Now! Then! On his way to play with the Muker church band, Richard Guy of Hill Top Farm climbs over a wall to inspect a fertile heifer

Excerpt

We used to walk from our farm, Hill Top; it was right on the top and it was the first house you came to after you left Askrigg on the road to Muker. My grandfather – my father’s father – had been tenant there before my father. His name was Guy, and in them days Muker was full of Guys, same as Askrigg was full of Chapmans. Now my grandfather Guy was killed with a bull, one he’d brought up himself. It was a Sunday morning and me grandfather used to play the bass fiddle in Muker church. There was an orchestra in the church, them days; me grandfather played the bass and there was a fiddle, and I wouldn’t know whether they had drums or not, but they had four or five in the orchestra. Well, me grandfather had put his best Sunday clothes on to go, and he passed this pasture where the bull was and there was some heifers there, and he heard one of them in service and he wanted to see which one it was. That is why he climbed over the wall they think. And they always think that the bull didn’t know him in his Sunday clothes and that is why it gored him. My father said he hadn’t a rag left on him when they found him; it had gored him to death. He was a really good man, my grandfather, one of the best living men there was; everybody said he wouldn’t play a dirty trick on anybody. But the bull didn’t know him in his Sunday best.

Order the book

Subscribe to the free daily email

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations

Comment

Dates. Malise McGuire has discovered a mention in the press (the Northern Echo? I can’t find it) of this tragedy. It is dated 4 August 1882, so Sunday was 30 July: “On Sunday at Hill Top Farm, near Gunnerside, Richard GUY went out to look at some young cattle and was soon afterwards found in a field dead. His clothes were literally torn to shreds.” I haven’t looked on Ancestry, but this is the Richard Guy born in 1833 at Scar House, Muker, and present in the 1881 census:

70. Hill Top Farm
GUY/Richard S/Head/M/47/Farmer 158 Acres/Yks Muker
GUY/Rosomond/wife/M/47/Farmers wife/Yks Muker
GUY/Thomas/son/U/20/Farmers son/Yks Muker
GUY/Robert J/son/U/17/Farmers son/Yks Muker
GUY/Richard/son//13/scholar/Yks Muker
GUY/Elizebeth/dau//8/scholar/Yks Muker

The anecdote also turns up in abbreviated form, perhaps abstracted from the above, in an outstanding book by Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby (Hartley 1982).

Something to say? Get in touch

Original

We used to walk from our farm, Hill Top; it was right on the top and it was the first house you came to after you left Askrigg on the road to Muker. My grandfather – my father’s father – had been tenant there before my father. His name was Guy, and in them days Muker was full of Guys, same as Askrigg was full of Chapmans. Now my grandfather Guy was killed with a bull, one he’d brought up himself. It was a Sunday morning and me grandfather used to play the bass fiddle in Muker church. There was an orchestra in the church, them days; me grandfather played the bass and there was a fiddle, and I wouldn’t know whether they had drums or not, but they had four or five in the orchestra. Well, me grandfather had put his best Sunday clothes on to go, and he passed this pasture where the bull was and there was some heifers there, and he heard one of them in service and he wanted to see which one it was. That is why he climbed over the wall they think. And they always think that the bull didn’t know him in his Sunday clothes and that is why it gored him. My father said he hadn’t a rag left on him when they found him; it had gored him to death. He was a really good man, my grandfather, one of the best living men there was; everybody said he wouldn’t play a dirty trick on anybody. But the bull didn’t know him in his Sunday best.

274 words.