When fishes flew: A selection of legends and old wives' tales from the West Country

by Josephine Poole, Barbara Swiderska (Illustrator)

149 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1978

About the author

Jane Penelope Josephine Helyar known by her nom de plume Josephine Poole is the renowned author of several books for children and young adults. Her first book was published in 1961, and she has also written extensively for television. She lives in Somerset.

https://whistlesinthewind.wordpress.c...

Reviews

[Capn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The dust jacket flaps say:

When Fishes Flew
A Selection of Legends and Old Wives Tales from the West Country
Josephine Poole
Illustrated by Barbara Swiderska

Pippenhay, with its dry rot and Tudor plumbing, was hardly an ideal home and when Giles Dory moved in with his family he was afraid that the children would miss the amenities of urban life. But the Dorys belonged at Pippenhay, and the house and the country welcomed them back. Charlotte and Vincent soon discovered aunts and friends who were very ready to put them in the picture by telling them about the places around them.

In WHEN FISHES FLEW Jospehine Poole has intertwined a family's first year in a new place with folk tales from the West country. These are of all sorts, ghostly, historical, saintly and comic; and there are all kinds of characters from Fair Rosamund to the robust Duddlestones. Each story is told by a different person and has a distinctive flavour of its own. This collection belongs to the West country, but it has a much wider appeal to anyone who enjoys a good tale, well told. The book has been attractively illustrated by Barbara Swiderska.

//

Josephine Pooles lives in house on the back of the jacket, with five of her six children. Her husband is a farmer. The family enjoys reading, travelling, riding and sailing.

She is the author of several books for children, including Moon Eyes and her most recent, Touch and Go: A Story of Suspense

The picture on the back of the house is for sure the house of Josephine Poole, because as soon as I saw it, I recognized it as it was described in both Moon Eyes and Billy Buck/The Visitor: A Story of Suspense. And those books aren't even meant to be related - but this is the (creepy) house. Apparently it's "Pippenhay", here. :)

I've given this a somewhat reluctant 4 stars. My heart just isn't as 'into it' as I'd like, and I really think that this is only because I have very recently read Tales from Barleymill which was fantastic. The structure here is clever - you follow the family along and through, and hear these stories as they do (or, usually, as subsections or individual members of said family). Alcoholic Aunt Jane shows up and wreaks havoc, and tells Vincent a story about the highwayman Tom Cox (Vincent's cockchafer gets loose in the telling of the story, and the chapter ends with Charlotte screaming down the house and he calling her an ass for letting it out the window again). A man from the Ministry of Agriculture was there to meet their father Giles to talk about ditching in the fields, and while they wait for their dad at the gatepost, they hear a tale about cowardice and misery on a battlefield of long ago. When Charlotte drops off some crocheting yarn on behalf of Aunt Mil to a neighbour, she learns all about King Ina and Princess Adelburgh. And the book ends on a melancholy story about Christmas and the death of a favourite son at sea. Here are the contents:

THE OLD HOUSE 1
THE DUDDLESTONES 7
THE FAIRIES 15
FAIR ROSAMUND 25
TOM COX 45
MIDSUMMER MIDNIGHTS 57
SAINT WULFRIC 69
KINGS AND HEROES 81
WITCHES 102
"SO-HO!" 113
KING INA 125
A CHRISTMAS STORY 139

Typing this out, I feel I've been a bit mean. It's a well-deserved 4 star rating from me, and I suppose I could even round up. How she managed to weave a coherent thread through this many unrelated stories is quite impressive to me. If I lived in Taunton or Crewkerne or even anywhere in Somerset, really, I'd probably be even more impressed. There was the goblin market story in Fairies, but it wasn't much different than the tale I had read in Magic From The Ground. Lots of backseat bickering and bruised (adult) egos in "Kings and Heroes" (a bit about King Arthur in passing, but mostly the story of the founding of Bath). The other stories were less interesting to me, but then of course Poole's writing from local folktales and can't very well rewrite the entire narrative to make it a humdinger of a story. She's done a very, very adept job at stringing these altogether. I suppose I'll have to wait and see if any of these stories haunt me at all... I might just use the superstition of not dancing past midnight on a Saturday to go home early sometime. I'm too old for that sh*t now. Metaphorically turning to stone only, though, I hope... ;)

A highly recommended read if you're wanting to read about folklore in Somerset, or if you're just a lover of folklore in general. At time of writing, this one is cheap and comparatively plentiful on the (UK) secondhand market. And maybe that's partly why I didn't love it as much as I might have - it was a substitution at a pinch when WOB sent me another (third? Fourth time?) "Oh dear - the book we sold you is not in saleable condition. Please choose a replacement - of course we don't have any more copies of the one you ordered, so...". I had searched 'Poole', this was available at the comparable price point, and I had shelved it as To Read, and that's my backstory. It sadly always reminded me of the book I didn't get but wanted more, which is unfair of me.

I'll revisit this review and amend it, if ever I reread this. ;)