Here’s a little oddity that may be just right for Halloween.
As this story is written by a historian, it is perhaps fitting that I begin here with some context. The Introduction to this book tells of the legendary ghost-story writer M. R. James in the 1920’s in his day-job role as scholar finding a reference in the British Museum to a book containing a dozen medieval ghost stories. Written down in about 1400 AD by a monk at Byland Abbey in Yorkshire, James got the original manuscript, copied them out and translated them into contemporary English.
By then James’s work had been published in three collections of his own, although these weird and wonderful medieval stories were, he thought, worthy of publication as much as his own work – he wrote in the English Historical Review “…I did not find them disappointing. I hope others will agree that they deserve to be published.”
And for fans of M. R. James’s work, like myself, that might be enough to pique your interest.
In this short book we have one of those stories, the longest, presented to us in a form palatable to modern readers*. They are, as Jones suggests in his Introduction, “closer to reportage than polished homilies: they are folk tales, circulated by the ordinary people who lived around Byland Abbey in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.”
The author has not tampered “with the structure or the outline, but just flesh(ed) it out here and there, developing characters a little, inventing some, even: colouring in where the Byland monk had left only sketches, and making the piece, for want of a better term, ‘my own.’ “
The story involves a tailor named Snowball and his horse Borin. The name Snowball (albeit as “Snawball”) is in the original tale, Borin not – to my mind, the names sound like they should be the other way around! Whilst travelling along the road from Gilling to Ampleforth, they meet a raven and then a huge dog who demands that in return for his life Snowball must go to York and ask a priest to absolve the dog-spirit, for he is a really a sinner from Snowball’s past who was buried in un-consecrated ground. The rest of the story is about what Snowball does.
It may be tempting when taking an older book to reinvent it with some stylistic touches of the modern prose or perhaps invoke some sort of cod-Medieval “Ye Olde Englysshe” to generate the mood of an old folk-tale. Here Dan has attempted to convey “the marvellous spirit of the original”, managing to make the story be relatable to modern readers whilst still retaining the feel of Medieval England. Whatever it’s origin, it works pretty well.
What this version of the story does is give modern readers a glimpse into the medieval world – a place where people were generally God-fearing, who would live in fear of things in the dark, at night.
It’s also a story that I think would work read aloud. Dan says in his illuminating Introduction that he discovered the Byland stories when he was looking for something from the Middle Ages to read to his children for Halloween 2020 and was then inspired to write this as well. I could imagine people having this read to them at Halloween, or as was typical of M. R. James, at Christmas, sat around a candle, as much as I can see it being enjoyed by modern readers.
It is rather short, and I would be interested in Dan or some other author expand on the other eleven stories in the same way, although some of them are very short, amounting to little more than a paragraph. To fill this book out, there’s the Introduction I’ve already mentioned, a photo of part of the original manuscript and some background to Byland Abbey, where they were originally discovered. For those who wish to practice their Latin, there’s a Latin-translated version at the end with notations in English. They’re not essential but they give the reader an idea of context and the background.
In summary then, The Tale of the Tailor and the Three Dead Kings is an interesting glimpse into a world that almost reads as Fantasy today. I found that the origins and background to the story were as intriguing as the story itself, which creates a nice little shiver and then allows the reader to move on. One for readers looking for a brief, classic read at Halloween.
*The original version of all 12 stories, both in Latin and in English translation, are also here: http://www.bylandghosts.com
The Tale of the Tailor and the Three Dead Kings by Dan Jones
Published by Head of Zeus, October 2021
96 pages
ISBN: 978-1801101295
