Episode 38 – The Devil’s Own – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 38 Show Notes

Source: English Folklore

This week on MYTH, it’s off to jolly old England for a classical tale of knights and dragons. You’ll see that you should never kidnap a cat, that even Satan has favorite pets, and that cleverness can keep you out of Hell. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll meet the ghostly apparition of a long dead army. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 38, “The Devil’s Pet”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
Because too much of a good thing is never enough, we’re sticking with our apparent ongoing island theme, although with a dreary twist, as we go to jolly old England. Both the main story and the Gods and Monsters segment for this week’s episode come from The Book of English Folk Tales, collected by Sybil Marshall. I got the book as a gift from a friend of mine, and I think it’s finally time to crack into it for this podcast. England has a long and storied history with dragons and dragonslayers, but this tale, known as The Devil’s Own, is of the odder ones I have encountered.
Jack o’ Pelham, from Hertfordshire, England, had an incurable case of sticky fingers, although he preferred to think that he just had trouble distinguishing between his neighbors stuff and his own. He wasn’t a thief, you understand, he would just be out, minding his own business, and see something that belonged to one of his neighbors just sort of lying around. “It’s a real shame to let such a fine object go to waste,” he would say to himself. “Craftsmanship as fine as that deserves to be used. It’s wasted just sittin’ around like that.” He’d go on and on like that, turning the ideas over and over in his mind until he was able to convince himself that he had every bit as much a right to it as the actual owner if not more so. After he convinced himself of that, only a lack of opportunity would keep him from making off with whatever he had set his eyes on.
This sort of mindset wasn’t all that uncommon at the time. Jack had heard tell of a man who’d lived in town who, while sitting in a pub one day having a pint, laid eyes on a cat. This was as ordinary a cat as you can imagine, utterly plain in every way, but this chap, he took a shine to the cat. He thought it was the coolest cat he’d ever seen, and he wondered who it belonged to. The more he thought about it, the more he thought that cats were very independent creatures, and no one could ever truly own one. You could just keep it around for a while until it decided to move on.
The cat stayed on his mind long after he left and went home, and he eventually decided that, since no one could really own a cat, no one but the cat could tell him no if he decided to bring the cat home with him. He spent a lot of time trying to figure out a reason to go back to this pub in this town with his horse and carriage, which took some doing since the place was 30 miles away from where he lived. He sat with his beer, petting the very friendly kitty, until the pub owner/landlady went into the back to find something, then he stuffed the cat into a sack he’d brought with him and headed out.
When he arrived home that night, holding a sack with a now disgruntled cat in his hand, his wife was less than pleased. “What the fuck are you thinking, asshole? You can’t just steal someone’s cat! That lady isn’t going to just shrug and be on her merry way. Mark my words, you’re going to be caught for this one of these days, and it’ll serve you right.” The man told his wife she could shove it up her ass and let the cat out of the bag. The cat, to put it mildly, was pissed. It didn’t like its new home and it didn’t like its catnapper. For several days, it raised a royal ruckus and raced around the house smashing things, knocking shit over, and generally making its displeasure known. Soon enough, the police came knocking since he had been seen by other patrons making off with the cat. The angry kitty was taken back home and the man was fined for his malfeasance. During his sentencing, the magistrate had proclaimed that he couldn’t understand why someone would shit on their reputation like that for a completely unremarkable cat that could be bought all over town, but then again, the guy hadn’t exactly had a stellar reputation to begin with, so it wasn’t much of a loss. Jack o’ Pelham was pretty much the same kind of guy, so now you maybe understand his brain a little better.
As it happened, Jack was at home one chill moonlit night minding his own business. He was getting cold, so he went to start a fire only to realize that he was all out of wood. Now, he could easily have tromped all the way out to the woods, chopped a bunch of wood, and made several trips to carry it all back, but that sounded like an awful lot of effort, and he was already kind of tired, so he figured there had to be a better way. He thought about it, and he remembered seeing several fat stacks of firewood cords lying in his neighbors field, already split and tied and ready to be hauled off and used.
