Burton Agnes - critical of retellings (aka preposterous trash).

A certain class of scribblers have no mercy on crude village tradition, superstition and legend when they sit down with the design of making "capital" out of what they have not investigated. Modern book-legends are rarely genuine, for they have been copied and embellished to each re-writer's own liking; and if you inquire about the legend in the place where it originally sprang from you may get many different versions; or, as often as not, the natives know nothing about what has been ascribed to them.

In a recent Christmas Number of a lady's magazine appeared an account of "The Yorkshire Ghost Story of the Screaming Skull of Burton Agnes Hall," which was said to be "weird and uncanny enough to satisfy the most morbid craving for the horrible." The whole story was, of course, preposterous trash, and it melts away as soon as the limelight of history is turned upon it. As for the plain skull tradition, which deserves no undue prominence in literary pages, the Rev. Carus Vale Collier, F.S.A., of Burton Agnes, convinces me that it is a good story to tell visitors.

Not a few old village folk can remember their grandparents or godparents telling them about seeing the skull placed in Squire Boynton's entrance-hall in a glass case.

[...]

We have been told by those who profess to know that it is guarded by the Boyntons as a piece of sacred property. I think I hear the present owner of Burton Agnes saying to me:-- "Perhaps no living person has seen this skull nor does anybody seem to have an intelligent idea where to look for it."

Anne Griffith is an imaginary character altogether; so how did the skull story arise? The crest of the Griffith family was a female head, which occurs many times on the spouts of the hall; also on Sir Henry Griffith's tilting-helm in the church. "Undoubtedly," says my correspondent, Rev. C.V. Collier, F.S.A., "this is the origin of the tradition about Anne Griffith or 'Awd Nance Boynton' (no matter which) losing her head. When Francis Boynton came into the property after his  maternal uncle's demise the female head of the Grifffiths would be replaced with the Boynton goat; and this would, of course, be looked upon as a bad omen by the Burton Agnes folk."

There is another local tradition, this time respecting the griffin at the foot of Sir Henry Griffith's monument in the church. It is supposed that the fabulous eagle-lion which this carveing professes to memorialise once haunted the forest near Burton Agnes, and would at times steal forth into broad daylight and pick up succulent maidens or village children, carrying them off to his lair and feeding on their limbs. Sir Henry Griffith went forth to annihilate this monster, but he only succeeded in cutting off its beak. If you doubt this story you are shown the beakless eagle-like head on Sir Henry's tomb.

Leeds Mercury, Saturday 3rd January 1903.