76 NOTES ON ESSEX DIALECT AND FOLK-LORE.
peared, but its reality is still discoverable by the word batch being
affixed to the name of the place as above.
I am not prepared to say how many times the Devil has appeared
in our county, but it is reported that he showed himself to the
inhabitants in the form of a Minorite friar during a thunderstorm
at Danbury, 1402, when the nave and a great part of the chancel of
the church was destroyed.
In the parish of Tolleshunt Knights there is an uncultivated field, and at
some distance from it is an old mansion known as "Barn Hall." The legend is
that the Hall was intended to have been built on the first named spot, but the
devil destroyed in the night time all that had been done in the day. A knight
with two dogs was sent to watch, and when the evil one came there was a sharp
tussle, but of course Apollyon was vanquished by Greatheart. The irritated demon
thereupon snatched a beam from the building and hurled it through the darkness,
exclaiming:
" Wheresoever this beam shall fall
There shall stand Barn Hall,"
and further added that on the knight's death he would have him, whether he was
buried in the church or out of it. To avoid this calamity the warrior was buried
in the church wall —half in and half out. A curious doggerel was common in the
district named.
The "Legend of the Flying Serpent," an account of which
appeared in a pamphlet published by Peter Lillicrap in the year
1669 with the title of "The Flying Serpent, or Strange News out of
Essex, being a true relation of a monstrous serpent which hath at
divers times been seen at the parish of Henham-on-the-Mount, 4
miles from Saffron Walden." This was reprinted a few years ago by
our member, Mr. Miller Christy.
" It is the hardest thing in the world to shake off super-
stitious prejudices. They are sucked in as it were with our
mother's milk and growing up with us at a time when they take the
fastest hold and make the most lasting impressions become so inter-
woven into our very constitution that the strongest good sense is
required to disengage ourselves from them." These were the words
of Gilbert White, written in 1776, and if true in his day they are as
true in ours.
In Essex it is considered lucky to see the new moon over your
right shoulder, but unlucky to see it through glass. One good
woman I came across always shut her eyes when she closed the
shutters, lest she should see the moon.
It is lucky to put on your stocking wrong side out, but unlucky to
turn it immediately on discovering the mistake.