The more he thought about it, the more he figured that if all of that wood was lying unused in the field like that, then clearly his neighbor had more wood than he needed. Besides, was it right that Jack should freeze while his neighbor hoarded all that extra warmth? No, no it surely wasn’t! It didn’t take long for Jack to convince himself that he had every right to go and take as much wood as he wanted from the field.
When he set out, the sun had long since set but the full moon was riding high and bright in the sky, so he could clearly see where he was going. It was late for a time when everyone went to bed when it got dark, and all honest men were at home asleep in their beds, so Jack had no fear of meeting anyone as he went about his totally moral but still secretive work. He loaded up his pack with wood, then set out for home, resisting the urge to whistle.
Well before he’d arrived, though, the pack on his back began to feel incredibly heavy. I mean, it was full of wood, but Jack had been carrying heavy things in the sack on his back his entire life, and it had never tired him out like this before. Several times, he had to stop and set the pack on the ground while he caught his breath, but each time he set out again, the thing felt heavier than it had before. As he neared home, Jack found that the damned thing was now so heavy that he couldn’t keep his feet, and he collapsed face-down in the dirt, buried under the wood on his back.
As he struggled to find his feet again, Jack found that the deserted road wasn’t so deserted anymore. Right in front of him stood another man he hadn’t noticed before, close enough that Jack could have reached out and touched him, and leaning over Jack to peer down at him. The man was huge, broad-shouldered and well-muscled, but that wasn’t what drew Jack’s eye. No, he was almost entirely focused on the length of naked steel glinting in the moonlight. The man was holding a wickedly sharp-looking sword in his hand. Behind the sword (though it was hard to see anything but the sword), Jack could see the man’s face, fierce and stern. Thinking he was about to die and too overburdened to have any hope of getting away, Jack did the only reasonable thing he could: he fainted dead away.
When he came to again, Jack didn’t bother to wait and see what had happened to the swordsman. He dumped the wood on the ground and raced off as fast as his legs could carry him. “Oh shit, I know who that was! I knew it as soon as I saw his face: that was Ol’ Percy Shonkey, come back to get me like I were one of the devil’s own!” The next morning, safe and sound, Jack couldn’t help but tell everyone he met the story (leaving out the bit about having taken the wood from his neighbor’s field since other people never seemed to understand why Jack had been completely in the right in taking the things he had). They all agreed with him, at least about him being one of the devil’s own seeing as how that was something they had all called the man at one time or another upon looking for some item that had mysteriously grown legs and walked off while no one was looking.
Everyone in Hertfordshire knew Pierce Shonkey, and they’d all seen the place in the wall of Brent Pelham Church where the man was buried. He had a tomb in the north wall of the church, complete with a little altar decorated with carvings of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as an angel, an eagle, a lion, and a bull, all with wings to carry the dead man’s soul to heaven and guard it from the Devil’s clutches. The tomb also showed the dragon the old knight had slain, with a cross shoved down its throat like a spear to ward off the creature’s evil.
The knight had once lived in a huge manor house near the village, complete with its very own moat. All of the stories agreed that Piers had been a brave man, always ready to sally forth on an adventure to help those in need, but his specialty had been protecting people from the dangers of strange monsters, such as dragons, wyverns, and giant serpents. In his spare time, he’d been a great hunter, often setting out on the chase with his groom and his three favorite hounds to go rip some poor unsuspecting animal to shreds in the name of sport.
According to the legend, the knight had set off hunting from his moated manor home one day, but had only gone as far as the Great Pepsells field when he heard an ear-shattering roaring and growling. He turned to face the sound, and caught the stench of brimstone on the breeze. Knowing that something dangerous lay in that direction, he loosened his sword in its scabbard, drew his spear, and charged. As soon as he cleared the trees lining the road, he could see what was making the racket. It was the biggest dragon he had ever seen, bigger than he’d ever imagined they could get, lying under a yew tree in the corner of the field. It seemed that the knight had woken the dragon as he passed by, and it was pissed about being disturbed.
