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When's Peg O'Nell's Night?

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darrg

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Peg O'Nell is said to be the ghost of a servant girl who haunts the river Ribble near Clitheroe, Lancashire. She's associated with Waddow Hall. The tradition claims that she returns from the river every seven years to claim a life. Although the legend is said to date from the 18th century, it sounds to me more like a very old river spirit being reinvented.

There is a traditional Peg's Night which used to be (is?) marked by an animal sacrifice. Does anyone know what time of the year Peg's Night is? And is it only held on the seventh year, or annually? Or at all, anymore?
 
There's a beer dedicated to her: link.

Apologies if you've already come across this:

The tragic drowning of the honeymoon couple at the Strid on the River Wharfe last August highlit the reputation of the river, and coincidentally underlined Jeremy Harte's article 'Death by Water' in the August issue of White Dragon. He quoted the old rhyme 'Wharfe is clear and Aire is lithe; where Aire kills one, Wharfe kills five', and noted that rivers of such ill repute tend to be those running off high land prone to flash storms and sudden water level rises.

In the same article he referred to my report in NE 54, 'The Lady of the Dark Waters', about the Ribble near Clitheroe in Lancashire. In the grounds of Waddow Hall, near Brungerford Bridge, is a well near the river; beside it stands a headless statue, perhaps once St Margaret, but now considered to 'be' Peg o'Nell, a dangerous water spirit. She has been said to claim a life every seven years - extrapolating from my earlier article, 1999 will be one of those years. I stayed there for a few days last July (yes, I know it's a Girl Guide centre...), when torrential rains swelled the Ribble to an alarming height, speed and width - quite a contrast with the placid well, enclosed within a wooden fence - and the dangers of the Ribble, let alone Peg, could be well understood; before the bridge was built, the river was crossed by stepping stones.

While I was there, I made a few enquiries about Peg (for more on the relationship of the name Peg with wells, see J.A.Hilton, 'Return to Peggy's Spout', NE 70) and can add one more piece of information; the head of the statue, once kept in a room at Waddow Hall, but subsequently lost, is said to have been built into a wall at Brungerford Farm, by the bridge.

Maybe it's the time for these things, because Peg made another appearance in an article by Carole Nelson in Source 6, in which she adds that the curse was broken when a traveller crossed the Brungerley Stepping Stones when the river was high. Though an innkeeper warned him that it was Peg's night, the traveller laughed and said that if he died he'd make sure she never bothered the locals again. The sacrifice was, of course, accepted... [JB]
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http://northernearth.co.uk/76/news.htm
Contact info: http://northernearth.co.uk/contact.htm
 
Thanks for that, interesting stuff. There's an old postcard of the well and the broken statue here - curiously enough, it was the beer that lead me to this question :_pished: ! It seems to be seasonal and I was interested in finding out what time of year it is brewed. From there it was only a short mental leap to wondering about the Night itself and whether it's still marked.
 
Yes, I saw that stuff, thanks. Everything you need to know except, exasperatingly, what time of year "Peg's Night" is supposed to be :)
 
I did the same Google search and also found everything but the date. Sorry
 
I've had a look through a few books, ghosts of the British Isles and also a few folk customs and traditions etc. and haven't been able to find anything at all on this.

BTW 'Peg O'Nell' just makes me think of 'Pigging Hell'.
 
From a close reading of the stuff on BBC Lancashire Website

The first poster says it was "Yesterday" when he saw an apparition, and the item was posted on December 15th..

So, a provisional December 14th?
 
The nice man at Bowland Brewery says he doesn't know if there's a specific 'Peg's Night' either and although his 'Headless Peg' beer is essentially a winter ale, he sometimes makes it at other times of the year too. So I think we just have to hope that whenever Peg's night is, it isn't the night any of us are taking a stroll along the banks of the Ribble!
 
I found a reference to Peg o'Nell in pages 2-4 of a Christina Hole book, Haunted England - A Survey of English Ghost-Lore, first published in 1940.

