Let A Sleeping Witch Lie by Elizabeth Walter by Elizabeth Walter

Book Review

Pauline Morgan

Beginning writers are often told to ‘write about what you know’. It equally applies to writing about where you know, and knowledge can also include local tales and legends. Elizabeth Walter is best known for her supernatural stories, which can still hold their own amongst those produced by more recent authors. Brought up in Hereford, it’s not surprising that some of her stories are set just over the border in Wales. This collection has selected the best of her Welsh-based stories and gives a flavour of the quality of her prose.

The idea of the sin-eater was around before the seventeenth century, from when there are written records, and was prevalent in Herefordshire and Wales. The tradition is a way for a living person to take on the sins of a dead person so that they will be accepted into heaven. In ‘The Sin-Eater’ Clive Tomlinson is a man fascinated with visiting the rood-lofts of old, out of the way churches. He is inadvertently trapped into becoming the sin-eater of a man who had been sentenced for killing his wife. Unfortunately for Clive, he later discovers that the sin-eater has to take the fall for the sins he has acquired.

Another story based on local folklore is ‘Telling the Bees’. The idea is that when something important happens in the household that owns the beehives, the information must be whispered to the bees, or they will all leave. As a child, Diana overheard the bees being told of her father’s death before she was. The family’s fortunes take a downturn when the bees are not told of the death of her baby brother and the hives empty.

Some supernatural stories have their origins in history. In ‘Davy Jones’s Tale’ is a revenge tale where a hundred-year-old wreck reappears on the rocks to entice out a lifeboat whose crew were descended from the crew that turned back, leaving the ship’s crew to die. ‘Snowfall’ is also a ghost story. In this case, a salesman is trapped in snow on Brecon Beacon. After a tramp looking for help, he is offered shelter by an anthropologist. This superficially straightforward story contains not just the elements of a traditional ghost story but involve voodoo, curses and murder.

‘Come and Get Me’ is also a ghost story. A military unit is on manoeuvres based in an old house where the story is that the son of the family drowned himself. He appears to be haunting the house. A parrot gives clues to what really happened.

‘The Drum’ takes a local legend, that the instrument beats when a colonel is about to die. It does so when Henry and Cynthia Lawson visit the museum where it hangs. When Henry tries to rectify a mistake, he made in the past, he becomes suspicious of his wife’s fidelity, which leads to a series of tragic misunderstandings. It is what happens when people do not talk to each other.

‘Hushabye, Baby’ is a changeling story but based on the ballad of Tam Lin and Queen Mab. In this adaptation, Sarah is convinced that her baby has been swapped for another. She is right, but the sorceress who took him ensnares her husband and offers to swap him for her baby.

In ‘Dead Woman’ Jane, a single woman, buys a plot of land in the shadow of the hill known locally as Dead Woman. The cottage she builds is on the site of that once lived in by a woman who was lynched as a witch. When things such as trees, dogs, and children begin to die, Jane is accused of causing it. It appears that history is repeating itself. The title of the volume is taken from a line in this story.

On ‘Christmas Night’, two actors are driving through the snow when the car breaks down. They seek shelter for the night in an out of the way in. Another guest arrives very late. He is found murdered the next day, and the inn has disappeared, though there had been one on the spot a hundred years before.

All these stories are more complex than any summary can suggest. Walter is a master at writing supernatural stories. This collection is just a sample of her work. Try this as a taster and if you then want more The Spirit of the Place and Other Strange Stories (from Shadow Publishing) claims to be a complete volume of Elizabeth Walter’s stories.