In the days when people were nervous of witches, and called on the wake-wailer to come each evening before a funeral to sing the lyke wake that would keep their loved one's body safe from demons, they also had another resource – the Wise Man. The wise man could be consulted for many problems – illnesses, lost and stolen goods, help in time of need, and to turn away witches' charms.
The most famous in Cleveland is undoubtedly John Wrightson, the Wise Man of Stokesley. He was at the height of his fame at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, at the time of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. This was a time when nobody was left unaffected by the huge demands of the war. The wartime economy, the press gang, the militia and the army, the disruption of trade and manufacturing and the effect on people's livelihoods gave rise to uncertainty and many great hardships [1].
So it is hardly surprising that John Wrightson should have a fertile field in which to work. As to what he actually did and how he did it – writers over the years had various opinions on this, while there has always been an audience for the stories of his amazing feats.
Opinions on John Wrightson
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| Richard Blakeborough |
Richard Blakeborough (1850-1918) was a writer, publisher, actor, playwright, recitalist and entertainer, in great demand at concerts and at house parties, where he was a favourite of fashionable audiences. Born in Ripon, his passion was for the folklore and dialect of his native Yorkshire. He began collecting during the time he worked in Bedale as a jeweller and watchmaker between the early 1870s and 1882 when he recorded many stories and dialect words which would otherwise be lost to us [2]. Born a couple of years after the railways reached Ripon, in the year that ironstone was discovered in the Eston Hills, he lived in the age of empire, of Disraeli and Gladstone and the might of industrial Britain. He wrote with affection and enthusiasm of the world before industrialisation and compulsory education and he had a love of the mysterious and magical. For him John Wrightson was "undoubtedly a man endowed with marvellous psychic power, and with the smallest amount of charlatanry possible" [3].
He relates in Wit, Character, Folklore & Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire a couple of the stories that he was told.
The first was a tale told him by William Scorer, who came from Baysdale and was landlord of the Fleece in Bedale during Blakeborough's time there. The buyer of some cattle at Northallerton fair had engaged an old drover to drive them to Stokesley with the beasts he was taking for another buyer. In the morning two of his cows were missing from the field near Stokesley in which the drover declared they had been gated the night before. The buyers decided to consult the Wise Man, but also to test him by saying that it was a horse that was missing. As they entered Wrightson's house, before a word had been said, Wrightson called from the scullery where he was washing himself
Noo then, if you chaps is sharp eneaaf, an' ez that mich off [ie. know that much] 'at ya can manish ti to'n tweea coos intiv a hoss, it's neea ewse cumin' ti me, foor Ah can't to'n a hoss back inti tweea coos, an' seea ya'd better mak yersens scarce. Ah've nowt ti saay ti ya.
In the end he was persuaded to answer, and he told them that the cows were in the beck – where, indeed, they found them. The cows had missed the bridge as they were driven over the Leven late at night and fallen into the swollen river.
