Gotham by the Short and Curleys

Pulling the Wool Over the King’s Eyes

Most people will think of Batman and Robin when they hear the name ‘Gotham’ but the one I write about here is not a large metropolis, it is merely a small village, the inhabitants of which, many, many years ago used their wit and cunning to outwit the King of England and his servants.   

There are many reasons why they would want to do so least of all is that they would become unpaid servants and more importantly lose their lands and the right to hunt, gather wild food and firewood from the woodlands.  

Let me explain..................

The village of Gotham is in Nottinghamshire in the north of England.  Way back, King John of England (1167 – 1216) was crowned in April 1199.  Nottinghamshire is famous even now for its fine and vast woodlands and it is there in fact that the story of Robin Hood is sited – be it true or not.  

King John fancied a large area of the forest as a royal hunting ground with Gotham Village at the centre of it. He intended to build a large house in the area...................

In those days, woodlands more or less belonged to the common people and they had certain common-law rights.   If they were taken over (i.e. confiscated) by the King, the land and woodlands earned the title of Forest and all rights over such land belonged to the Crown.

In days gone by, (and some say even in present times), the Royals did not like to spend money. They expected everything to be free – supplied by the people of the locality either by way of gift or taxes. 

The villagers did not fancy the prospect as not only would they lose their grazing rights in the forest glades but also they would be expected to tend the forest on behalf of the King. They would lose all hunting rights and even the gathering of certain wild fruits would have been forbidden. 

All dogs would have to be ‘clawed’ by removing their claws if they were to be taken into Royal forests to prevent them from attacking the deer.   (Small dogs, provided that they could crawl through a Norman stirrup (see below) were not harmed).  Not only that but the people would have to supply servants (unpaid), labourers (unpaid) and very large quantities of food (unpaid) for the large court that followed the King everywhere (hangers-on).   Something had to be done so a cunning plan had to be hatched.....................

In order to try to preserve their 'rights, the villagers decided to try to convince the King’s emissaries that the locality was full of ‘idiots’ which would possibly suggest to them that there was something wrong with the local water. 

This method of keeping strangers away from certain areas was not only used in Gotham but in many other areas of England and Scotland. People from many such areas are, as a result, still called ‘idiots’ to the present day......................

Whenever the emissaries arrived in the village some of the yokels would set up a scene for them.....

One became known as the ‘cuckoo bush farce’. In order to prolong spring, the locals told the King’s men that they were erecting a fence around a bush in which there was a cuckoo living. They laboriously built a high fence around the bush and lo and behold, the cuckoo flew upwards and ‘escaped’. 

On another occasion, a man’s horse was drinking from the village pond on which there was a reflection of the moon. When a cloud moved in front of the moon and it ‘disappeared’, the man claimed that his horse had swallowed it – the moon that is. He and others in the presence of the King’s agents killed the horse to recover the moon.

On another occasion, they watched a man as he filled two large sacks of wheat. He told the agents that he feared that the wheat was too heavy for the horse so he would carry them himself. He put them under his arms and promptly mounted the horse............................

On another occasion as they watched, the blacksmith decided to rid his forge of a bee’s nest. He decided to set fire to it and in doing so he burnt down the entire smithy building.

Probably the finest of them all was when the agents were examining the local river, they saw several men arrive. They told the agents that the swirling eddies were in fact the river boiling. They promptly threw in their porridge oats. After a while, one of the men jumped in to see if the porridge was cooked. When he could not find it, the others joined him.

Needless to say, the report to the King was that the locality was full of total idiots and they suggested that he seek a hunting forest elsewhere – as far away from Gotham as possible.

The villagers may well have ‘won’ but since those days, they are still considered to be fools. In actual fact, I think that they were in fact very clever and like the ‘Kerryman’ jokes in Ireland, they paint a totally false picture of the people themselves..........................

------------Mike------------