River Dee

Part one.

For the purposes of this bit of history, Bangletop Hall stands upon a grassy knoll on the left bank of the River Dee, about eighteen miles from the quaint old city of Chester.

It does not in reality stand there, nor has it ever done so; but consideration for the interests of the living compels me to conceal its exact location, and so to befog the public as to its whereabouts that its identity may never be revealed to its disadvantage.

It is a rentable property, and were it known that it has had a mystery connected with it of so deep, dark, and eerie a nature as that about to be related, I fear that its usefulness, save as an accessory to romance, would be seriously impaired, and that as an investment it would become practically worthless.

More about Rockabye Baby.

in the last story you remember i told you all about the foolish miller who lived upon the river dee and who went skating when the ice was thin and so felled in and got new money well after he invited puss to come into the old mill he brought out a chair and asked our little traveller to sit down and tell him more about the rock-a-bye baby whose cradle swam on the willow tree by his brother's mill in old mother goose land i might as well begin at the beginning and go right on to the end said puss crossing one leg and stroking his whiskers like a regular story-teller you see your brother was very busy grinding corn all day for in the morning the farmers would leave it and then call for it in the evening so all day long he would have nobody to talk to except as i told you his two small friends the rat and the mouse and the baby of course but it couldn't talk it would only cool from the tree-top and he would cool back to it and then he would go inside the mill and grind his corn and the little mouse would watch him and so would the rat but they were the only live things he saw all day and in the evening the mother of the baby would come up from the town and take down the cradle and carry cradle and baby to her little house close by and she would thank the miller so sweetly for feeding her little boy at noontime and the miller would say oh don't mention it when he grows up i shall let him work for me and when i die he shall have the old mill and then she would smile and sing to her baby boy hi little baby boy mother is here what has the robin bird sung to you dear lonely has mother been down in the town sewing a bonnet and stitching a gown softly she sang to herself as the clock went ticky-tock ticky-tock ticky-tock

Forget whatever plans you have this weekend because you're staying at home and playing on SpinQuest.

And there's never been a better time to sign up than right now.

The geography of Britain being what it is, it's very close.

They came from North Wales and it's just the other side of the River Dee from Liverpool and Manchester.

They were the two biggest cities.

to listen to the Beatles talk like on their Christmas club records.

Story two, The Specter Cook of Bangletop, part one.

For the purposes of this bit of history, Bangletop Hall stands upon a grassy knoll on the left bank of the River Dee, about eighteen miles from the quaint old city of Chester.

It does not in reality stand there, nor has it ever done so, but consideration for the interests of the living compels me to conceal its exact location, and so to befog the public as to its whereabouts that its identity may never be revealed to its disadvantage.

It is a rentable property, and were it known that it has had a mystery connected with it of so deep, dark, and eerie a nature as that about to be related, I fear that its usefulness, save as an accessory to romance, would be seriously impaired, and that as an investment it would become practically worthless.

know Flint in North Wales? Yes.

The River Dee, where my dad comes from, he was a Welsh guard, wore the bearskin hat and all of that.

And Kent, is it Swanley, where I was born in my mum's bed.

Yeah, and

work.

I think crabfish and... down at West Kirby Marine Lake with my dad, which is obviously, you know, you don't eat crabs you've caught in the River Dee.

So all you do is you go down with a string and a bit of streaky bacon.

Crabs like streaky bacon best because of the content.

There's a kind of strange company in the sound of water, whether it's the quiet lapping of a loch or the rushing of waterfalls or I slept next to the...

River Dee and the feeling that this is, you can hear this huge, this huge thing, getting on with things while you sleep.

Ivana must know about this, but something strange about sleeping near sort of the restlessness.

Well, let's go back to it, Ivana, because, you know, it's very romantic, some of the images I feel that Bridget is putting forward there.

Hayley starts us off.

So I'm just walking to the meat house at Lansilio just outside Llangollen.

I've got the River Dee to my left and the canal to my right.

Every day we'll do a daily inspection, make sure everything's doing everything that it should.

It was already manufactured when Caesar conquered Britain, and tradition is that the Romans built the walled city of Chester to control the district where the precious cheese was made.

Chester, on the River Dee, was a stronghold against the Roman invasion.

It came to fame with the old Cheshire cheese in Elizabethan times and waxed great with Samuel Johnson presiding at the Fleet Street Inn, where white Cheshire was served with radishes or watercress or celery when in season, and red Cheshire was served toasted or stewed in a sort of welf rabbit.

See Chapter 5.

The magnificent royal park is widely encircled by the rugged mountains of that Northland.

The River Dee, famed in song and story, runs close to hand.

This Northland is more mountainous and stern than Ayr or Dumfries, the land of Bobby Burns, and as instinct with the tradition of the fighting Jacobite times as the border country, the land of Scott, or Loch Leven with its memories of Queen Mary.

Princess Ena reveled in the stirring past as she breathed the strong air of the Cairngorms, growing physically strong and sturdy, innocent of the destiny which was to shape her life and make her a mother of kings.