Information
One of the best-known of Barham’s ‘Ingoldsby Legends’ (1840) reaches its dramatic climax in the hamlet of Acol, in the precipitous chalk pit whose present use as the ‘Smuggler’s Leap Residential Caravan Site’ reflects the legend’s title. The legend tells the story of the pursuit of a gang of smugglers, carrying newly landed contraband gin and lace, by a party of Customs men. Their senior officer, Exciseman Gill, is so determined to catch the leader, Smuggler Bill, that he unwittingly makes a pact with the devil, who gives him his own horse. The mad pursuit ends at the Acol chalk pit where both men plunge to their death. Such was the notoriety of the place that Barham related how the enterprising locals vied with each other to take the credulous tourist by trap from Margate pier for a ‘three shilling drive’ to give them ‘a peep at that fearful chalk pit’.
Quotations
Smuggler Bill, he looks behind,
And he sees a Dun horse come swift as the wind,
And his nostrils smoke, and his eyes they blaze
Like a couple of lamps on a yellow post-chaise!
Every shoe he has got appears red hot;
And sparks round his ears snap, crackle, and play,
And his tail cocks up in a very odd way,
Every hair in his mane seems a porcupine’s quill,
And there on his back sits Exciseman Gill,
Crying ‘Yield thee! Now yield thee, thou smuggler Bill!’
…The dapple-grey mare made a desperate bound
When that queer Dun horse on her flank she found,
Alack! And alas! On what dangerous ground!
It’s enough to make one’s flesh to creep
To stand on that fearful verge, and peep
Down the rugged sides so fearfully steep,
Where the chalk-hole yawns full sixty feet deep,
O’er which that steed took that desperate leap!
It was so dark then that under the trees,
No horse in the world could tell chalk from cheese-
Down they went- o’er that terrible fall,-
Horses, Exciseman, Smuggler; and all!!
Place | Extract |
| Acol | The legend tells the story of the pursuit of a gang of smugglers, carrying newly landed contraband gin and lace, by a party of Customs men... |
| Eastchurch | One of them , Sir John de Northwoode, has his brass in Minster Abbey Church, not far from the tomb of his erstwhile opponent... |
| Margate | Having been born in Canterbury and had the living of parishes near Ashford and on Romney Marsh, it is not surprising that many of the Legends have a Kentish connection... |
| Minster-in-Sheppey | In the humorous prose story ‘Grey Dolphin’, he adopted a legend from the Isle of Sheppey... |
