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Fred the Fool
A wayward lad called Fred Baddeley, who is thin yet greedy, gets a job at a farm on the other side of the Wolds: the farmer has offered him the job in the belief Fred will be cheap to feed and clothe. Unfortunately, Fred eats the house bare…
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Sir Hugh Bardolph & the Dragon
The legend of Sir Hugh Bardolph, set in the twelfth century, recounts the slaying of a man-eating dragon with one-eye (perhaps unique in British folklore) at the site, during a storm…
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The Serpent Slain at Walmsgate
A tradition, which probably took its rise at an early period, tells of a huge serpent that devastated the village of South Ormsby and was slain at the adjacent hamlet of Walmsgate.’ This is said to have been the handiwork of Sir Hugh Bardolph, more famously associated with dragon-slaying at Castle Carlton, a few miles…
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William of Lindholme
William is accused of selling his soul to the Devil. Legend has it that he agreed to construct a causeway across the wetlands from Lindholme to Hatfield, on condition nobody could watch him, and was subsequently seen working on it at great speed with the assistance of scores of miniature demons.
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The Wild Man of Stainfield
A ‘wild man’ allegedly once lived in the woods near Stainfield, and would make raids to kill the locals and their livestock. Variations of the tale exist. In one, a band of local farmers known as the Hardy Gang, angry that livestock keeps being stolen and their families terrorised, hunt the wild man down between…
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The Drake Stone
Outside Anwick’s church, a plough horse vanished in quicksand, and a drake flew out in its place. The following day, a boulder shaped like a drake’s head appeared on the spot. In a competing narrative, recounted in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1833 and quoted by Maureen James in Lincolnshire Folk Tales (2013), the devil, or…
Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project 