Ghost
Owd Walter Rides
A pun more weight, lig on!
See it clearly
- What's there
- Moonlit woods sloping down to the River Aire
- Legend from
- Yorkshire Evening Post (1926)
- Best time
- Moonlit night
- Tone
- Grim
Headless horses gallop through Calverley Woods, and their rider cries 'A pun more weight!'
In 1605 Walter Calverley, lord of the manor of Calverley, murdered two of his young sons. He refused to plead and was pressed to death, and plays based on the story appeared in 1607 and 1608. Leeds Libraries reprints a 1926 Yorkshire Evening Post tale of a villager walking through Calverley Woods on a moonlit night who saw four phantom horsemen gallop towards him on headless horses. The leader, clutching a dripping dagger, leapt the rock where he hid and cried 'A pun more weight, lig on, lig on!' The same article says Calverley cried those words under the stones, begging for more weight.