The Gytrash of Goathland: A Yorkshire Legend from the North York Moors
Michael Henry Temple (1862–1928) was born on the Isle of Man and educated at Leeds Grammar School and Keble College, Oxford. While called to the Inner Temple bar in 1886, rather than practise as a barrister he spent an eclectic career as a man of letters, becoming the chief leader writer for The Globe, co-writing “Alice”-themed Boer War political satire Clara in Blunderland (1902) and writing what would become a definitive fisherman’s handbook for decades to come, First Steps to Fly Fishing (1924). Towards the end of his life he returned to the North Country influences of his youth, compiling folklore collection The Gytrash of Goathland and Other Yorkshire Legends.
The tiny village of Goathland itself stands on the North York Moors. As Temple’s narrative notes, “[w]ild and lonely it remains to this day, and many a traveller has gone astray on those bewildering moors which ring it round and seem to have no end.” In the 1960s, this isolated stretch of moorland became the location for the ballistic missile early warning system at nearby RAF Fylingdales, where the ominous “golf balls” could clearly be seen from Goathland until their replacement in 1992 with a huge grey radar pyramid. Less apocalyptically, Goathland has become better known as the filming location for rural police drama Heartbeat and Hogsmeade Station in the first Harry Potter film.
The area now known as Julian’s Park, on the outskirts of Goathland, is the setting for Temple’s gruesome account of a local legend. Once the hunting seat of the de Mauley family, the now vanished grand lodge, some say, was erected by the sadistic Julian de Mauley for a terrible price. However, while Julian’s wealth and power may have placed him outside earthly law, evading supernatural justice proves to be another matter.
The Gytrash of Goathland by Michael Temple (1928)
In the far-off days when Arthur ruled in Camelot and the Kingdom of Northumbria stretched from the Humber to the Forth, the Vale of the Mirk Esk was held by Julian of Goathland from Allerston Moor, whence today you may look upon the red roofs of Pickering, to Grosmont, where Esk and Mirk Esk unite to flow through Sleights and Ruswarp to Streonshal – which men call Whitby now – and the sea.
It was ever a wild and lonely land, so little troubled by the comings and goings of men that even in much later days the cliffs of Goathland were chosen for the breeding-place of the falcons whose young were taken to Court to be trained for the pleasure of the Kings of England in the noble sport of falconry. Wild and lonely it remains to this day, and many a traveller has gone astray on those bewildering moors which ring it round and seem to have no end.
Yet it is a very pleasant land, and you may spend a summer’s day with great profit to your soul in listening to the beck tinkling sweetly over Water Ark or in wandering through the purple heather until you come to Falling Foss, that fall of water which is too tiny to be famous, but is yet perhaps the most perfect gem the fair North Country wears. Here you may enter upon the very holy of holies of the moorland and shake off the mean thoughts of cities in the visible presence of the Great God Pan.
Cover image of “Haunted Yorkshire: Ghostly Tales from God’s Own County”, edited by Elizabeth Dearnley
Here Julian was minded to build himself a castle, and for it he chose a spot which is known as Julian Park to this day. He could have made no better choice, for indeed it is a lovely place, hanging over the green woodlands which fringe the beck and hard by to Malyon Spout, where the water throws itself over a cliff draped and hung since, time immemorial with the greenest of green creeping plants, through whose trailing fronds it makes its way.
“Evil lord”
When the beck is running full after a summer storm and the sun lights up the dripping verdure it makes a picture in gleaming emerald and sparkling crystal that has no equal from Trent to Tweed. Little cared Julian for the beauty of the place.
It was enough for him that here he could build a strong castle in which he could defy marauding neighbours and from which he could safely exact what he held to be his dues from the common folk on his lands, then, as now, quick to resent oppression if by any means resistance should avail them; that here was great plenty of needful wood and water and game of every sort for his hunting.
