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A List of my Stories
Here are my Wessex Tales stories in chronological order,
from 8,000 years ago through the twentieth century:
1. The Infant and the Hare [*e-available]
Stone Age hunter-gatherers camp on Okeford Hill. The men go hunting; a woman gives birth to a child. [8,000 years ago]
2. On the Kingfishers’ Bank
The River Stour once served as a tribal boundary. A dark-skinned youth from the advanced ‘Windmill Hill’ culture meets a fair-skinned ‘primitive’ girl from the ‘Peterborough’ people. Despite racial and linguistic differences they fall in love. [5,000 years ago]
3. Whose Pig?
A cruel winter ends with the seemingly magical appearance of a pregnant sow. Two Neolithic farmers seek to claim her. [4,000 years ago]
4. Bronze
What does a Stone Age village make of the sudden appearance of a hard, cold, yellow ‘stone’? [3,900 years ago]
5. In the Land of the Great Stone Rings [*e-available]
A Bronze Age peasant is called up for labor service. Two winters later his gang lifts the final sarsen stone onto a structure we know as Stonehenge. [Research has revised the date of this event, from 3,600 to 4,600 years ago.]
6. The Hill
Pressed laborers build hill forts as invaders flee climatic change and population pressures on the continent. Two of the largest forts lie within a mile of Okeford. Conscripts flee their masters during a raid. [2,500 years ago]
7. Bonds of Silk and Circumstance
A slave explains to his master’s children how a meadow spider weaves a web. After years of observation he is able to predict the spider’s next move, impressing the little boys. Watching a fly struggling in the web reminds the slave of his own predicament, captured by a raiding party years before. Who were his parents? Do they speak the same language? Should he escape? [2,300 years ago]
8. Our Lady of the Holy Spring
The sacred waters of the Holy Spring at Fummel, modern Fontmell Magna) served the threefold functions of the Celtic trinity: as oracle, healing power and wishing well. Fummel’s holy spring owed its exalted reputation to the tripos powers of its avatar, Birgit, virgin, crone and witch. As last light fades into night, Birgit predicts an attack by marauders coming up the river. [2,200 years ago]
9. Dies Irae
The Second Legion Augusta) fought a lightning campaign of 27 battles across the land of the Durotriges (Dorset) in 44 CE. A family flees before the Roman march. The battle for the Iron Age fort on Hod Hill.
10. The Face in the Floor [*e-available]
The earliest known floor mosaic representing Christ was laid in a remote Dorset villa around the year 325. (Discovered in 1963 it was rapidly moved to the British Museum.) Why was such a magnificent floor laid in the wilds of Dorset? ‘The Face in the Floor’ gives this exceptional mosaic a putative history. The next story, Julia, is a sequel.
11. Julia [*e-available]
This story is a sequel to the previous one. Julia’s parents commissioned the mosaic floor. As a child, she watched a master-mosaicist build it. As this story begins, Julia is a young woman, resisting marriage. [c. 335]
12. Silent Witness
A nineteenth century antiquarian discovers, wrapped in lead, the testament of a seventh century missionary sent by Canterbury to convert the pagans in a part of the country described by the Venerable Bede as ‘very pagan’. [c. 635]
13. From the Wrath of the Norsemen …
The ‘Year of Nine Battles’ [871] saw Wessex defenders holding the Norse army at Bokerley Dyke between modern Salisbury and Blandford. Okeford levies are conscripted into Ethelred’s army. Ethelred is wounded at Wilton, dies at Wimborne, and his young brother Alfred takes the throne.
14. Schelin’s Daughter [*e-available]
Schelin (for whom Shillingstone or Shilling Okeford is named) was awarded the manor for service to King William at Hastings. Schelin has a problem: his daughter would rather get herself to a nunnery than marry well. A Saxon wise woman’s potions are called for. [c. 1086]
15. The Cottar’s Tale
A bard, stranded by darkness, is forced to take shelter with a cottar’s family on Okeford Hill. By way of thanks he tells a story. [c. 1170]
16. For Viviana’s Wedding [*e-available]
Viviana de Eskelling was the last of the Norman Schelins. Around 1287 she married Bartholomew Turberville, taking Okeford into the Turberville domains. Villagers prepare for their lady’s wedding.
17. Apocalypse [*e-available]
The plague of 1348 (known later as the Black Death) struck hardest in Dorset, where it landed, Somerset, Wiltshire and Devon. ‘Apocalypse’ tells the story of a heroic village priest, the only one of four, records suggest, to survive the pestilence.
