Curse
Dickie's Skull
He would not lie in the churchyard, so he kept the window.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Farm buildings in a quiet valley
- Legend from
- Local tradition; recorded by William Wood 1862
- Tone
- Chilling
Bury Dickie, and the cattle sicken. Leave him in the window, and the farm is quiet.
At a farm in Tunstead, near Chapel-en-le-Frith, a skull known as Dickie long sat in a window and was said to refuse burial. Clifford Rathbone and a Yorkshire Post correspondent tell that it was the head of Ned Dickson, who came home from the wars to find his cousin had taken his farm, and was murdered in his sleep. When the skull was buried in Chapel churchyard, cattle died or strayed and furniture was thrown about until it was brought back. A railway bridge built near the farm kept collapsing, and Dickie was blamed for that too.