He was a hard and cruel man, of the blood, it was said, of that fierce people which came, no one knows when, up out of the North Sea and built that great wall which we call the Dane’s Dyke as a defence against the in-dwellers of the land. He recked naught of the White Christ, but worshipped Woden and Thor, so far as he regarded any gods but his own fierce will, and was a bitter lord to all who were beneath his power.
It is told that the rumour of his oppressions reached even to Arthur at Camelot, and that the good King was about to place the matter of his chastisement before the Knights of the Round Table when he was summoned to his last battle. But of that there is no sure word; all that is certainly known is that Julian of Goathland was a very evil lord who was hated by all the countryside.
Now Julian held by the old creed that if any great house or temple was to be securely built life must be built in with it, and, since he was resolved that the new Castle Julian should be able to withstand the assaults of all his enemies and endure for ever to the glory of his name, he swore a great oath by the Ravens of Woden that whosoever was the best beloved of the maidens of Eskdale should be walled up in the foundations of his keep and there be left to perish miserably.
Among them all there was found none so much beloved or so fair as Gytha, the only child of Gudrun of the Mill, and therefore as soon as the building began he sent his men-at-arms and took her from her father’s house. She was at her spinning-wheel when they took her, and they brought her before her lord with the spindle still in her hand. But when his purpose was known many of the people of Goathland followed after the men-at-arms, and made their way into the presence of Julian to entreat him to spare the maid.
“Powerful enemies”
But he only laughed at them and their tears and prayers and declared that he would give them a lesson in the obedience which his people owed to their lord. Wherefore he ordered his men-at-arms to seize Gudrun of the Mill, who had been loudest in his prayers for his daughter’s life, and commanded that he himself should build the wall of his daughter’s living tomb. And when Gudrun refused, saying that he would rather die any death than do this fearful thing, he tortured him with fire for many days until his spirit was altogether broken within him and he obeyed like a man in a dream.
But when there remained but two stones to be laid they placed by the side of the maid a beaker of water and a loaf of bread – for Julian was angry with the murmuring of the people of Goathland and would not have her die too soon – and in mockery of her wretchedness he added also her spindle and spinning-wheel, saying that it was not well for maids to be idle and that perchance she might find the time hang heavy upon her hands. And so the wall of the foundation was finished and the wailing girl was shut away for ever from the light.
There was but little strength in the law in Northumbria in those days, and though many came and told the King of this deed and entreated him to avenge it, and the priests of Christ who were newly come to the land, but had gained great power with him, exhorted him to do justice, he feared to move against Julian lest he should ally himself with the many and powerful enemies of the kingdom. So nothing was done against him, and when the Hermit of Eskdaleside visited him to bid him repent he laughed him to scorn and set his great dogs on him so that the holy man hardly escaped with his life.
The next year on the night of the day on which the maiden had been sacrificed Julian was lying on his bed planning to add this and that to the castle he was building, when he and all within the house heard the wail of a woman coming, as it seemed, from the foundations of the keep. The wailing sound came nearer and nearer to the room in which he lay, and when he would have called to his guards he found that his tongue refused its office, nor could he himself move hand or foot.
Presently the door of his chamber opened, and he was aware of a white figure clothed in what seemed to be the garments which Gytha had worn when she was entombed and bearing a spindle such as she had had in her hand when his men took her from her father’s house. The figure spoke no word, but came and stood at the foot of his bed, still wailing, and he knew it was the wraith of the murdered Gytha come to exact the vengeance which neither the King’s counsellors nor the priests had been able to win.
“So much evil”
For some moments she stood motionless, and then very slowly she stretched out her right arm and held the spindle over his feet.
Criss-cross, criss-cross, criss-cross, three times she moved the spindle over the foot of the bed, and, as she moved it, it seemed to him as though invisible threads were being wound about his feet and ankles, threads which no power of his could break.
Then, still gently wailing, she turned and left him, and it seemed to him, as the sound grew more distant, that she was returning to her grave in the keep. Upon him there came a great horror, but not until the wailing had altogether died away was he able to cry out or to rise, but at last power returned to him and he struggled from his bed. But when he stood up his feet felt strangely numb, and when he would walk he found that he could not lift them as heretofore, but that he could only shuffle along with a queer, tottering gait.
