Ep 2: The poacher (Dave Royal) survives by poaching fish and game on the local lord’s land by night. But when he hits a barren period in his poaching, he discovers something unusual appearing in the woods at night that he finds himself compelled to investigate...
These are unusual true life tales from the supernatural anthology series West Country Tales from 1982-83. Not all of the episodes are available - some are missing - so I am uploading what episodes there are for people to enjoy running up to Halloween next week.
These are unusual true life tales from the supernatural anthology series West Country Tales from 1982-83. Not all of the episodes are available - some are missing - so I am uploading what episodes there are for people to enjoy running up to Halloween next week.
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TVTranscript
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00:50There's only one way to tell a story,
00:54and that's over a drink,
00:56paid for, preferably, by somebody else.
01:00And in a pub like this, that's not difficult.
01:03In the summer, the tourists.
01:05In the winter, the weekend people from our nearby towns.
01:09To feel part of the countryside,
01:11to feel part of people like me.
01:14Anyway, I talk, and they listen.
01:18But what they're never sure about
01:20is whether what I'm telling them is the truth.
01:23I can see it in their eyes.
01:25I don't know. Let's see.
01:29Well, I started creeping up towards this old pie,
01:32where I knew it was old culture.
01:34I'm in the middle of a story,
01:36and there's this uncertainty.
01:38A sort of half-belief.
01:40A kind of wanting to believe, but not being sure about it.
01:45But the joke is, my private joke, you'll understand,
01:49is that all of it, every single word of it, is gospel.
02:01The people who live here in the village don't doubt me at all.
02:05The older ones have known me from a boy.
02:08I was a bit of a character even then, they tell me.
02:29As for the young ones, well,
02:32they know about the poaching, or think they do.
02:35Sometimes I think they know more about me than I know myself.
02:39But tall tales always get taller in the telling, don't they?
02:43And I don't mind.
02:52They want a hero.
02:54Well, why not me? Better than some these days.
02:58So I'd never deny a thing, nor admit it neither.
03:03Hold the gun.
03:05I'll give you a cartridge to put in there.
03:08Yes.
03:10Bring the gun together, cock the gun.
03:13Are you ready to fire? Yes. Right.
03:19And I dress like a bit of a hero, a touch of the gypsy.
03:23And why not? An old army jacket.
03:27But that's not just for show.
03:29One inside pocket, big enough for a ferret.
03:32And another one, even bigger.
03:34Big enough and more, for one of Lordy's ducks.
03:38Just waiting for me down there along the estuary.
03:43On one of those misty mornings when it's all still and reddish-grey.
03:50And nobody else in the world seems alive, save me.
04:27But my favourites are those lovely fish in Lordy's stream up there beneath the trees.
04:33I'll tell you about tickling for sea trout.
04:37First, make sure no one's about, especially one of Lordy's keepers.
04:47You know, of all the talents in the countryside, tickling to me is the one.
04:53It's got something to do, I reckon, with the hunter being completely out of his element
04:58and the hunted completely at home in haze.
05:02Just you try wading through a stream without causing a ripple.
05:07There's a gentleness about it, too.
05:10And a lovely sense of style and skill.
05:15Fish look lazy in a stream, nose to the flow of it.
05:20Just the flick of a tail, the merest twist to keep them just where they want to be.
05:24But don't you believe it.
05:26Sea trout and salmon, wild animals, survivors.
05:31Where have you come from, old friend?
05:34And out of all the estuaries and the rivers and the streams,
05:37what miracle brought you back to this one?
05:40The water in which you were born.
05:43My hand slides in to caress you.
05:46My touch is as soft as a maiden's kiss.
05:49No escape this time, old friend.
05:53Fingers in the gills.
05:56And then...
05:58the explosion.
06:02Mind you, nobody, not even me, can make a living out of poaching.
06:06So I do other things as well.
06:08Nothing nine to five, that's for other people.
06:11Just things I enjoy.
06:14And then, only when I feel like it.
06:19I spend a fair amount of time down by the water,
06:22under this great soaring railway bridge that Brunel built.
06:26You know, there used to be a chap who lived here,
06:30who would throw a stone right over it.
06:33And he'd say,
06:35I'm going to kill you.
06:37And he'd say,
06:39I'm going to kill you.
06:41And he'd say,
06:43I'm going to kill you.
06:45There used to be a chap who lived here,
06:47who would throw a stone right over it.
