I’ve had some interesting information about the Corkseller’s Grave that I mentioned a couple of weeks back. If you recall, I quoted a 1990s article written by Paul Grantham in which he explained that our corkseller would have been trekking the moors in the 18th century. Sadly, his threadbare clothes were not enough to protect him one savage winter, and he perished. Hard-up locals would not have been willing to bear the cost of a funeral and so they would have buried him where he was found, which was legal at the time.
My son Joey and I tried to find his grave, but were unsuccessful. I’m thrilled that the writer himself, Paul Grantham, got in touch after reading the column: “I was told, and shown, the Corkseller’s Grave by Dick Bell, the first head ranger of the Moors. He kept the grave marked, and tidied up the stones whenever he passed the site. He told me because he was sure that I would continue to keep it tidy. Sadly, it now appears to be neglected and is in desperate need of some TLC.
“I have records of many unconsecrated graves across the country, some in danger of being lost forever. There is (at least) one other grave on the Moors which beggars belief and will make a wonderful story if written up by someone more skilful than me. There is another story of a missing body which revolves around the little known group of cunning folk called St Mark’s Maidens who operate on the eve of St Mark’s Day. This is April 24th…so it will be here soon.”
I’m looking forward to hearing more from Paul about these mysterious tales, and will of course pass them on to you once I read them for myself.
His comment about St Mark’s Maidens made me want to find out about them, but there was not much that I was able to discover specifically with that name, although there is plenty about St Mark’s Eve.
St Mark the Evangelist was one of Christ’s 12 apostles and is best known for having one of the Bible’s four Gospel books of the New Testament attributed to him. He is the patron saint of many things, including lions, lawyers, opticians, pharmacists, painters, secretaries, interpreters, prisoners and people with insect bites!
I can’t find anything suggesting he is connected with predicting the future or romantic love, which is why it’s a bit odd that the day before his saint’s day is all about ‘divination’, specifically people trying to either find their life partner or determine who is going to die in the coming year.
All sorts of curious practices took place in the hope that at the end, the supplicant would discover the identity of their intended one. Both men and women performed these customs, so would it be that the women were known as St Mark’s Maidens? Would the men then be ‘Masters’?
Rituals included women walking backwards towards a well before circling it three times, also backwards, while wishing to see their future husband. After the second circle, she would peer into the water where the face of her intended would reveal itself. Presumably if she didn’t like the look of him, she’d not complete a third turn!
Another custom was to set the dinner table and leave the front door open. The next person through the door would be your true love. If you didn’t like cooking you could instead visit a church yard at midnight, pluck some grass from a grave and leave it under your pillow. When you awoke, the next person you saw would be THE one.
As for predicting who would pass away, ‘watchers’ would sit in the church porch and at midnight the apparitions of those to die in the coming year would file past. If the watcher at any time fell asleep, then they would be the one to perish. A similar custom was ‘chaff riddling’ where the watcher had to sit by a barn door riddling chaff all night. At midnight the spectres of those who would pass away would parade past. In his book ‘Yorkshire Days’, my dad tells the a story of a female watcher from Malton seeing a coffin being carried by two men.
She was dead within the year.
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This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 3rd and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 1st April 2026
The Countryman's Daughter 