Neither the next day, nor the next, nor on any day, did the life come back to those dead feet of his, nor could any leech restore it. For a year he must go shuffling on dead feet, growing, as it seemed, neither worse nor better, until the fatal night came round once more. Then again the wailing of the Spinning Maiden was heard, and again he saw her figure with the spindle in her hand. But this time she waved it criss-cross, criss-cross, criss-cross, three times above his knees, and again he seemed to be bound with the same invisible threads.
The next day and for all that year he was dead from the knees downwards, only in that year strange and cruel pains that came and went as suddenly as the lightning shot through his body from time to time and in his agony he would cry out and curse his gods. At the last he sent for the old Hermit of Eskdaleside and offered to turn Christian and build him a church if he would but pray to the God of the Christians to heal him and deliver him from his great distress.
The Hermit took his confession and set about the building of a church where Goathland Church now stands, but there was no remedy. Each year on the appointed night the Spinning Maiden came again with her dreadful spindle and each time she wound the invisible threads a little higher than the last. For ten years the lord of Castle Julian died slowly from the feet upwards, and always he suffered intolerable pains until at last his soul passed from him during the night of a great storm.
Now here the tale becomes broken and confused, and it is not easy to say why the Gytrash came at this time or what connection there was between his coming and the sacrifice of the Maiden or the end of Julian’s long agony. But some, it seems, there must have been, were it only that these things had filled the place with so much evil that it was a fit home for him, for it was on the night of Julian’s death that he was first seen.
Some will have it that the Gytrash was the wraith of Julian himself, doomed to wander on earth and to do yet more evil than he had done in his life, and that certainly would be the easiest explanation did we not know that at this same time the neighbouring village of Egton was also haunted by another being of the same kind, and that Egton has no record of any evil-doer such as the wicked lord of Goathland.
All that has certainly come down to us is that one of the men of Goathland was making his way home through the storm when his lord lay newly dead, and that when he was passing the church a gigantic black goat, with eyes that burned like live coals and horns tipped with fire, sprang over the churchyard wall and rushed past him.
“Nervous tension”
According to the account he gave of it when he reached his home, the apparition made no sound either when it leaped the wall of the churchyard or when it dashed close past him, but he particularly noticed that when it rushed away along the road, he could hear the sound of its footfalls, a sound not at all like the clattering of a goat’s hooves over hard ground, but a soft, padding noise like that made by a man running with bare feet. This at least was all that the neighbours could make of the story he told, for he reached his home in such a state of terror as to be almost incoherent.
Nor was there at that time any means of testing his tale of “Padfoot,” as the villagers named the creature, for the man never recovered from his fright, but sickened of some mysterious malady which affected his mind as well as his body, and of which in due course he died. By all accounts the disease in no way resembled Plague, the symptoms of which were well known at that time and about which there would have been no mistake, but to have been more akin to what we know now as Sleepy Sickness.
However, the people soon had plenty of opportunities of confirming the truth of the dead man’s story, for the appearances of the Gytrash, or Padfoot, became so frequent that the whole countryside was thrown into panic terror. Men coming home in the evening after their work would hear behind them the pad, pad, pad of the monstrous goat, and, run as they might, the horrible thing always overtook them before they could gain the shelter of their homes and rushed past them with the speed of the wind.
It never touched any of them, but whosoever was overtaken by the goat most surely sickened the next day of the mysterious malady and was marked for death. During these sad days it is said that a blood-curdling shriek was heard from time to time across the moors, and this the people attributed to the Gytrash, though whether rightly or wrongly it is impossible to say.
Considering that Padfoot himself was never known to make any sound when he encountered a human being, it is more probable that the people had been thrown into such a state of nervous tension by the happenings around them that they magnified the natural cry of some bird or beast into the voice of the dreadful goat. Be that as it may, the Gytrash was by no means the only terror with which they had to contend, for the spirit of the Spinning Maiden was still unlaid.
