Floods on my mind

There is a flood watch on the River Soar from Nuneaton to the Trent. Loughborough town meadows are under water (this happens quite often in winter, but not, as a rule, in July), and the local paper reports that the town centre’s Victorian drains were overwhelmed in a downpour last Friday: four inches of water in the market square, and shopkeepers struggling to keep it out of their premises.

This was supposed to be a nice quiet week in which I came back all fired up from the Robin Hood conference and got down to work. Instead, I spent yesterday afternoon drawing up a basic flood protection plan for the house, and yesterday evening clearing out the gutter-pipe drains and later, by the light of a gas lantern, pointing some brickwork where the mortar had washed away, down near the base of the walls. I have never done pointing before. It’s harder than it looks. More light would have helped, but there was rain forecast today, and sure enough, it is raining already. Today I have to figure out how to add easily removable covers to the air bricks, and, if it’s possible between showers, mastic round various places where cables come into the house. After that, we will be (I hope) reasonably well prepared for a four-inch flood and can start to worry about anything deeper. The next spell of heavy rain is forecast for Thursday afternoon.

This is the beginning of a story collected at the end of the nineteenth century from an old woman in the Lincolnshire Cars, once a fever-ridden district of rivers running through wide impassable swamps:

Tiddy Mun

Whiles syne, afore tha dykes wor made, an’ tha river-bed changed, whan tha Cars wor nobbut bog-lands, an’ full o’ watter-holes; tha wor teemin, as thou mayst a’ heerd wi’ Boggarts and Will-o’-tha-Wykes, an’ sich loike; voices o’ deed folks, an’ hands wi’outen airms, that came i’ tha darklins, moanin’ an’ cryin an’ beckonin’ all night thruff; todlowries* dancin’ on tha tussocks, an’ witches ridin’ on tha great black snags, that turned to snakes, an’ raced about wi’ ’em i’ tha watter; my word! ’twor a stra-ange an’ ill place to be in, come evens.

Folk wor gey skeered on un nat’rally, an’ wouldna goo nigh un wi’outen a charm o’ some sort, just a witches pink or a Bible-ball, or the loike o’ that. A’ll tell thee ’bout them another toime. Tha shook wi’ froight, a tell thee, whan tha found their sels i’ tha Cars at darklins. For sartain, tha wor mostly shakin i’ they toimes; for tha agur an’ fever were terrible bad, an’ thar wor poor weak crysoms,** fit for nowt but to soop gin an’ eat op’um. In ma young days, we’d all tha agur; tha women ower tha fire, tha men out i’ tha garth, even tha bairns had tha shakes reg’lar. Ay, mebbe, tha’s better off noo, but a don’t know, a don’t know, tha’s lost Tiddy Mun.

For thee know’st, Tiddy Mun dwelt in tha watter-holes doun deep i’ tha green still watter, an’ a comed out nobbut of evens, whan tha mists rose. Than a comed crappelin out i’tha darklins, limpelty lobelty, like a dearie wee au’d gran’ther, wi’ lang white hair, an’ a lang white beardie, all cotted an’ tangled together; limpelty-lobelty, an’ a gowned i’ gray, while tha could scarce see un thruff tha mist, an’ a come wi’ a sound o’ rinnin’ watter, an’ a sough o’ wind, an’ laughin’ like tha pyewipe*** screech. Tha wor none so skeered on Tiddy Mun like tha boggarts and such hawiver. A worn’t wicked an’ tantrummy like tha watter-wives; an’ a worn’t white an’ creepy like tha Dead Hands. But natheless, ’twor sort o’ shivery like when tha set round tha fire, to hear the screechin’ laugh out by the door, passin’ in a skirl o’ wind an’ watter; still tha only pulled in a bit nigher together, an’ lispit wi’ a keek ower tha shouther, “’Arken to Tiddy Mun!”

Mind ye, tha au’d Mun hurted none, nay, a wor real good to un at times. Whan tha year wor geyan wet, and tha watter rose i’ tha marshes, while it creepit up to the door-sill, an’ covered tha pads, come tha fust New Moon, tha feyther an’ mither, an’ a’ tha brats, ud go out i’ tha darklins, an’ lookin’ ower the bog, called out together, thoff mappen a bit skeered an’ quavery like:

“Tiddy Mun, wi’-out a name,
tha watters thruff!”

an’ all holdin’ on togither an’ tremblin’, a’d stan’ shakin’ an’ shiverin’, while tha heerd tha pyewipe screech ’cross tha swamp; ’twor tha au’d Mun’s holla! an’i’tha morn, sure ’nough, tha watter ud be doun, an’ tha pads dry. Tiddy Mun a done tha job for un.

What’s that? Ay’ a called ’un Tiddy Mun, for a wor none bigger ’n a three year’s bairn, but a hadn’t rightly no sort of a name—a niver had none. Someday a’ll tell thee how that comed.

*todlowries: foxes, usually; but these seem to be supernatural creatures

**crysoms: Christians

***pyewipe: peewit

Marie Clothilde Balfour (1829–1897)

from ‘Legends of the Cars’ in Folklore, June, 1891

The story, which is a long and rambling one, seems to incorporate folk memories from the seventeenth century. It tells how ‘tha Dutchies’ drained the marshes, how Tiddy Mun became angered, and everything began to go wrong for the folk of the Cars: their animals fell ill, and their children too, ‘tha thatch fell in, an’ tha walls burst out, an’ all an’ anders went arsy-varsy’.


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