A Warning to the Curious

My little illustration is based on the famous ghost story “A Warning to the Curious” by M. R. James. It was one of many tales found in his book A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories, first published in 1925.

The story follows Paxton, an antiquarian who holidays in Seaburgh, a quiet village on the east coast of East Anglia. He learns of the local legend about a Anglo-Saxon crown that protects the country from invasion. Paxton discovers its location and digs it from its barrow. The crown, however, has been guarded by the Ager family, who are all but deceased. Poor Paxton now finds he is being followed by some mysterious entity. He has to get rid of the crown or face the consequences.

St Hilda’s Feast Day (CofE)

19th November is the feast day in the Church of England calendar for St Hilda (AD 614–680). In AD 657, Hilda came to Whitby, North Yorkshire to administer the abbey. As the abbess of Whitby, she managed one of the most important religious centres in the Anglo-Saxon world. Traditionally her feast day is 17th November, which is recognised in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches as well as the Anglican Church of Canada. Some parts of the Anglican Communion also celebrate in it on 18th November while Church of England’s calendar places it on the 19th November.

My illustration above depicts Hilda wearing Anglo-Saxon costume from the 7th century, as there is little evidence of what nuns and abbesses wore prior to the formalisation of their apparel circa AD 1000.

My illustration is also inspired by Hilda’s associations with the ammonite fossils found in the cliffs of Whitby. According to legend she cast out the serpents in Whitby to clear ground for a new convent. After her devout praying the snakes coiled up, turned to stone and fell off the edge of the cliffs. She also supposedly cut off their heads with a whip. A 15th-century Latin manuscript found in the Durham University library indicates this ammonite legend goes back to at least late medieval times.

Ammonites collected from the cliffs of Whitby were reshaped with snake heads and examples of these snakestones are found in the Whitby Museum. Moreover, Victorian geologists named one of the local species after her – Ammonite hildroceras.