The Mistletoe Bride and Other Haunting Tales
Author’s Note
And yet . . .
It was in Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain that I first came across the story of ‘The Mistletoe Bride’.
Several places in Britain claimed to be the historical setting for the story – Skelton in Yorkshire, Minster Lovell Hall in Oxfordshire, Marwell Old Hall in Hampshire, Castle Horneck in Cornwall, Exton Hall in Rutland, Brockdish Hall in Norfolk, and Bawdrip Rectory and Shapwick in Somerset.
The Cope family of Bramshill House claimed to be able to produce the famous oak chest, in which the young bride was supposed to have suffocated.
Grisly, oddly compelling, it is the sort of story that sticks in the imagination.
My parents’ book is long gone. I managed, some years later, to find an old replacement copy which sits now – the spine missing and in pride of place – in my study where I write. In idle moments, I take it down and let it fall open at a page of its own choosing. Lose myself for an hour or two.
In memory of those long and happy teenage days reading back in the 1970s, I wrote two versions of the story of the bride who vanished on her wedding day for this collection. This, the first of them – a ‘white lady’ story – is dedicated to my wonderful mother and my beloved father, who died in 2011.