Sep 11, 2026 · 23 min · 10 segments
Wiltshire, 1662: a magistrate takes a travelling beggar's drum away — and afterwards his house drums for two years. Out of nowhere. The "Drummer of Tedworth" is remembered as the first documented…
They tell it like this.
The drummer was a beggar, one of those who wandered from village to village and beat for alms.
The gentleman took him for a fraud and had his instrument confiscated.
The drum was carried into his house.
that very night it began.
First it struck against the outer walls, as if something wanted to wake the house.
Then it came inside.
It drummed on the roof, it drummed on the bedposts, it beat the army signals, the revel, the tattoo, the march into battle.
When the master of the house entered a room, it fell silent.
When he stepped into the next, it took up there.
It tore the blankets of the children.
It lifted their beds in the air.
It sent chairs walking across the parlor, threw shoes through the dark, tipped our chamber pots, sent candles floating up the chimney.
One morning, a horse was found with a hind leg wedged so deep into its own mouth that it took several men and a lever to work it free.
And once, they say, a voice came out of nowhere and it cried the same thing again and again.
A witch, a witch.
For two years no one in that house slept easy.
And the whole time, so the tale goes, the drummer sat in a goal many miles away and laughed.
For he had said, the man will know no peace until he gives back my drum.
That's the tale.
Now let's look at what actually happened and at what the one has to do with the other.
They tell it like this.
The drummer was a beggar, one of those who wandered from village to village and beat for alms.
The gentleman took him for a fraud and had his instrument confiscated.
The drum was carried into his house.
that very night it began.
First it struck against the outer walls, as if something wanted to wake the house.
Then it came inside.
It drummed on the roof, it drummed on the bedposts, it beat the army signals, the revel, the tattoo, the march into battle.
When the master of the house entered a room, it fell silent.
When he stepped into the next, it took up there.
It tore the blankets of the children.
It lifted their beds in the air.
It sent chairs walking across the parlor, threw shoes through the dark, tipped our chamber pots, sent candles floating up the chimney.
One morning, a horse was found with a hind leg wedged so deep into its own mouth that it took several men and a lever to work it free.
And once, they say, a voice came out of nowhere and it cried the same thing again and again.
A witch, a witch.
For two years no one in that house slept easy.
And the whole time, so the tale goes, the drummer sat in a goal many miles away and laughed.
For he had said, the man will know no peace until he gives back my drum.
That's the tale.
Now let's look at what actually happened and at what the one has to do with the other.
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