Summer is silly season. It’s official – there’s even a Wikipedia page about it! In the summertime, if we can, we take a rest from the weighty news of the day and find things to have a laugh about. The first mention of a ‘silly season’ is in 1861, when the Sunday Review states: ‘The hands which at other times wield the pen for our instruction are now wielding the gun on a Scotch moor or the Alpenstock on a Swiss mountain. Work is left to feebler hands.’
So, in the spirit of summer silliness I bring you some of the silliest Gloucestershire and Wiltshire tales.
The great compiler of British folklore, Katherine Briggs, gives a list of ‘places supposed to be inhabited by simpletons’. These are what she calls ‘local taunts’, tales told by one place at the expense of another.
The most famous sillies of all are the Wise Men of Gotham in Nottinghamshire, but the stories told of such ‘Gothamites’ are told in many places.
I was delighted to discover that the small town in Suffolk where I first went to school, Hadleigh, was considered one such silly place. I felt this made me an adopted silly!
And I’m afraid I’m doubly silly, since the people of Painswick see the people of Stroud, where I now live, as Gothamites.
Wiltshire bears the crown in our region for the number of silly places, which are mostly in the north of the county: Aldbourne, Beckhampton, the Cannings villages, Chiseldon, Collingbourne (she doesn’t say which one), and one of the Lavingtons.
Katherine gives but one in Gloucestershire – Ebrington, whose folk were known as the Yubberton Yawnies or Mawms by their arch-enemies over the Warwickshire border in Ilmington… which village is also on Katherine’s list!
Stroud isn’t on her list, and neither are Drybrook, Willersey, and Gotherington, but all have silly stories associated with them.
What are the silly tales told about these places? What I find interesting is that it’s commonly the same stories, over and again.
The Yubberton yawnies
Perhaps the most famous tale associated with Ebrington is of the competition between Ebrington and Chipping Campden as to who had the tallest church tower.
It was clear to the folk of Ebrington that Campden topped them by a good way, but they had a solution – giving, ahem, rise to this rhyme:
The Yubberton Yawnies be so wise
They mucked the tower to make it rise
And when the muck began to sink
The swore the tower had grown an inch.
Why though? All becomes clear when you realise that the muck-covered stone would look discoloured as the muck sank back down – clearly showing that the tower had risen higher from the dirty ground.
Another informant swore that it had ‘growed two inches’, but alas not enough to top Campden’s tower.
That’s not the end of the story, however. The locals thought about it and decided that if the tower were a little further up the hill, then surely it would be higher!
So, after a fortifying session in the Ebrington Arms, the villagers set out to the church, and, it being a warm summer’s evening, they piled up their jackets in a heap and set to trying to push the tower a bit further up the hill. They heaved and they strained, but while they were doing so, one of their number ran off with their coats for a laugh. When the labourers had done, they saw that the jackets were missing and bewailed the fact they must’ve moved the tower right on top of them!
Two Yuperton Yawnies to Campden went
To buy a barra were their intent.
They carried the barra from town to town
Lest the wheel should bruise the ground.
That rhyme had a coda that happily we don’t have to worry about in this country today. A mad dog was said to have come into the village and bitten the barrow. So the Yawnies carried the barrow to the sea and dipped it in. That makes complete sense when you know that seawater was once considered a cure for rabies. Sadly, of course, it isn’t.
Animal tales
Like at Yorkley Slad, the Yawnies are also accused of putting a pig on the wall to watch the band go by – but at least they didn’t let it play the organ, like at Hook Norton. Animal-related stories are common – the folk at Gotherington are said to have put a thatched roof over their pond so that the ducks could swim in the dry.
The Yawnies also tried to trap a cuckoo to make sure the summer didn’t end… but forgot to put a lid on the trap, so the cuckoo flew away. Although they wanted summer to last for ever, they also put the clock forward to make Christmas come sooner. And when they thought their candles were damp they put them into the oven to dry.
The stories of the moonrakers
The most famous of all silly stories is indeed associated with Ebrington – the story of how the villagers saw a great round cheese floating in the pond.
They brought their rakes to get it out, lest it should spoil in the water, but to no avail. Every time they tried to haul it out, it dipped beneath the water and nothing they did could get it out – and then up it bobbed as soon as the rake was lifted away. It was, of course, the reflection of the full moon.
The full moon was associated with madness – lunacy – and caused other villages to do strange things too. The folk of Drybrook set off to put out the moon, thinking it was a haystack on fire, and the people of Willersey put a net over their pool to keep the moon in!
Versions of this story are told all across Britain, but in Wiltshire there’s a twist. Wiltshire folk are known as Moonrakers, and you might think that that’s because there are so many silly villages in the county. But no.
Many places from Swindon to Devizes claim this story as their own; it’s a tale in which the idea of the ‘Wiltshire clown’ is turned on its head. Devizes is the place most associated with it today.
Two smugglers bringing barrels of French brandy up from the coast to the Pelican Inn in Devizes come a cropper at the Crammer Pond on the edge of the town.
The donkey pulling the cart takes fright and won’t move, so one of the smugglers beats it and – in a good comeuppance to animal cruelty – the donkey kicks up the traces, the cart tips over, and the barrels roll straight into the pond!
The two men wade into the water to get the barrels out, but the heehaw-ing of the donkey brings out the exciseman, who was responsible for collecting taxes on goods such as alcohol.
Thinking fast, the smugglers grab the rakes on the cart and when the exciseman challenges them they claim to be raking the gurt cheese in the pond. The exciseman swallows it hook, line, and sinker and goes away to tell folks how he’d seen those men raking at the reflection of the moon; but in fact the joke’s on him: ‘That yer smeart Excisemin fresh vrum town wur took in well wie a Willsheer clown,’ as Edward Slow’s dialect retelling of the story ends.
In Ebrington the villagers get a last laugh, as Katherine Briggs records. A stranger came to the pub and asked what the name of the place was. On being told Ebrington, he rejoined: ‘That be wheer all the fools live.’
‘Well, I don’t know that they all live here,’ said the landlord.
‘But we get plenty passing through.’.
Places: Ebrington, Willersey, Gotherington, Drybrook, Yorkley Slad, Hook Norton, and Devizes.
Toilets and refreshments: You can still visit pubs associated with the tales: the Ebrington Arms in Ebrington and the Pelican Inn in Devizes.
Further reading: Gloucestershire Folk Tales for Children by Anthony Nanson and Kirsty Hartsiotis and Wiltshire Folk Tales also by Kirsty Hartsiotis,
A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales, Vol 1, by Katherine Briggs and Wiltshire Rhymes by Edward Slow.
Kirsty Hartsiotis is based in Stroud and available for hire as a storyteller and speaker.
She is an accredited Arts Society lecturer, and her books include Wiltshire Folk Tales and (with Anthony Nanson) Gloucestershire Ghost Tales and Gloucestershire Folk Tales for Children. She is also a curator at Museum & Art Swindon.
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