Infuriatingly, it does not say when the date of 'Peg's Night' is meant to be and it does repeat what has already been stated about 'her' but I thought people might find the entry interesting.

Where the ancient belief has been forgotten, a new legend has often been invented to account for the supposed haunting.

The River Ribble, for instance, was once the home of a goddess to whom sacrifices were made at stated intervals. It is now haunted by a ghost called Peg o'Nell, who demands a life every seven years. The local tradition says that a servant of the name was employed at some unspecified date at Waddow Hall and quarrelled with her mistress, a reputed witch. The latter sent her for water and threw a spell over her, so that she slipped on the ice-covered stepping stones and was drowned. She returned to haunt the district and, more particularly, a spring near the river called Peg o'Nell's Well.

Every local disaster was put down to her agency, and she was said to cause unaccountable noices at Waddow Hall itself. Every seventh year, as "Peg's Night" came round, a bird, a cat or a dog was drowned in the river; if this was not done, a human life was taken by the ghost. There is a story of a sceptical young man travelling from Waddington to Clitheroe on "Peg's Night," at a period when the only means of crossing the river was by Bungerley Stepping Stones. He was warned that it was unsafe to continue his journey, as no animal sacrifice had yet been made, but replied that he did not believe in any ghost and must be in Clitheroe that night. He and his horse were both swept to death on the stepping-stones, which was, of course, no more than the local people expected in the circumstances.
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Prior to the bridge being built at Bungerley in 1820, the Ribble had to be crossed by the "Hipping Stones", said to be haunted by the malevolent spirit of Peg o' Nell, who claimed a life every seven years. It was said that King Henry VI was treacherously betrayed following the Battle of Hexham by a member oF the Talbot family of Bashall Hall
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(taken from "North Country Ghosts & legends" page 343, by Terrence W. Whitaker. ISBN 0-586-074740. )

So Peg is an amalagmation of a "water spirit" (Black Annas/Anis?) and a maid.

Is there a thread about Black Annas/Anis? because I've searched and can't find any [/quote]
 
When's Peg O'Nell's Night?
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It could be tonight if she buys me a drink ;)

Actually, I'm sure the name Peg appears connected with other 'water spirits' too. Off the top of my head I think Brian Froud did a nice image of a Peg like this.

Is Peg one of those names like Jack that gets attached to a lot of stories etc., etc., perhaps reflecting a past trend/popularity for a particular name? In the recent Fables comic spin-off, Jack of Fables, this gets touched upon when Jack's many, many aliases are brought up: Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack the Giant Killer, Jack of the Tales, Jack Frost etc., etc..

And if any of you comic-reading Forteans out there aren't reading Fables, then shame on you.
 
Mr_Nemo said:
Is there a thread about Black Annas/Anis? because I've searched and can't find any
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Not specifically about her, but she's discussed at length in this thread.

On the water spirit front, I came across this, which has lots of general info on watery sacrifices and deaths, and says this about Peg O'Nell:
Peg o’ Nell, the spirit of the Ribble, is the best known of these figures. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, she built up what amounts to a new mythology. Her principal haunt was a swirling ford where the Clitheroe road crosses the river near Waddow Hall. Peg claimed a life in the river every seven years: people might live securely in the meantime, but they knew that the night would inevitably come when she demanded a victim. There was a young man, a stranger, who rode into Waddow Hall on his journey across the cold fells. The maidservant pulled him to one side and whispered that it was Peg o’ Nell’s Night, but he would go on to brave the rain-swollen ford: and next morning there he was, bobbing on the water, and his horse beside him. (16). It became customary to appease Peg with something drowned on her night - a bird, a cat or a dog - to stave off her hunger for life. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. There were men drowned in the Ribble in 1894, 1901 and 1908 - a seven-year cycle (17).

All sorts of things have gone into the making of Peg o’ Nell - poltergeists, mediaeval statuary, severed heads and holy wells.
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I live with someone originally from the Ribble area, and though she's heard of Peg O' Nell, she has no idea when Peg's night is supposed to be, except she thinks it's in the summertime.
 
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