Edvane Stories

This is a fictional folklore yarn, written for a specific purpose and based on a note I wrote to myself in 1986

In the farms and scattered houses above Dunsop Bridge, old people used to say there were places on the fell that held weather for too long and should be given a wider berth than the path required. One such place was a hill hollow known as the Smothing. Some meant the hollow itself by that name. Some meant the thing said to lie in it when mist sat low and would not lift. Some meant the wasting change that could come over a bairn afterwards. No one much cared to argue which was right.

The rule was plain enough. No unbaptised child was to be carried near the Smothing when the mist was lying in it, least of all toward evening, when the light dimmed, and sound went queer on the fellside. If there was no help for it, the long way round was to be taken, however rough the weather.

People kept the rule because one house above the valley broke it once and paid dearly for the shortening.

In the telling most often given, it happened in a hard back-end of the year, with the ground sodden underfoot and the fells under rain that ought to have passed on. The child at the centre of it had not yet been baptised because there had been no easy chance for it. The mother had been poorly after the birth and not fit to be taken far. The beck had been troublesome after the rain. The parson could not be had when wanted, and in such country a christening was sometimes put off a little when roads and bodies were both against it.

They were decent people, living out from the village in a cottage where every small need was earned. The father was away that day, or else busy where he could not be called from. A message had to be taken, or broth, or something else that could not well wait till morning. In some tellings, it is the mother herself who goes, still weak but steady. In others, it is an elder kinswoman, or a girl old enough to carry the child and think no great harm in the shorter path. However it is told, the reason is always ordinary but pressing.

The shorter way ran beneath the hollow. The longer way bent wide over worse ground and would have added time they did not think they had. The mist was already gathering in the folds of the fell, though not so thick yet as to stop a body walking. Whoever carried the child knew the rule well enough and likely thought of it. It was broken in the old way that such rules are broken, by tired people in poor weather telling themselves they would be past the place in a minute and home soon after.

By the time they came under the side of the hollow, the mist was thick and had sunk lower than it looked from a distance. It lay in the fold of the ground, somehow held there after the rest of the fell had let it go. The path was narrow, and the air was still. There was no movement of sheep nor creaks in the breeze.

Nothing was seen clear enough to be sworn to after. That too is always part of the telling. Yet whoever carried the child felt, all at once, that the weight in their arms had altered, like the bairn had given itself over to listening. It had been fretful before, or half wakeful, but under the hollow it went entirely still. No whimper, nor small stirring under the wrap either.

Some say the cloth over the child’s face grew damp on one side, though no rain was falling by then. Some say there came a smell of wet earth stronger than the ground itself should have given. Some say the carrier had the sharp fancy of another face close over the bundle, leaning to look in, though when they turned, there was nothing but mist.

By the time they reached home, the child had not cried once. That part was always told the same. At the time, it seemed no more than a mercy.

That first night passed without alarm, and if anyone remarked on the child’s unusual quiet, it was only to say that the road and weather had likely tired it. A fretful bairn turning peaceable might seem a blessing in a hard house. The mother may even have been grateful at first. The child fed when put to the breast, and yet there was something wanting even then, though no one would have wished to name it. It suckled without eagerness, then it lay in the cradle with a stillness too settled for its age.

By the second or third night, the change was harder to set aside. The child did not cry properly. It made little sound, and it began to lie wakeful at hours when any right child would have dropped into heavy sleep. More than once, the mother found its eyes open in the dark, fixed and watchful, not roaming as a baby’s eyes ought. It fed, yet did not thrive. Milk went into it, but flesh did not come on. The mother began to rub its hands between her own before the fire because the child’s were oddly lacking in warmth. When she kissed its head, she thought once or twice that it smelled of moss brought in on boots.

Then there were the smaller matters, the ones hardest to tell without sounding foolish. The cradle blanket would sometimes be found lying strangely smooth in the morning, pressed flat by careful palms. The child no longer started at the creak of the latch or the shift of flame on the hearth. It seemed to listen more than to sleep. The mother, who had known every fret and rooting movement of it since birth, began to dread the sight of it lying so still.

She said nothing at first, or not enough. Shame had a hand in it. So did fear of hearing her own thought spoken back by someone else. But the house changed around the cradle. Even those who laughed at old sayings lowered their voices near it. Yet the child remained before them, and by nights it seemed to be withdrawing from them a little more, while something else was settling in its place.