It was well and truly a monster, many yards long and broad and muscley in proportion to its length. Its body was covered in horny scales as big around as dinner plates, and was a sickly green, like a festering wound rotting under a scab, except at its belly where it turned a sickly yellowish white. A black stripe ran down its back and the length of its tail, ending in a whip-thin tail topped with deadly spikes. It had short legs but huge feet tipped with wicked razor-sharp talons and long bony spurs like the legs of some monstrous rooster. It claws were sharp and powerful enough to rip a full-grown bull clean in half as easily as you might tear off a hunk of bread. Rising up from near its spine were two huge, ribbed wings with enough power to knock a fully grown man flat on his ass, although no one had ever seen the dragon actually use them to fly.
The worst part, though, the worst part was the head. It had a long, bony snout armored in the same sickly green scales. Out of its head grew two bony knobs, like the very beginnings of massive horns that had never grown in. Beneath the horns sat two angry, ridged brows with huge, bulging eyes that glowed an iridescent orange and blue, like the flame of a wickedly hot torch burning against a winter’s night sky. When it opened its mouth to roar, huge, jagged yellow teeth were revealed, set farther apart than you would expect, like the teeth of a rusted out saw. A forked tongue writhed sinuously between the awful teeth, tasting the air like a snake as clouds of smoke puffed out of the gaping black holes of its nostrils. Every so often, the hideous thing would spit a bilious red poison to crackle and burn the earth around it.
Brave as he was, even Piers Shonkey took a step back at the sight of the horrid creature from the very bowels of hell. He raised his eyes heavenward, although not so far that he couldn’t still see the creature, and prayed for strength and protection. His groom and his three hounds, prepared to rip something small and helpless to shreds, turned and ran the other way as fast as they could, tails tucked between their legs. Piers gripped his lance tight, for he knew that he would have a bad time of it if he had to try and fight this thing at sword length.
The dragon, clearly sensing battle being offered, reared up on its hind legs and bellowed, an eardrum bursting screech that Piers could feel in his armor, and that left his ears ringing after it finally died down. Dazed a little by the wall of sound, Piers lunged with his lance at the relatively soft underbelly of the massive reptile, but the creature leaned forward, brushing the weapon aside easily with one claw. Then, it opened its ragged maw and spat a gooey wad of steaming red poison at the knight. The spittle spattered across his armor, sticking like hot tar, and wherever it touched, the metal turned the ugly purple of a fresh bruise and melted down his chest in sticky globs.
Piers drew back his spear for another thrust, but the dragon whirled before he could steady himself, tail whipping at the knight’s armored feet in an attempt to trip him and end the fight almost as soon as it had begun. Piers saw the movement coming, and was able to leap over the whistling tail, though it was difficult in his heavy armor. As soon as the spikes cleared his feet, Piers stepped into another thrust, aiming for the back of the dragon’s head, where it’s skull met its neck. He connected, his aim true, but the steel point bounced off the hardened scales, jarring his arm and stinging his hand with the force of the blow.
The fight went on like this for hours, with both parties getting in small hits and minor wounds, but although both ended up covered in blood, mud, and gore, neither had been able to land a killing blow and end it. Finally, the tired dragon made a mistake. It sat back on its hind legs, balancing on its tail, and whipped its head forward to try and seize the irritating knight by the throat. Piers thrust once more with his lance, and the steel ripped straight down the throat of the massive beast, driving so deep that Piers couldn’t pull it back out.
Rather than waste valuable time fighting with the lodged weapon, Piers dropped the handle and drew his sword and his dagger, one in either hand, ready to fight what would definitely be a brutal fight if he had to get close enough to use them, but he needn’t have worried. The old dragon, transfixed by the huge hunk of metal running down its throat and into its chest, sank wearily to the ground and died, still thrashing and hissing as it tried to pull the painful thing out.
