Devil’s Dike, Devil’s Bridge, Devil’s Spittleful, Devil’s Churchyard, Devil’s Chair, Devil’s Jumps, Devil’s Apron-Strings; these evocative placenames in the English countryside and many more like them inspired Jeremy Harte’s Cloven Country: The Devil and the English Landscape, a learned examination of the activity of the Devil in early modern England. Over the course of nine thematic chapters, the author takes the reader by the hand and leads them on a rollicking excursion throughout the green and pleasant land to uncover the local history behind the names of landscape features inspired by the Devil. The result is a rich and heady hodge-podge of legends and lore, some still told by locals down to the present day, narrated with verve by an expert in English folklore with an enviable gift for storytelling. While the book will not satisfy readers looking for clear arguments about the origins of these stories, it is difficult—if not impossible—not to succumb to the allure of these charming tales and the author’s skill not only in recovering them from a myriad of oral sources and obscure regional publications but also in telling them afresh in a modern idiom for a new generation of readers.
Chapter 1 introduces landscape features—trenches, causeways, monoliths, bridges—associated with Satan’s machinations. These stories often involve half-finished projects of demonic origin, abandoned when the Devil is thwarted by a lowly human hero. An appealing example is the tale of a traveling cobbler who met Satan carrying an enormous shovelful of rocks that he was planning to pour on a local town called Bewdley. The cobbler outsmarted the Devil by convincing him that the town was much farther away than he imagined and presented worn-out shoes—the trappings of his trade—as proof of how far he had already walked from that place. Unaware that the man was a cobbler, the Devil believed his tale and dumped out his rocks before leaving. This story explains the name of a sandstone hillock a mile from Bewdley: Devil’s Spittleful.
Chapter 2 likewise deals with landscape features named after the Devil, but here the author presents the idea that some diabolical associations overwrote older stories of large earthworks attributed to others legendary protagonists: “at some point between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the Devil . . . took over as the lead character for stories that had previously feature heroes or witches or giants” (49-50). The suggestion that this may have been a purposeful “structured forgetting” of non-English traditions is tantalizing, but not fully explored (53).
The remaining chapters follow a similar pattern; they are rich in folklore but elusive in terms of argument. Chapter 3 treats stories about the Devil’s attempt to interfere with church buildings, either by moving them, throwing great stones at them, or stealing their bells. Chapter 4 presents legends about bargains with the Devil and their consequences, often contracted after dark in remote locations commemorated with the enemy’s name. Chapter 5 discusses placenames that evoke legendary escapes from the Devil’s clutches, like “Devil’s Race,” or places so desolate that they adopted his name ironically, like “Devil’s Garden.” Chapter 6 explores stories about sorcerers who raised the Devil to do their bidding and then reversed their invocations in the nick of time or by assigning him a task that he was unable to perform.
Chapter 7 turns to tales featuring women, including the wife of a Sussex farmer turned over to the Devil by her husband, who upends Hell and beats up imps until Satan evicts her with a clever couplet: “I have been a tormentor the whole of my life / But I never was tormented till I met with your wife” (175). As the author notes, sometime before the 18th century, the Devil had become a comical figure: “silly, combative, vengeful, and vain” (185). The reader is left to wonder why. Chapter 8 notes a similar shift around 1700, when stories about the Devil ceased to revolve around the punishment of exemplary sinners and turned instead to warning against mundane pursuits on the Sabbath, like gathering nuts, collecting blueberries, or playing cards. The final chapter deals with stories portraying the Devil as a huntsman on the moors in search of souls, which featured one of the most memorable tales in the volume. As an intoxicated farmer returned home one night through the rugged uplands of Dartmoor in Devonshire, he heard the sound of a hunting horn and encountered a dark rider with a pack of hounds. When he asked if the rider had bagged any prey, he received in response a ragged hunting bag stuffed with the hunter’s quarry. Upon his return home, the farmer opened the bag to discover its grisly contents: the corpse of his own infant son
There is much to admire about this study. Cloven Country is an entertaining collection of anecdotes about the pursuits of the Devil in early modern England and the imprint left by him on placenames in the countryside. The prose is appealing; the stories are charming, though sometimes harrowing; and the depth of research is admirable. This is recommended reading for anyone interested in the history of the Devil and the local folklore of England. It reminds us in no uncertain terms that every placename has a history. While those stories are sometimes elusive or shrouded in mystery, Cloven Country demonstrates clearly that they are worth the effort required to recover them.
Scott G. Bruce is a professor of history at Fordham University.
Scott G. Bruce
Date Of Review:
February 14, 2024