06:50Extraordinary.
06:53I've got this old shed down by the estuary.
06:57Only taken to locking it up in the last year or so, come to think of it.
07:01That's a sign of the times.
07:04But anyway, like I was saying,
07:06this is where you can often find me.
07:09Fixing up a boat.
07:11Carving a bit of wood.
07:14Mending a bit of rigging.
07:16Things I've taught meself.
07:19Things I like.
07:22Things people will pay me for.
07:25And then, towards evening, home.
07:46This is my place.
07:48Better now than it was.
07:50I've done a fair amount of work on it.
07:53But it was the satin I always liked anyhow.
07:56The trees and the streams.
07:59And I'll tell you a funny thing.
08:01I'd known this place ever since I was a boy.
08:04But I'd never been inside it.
08:06And when they said I could have it, I stood outside,
08:09and I knew exactly what it would be like inside.
08:12And especially this fireplace.
08:15I opened the door, and there it was.
08:18Stone for stone.
08:20Strange, wasn't it?
08:27But you know, I've learned that lesson from the countryside.
08:31You can never be sure that things are just what they seem to be.
08:35I've seen magic done.
08:37Don't laugh.
08:38Magic were the most common of hedge plants.
08:41Even with a twig like this,
08:43half strangled with honeysuckle.
08:45Such twigs have magic powers.
08:48But only if you cut it in the right way.
08:53White magic. Black magic.
08:56Coincidence. Suggestion.
08:59Call it what you will, but I've seen it work.
09:08Village people will often come to me to charm away their warts,
09:12and it nearly always works.
09:14It's simple if you know how.
09:16I'm going to draw this here circle, all right?
09:18A magic circle drawn in the grass with a hazel stick.
09:22Go then.
09:23I want you to step into this circle through that gap there.
09:26So come on in here now.
09:30Come right in.
09:35Right.
09:36Now, you want to get rid of this wart.
09:38All right, then.
09:39What I'm going to do, I'm going to cut this potato,
09:42and I'm going to rub it on there.
09:44Then, take a common or garden potato,
09:47cut him in half, and rub it on the wart.
09:50Right. Where's that wart?
10:01Right on me butt.
10:05There's one.
10:07There's two.
10:08Pure wool wrapped round the potato,
10:11and the whole thing buried in a secret place at midnight.
10:16The great thing is to never tell a living soul where.
10:21Right then, boy.
10:22Now, what I want you to do, take that potato home,
10:27bury it in your garden at 12 o'clock tonight, mind.
10:29All right?
10:30Yeah.
10:32And then forget all about your wart.
10:34Go on then. Off you go.
10:37Half my life, and more, I dare say,
10:40in the daylight and the dark,
10:42has been spent along the hedgerows and in the woods,
10:46by the rivers and the streams,
10:48the salt flats and the coppices.
10:51Show me a hedge, and I'll show you where a thrush will build.
10:55Show me a copse, and I'll show you where a pheasant will roost.
11:00I was reading in the paper the other day about some fellow up north
11:04who was calling himself the king of the poachers.
11:07King? He wouldn't even be a prince.
11:10He had a list of convictions as long as your arm.
11:13A poacher, a real poacher, I mean,
11:15should go through his life from his cradle to the grave
11:18without even having the finger of suspicion pointing at him.
11:22I can't say that, but I've never been in court.
11:27One Christmas, I gave Lordy himself a brace of pheasants,
11:32and all he said was,
11:34to each his own.
11:37And I'll tell you something else.
11:39Never in the whole of my life have I ever killed
11:42just for the sake of killing.
11:44I think about that a lot when I'm in the woods.
11:50250 pheasants a day.
11:54250 pheasants a day.
11:57That's not sport. That's murder.
12:00Slaughtering things that you can't recreate.
12:04Not for me.
12:11One evening, just after dusk it was,
12:14and don't you believe anything they tell you about a poacher's moon?
12:17A fallacy, that is.
12:19Moons are for keepers, not poachers.
12:21Well, one evening just after dusk, I was in the woods,
12:25and I looked up, and right there in front of me
12:29was this fox, no more than ten yards away.
12:33A beauty.
12:35And we stood there, just like that.
12:38He looking at me, and me looking at him.
12:42I brought up the gun,
12:45and there he was, straight down the barrels.
12:48And I said to myself, well, well, old friend,
12:51we're after the same thing, aren't we?
12:53A nice plump duck.
