Brought Up By A Tree April 9, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
This story dates to 1706 and seems, at least, to Beach just too incredible. It is enjoyable though, in a kind of my-foster-dad-was-an-oak, murder-will-out way.
The scene of the occurrence is laid at a nameless place in Essex [note not named!], in the neighbourhood of which a gentleman was in the habit of amusing himself by hunting. One day the dogs started a hare, and pursued the animal with great vivacity till they encountered a large hollow tree, where they stopped unanimously, fixed their eyes on it, and barked in concert; naturally supposing that the hare had taken shelter in the tree, the gentleman and his attendants rode up, and soon heard a low moaning: surprized at this circumstance, he ordered a servant to feel whether any animal was within reach, while he stood prepared to obstruct its passage or escape; the domestic obeyed, felt a human head, and soon drew a child from the trunk, apparently two years of age.
Crucially we do not learn how long the little fellow had been in this tree: but surely a deciduous trunk has got to beat lions and wolves.
This unfortunate little fellow suffered so severely from hunger, that he had gnawed part of the flesh from one of his arms: the gentleman, touched with compassion at this wretched scene, determined to take the infant home, which he did, and soon recovered him from the consequences of his cruel confinement. The ensuing Christmas produced an explanation of the mystery attending the discovery almost as remarkable as the barking of the dogs around the tree.
Suspend your skepticism, if it is active you won’t got to the end of the paragraph.
Several young women had visited the town where the benevolent protector of the child resided, in order to keep the wassel of the season, one of whom seeing the boy at his door, immediately observed to a friend with her, ‘If Goody’s nurse-child was not dead, I should have sworn this had been it.’ The servant entrusted with the care of the foundling having heard this speech, conveyed the information to her master, who made further enquiry, and was conducted to the house of the nurse: he demanded of her where the child was which she had recently nursed; the woman declared her charge died, and positively asserted it was buried in a church-yard she named; the gentleman contradicted her in decided terms, and added his belief that she had destroyed the infant, insisting that the precise place of interment should be pointed out, that he might be satisfied, by personal examination, whether her statement was founded in truth. Thus compelled, the woman reluctantly led her accuser to the burial-ground, where the earth was removed that covered the supposed body, in presence of proper witnesses, when, instead of the child, the persons employed removed from a coffin the wax resemblance of a face, and a figure made for the purpose dressed in the usual habiliments of the grave: this was complete conviction; and the culprit at length confessed that she had been urged to murder the boy by his guardian, who was his heir to property amounting to fifteen thousand pounds: an imperfect sense of rectitude led this vile woman to fancy she pitied the forlorn state of the infant, who had lost both of its parents; she therefore determined not to embrue her hands in his blood, though she did not scruple, in consideration of a large reward, to immure it in a hollow tree, there to perish by the lingering horrors of starvation.
Again is it true: the writer gives himself a kind of get out at the end.
Here my information ends, nor have I been able to trace the consequences of a prosecution said to have been intended.
Any other tree as father stories? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
24 April 2014: Chris from Haunted Ohio Books writes in with this gem. Here’s a fictional “Tree as Father” story: The Tree’s Wife, Mary Elizabeth Counselman. http://www.unz.org/Pub/WeirdTales-1950mar-00043 I read this as a child and it made a big enough impression that I will remembered it. Thanks Chris!
