'She was so grisley for to meete,
She rave the earth up with her feete,
And bark came fro the tree;
When fryer Middleton her saugh,
Weet ye well he might not laugh,
Full earnestly look'd hee.'
To calm the terrible beast when they found it almost impossible to hold
her, the friar began to read 'in St. John his Gospell,' but
'The sow she would not Latin heare,
But rudely rushed at the frear,'
who, turning very white, dodged to the shelter of a tree, whence he saw
with horror that the sow had got clear of the other two men. At this
their courage evaporated, and all three fled for their lives along the
Watling Street. When they came to Richmond and told their tale of the
'feind of hell' in the garb of a sow, the warden decided to hire on the
next day two of the 'boldest men that ever were borne.' These two,
Gilbert Griffin and a 'bastard son of Spaine,' went to Rokeby clad in
armour and carrying their shields and swords of war, and even then they
only just overcame the grisly sow.
If we go across the river by the modern bridge, we can see the humble
remains of St. Martin's Priory standing in a meadow by the railway. The
ruins consist of part of a Perpendicular tower and a Norman doorway.
Perhaps the tower was built in order that the Grey Friars might not
eclipse the older foundation, for St. Martin's was a cell belonging to
St. Mary's Abbey at York and was founded by Wyman, steward or dapifer
to the Earl of Richmond, about the year 1100, whereas the Franciscans
in the town owed their establishment to Radulph Fitz-Ranulph, a lord of
Middleham in 1258. The doorway of St. Martin's, with its zigzag
mouldings must be part of Wyman's building, but no other traces of it
remain. Having come back so rapidly to the Norman age, we may well stay
there for a time while we make our way over the bridge again and up the
steep ascent of Frenchgate to the castle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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