It was the women coming and going on ordinary errands, bringing broth, asking after the mother, looking in on the child as neighbours do, who named what was wrong. At first, they said very little. One remarked only that the bairn was uncommon still. Another said it did not cry with a bellyful of life in it. A third, lifting the blanket edge, let it fall again and asked how long it had been keeping so quiet. None wished to be the first. People often circle a fear before they touch it.

The mother grew sharp and defended the child more fiercely than she meant to. That too is remembered. She said it fed well enough. She said some babies were quieter than others. She said the weather and the poor nights had put foolish notions into their heads.

At last an older woman was fetched, one who had served at births, laid out the dead, and knew what had been said around the Chase long before younger folk took to scoffing at it. She came in, looked once at the child, once at the cradle, and once at the mother, and did not waste words. She asked whether the baby had been carried out before christening. Then she asked by which path. When she heard it had gone beneath the hollow with mist in it, she crossed herself without show and said the child had been smoothed.

She did not mean taken whole in a single lifting, as in travellers’ tales from elsewhere. She said the Smothing came on by degrees. It leaned over the cradle by night. It quieted what was lively. It drew the true child away a little at a time toward the hollow and left its own stillness behind.

After that, nobody in the house could pretend the old fear had not entered it by name.

The old woman said there was one way to know whether the child was only failing, or whether something older had got its look upon it. The trial was made in the plain, hard fashion of country folk who used what had been handed down. She ordered that the child be laid in the cradle after dark with no smoothing cloth over it, and that a piece of iron be set beneath the bedding with another at the threshold. Then she had the women bring the fire low and keep the room still.

What she did next is told with small differences, but the sense is always the same. She took an eggshell or two, cleanly halved, and set them by the embers. They say a meal was brewed in them, stirred with grave care and thought perfectly ordinary. It was an ancient act to wrong-foot what watched from the cradle, for no true infant could mark it with understanding, let alone mock it.

Presently, the child, which had lain quiet as ever, gave a sound that was not its proper cry. Some say it laughed like an old woman. Some say it asked what housewife had lived so long and seen broth brewed in so small a shell. Others say no words were heard, only that its face changed into something knowing and spiteful.

Whatever the exact sign, all agreed that what then looked out from the cradle was not the helpless mind of a newborn child. After that, no one in the house doubted what had come among them.

The old woman said there was no use waiting once the thing had shown itself. So they made ready in the last black hours before dawn. The child was wrapped in a shawl, with a small piece of iron hidden in the fold. The mother was made to carry it, and the old woman went with her, in some tellings, the father too, silent now and past scoffing.

They took the path back, and none were to speak the child’s name on the way. No one was to answer if a voice called from the hollow, nor turn if they heard a step behind them where no foot should be. The old woman walked nearest the side of the hill, muttering prayers under her breath and words between them that were not for asking about.

At the edge of the hollow, they stopped. There, the old woman told the mother to hold out what was in her arms and call for her own living child, not the quiet thing that had lain in the cradle, but the one born of her body. She must ask for it plain and stern, and promise nothing. In some versions, the bundle was laid for a moment on the wet ground. In others, it was passed through smoke of peat and rowan brought in a covered pan.

In all tellings, the bundle then changed. Some say it grew suddenly heavy. Some say a cry broke from it, fierce and unearthly and full of rage. Some say another cry answered from higher in the mist, and then was gone. The mother fell to weeping when she heard the child in her arms cry as a true child should. The old woman bade them then to turn and go home without once looking back toward that place.

The child was said to have lived, but no telling makes the end too easy. For a while, it was weak and hard to settle. In some versions, it cried for nights together and would not bear to be laid facing the wall. In others, it mended slowly enough, yet never took kindly to mist, nor to the sight of that side of the fell. There were those who said a child once smoothed was never afterwards quite the same, even if brought back in time.

It was christened in haste, that much all agree on. After that, the family would not use the lower path when weather sat in the hollow, and the mother, they said, would sooner wade bad ground than pass beneath it again. The old woman’s name has gone, but not what she said or did. Her warning outlived her.

So the rule stayed in the mouths of farm wives, grandmothers, and those minded to listen when weather closes in. Folk might disagree over what was seen, or whether a child was truly taken bit by bit, or only touched by some ill that a village put extra flesh to. But they kept the caution all the same.

No unbaptised child was to be carried near that hollow when mist lay in it. That was enough. In Bowland, people did not care to make a trial of the Smothing for a second time.

Based on the account of Annie Stanley, aged 82, of Clitheroe, taken down in 1869

I welcome polite comments. If you enjoyed this tale, then you might also enjoy The Children of Bradfield Wood