Folklore of Lincolnshire by Susanna O'Neill Page A

money to be had from their father, they began to change their behaviour towards him. He was given the best room at each house, the nicest food, fine wine and generally treated like a king. After a month the old man went back to his attorney friend and told him of the changes. He thanked him profusely and returned the box of money to him, although he told his sons that he had hidden the money again until the day he needed it.
    The sons continued to treat their father with this renewed respect for the rest of his life, all because of the promise of more money. Just before he died he toldthem there was no money and reprimanded them for their bad behaviour in the past, but forgave them on his death bed, even though they had acted like beasts to their own kin.
    There is also a rather well-known story about Jesus Christ visiting Lincolnshire, and having a run-in with a selfish farmer who owned Fonaby Top farm. The story, as retold by Polly Howat, 18 tells that Jesus was riding his ass through the fields near this farm, when he saw the farmer sowing some corn. He slowed down his hungry animal and enquired if the farmer could spare some of the corn for the ass. The farmer, not realising who the stranger was, lied and said that he had no corn. When Jesus asked what was in the sacks in the corner of the field, the farmer insisted they were full of stones. ‘Then stone be it,’ Jesus is said to have replied, and the sacks immediately turned to stone. Jesus went on his way but the farmer could not carry on with sowing, as he had no more corn!
    The large sack stones also began to get in the way when he was ploughing later in the year and eventually he decided to move them. It was a large undertaking and took twenty-two horses in all to shift the stones from Fonaby Top down to the farmyard at Fonaby Bottom. Only then the farmer began to experience really bad luck; his crops started to fail and his cattle became ill and died, until eventually he believed the sack stones were to blame and had them taken back up to Fonaby Top. This time it only took one horse to drag them up the steep hill.
    Word soon spread that the stones had some mystical properties and when it was known Jesus had passed that way, the whole story was revealed and many people came to see them. With time, the stones fell into three pieces so they are not very recognisable today, and though lying on private land they can still be seen.
    Whilst visiting the area, I enquired at the farm, Fonaby Top, as to whether the stones were still visible. I was met by Mrs Rose Cole, who was extremely welcoming and invited me in for tea and homemade cakes. She kindly showed me the remains of the stones and told me that superstition around them was still prevalent today. They were half hidden in the undergrowth and she explained they had built the field boundary hedges along that section to cover the stones, so they would not be disturbed. Touching them was still seen as rather unwise. Mrs Cole even went on to tell me how her husband, Mason, had once accidentally nudged the stones with his combine harvester and broken his arm in the process!
    What exactly Jesus was doing in Lincolnshire remains a mystery, although some versions of the story assert that the stranger was St Paul, not Christ. You can decide which is more probable.

FOUR
G IANTS
AND H EROES

    Britain is a land awash with numerous stories of giants, such as the famous Gog and Magog giants defeated by Brutus and Corin in Cornwall. Also Wade and his wife, who built the castles at Mulgrave and Pickering by tossing a hammer between the two; the Wrekin giant from Wales who hated the people of Shrewsbury and wished to flood the town, but couldn’t find it; and the Alphin and Alderman giants who fought over a beautiful water nymph and created large hills in the peaks by throwing great boulders at each other, plus many more. Of course many of us have seen the Cerne Abbas giant, whose colossal outline can still be viewed etched into