At midnight on every anniversary of her death the same wailing sound was heard to come from the keep of the castle, and that year whoever was fairest and most beloved of the maids of the countryside was sure to die. You will understand the bewilderment of the unfortunate people under all these happenings. Ordinary troubles such as war, the ravages of wolves – very frequent in those dales – scarcity, occasional epidemics and the oppression of the common folk, they were prepared for, and were able, to some extent, to provide against, but this persecution by the Gytrash and the Spinning Maiden was something quite by itself and beyond any remedy of their own.
Very naturally and properly they turned first of all to the Church for help, and begged the Hermit of Eskdaleside to come to their assistance. Had these things happened a few hundred years later they would, of course, have applied to St. Cedda at Lastingham, where he had built that Saxon church, on the top of which, as you may see to this day, the Normans afterwards erected a church in their own style, and no doubt his eminent sanctity would have proved sufficient for the occasion.
“Wits were sharpened”
It is not known whether the then holder of the hermitage had obtained it in some irregular way instead of being appointed to it by the proper authority, as was the usual custom, or whether he was inexperienced in dealing with phantoms and boggarts, or whether, as did sometimes happen, this particular Hermit was in some way unworthy of his sacred calling, but it is certain that, for some cause or other, his interference was quite ineffectual.
He exorcised the churchyard with bell, book and candle and said a Mass for the dead over the grave of the Spinning Maiden, but neither she nor the Gytrash appear to have been in the least affected by his ministrations and their evil activities continued as before. The Church having failed them, the distressed people determined to call in the Other Power, and sent a deputation to the Spaewife of Fylingdales, who was considered to be the most competent witch in those parts, and who, as trustworthy witnesses could testify, was able to change herself into a hare when she was summoned to the Witches’ Sabbaths on Whorle Hill and desired to elude observation.
The Spaewife gave the deputation a more civil reception than, considering the treatment she usually met with in the neighbourhood, they had any right to expect, and told them to come again that day week, when she hoped to have found out some remedy for their troubles.
What magic she practised in the interval remained her secret, but when they returned at the appointed time she told them that deliverance was to be found in a proper interpretation of the words, “Tane to tither.” What the interpretation was she said she was forbidden to tell them; they must make it out for themselves, and she added that they had best set their wits to work, for, if they failed to discover it, the wraith of the Spinning Maiden would never be laid and the Gytrash would continue his maraudings until the whole countryside was made desolate.
“Tane to tither!” The words seemed to have no bearing upon the case, and for weeks the elders of the village debated the question at their evening meetings in the ale-house without coming to any conclusion. But it is to be supposed that their wits were sharpened by the fact that two of them encountered the Gytrash on their way home, and came back to their families with the news that they were doomed men – as indeed they were.
At last it occurred to one who was more intelligent than his fellows that the meaning of the Spaewife’s words must be that they should somehow set one of the phantoms to deal with the other, and that perhaps the magic threads of the Maiden would suffice to bind the Gytrash and so rid them of their worst trouble. The idea seemed to be a good one, and at any rate no one had anything better to suggest, and they discussed for a long time the best means of carrying it out.
Evidently, if there was anything in it, the Gytrash must somehow be decoyed into some kind of prison and the Maiden be persuaded to weave her threads round it so as to keep him fast. Now it is well known that these Gytrashes, or Barguests, as some call them, have a particular liking for newly buried corpses, from which it is supposed that they draw their life, after the manner of a Vampire, and it had been noticed that the Goathland Gytrash invariably hunted the neighbourhood of any newly made grave for some nights after the dead had been laid to rest.
“Proper precautions”
The village elders determined therefore to wait for the night on which the Spinning Maiden was abroad and then to lure the Gytrash by a mock funeral into the place which they intended to prepare for him. They came to this decision about three months before the anniversary of the Maiden’s death, and set to work at once to dig those Killing Pits which you may see at Goathland to this day.
