eognomina are heeded to distinguish the. place from its neighbours, Pelham' Furneaux and Pelham Stockin. ..But'at the time of the Conquest, says'Sir Henry Chauncy '/list. Herts, i., 276),/* These several Mannors^ and'Parcels of Land made but one Parish, known in Domesdei Book only by the name of Pelham," when they Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 21:53 28 June 2016 , formed an estate of the Bishop of London. The three parishes are collectively known as " the Pelhams " to this day. The Domesday Church seems to have been at Pelham Furneaux. 304 Collectanea.

represented on the tomb.1 Chancing one day to kill a dragon, which seemed to have been under the immediate protection of Satan, the latter declared that he would be revenged on Shonkes, and would have him at his death, whether he was buried within 'or without the church. Shonkes, to avoid his fate, directed that he should be buried neither within nor without the sacred build­ ing, but in the wall, and feeling perfectly secure in that position ordered that a representation of his achievement should be carved on his tomb. On the wall at the back of the tomb is painted, this inscription:

" • Tantum fama manet Cadmi sanctique Georgi Posthuma; tempus edax ossa sepulchra vorat. Hoc tamen, in muro tutus, qui perdidit anguem Invito positus Dsemone, Shonkus erat. , O, Piers, Shonks Who died, Anno 1086.*

" ' Nothing of Cadmus nor St, George, those names Of great renown, survives them but their fames ; Time was so sharp set as to make no Bones Of theirs, nor of their monumental stones. . But Shonks one serpent kills, t'other defies And in this wall, as in a fortress, lies.'

" It is possible that the last couplet may have given rise to the tradition."2

1 The four Evangelistic symbols as above. * The epitaph is; said (by Salmon) to have been composed by the Rev. Raphael Keen, who died in 1614. He was vicar of Brent Pelham for 75^ years! Chauncy, writing in 1700, gives the inscription and also a variant of it, and speaks of it as "formerly " over the tomb. Mr. E. E. Barclay, of Brent Pelham Hall, has kindly shown me a copy, made 1806, of a copy of both variants made by Tho: Jugge, Vicar 1683-1725, which also speaks of them as "formerly" there. . That now existing must have been repainted before 1728, when Salmon saw it. The other runs thus :— Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 21:53 28 June 2016 " Cadmi Fama manet, tantum tua Fama Georgi Posthuma, Tempus edax Ossa, Sepulchra vorat: Attamen hoc Tumulo, Shonkus qui perdidit Anguem Invito Satano caute sepultus erat." " Cadmus his Fame, St. George his Fame alone, Their Tombs and Ashes all are gone: But Shonkk who valiantly ye Serpent wounded In spite of Satan, here he lies entombed."

[The. tradition must be older than the epitaph which embodies it.—ED.] A Hertfordshire St. George. 305

Salmon, writing in 1728, winds up his account of the place "with the relation given to me by an old farmer in the parish, who valued himself for being born in the air that Shonk breathed. He saith ' Shonk was a giant that dwelt in this parish who fought with a giant of , named Cadmus, and worsted him; upon which Barkway hath paid a quit-rent to Pelham ever since.'"1 It is hardly necessary to state that the Cadmus referred to was no local giant, but the fabled Phoenician dragon-slayer mentioned in the epitaph, while the quit-rent was the usual copyhold tenure. 'The accounts given locally vary greatly, as is usually the case. The chief variant is, that when Piers was on his death-bed he called for his bow and an arrow and shot it at random from his window, commanding that he should be buried where the arrow fell.2 The arrow passed through one of the church windows and transfixed itself in the wall where the tomb now is. Some thirty or forty years ago, a patriarchal old villager told Mr. W. H. N. of that he either remembered or heard that on an excavation being made under the wall near the monu­ ment, bones, supposed to be Shonkes', were found, and from their proportions would have belonged to a man from nine to ten feet high. Whether these were replaced in the tomb or not he did not know. An old man named Thomas Tinworth, who died a septuagenarian in 1899, told Mr. E. E. Barclay, of Brent Pelham Hall, that his father was the person who explored the tomb during some repairs to the floor about 1835. He found that the recess went a long way down, and in digging into it he found some very large human bones, evidently belonging to a man of great stature. The following account written some years ago by the Vicar of Brent Pelham (the Rev. W. Wigram, M.A.) is worth quoting here. He says: '* The tomb is in the north wall of the church and is of thirteenth-century8 work The staff of the cross is driven Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 21:53 28 June 2016 like a spear through the mouth of the dragon,'the emblem of the human soul[?]. The chancel of the church was rebuilt about forty years ago and is now in a straight line with the nave. For­ merly it inclined so much to the north that room for a small

1 Salmon's History of Herts, p. 289. ' This resembles an incident in the Robin Hood hero-tale. * More probably fourteenth century.