Piers stood there for a long moment, making sure that it wasn’t playing possum in an attempt to kill its tormenter before it died, but it didn’t move again. He said a quick prayer of thanks that he had survived another fight. He was just starting to wonder if he should try to pull the lance, twisted and ruined from the combination of the dragon’s poison and its agonized thrashing, out of the corpse and cut off its head as a trophy when the smell of brimstone, so pervasive that he had blocked it out, suddenly overwhelmed everything else. The smell was so much worse than it had ever been when the dragon was alive.
Looking up, Piers saw why. Standing over the corpse, looking at the dead monstrosity like a favorite puppy, was Old Nick, the devil himself. The battered knight could see the horns, the tail, and the cloven hooves, leaving no doubt as to who he was seeing. The devil looked up, eyes locking with Piers. “You! You did this! You killed him! This was my very favorite dragon, you son of a bitch! I raised him from a hatchling, fed him with my own hand! He was special. I used him to go and raze certain villages or countrysides that I particularly didn’t like. He was a sweet little hell dragon, and you killed him! I’ll have your immortal soul for this, asshole! I swear on my own damnation that when your time comes, you will not escape me! Be you buried inside a church or out of it, I’ll come for you. Live as long as you like, I’ll be waiting at the end. You will not escape me for murdering my pet, Piers Shonkey!”
Piers crossed himself in terror, but the Devil just stared angrily at the man for a moment longer, then vanished in a puff of sulfurous smoke. Not sure what else to do, he left the dragon laying where it was, head still attached, and headed home. He washed off the gore then ate dinner with some ale. Afterwards, he lay down, exhausted but brain still too busy to find sleep easily. The Devil’s threat had shaken him. He hadn’t ever really thought much about his own death, but now seemed a prudent time to start. He figured that he should go ahead and make whatever preparations he could now so that, when his time came, he might just have a chance to slip through Old Nick’s claws and sneak away to heaven.
He lived for a good many years later, and had many more adventures, though none quite so exciting as the dragon, and eventually died in his bed as an old man of liver failure from one too many pints of cheap ale. He was found by his family, and they were surprised to discover that he had left very specific and somewhat odd instructions for his burial (he hadn’t exactly loved to tell the story of the Devil himself laying claim to his soul). The devil had said he would get him if he was buried inside of a church or out of it, but Piers had found a loophole. He had them bury his body inside the north wall of the Brent Pelham Church (which some stories claim is a corruption of the name Burnt Pelham Church after the damage to the town from the deadly dragon), half inside the church and half outside of it, so that he was neither inside nor outside of a church. In this way, so they say, the crafty old knight had saved himself from the devil’s evil clutches and made his way safely up to heaven.
If you go to the church today (and yes, you can actually go and see the black marble tomb still located in the old church), you’ll be able to see the name Piers Shonkey and read the engraving (added more recently than the tomb itself): “Nothing of Cadmus nor St. George, those names of great renown survives them, but their Fames; time was so sharp set as to make no Bones of theirs, nor of their monumental Stones, but Shonke one Serpent kills, t’other defies, and in this Wall as in a Fortress lyes.”
The story doesn’t say what happened to Jack o’ Pelham, but I have to imagine that seeing the ghost of the legendary knight who had, through his wits alone, escaped the clutches of the literal Devil gave him something to think about. Piers’ adventure had made him consider his death and afterlife, and perhaps old Jack did the same. Perhaps he changed his way, but perhaps not. He was an old scoundrel, after all, and the tiger doesn’t change his stripes. Either way, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s monster, inspired by the ghostly apparition of the knighted dragon-slayer, is the Phantom Army of Flower’s Barrow.
Flower’s Barrow is an ancient hillfort, built during the Iron Age, over 2500 years ago above Worbarrow Bay in what is now Dorset on the southern coast of England. The white cliffs that make up the southern part of the hill are falling into the sea due to erosion, so the ancient hillfort won’t be around forever. Nearly half of it has already collapsed into the surf and been lost. It was still quite sturdy when the Romans invaded the area, though, and they were more than happy to take over the fortifications rather than build their own. History doesn’t tell us what befell the Roman legion that quartered there, but according to multiple accounts, their ghosts never left.
