Chapter 12: Derbyshire

Derbyshire is a nondescript place. Little of note seems to have happened there. It’s very, very rare that you’ll meet someone that will admit they’re from there, or who’s been there or who’s even passed through there. There. I’m not sure if the county has any parliamentary representation. Nonetheless, delve far enough into the past and you’ll discover that even Derbyshire has macabre tales: for once it was plagued by dun cows.

The following extracts come from Se Mu-Mu’s 1801 opus A History of British Englishness, kindly reproduced here due to expiration of copyright:

“Picture the scene: It is All Beads’ Eve, 1691, 7.36pm, and Derby is at calm. The crypto-saintly Red Boon has returned victorious from the holy dales of Kack with the revered Glass Banana in his velvet satchel. Children toss blue berry-balls in the streets, and the heinous impostor Christ-Mayor Jenkins Le Tapplings has been exiled to Van Janet’s Woods.

“An age of joy and prosperity has apparently beholden the village. Or so it seems.

“For settled deep in the droid beetle-dappled greenery of Derby’s Radish District, a tyrannous nuisance hovers.

“For it is Jasper III, the thought-to-be-slain son of the god-like King Jasper. Castigated and pummelled for his endless profanities, the ‘Great Bastard’ has returned to deliver furious carnage upon the village. His body a mosaic of pike ‘n’ staff wounds, the reviled fiend plots and fumes in the thicket, setting his cunning nature to gruesome revenge.

“And what unfortunate twite should happen to saunter this way, this hour than the Rye Widow dun cow, her tail gayly aswish in the nettle-plush dips and chunnels of St Canard Smith’s radish symposium.

“The artful and unspeakably evil Jasper delights in this belch of Fortune’s whimsy, and thoughtfully caresses his mace between wicked fingers.

“Flinging himself from a patch of knobbly brier, the unrepentant villain surges upon the shocked beast, flaying it without mercy until it falls to bloodied dust.

“It is said that the battered animal’s screams and bellows can still be heard on moonless nights, when the west wind whistles through the banshee grass, and Puddling Brook’s ancient waters swell to burst.

“The diabolical Jasper was hunted for his crimes but fled north in a canoe, where he was eventually given sanctuary by Evelyn the Dunce of Huddersfield. Unlike his sad victim, the foul regal spawn lived out the rest of his days in opulent splendour, hand maidens busy about his loins, fromage-sur-toast, and shiny jewels to jingle in his satin dungarees.”

I said “extractS” above, didn’t I? Here’s another of them:

“When Willis the Elder of Hope Yardle crossed the Tidal Swathe of Lower Brook in temps no kinder than -31c, his ice-heavy bow a-tilt north-north east, us saddened eighteenth century relics, grown hog-fat in our graceless bent on a grim tableau of deity-less despair, aimless onanism and vapid stupors, have not the strength of will, nor mind, nor flesh, to imagine the pulsing ream of dazzling thoughts and feelings that must have curved their path through the carousel of his inordinate brain.

“So, we are agreed, Willis’ angst was strummed to a deadly pitch afore he stumbled into the moon-glazed lea of the B1 Marsh dun cow.

“A culvert he settled upon, upon espying the beast, and struck a flume of copper arrowheads across its flanks. The gargantuan milker brayed in disbelief and pain, but did then come to settle in its death curdle – its sapid blood pooling black in the glare of the blasphemous lunar smile.

So much for the B1 Marsh dun cow! Poor, poor thing!

“Willis, for his trouble, received the patronage of Ty Long VIIIIII, whose garrison then festooned the northern ramparts of Gloucester Harris’s dreadnought compound, the fortification braided with the skulls of many a vanquished layman. And a mighty feast was there lay forth, betwixt which the children of the starless emporium did dance in merry; and Dean Wisp of the Blue Committee laid down amongst the dirt ‘n’ ash in an afeared reverie, his lucid sniggering setting the night herons on a south-ish course.”

According to guidebooks, Derby’s Cathedral Castle houses a dun cow collarbone in a bricked-up garret. But who knows? Who cares? Really, what’s the point? Why are we here? Pointless. It’s all pointless. And sad. And expensive. Expensive, sad and pointless. That’s what it is. Those three things. Anyway, that’s about as much as Derbyshire has to offer.