VOL. XII. X 3o6 Collectanea.

vestry was gained between the original north wall (which was left as it stood) and the line of the existing north wall; hence the south window of the chancel looked through the chancel arch, and an arrow entering at the window could have struck the north wall of the nave. "A terrible dragon kennelled under a yew tree which stood between what were afterwards two fields called Great and Little Pepsells; and the stile in the pathway which crossed them was set up in the stem of this tree when it was split open, as such trees do, with extreme old age. This dragon was killed by Shonkes, and as it was dying Satan himself arose and claimed Shonkes' body and soul for slaying his dragon. The Christian knight defied him, promptly replying that his soul was in the keeping of Heaven, and that his body should rest where the arrow then upon his bowstring should fall. He shot accordingly, and the arrow entering the south window of the crooked chancel passed through the chancel arch and struck the north wall of the nave at the spot in which Shonkes still rests, invito Dcemone. " In subsequent ages the yew tree was cut down by a labourer well known to my informant, the parish clerk. The man began his work in the morning, but left it at breakfast-time, and on returning found that the old tree had fallen, collapsing into a large cavity underneath its roots." As to the real history of the hero, little can be said. Weever, who gives neither legend nor inscription, says (loc. cit.): " He is thought to have been sometime the Lord of an old and decay'd House, well moated, not far from this Place, called 0 Piers Skoonkes} He flourish'd Anno a Conquestu vicesimo primo." In Salmon's time (loc. cit.) there was a barn standing on this moated enclosure, and he also states that this manor (Beeches) pays castle-guard to Bishop's Stortford, a relic of the feudal system which is, I believe, paid to the lord of the manor of Stortford Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 21:53 28 June 2016 to-day. Mr. . Wigram (ut supra) says: " The site of the hero's house is marked by the moat,which once surrounded it, in a pasture still called 'Shonkes' Garden,' upon Beeches' Farm." "Batches alias Beaches" was a distinct manor in Brent Pelham parish; and of another manor, "Graies," Sir Henry Chauncy

1 Sic. The next sentence is not borne out by Domesday Book, Etill less so is the statement of the inscription that Shonkes died in that year. " Grateful FrSfus." 307

(1700) says it was "become a decayed Farm and now annexed to Beaches." Among the endowments of the church is a parcel of woodland called " Beches and Shohks." The only other person of the name in the neighbourhood of whom we have any record is Gilbert Sank, who in the sixteenth year of Edward I. was distrained upon by Simon de Furneaux, Lord of the Pelhams, for his "Homage and service and forty shillings and sixpence rent by the year, Fealty and Suit at Court at Pelham Arsa, from three weeks to three weeks."1 Salmon suggests that he might be the father of Peter or Piers Shonks. . As to the dragon, fossil remains of extinct animals have often been found in the clay-pits of Hertfordshire, none of which, however, are of so recent a date as the mediaeval period. But the story may be very much older, dating possibly even from prehistoric times, and thus handed down from father to son it has become connected in the usual materialistic way with the monumental slab, assisted during the past two centuries, as Mr Cussans says, by the epitaph. W. B. GERISH.

" GRATEFUL FREJUS."

(Quoted by permission from the " Guardian," 22nd August, 1900.)

It is not often, even in Provence, which has kept much sim­ plicity and the beauty, born of simplicity, that we have the. opportunity of taking part in a festivity entirely popular in its character, which,has been celebrated for several centuries with

1

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 21:53 28 June 2016 the same details as it is to-day. But on this sunny May morning the high road to Frejus is gay with bright faces, and many a family group of gaily dressed girls, white-capped mothers, and red-sashed, blue-trousered fathers, goes chattering along the boulevard under its young-leafed" plane-trees, their French greetings seeming almost out of keeping with their dark, handsome Italian faces. French greetings for us only,

1 Chauncy, Hist. Herts (1700), vol. L, p. 278. X 2