It is not certainly known why they dug so many, but it is a probable conjecture that the reason was because they had to make several attempts before they found a spot where the rock lay sufficiently far beneath the soil to allow them to dig one deep enough to their mind. The suggestion that the Killing Pits are really Kiln Pits, and were dug in ancient days for the purpose of smelting the iron-stone which abounds in the district, may be dismissed as a fable devised by modern science. They were made for the beguiling of the Gytrash, and the fact is confirmed by tradition and reason alike.
To discover how to persuade the Maiden to do her part when the Gytrash had been decoyed into the chosen pit, the elders again had recourse to the Spaewife of Fylingdales. She congratulated them on having rightly interpreted her cryptic message, and told them that they need have no fear of the Maiden giving her help, if the proper precautions were taken, for she said that it had been revealed to her as the result of many and varied conjurations – for which she looked to them for suitable remuneration – that between the Maiden and the Gytrash there existed a mortal enmity.
All that was required was that they should lay a trail of honey from the castle to the pit and sprinkle it with corn and salt. That would, she declared, suffice to guide the maiden to the appointed spot, and the rest they might safely leave to the phantom herself. Then the people of Goathland made a Mell Baby out of a corn-sheaf, as the folk of that part were wont to do when the last of the harvest was carried, and got it ready with great secrecy for the fateful night. They dressed the Baby in corpse-clothes and put in a coffin, mourning the while as though for some dead friend.
Next, having laid the train of honey, corn and salt, the mourners, weeping and bewailing themselves, as the Spaewife had told them, bore the coffin through the village and laid it in the Killing Pit a little before midnight. Then they retired to some distance and waited to see what would happen. At midnight the padding of the Goat’s footsteps was heard near at hand, and in another moment the dreadful creature himself appeared, his eyes blazing like hot coals and his great horns tipped with fire.
“Horrible cry”
He disappeared in the pit, and at the same moment the figure of the Spinning Maiden with the spindle in her hand was seen approaching along the track which had been laid to guide her. It was noticed that on this night the wailing sound was not heard, for the first time since she had been so cruelly done to death, and that on her calm face was the look of one who sees a great deliverance at hand.
When she reached the pit she stretched her hand over it and began to weave with her spindle criss-cross, criss-cross, criss-cross, weaving her magic thread over the Goat as she had woven it over Julian of Goathland. And the magic thread held true. From the bottom of the pit came a horrible cry such as that which the villagers had heard from time to time coming across the moors after the coming of the Goat, but of the Gytrash himself nothing was seen. Only as the Maiden wove with her spindle the sides of the pit fell in until at last all was filled up as though no pit had been dug in that place.
The other Killing Pits remain as witnesses to the tale, but that which became the prison of the Gytrash vanished altogether, and the place cannot now be found. Yet there is one spot near to the Killing Pits on which the grass never grows, and it may be that this marks the prison of the Goat. Perhaps it would not be very wise to dig deeply there even today. When the Maiden’s task was accomplished a gentle smile was seen upon her sad face, but no sound came from her lips.
Slowly, very slowly, she raised her arms above her head, dropping the spindle as she did so, and then she faded away in the moonlight, and neither she nor the Gytrash troubled the people of Goathland any more. But the foolish villagers forgot that they owed their deliverance to the Spaewife of Fylingdales, and most ungratefully refused to bestow upon her the gift she had demanded as the price of her wisdom. From which thing sprang great trouble, as shall be told anon.
Excerpt taken from “Haunted Yorkshire: Ghostly Tales from God’s Own County”, edited by Elizabeth Dearnley, published by the British Library, 18 June 2026
ISBN: 9780712369459
Price: £10.99
Authors in the anthology include: Andrew Michael Hurley, Emily Brontë, Sylvia Plath, J. S. Le Fanu, Ted Hughes, Charlotte Brontë, Arthur Machen
Launch event panel discussion on Sunday 21st June at The Old Woollen in Leeds: Old Woollen – Midsummer Weird Tickets | Sunday 21 June 2026 at 14:00
all illustrations: © On: Media
