And now for something completely different. I’ve recently been
listening to a CD of Jake Thackray, a Yorkshire comic and balladeer
who recorded a series of very funny stories in the folk-singing
tradition. The ballad is a simple, jaunty form with lots of rhyme,
and ideal for story-telling – so I thought I’d have a go at one, and
here it is.
Hob Hurst is the folk name for a spirit or elf who lives in the oldest
and most mysterious places in the Peak. Before archaeology came
along to investigate the burial mounds, stone circles and other
traces of prehistoric people, such landmarks were explained as the
work of Hob Hurst. Like Puck or Robin Goodfellow, Hob could be
mischievous if you didn’t stay on his good side, and was often left
a dish of cream on a farmer’s doorstep to keep him in good humour.
Amongst several sites known as ‘Hob Hurst’s house’ are the cave
at Wetton better known as Thor’s cave, and a burial mound on
Bigg Moor, near Beeley. Both were used in the Bronze Age.
Jo
Hob Hurst’s Ballad
In days when home meant an open hearth
and no-one had a wall or a door
Hob Hurst’s foot was the first on the path
and he danced all over Bigg Moor and he laughed,
he danced by moonlight on the moors.
Hob Hurst came when no-one was here
and nobody bothered him then;
he sang in the wind and he whistled in the air
and he knew they were coming but
he didn’t care, he didn’t much care for the coming men.
Hob’s house lay in a circle of earth,
for it wasn’t his way to draw lines;
and the Romans came, and they cut the turf
and they laid straight roads and cut holes in the earth
and he didn’t much care for their mines.
Hob Hurst sat on a gritstone edge
and whistled down to Wetton in the night;
and the Normans came, with their stone-arched bridge
and their monks and their knights and their castle on the ridge
and he didn’t much care for them, King or knight.
Hob danced jigs by the old cold streams
as the farmers sowed their barley and their corn;
he goosed all the goodwives and drank their cream
and sometimes popped his head up to make them scream
but he didn’t much care for butter or corn.
Hob Hurst fiddled on the high bright hills
and grinned at the sound of his voice;
and Arkwright came with his looms and his mills
and his houses and his engines till the dale was full;
and Hob didn’t much care for him.
Hob Hurst plays in a circle of stones
drumming on a skin with a pair of bones
and the latest ones come with their Barratt homes
and their stress, and their offices and mobile phones
and he doesn’t much care for us, you know
he doesn’t much care for us.