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The Lad who Went Looking for Fools
This story tells of a young man called Jack, due to marry a young woman called Polly. One day, he finds mother, father and daughter in tears: there is a well in the garden, and the three are terrified that, should Jack and Polly have a child, it will fall in and drown…
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The Markby Church Ghost(s)
According to legend, anyone who runs three times round the church anticlockwise and then bangs a nail into the door will see a ghost. We obviously do not endorse this act…
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The Flyin’ Childer
A lad sees a girl washing herself, and offers to marry her if she follows him. She agrees, but says that if he rescinds his promise she will put a spell on him, and he says that if he lets her down the worms should eat him and their children should develop wings and fly…
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The Faithful Servant
A fairly widely reported story tells of a servant at Girsby Manor in 1784 who is threatened with being flayed alive by a band of robbers if he doesn’t help them to rob the home. Instead, he tells his master, and the robbers are captured and later executed and gibbeted. The story doesn’t end there,…
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In the Box
During a cholera outbreak, a farm labourer heads home to Frog Hall, south of New York (the little one near Coningsby), and sees a horse and cart bearing a coffin, so he asks who is in it. ‘Your own wife’, he is told…
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King John’s Lost Jewels
In 1216, King John was campaigning against rebel barons, which took him through Norfolk and on to Lincolnshire. It is said he sent his baggage ahead, via a more direct route than the one he would take himself, and that all was lost in a tidal surge…
Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project 