Pete Castle - Nottinghamshire Folk Tales

To disciples and followers of Robin Hood everywhere;
and to everyone who loves a good story.

Thanks are due once again, to Sue who continues to put up with me both sitting at the computer and gallivanting off on singing and storytelling trips. Shes also a fount of ideas and an indispensable critic and proof reader.

To Roy Harris, for the citation, various bits of information, and for being my mentor all those years ago.

To Stephen Best: man of Nottingham, friend, and source of advice and information on this subject.

To Lewis Brockway for the rear cover photo.

To Jenny Ball for the loan of books.

To the staff at both the Nottingham and Derbyshire (Matlock) local studies libraries for help with finding and copying material.

To all the many storytellers and folk musicians Ive worked with over the years.

To all the many people whove sat in my audiences.

To you for buying this book.

Old Mr Snotta built himself a hutta

By the side of the River Trent.

It was a very pleasant spot in the forest deep

And pretty soon he was collecting the rent.

Oh, the castle grew and the factories too

As the people came from miles around

To buy their food and sell their goods

In Mr Snottas little town...

This is a dangerous task I attempt! Having already written Derbyshire Folk Tales in this series of county folk tales books for The History Press I am now going to attempt Nottinghamshire Folk Tales . The two cities (and, I suppose, the two counties) are great rivals. The only man who has been able to unite them in the recent past was Brian Clough via his achievements with Nottingham Forest and Derby County football clubs. Now the two cities are literally joined by the Brian Clough Way the name given to the stretch of the A52 between the two cities. However, in the more distant past there were many other links even the famous Sheriff of Nottingham was, in fact, the Sheriff of Nottingham and Derby until Elizabethan times (therefore at the time of Robin Hood!) As you read these tales you will find other things the two counties have in common as well.

Im not from Nottinghamshire. I was born a Man of Kent and I have lived in Derbyshire since 1987 but, back in the 1970s, I lived in Arnold, on the outskirts of Nottingham, for a few very influential years. For the last thirty-plus years I have worked professionally as a folk singer and storyteller, but without those few years spent in Nottingham my life would probably have taken a very different direction and I would not be writing this now, for it was during those years that I first began to take a serious interest in folk songs and folklore. I owe an awful lot to those years in Nottinghamshire.

I had discovered folk music whilst at college having played and sung in rock bands when I was at school, and Id been toying around on the fringes of folk music singing songs by Bob Dylan and Paul Simon as well as my own compositions (deeply influenced by the Incredible String Band) for several years by the time we moved to Arnold. In the 1970s, Nottinghamshire was one of the foremost areas in England for folk clubs and bands. (Several of the stories in this book gave rise to the names of clubs or groupsBendigos, Hemlock Stone etc.) We hadnt been in Nottingham long when I happened to go to a meeting which led to me starting a folk club in Arnold and then, a year or two later when it folded, I joined the committee of the very successful Carlton Folk Club which continued to run into the present century, long after Id left. Whilst playing as a resident at Carlton I became more and more interested in traditional songs. I learned many and also wrote a few imitation folk songs, the most successful of which was probably the Goose Fair Song which was taken up, sung, and even recorded, by several other singers and groups.

Somehow my wife, Sue, and I also managed to get ourselves a series on Radio Nottingham called Sing a Song of Nottingham. It was a series of five programmes, each with a theme Sherwood Forest, Coal Mining, People etc built around mainly local songs which we performed. I wrote the little song at the top as the theme tune. I suspect the series might have been fairly bad and very nave, but it sowed a lot of seeds for the kind of work which Ive done since, including six years running a local radio folk programme after wed left Nottingham and moved down to Bedfordshire. It was whilst in Bedfordshire that I took the major step of giving up my job as a teacher and going on the road full time as a professional folk musician. A few years later I discovered storytelling and have been doing the two, in tandem, ever since.