The first recorded sighting of the ghostly army came in December of 1678, during a time of uneasy peace between numerous outbreaks of fighting between the local lords and kingdoms. It had lasted long enough that people had gotten used to sleeping through the night without being woken by news of a marauding army come to rape and pillage, so Captain John Lawrence and his brother, heading home with four workmen, clay cutters by trade, who lived near them, weren’t worried about being out and about as the sun set.
As they walked, John saw movement off in the distance, one that felt familiar. Looking harder, he saw what was unmistakably a column of soldiers marching down the road towards Flower’s Barrow, over Grange Hill, making for Wareham. He gasped, drawing the gaze of his brother. The column had grown. It was no longer a single column, but a force of thousands of men, all marching in the lockstep of trained soldiers. By this time, the six men had reached the outskirts of the town, and the four workers had followed the gazes of the two brothers and had also seen the army headed their way. They cried out, drawing the attention of the villagers who were still out and about.
A hurried council was called, and it was decided that the marching soldiers appeared to be foreigners and that a messenger needed to be sent to London. The king needed to be warned that a foreign army had massed on English soil and was headed for slaughter. Captain John Lawrence and his brother were chosen, as they had been the first to see the force and because John had been an officer and so had more credibility. They rode at breakneck speed, risking their horses in the darkness, until they reached London where they were deposed, under oath, about the foreign army on the Dorset coast. At the same time, the workers and those villagers who were most mobile ran for the nearby town of Wareham to warn the mayor and raise the militia.
Wareham had seen more than one raid, so they responded immediately to the warning. Before a single soldier had been spotted from Wareham, 300 militiamen had been mustered to defend the town. They barricaded the bridge, drew the boats out of the water, sent runners to smaller outlying villages, and raised what impromptu fortifications they could, shitting their pants at the thought of holding off such a huge army with such a small force. As they worked, more volunteers poured in until a force of several thousand had been gathered to try and fend off the invaders. Satisfied that they had done all that they could, they hunkered down to wait.
And wait they did. Hours passed, and not a sign was seen of the foreign army. It was possible that the army was just moving slowly, so the villagers kept waiting. Days passed, and still no army. Scouts were sent out to investigate. Not only did they not find the invading army, they found absolutely no sign that any such force had passed by at all, and it was inconceivable that so many men could move without leaving a clear trail. Sheepishly, the militia disbanded and everyone went home.
Everyone was pissed off at the Lawrence brothers and the four workers for scaring the shit out of everyone over nothing. Some people claimed that they had pulled a prank, others that they had mistaken shadows for soldiers and panicked, so terrorized by so many scourging armies over the last few years that they had armies on the brain. To the man, all of the men stuck to their stories and swore they had seen an army. John Lawrence even claimed he had heard the clashing of armor and weapons as they marched, a sound he was intimately familiar with. The town argued over whether to punish the men for an ill-conceived joke, but eventually decided to let them go. Through it all, none of the men changed their story, not even under threat of punishment.
For centuries, no one saw the ghosts of the Roman soldiers, who had marched in the area for nearly 400 years. However, sightings were again reported in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II and several times during the course of the war. The ghostly Romans appeared several times over the next few decades, with the last sighting being in 1970, marching up Knowle Hill near Corfe. They haven’t been seen since, but there’s no reason to think they’re gone forever, so if you’re out on the south coast of England, keep an eye out for the shades of the Roman Legion, still patrolling the old boundaries of the Roman Empire.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you like what you’ve heard, I’d appreciate a review on iTunes. These reviews really help increase the show’s standing and let more people know it exists. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
Next time, we’ll take a short hop across the Channel to old France for a tale as as old as time: Beauty and the Beast. You’ll discover that Disney really nerfed Bell’s father, that teenagers have always been assholes, and that you can always trust a horse to be smarter than you. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll learn why riding strange horse in the middle of the night is a bad idea. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.