12:55But if I don't get one, there'll be some bread and cheese.
12:59But what will there be for you?
13:05I lowered the gun.
13:07He kept looking at me for, well, it must have been ten seconds or more.
13:12And then he turned away.
13:14He didn't run, just a sort of loping walk.
13:19Things like that have happened to me more than once.
13:24It's as if you build up a sort of understanding,
13:27a sympathy almost, frightening in a way.
13:31Killer and victim, all the power one-sided.
13:35The victim almost knowing, resigned,
13:38willing you to pull the trigger.
13:45There's nothing tastier than a pheasant that you've caught yourself,
13:49and I should know. I've had a few.
13:51Lovely, won't we?
13:55Poachers are born, they say, not made.
13:58Once a man said to me,
14:00if there was one pheasant in a four-acre wood,
14:03you could walk straight to him.
14:05And he was right, you know.
14:07No.
14:08I could.
14:09But you love money.
14:15Except for one time.
14:23For a whole week, nothing went right for me.
14:28Not a pheasant, and I've never had trouble with them.
14:31In fact, there are so many ways of taking pheasants
14:34that I'm surprised there are any of them left.
14:38Not a fish, not a duck,
14:41not even a rabbit in a snare, and they're easy enough.
14:46But for this whole week, nothing.
14:50Even my favorite ferret failed.
14:54And it wasn't as if anything had changed.
14:57Same woods, same tracks.
15:00I know the place like the back of my hand.
15:03Every tree, every bush, every twig almost.
15:08And I did all the same things.
15:11But for a whole week, nothing.
15:15I said to myself, nothing's changed with you, old son.
15:19You're doing it like you've always done it.
15:21So what the hell's going wrong?
15:25And it was then that I saw the fire.
15:29Not a big one.
15:31One flame, orange in the dark.
15:34I moved towards it.
15:37And quite suddenly, it went out.
15:42You know how it is.
15:44You think you've seen something,
15:46and suddenly, it isn't there anymore.
15:50But I'd seen that fire.
15:53I was sure of it.
15:55And I crept to where it had been,
15:58to a clearing in the elders.
16:01There was a circle there, scraped in the mud.
16:05I was weary of crossing it,
16:07knowing about these things.
16:09And as I did, I felt a distinct chill come over me.
16:16There were the ashes.
16:18I reached down and touched them.
16:21They were cold, stone cold.
16:26And so was I.
16:35The next night, the same thing.
16:37All the snares empty.
16:39And I'd set them, I swear to you,
16:42with all the care of an apprentice.
16:44Me, an apprentice.
16:46But that's what I'd done.
16:51I don't like saying this, but the fact of the matter was
16:54that I'd begun to doubt myself.
16:57I went back over all the things I'd learnt
17:00and taught myself.
17:02And I did them, for the first time in years,
17:05by the book.
17:11But still, nothing.
17:20Nothing, that is, except the fire.
17:27And then, as I made to move towards it,
17:30it disappeared.
17:39For nights after that, the same thing happened.
17:42A different place, but always the same fire.
17:48And the woods were different, too.
17:50There's always sound in a night-time wood.
17:53You know, a stir of branches, the snapping of a twig.
17:56But the strange thing was, and I'm not sure
17:59I was really aware of it at the time,
18:02but every time I saw those fires,
18:04there was birdsong in the air.
18:06And birds don't sing at night, do they?
18:14Each time I saw the fire, I'd move towards it.
18:18200 yards.
18:20100.
18:2225.
18:2425.
18:26But any closer, and the fire would go out.
18:55Then, on the seventh night, I went into the woods again,
19:00making this time towards the stream
19:03where I'd tickled the salmon and trout.
19:06There was a sliver of a moon, I remember,
19:09and a stillness that was uncanny.
19:14I looked up, and there was the fire.
19:19I had to cross the stream,
19:22so I took off my boots and hung them round my neck.
19:48No sound.
19:50Just the swirl of water and the eerie birdsong.
20:04Once across the stream, I was quite near the fire.
20:08I could see it distinctly, the dancing flames.
20:12I could feel them.
20:14Once across the stream, I was quite near the fire.
20:18I could see it distinctly, the dancing flames.
20:22The swirling smoke.
20:24Closer than I'd ever been.
20:44I swear I never made a sound.
21:01And then, quite suddenly,
21:05the man appeared, moving into the firelight.
21:11He looked to where I was, and he beckoned.