18. Night of the Mowing Devils [*e-available]
The phenomenon known as ‘crop circles’ was ascribed in medieval times to ‘Mowing devils’. Two young lovers in a field are caught in such an event. [c. 1535]
19. Called to Arms
Peasants were so angered by the pillage of both armies in the Civil War that they organized into a briefly heroic shambles known as the ‘Dorset Clubmen’. Several thousand Clubmen resist Cromwell’s dragoons at the Iron Age earthworks on Hambledon Hill [1648].
20. Fairy-rings
A boy sets out to discover how fairies play in fairy-rings on Okeford Hill [1680].
21. Trial and Error
In 1685 the ill-fated Duke of Monmouth landed at Lyme Regis to depose King James II. An Okeford man, caught up in the fray, is condemned by Judge Jeffreys at the Bloody Assize in Dorchester.
22. Musing on Damory Oak
This huge and ancient oak, which stood at Blandford, finally died and was cut up for firewood in 1752. The Damory Oak pub stands near the spot. This tree was so well known that something of its history is recorded. This story creates a seven hundred and fifty year history for the oak.
23. Long Years and a Day at Okeford Fair [*e-available]
An orphaned boy seeks the father who sired him fifteen years earlier during Okeford Fair. He has few clues to his father’s identity. [c. 1790]
24. ‘An auncient & pleasaunt Ditty on Okeford Fair’
This ‘auncient’ ballad is in keeping with the ribald nature of Okeford Fair, whose charter dates from the time of the Anglo-Norman Schelins. [c. 1790]
25. Half a Dozen Ponies
Import taxes were so heavy in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that smuggling was a major industry in coastal counties. A young boy wants to make his mark in the smugglers’ world by leading a pack train through the night,
all the while evading troops and customs agents. [1800]
26. Midwinter Mummers
Christmas was the time for mummers and winter merriment. The pageant breaks down when two mummers, village lads vying for the affections of the same girl, turn the play into a bout of fisticuffs. But ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’. [c. 1830]
27. Keeping the Faith
1851 saw Britain’s industrial might celebrated at the Great Exposition in the Crystal Palace. The same year marked publication in English of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. At Okeford, a radical Methodist preacher is thrown into jail.
28. The Bull [*e-available]
Since medieval times the Child Okeford ‘Bull’ turned up at Christmas festivities, leaving a trail of jollity and mayhem. In ‘The Bull’, tenant farmers attend the Hall’s annual Christmas festivity. One man, seeing an opportunity to arrange a good match for his daughter, retains the services of the ‘Bull’ to carry off the girl. Rescued by her otherwise timid suitor, her future is assured. [1880s]
29. Lost and Found
A leading barrister defends a poacher. Decades before, the poacher had been the barrister’s mentor when the latter was a boy living in the village. A witness positively identifies the poacher in the wood, but was there enough light to see b
y? [1900]
30. A Short Walk in France [*e-available]
A young soldier from Okeford advances at the second battle of the Somme. [1916]
31. Moving On
A young woman, mourning the death of her fiancé in the trenches, has her reason restored by a violent storm on Hambledon Hill. [1916]
32. Looking for Edna on Shillingstone Hill
The American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay spent just two months in Okeford, but they were dramatic months for the poet and for her host village.
33. On Treading Softly
A woman plans to poison her father to end his sufferings and her mother’s exhausted labor at his sickbed. A timely release follows advice from a peculiar quarter. [1924]
34. Crossing [*e-available]
An elderly woman recalls her life as she lies on her deathbed while caregivers chatter around her. [c 1976]
35. The Patient Patient
A story based in fact. As the local doctor closes his office one evening, a guest reminds him that he has one last patient waiting in the hall. When the guest and the doctor look into the hall the patient is gone. The guest describes the patient. The doctor replies that the figure often waits there: the ghost of the patient patient probably relates to the old priest-hole discovered between two walls during renovations. [1962]
36. Gallipoli
The Dorset Yeomanry saw its first active service in the Dardanelles. Set in the 1960s, an old farmer looks back on boyhood trips to Bristol with a haywain, and on his later service with the regiment in the Great War. ‘Gallipoli’ is a tribute to the author’s former neighbor at Okeford, who died in 1976.
37. Fair Welcome and Farewell
Okeford sent a higher proportion of men to the Great War than any other parish in the U.K. Afterwards, in recognition of its heroism, the nation presented Okeford with a German field gun. Plotting the course of village history, this story ends with that glorious afternoon in September 1919.
Reader, may the Fates respect you and be kind to you.
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