Today in 1739

I have been obsessed with a poem for quite a few years now.

It is a particular favourite from having studied it as a schoolboy and later introducing it to my young children as a bedtime favourite. My Pop music hero John Otway brought out a rock track version.

It is a poem that appeals to youthful imagination as it is very atmospheric and features everything from ghostly images to swashbuckling individuals, enemy soldiers,a bit of romance and ultimate tragedy.

The poem is "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes (1880-1958).

It has obviously been a mainstay in the English Education Curriculum as my own father could recite it almost word for word from his schooldays in the late 1940's and early 1950's.

I have, on the basis of the very regular requests to hear it from my children, learned by heart large tracts, especially the first verse which sets the scene beautifully....

"The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghastly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding, riding, riding.
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door".

This classic poem popped into my head as I made to sit down at a small two seater table in the window of a public house. I was early for an appointment in the village of Welton in East Yorkshire Fed up of sitting behind the steering wheel of my car and having resisted buying a takeaway coffee from, in order a drive thru Starbucks and McDonalds I felt like treating myself to a cup of the stuff in a china cup and in a proper establishment.

My £2.11 black coffee with a foil wrapped chocolate mint balanced precariously on the wad of work papers that I had brought along, if only to shuffle a few more times whilst stalling for thinking time on a couple of difficult projects.

It is not really a surprise that the great words of Alfred Noyes came into my mind in that place.

As per the last line of the opening verse I was at an inn. The Green Dragon is a very old coaching house on what would have been a busy route for those crossing the Humber Estuary at low tide or coming out of the City of Hull on their way, principally to the influential regional hub and one time capital city of England, York.

The prospect of a highwayman riding up, however unlikely in 2016, was actually very real in 1739 when on the very spot that I was enjoying a restful coffee the notorious horseback villain, Dick Turpin was reputed to have been captured by the authorities.

There is, like the portrayal of the lead male character in Noye's poem, a very romantic perception of this branch of criminality and Turpin has certainly received the glossy treatment in popular fiction and film in the two hundred years following his reign of aggression and terror inflicted on travellers and residents of his stomping grounds.

Turpin was in the Welton area, supposedly having fled from his shooting dead of a collaborator in the South of England, but intent on continuing his lifestyle from the proceeds of crime or otherwise.

Under the assumed name of John Palmer he blended in with the East Yorkshire gentry for two years.

However, in a fit of rage in an argument Palmer/Turpin shot the prized fighting cockerel of a neighbour and this aroused the suspicions of the locals as to how he financed his livelihood.

Many tall tales and myths surround Turpin the highwayman.

One, and the most well known in popular culture, is his epic 200 mile ride from London to the North on his equally famous horse, Black Bess. This is actually attributed to another perpetrator.

Even with the discovery of his true identity after the chicken killing episode, Turpin is reputed to have jumped the Toll Gate on Cave Road, Welton on the wonderful Black Bess. I have seen a fantastic illustration of this particular endeavour in a feature in the publication "Look and Learn" which was a childhood favourite for many of my generation. It would be actually be another 32 years before there was a Turnpike Road on Cave Road which throws doubt on this exploit.

As I looked out onto the village green , sipping my coffee, I could well imagine another potentially tall tale whereby Dick Turpin evaded arrest by leaping through the window of the Green Dragon.

One constant is true. Turpin was eventually taken to York Assizes and sentenced to hang for the capital offence of stealing a horse. What is now York Racecourse was the location of the gibbet and noose which saw to the highwayman on 7th April 1739 exactly 280 years ago to the day.

As with many heinous villains there can be some softening of their fearsome and terrorising behaviour with the passage of time. There is no doubting that Turpin was a prolific thief and brutal murderer and so his ultimate come-uppance was inevitable.

To some extent this was always to be the fate of Noye's protagonist although his highwayman rode into the withering fire of the King's Redcoat Soldiers out of grief and anger for the demise of his true love, Bess, the landlords daughter who warned him away from an ambush with a single musket shot that took her own life.

By the time I would get to the last of the 17 verses my young children were usually fast asleep but I always made a point of finishing the poem properly. I would be a bit of an emotional wreck as I muttered the closing ghostly lines,

"Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs, in the dark inn-yard
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter
Plaiting a dark red love knot into her long black hair"