21:17I think I was frightened. I'm not quite sure now,
21:21but I know what I really was.
21:23I was bloody annoyed that a poacher, as good as I reckon I am...
21:28Well, it's the worst thing that can happen to a poacher,
21:32that he can be seen by anybody
21:34when he's been using every trick he's ever learned not to be seen.
21:38But nothing for it, I thought.
21:41He didn't look like a keeper.
21:43So I got up and walked towards the fire.
22:02Around it, as before, was the circle,
22:06scraped in the earth.
22:08I stopped at the edge of it.
22:10The man looked at me across it.
22:13That's not for you, he said,
22:17and told me to join him.
22:24It's a fine night.
22:27It is a fine fire.
22:30I've been waiting for you.
22:34Waiting for me?
22:38What do you want with me?
22:42Shall I help you?
22:44We sat together, talking by the fire.
22:47For how long? I'm still not sure.
22:50An hour, maybe. Perhaps two.
22:53The fire blazed on.
22:55Perhaps two.
22:57The fire blazed on.
22:59It worried me.
23:01It could be seen for miles, I was sure.
23:04And Lordy's keepers, I knew from experience,
23:06were likely to be much closer than that.
23:09The man seemed to read my mind.
23:12There's only two people in this world that can see that fire, he said,
23:17and that's you and me.
23:19And it was then that I began to think
23:21that this was no place for me to be.
23:25What's your name, then?
23:27Lookdown.
23:29Lookdown? Why?
23:31I dragged my eyes from his face and looked down.
23:35And where his feet should have been,
23:38there were two cloven hooves.
23:42Shh.
23:50Slowly, he stood up and then came towards me.
23:54I was terrified, but I couldn't move.
24:12It was as if I'd been struck by lightning.
24:14The hole in my shoulder seemed to burn.
24:16A hot iron couldn't have been worse.
24:25I don't know how long I was unconscious,
24:29but when I came to, he'd gone.
24:35And that's when I ran.
24:42Uncaring of noise, uncaring of anything.
24:45Keepers to hell with keepers.
24:47Across the stream, in and out of the rhododendrons,
24:51dodging the dark trunks of the dark trees,
24:54blundering, blundering, blundering.
24:56A professional poacher.
24:58Oh, not me. Not then.
25:06From that day on,
25:09from that day on,
25:11everything seemed to go right with me.
25:20It was as if I was one of the chosen ones,
25:23one of the favoured.
25:26A whole fortnight it had been and I'd taken nothing.
25:32But now, nothing got away.
25:38If I hadn't run,
25:41if I hadn't run,
25:44had I run,
25:46had I run,
25:48had I run,
25:50had I run,
25:52But now, nothing got away.
25:55I couldn't fail, and all the old tricks began to work again.
26:00In time, the burning sensation left me shoulder, but the mark didn't.
26:06It turned from red to black, and I know you're not going to believe this.
26:10It took on the shape of a cloven hoof.
26:15I hid it from everybody, never ever did anybody, even on the hottest of hot summer days, nobody
26:21saw me without a shirt on, but in the woods, I was infallible.
26:31It was at that precise moment that I stopped being a poacher.
26:36It was all too easy, the sense of adventure had gone.
26:39It was like being a burglar in a town with no locks.
26:44It was as if a special power had been conferred upon me, and if it had, well, I knew where
26:52it had come from, and I wanted no more of it.
26:58From then on, I walked the countryside, like a landlord, like Lordy himself.
27:04I looked at it, and I loved it, but I took nothing from it, except for what's always
27:11there, the beauty for those who have eyes that want to see.
27:17Of course, it was harder for the dog than me.
27:20He wanted to be up and doing, all this sitting about under trees and looking.
27:26I don't think he ever understood.
27:33Last spring, in the pub, I told this story, just as I've told it to you, and I looked
27:38at the eyes, and in them, I saw what I knew would be there, disbelief in some, a sort
27:44of grudging half-belief in others, except for one man, and in his eyes, I saw something
27:52else, not belief nor disbelief, just the look of somebody who's used to be in the centre
27:58of attention, and for the past half-hour or so, hadn't been.
28:03And you know, I carry his mark to this day.
28:21Oh, I knew what he was going to do.
28:24After all, there was only one proof of my story, and I thought, to hell with it, and
28:31I said to meself, don't you bother, old son, I'll do it for you.
28:36You want to see, so see.