March winds

Enjoying the word play, what I mean is that March winds on in some unexpected directions as far as Bevis is concerned. The work I did on pilgrimage in and around Southampton was always part of an attempt to understand why the place name was used originally for Boeve/Bevis’s patrimony. Of course the answer is obvious when one thinks about it closely – Southampton had always been the major port on the central south coast, and the entrepôt for the Anglo-Saxon and early Norman English capital in Winchester. It’s fame was widespread because of its shipping trade, which benefitted from the unusual feature that it has 4 tides a day, and offers a large sheltered harbour, as well as access routes connecting throughout England and similarly established sea routes connecting with pilgrimage routes throughout Europe and beyond. Pilgrimage is only touched on briefly In the Boeve/Bevis stories, but the work on English routes has alerted me to geographical connections, and matters pertinent to Southampton’s Anglo-Norman burgesses, all of which will contribute to further establish the relevance of the port town as a location for our hero’s patrimony.

The result of all my pilgrimage research has just been published in the Southern History Society’s journal (vol. 44), and as a result Mike O’Leary, Southampton’s local storyteller, asked if a copy of the article was available as he is planning his own pilgrimage. I passed a copy of the paper on to him and in return he kindly gave me a copy of his book Hampshire: Folk Tales for Children, in which he retells the story of Bevis, based on my translation, but with suitably whimsical additions and variations, much in the tradition of the constant rewriting of the story.

This story for children contained a nugget of information that I have not come across until now, but it sent me excitedly reaching for my VCH volumes. But the information was not there. However, Judith Glover’s book Sussex Placenames confirmed the information in Mike’s book. There is a long barrow on the Hampshire/Sussex border rejoicing in the name ‘Bevis’s Thumb’. Its location in the parish of Compton is no accident, because Compton always belonged to the honour of Arundel, founded of course by Boeve/Bevis in tribute to his horse! The naming of the barrow undoubtedly belongs to that period of history that saw similar names give to prehistoric features in the landscape, such as the barrows on Portsdown hill above Portsmouth, and the assumption in Southampton that an ancient tomb discovered in the eighteenth century far beyond the town walls must have been that of Sir Bevis. In this case, the landowner was certainly buying into the familiar local story of a hero as it was then understood. In the case of the barrows, and from the evidence of the corbel heads at St Peter’s church in Curdridge, the impulse then appears to have spread across Hampshire during the nineteenth century, tracing a line eastwards, in the direction, eventually, of Arundel. Earlier, and more authoritative links were in place from around the time of the first version of the Boeve story, but they are the subject of my ongoing research and need further analysis. But Mike’s book illustrates the way the story moves from text into landscape in successive attempts to link people and places with this ancient story, which has its ultimate origin in the death of a 10th century Provençal warrior while on pilgrimage [explained in my essay in Notes and Queries vol 266, no 3 (2021).