Hylton Castle
âEvery castle, tower, or manor-house, has its visionary inhabitantsâ, says Robert Surtees in 1820, and goes on to tell of perhaps the most famous in the County Palatinate of Durham, the Cauld [Cold] Lad who once inhabited Hylton Castle, a fifteenth-century tower house in the north-west part of Sunderland:
âThe cauld lad of Hiltonâ ⊠was seldom seen, but was heard nightly by the servants who slept in the great hall. If the kitchen had been left in perfect order, they heard him amusing himself by breaking the plates and dishes, hurling the pewter in all directions, and throwing every thing into confusion. If, on the contrary, the apartment had been left in disarray (a practice which the servants found it most prudent to adopt), the indefatigable goblin arranged every thing with the greatest precision. This poor esprit folet, whose pranks were at all times perfectly harmless, was at length banished ⊠by the usual expedient of presenting him with a suit of cloaths ⊠At twelve oâclock the sprite glided gently in ⊠and surveyed the garments provided ⊠tried them on, and seemed delighted with his appearance, frisking about for some time ⊠till, on hearing the first cock, he twitched his mantle tight about him, and disappeared with the usual valediction: Hereâs a cloke, and hereâs a hood, The cauld lad oâ Hilton will do no more good.
Surtees classes the Cauld Lad as a brownie, hence the âusualâ in his description â these domestic spirits often inhabited tower houses in the north of England and Scotland. However, he adds that the boy had become identified as the ghost of a servant killed by âone of the old chiefs of Hiltonâ and thrown into a pond âwhere the skeleton of a boy was (in confirmation of the tale) discovered in the last Baronâs timeâ.
Surtees thought the story might be founded on fact, as a coronerâs inquest recorded the death of Roger Skelton accidentally killed on 3 July 1609, with the point of a scythe held by Robert Hilton of Hilton. Surtees notes that a free pardon for the manslaughter appears on the Durham episcopal rolls, dated 6 September 1609, but it seems that what the coroner judged accident, local rumour turned into murder, and provided the traditional vengeful ghost.
Surtees observes that the Cauld Ladâs apparent glee on being released from his haunt by the gift of clothes was untypical, as brownies are often sad to leave âtheirâ homes. But the Cauld Lad is by no means a typical brownie. His very name links him to the Cauld Lad of GILSLAND, Cumberland, who was a ghost, and he shares the character of Silky of BLACK HEDDON, Northumberland, halfbogle, half-revenant.
Local storytellers themselves may have seen the Cauld Ladâs reaction as a departure from brownie traditions and sought to redress this. M. A. Richardson, in 1843, gave a corollary of the Cauld Ladâs story mentioned by neither Surtees nor Sir Cuthbert Sharp in his Bishoprick Garland (1834), which explains the spiritâs jubilation. He says, when the inhabitants of Hylton Castle decided to get rid of the Cauld Lad, he got an âinklingâ of their intentions, and would often be heard exclaiming sadly at dead of night:
âWaeâs me. Waeâs me,
The Acorn is not yet
Fallen from the Tree
Thatâs to grow the wood
Thatâs to make the cradle
Thatâs to rock the bairn
Thatâs to grow to a Man
Thatâs to lay me!â
Richardson judged that the Cauld Lad was comforting himself with the (mistaken) thought that the man was not yet born who could âlayâ him, but the rhyme links him with ghosts who accost people in hope of being released.
According to Richardson, the Cauld Lad was not banished entirely, but, long after, his voice would be heard at midnight dolefully singing:
âHereâs a cloak, and hereâs a hood,
The cauld lad oâ Hilton will do no more good.â
âCertain it isâ, he writes, âthat there was a room in the castle long distinguished by the name of the
âcauld ladâs roomâ, where âunearthly wailingsâ could be heard.â
William Howitt, when he visited Hylton Castle, heard a different version of the legend. In Visits to Remarkable Places (1842), he writes that a woman there told him that the boy had been kept in confinement in a cupboard and had consequently acquired the epithet âthe Cold Ladâ. She also said that he had no head. Others speculated that his name meant not âcoldâ but âcowedâ, having closecropped hair.
SEE ALSO:
SOURCE:
Haunted England : The Penguin Book of Ghosts – Written by Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson –
Copyright © Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson 2005, 2008
