If you’re like me and hesitate before climbing over stiles or making your way through a kissing gate and into a field, just in case there might be a bull waiting for you on the other side, you’ll know what it’s like to be afraid of those great beasts. Well, believe me you really don’t know the half of it. Not like those people from Bagbury and nearby Hyssington in Powys, Wales, they know!
It all happened a long, long time ago. The evil Squire of Bagbury was cursing his farmhands, laying about them with a whip, when something cracked. No, it wasn’t the whip, but the resolve of one of those poor bullied men to keep his mouth shut and keep his job. He uttered a curse and a curse so rich that the wicked Squire was gone in a puff of acrid smoke, and there, in his place, stood a black bull, and not just a black bull but the devil incarnate.
It served him right maybe. Yes, but it didn’t serve them right; the people of Bagbury and Hyssington, who hadn’t liked the Squire one little bit, found out they hated with a venom that quarrelsome devil bull who began roaming the countryside and causing havoc and panic wherever he went.
Every hour has its man and at that hour a fresh faced Parson of Hyssington Church came to the fore with his prayer book ready, to stare that malicious animal in the eye.
You’ve heard about the power of prayer, it certainly has a miracle or two to perform. It put paid to that big black devil bull. But it needed perseverance and staying power from that young parson
Off went the parson late in the afternoon to seek his quarry. When he was fixing the creature eyeball to eyeball he began to pray, reading from his prayer book as fast as his lips would let him.
The bull seemed transfixed; it followed him like a meek little lamb back to the Church. When he had it inside, he prayed some more. Gradually, as he spouted forth prayer on prayer, the bull started to shrink.
By eight o’clock it was the size of a Jersey cow. By nine o’clock it was the size of a Shetland pony. By ten o’clock it was the size of a Welsh ewe. By eleven o’clock it was the size of a sheepdog. But at that moment, when the church clock struck the hour, the parson’s candle guttered in a draft of wind and went out and he had to go home to return by light of day next morning.
As soon as he stopped praying, the bull started growing. By dawn it had grown so big that the church could barely hold it. It was cracking the walls, the cracks are still there today, and it was getting ready to push the place apart when the parson arrived back, prayer book at the ready.
Well it was a long day’s work, but he did it. He was almost hoarse, but by five o’clock the bull was the size of a dormouse. He loosened his boot, slipped it off his foot and threw it slap-bang over the tiny bull, trapping it inside. He tied the laces tight as tight could be and rushed out of the church and levered up the doorstep with a handy spade the grave digger had left leaning on the wall next to the church door. He threw the boot beneath and let the heavy stone fall back into place.
At the end of that day the parson let out a sigh of relief, which turned to a laugh and then to a roar.
“Its my job to save souls”, said he, “but today I became a hero by losing a sole, the one on the bottom of my boot”.
The bull’s still there under that stone to this day. But don’t you go looking or you’ll be the most unpopular person you could ever be.
