Ghost
Old Sis of Codicote
He swore never to leave his land, and his ghost never did.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Countryside; his hilltop grave is lost
- Legend from
- By 1820
- Tone
- Light-hearted
Somewhere in Codicote's hills lies old Sis, a farmer who swore never to leave his land, and whose ghost fed the horses and kissed the maids.
Sissevernes, also spelt Sissifernes, was a Codicote farmer so attached to his land that he swore he would never leave it. True to his word, he was buried on a hilltop on his own ground, and his ghost would not lie quiet. Around 1820 William Nobbs, parish clerk of Welwyn, put his pranks into verse: old Sis rose from the shades to feed the horses and kiss the maids, and when one girl, perhaps called Beck, refused him, he broke her neck. Grandmothers told such tales of him, Nobbs wrote, to frighten children away from the lonely valleys.