A poem of Fakenham Magna, a mile or so from home in my Lodge Farm days…
A little poem by Robert Bloomfield, read for Librivox by Colleen McMahon. Thanks to the Librivoxians. I was going to save it until Halloween, but I’m sure I can find other ghosts before then.
The Fakenham Ghost
A Ballad.
The Lawns were dry in Euston Park;
(Here Truth [1] inspires my Tale)
The lonely footpath, still and dark,
Led over Hill and Dale.
Benighted was an ancient Dame,
And fearful haste she made
To gain the vale of Fakenham,
And hail its Willow shade.
Her footsteps knew no idle stops,
But follow’d faster still;
And echo’d to the darksome Copse
That whisper’d on the Hill;
Where clam’rous Rooks, yet scarcely hush’d,
Bespoke a peopled shade;
And many a wing the foliage brush’d,
And hov’ring circuits made.
The dappled herd of grazing Deer
That sought the Shades by day,
Now started from her path with fear,
And gave the Stranger way.
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"And sometimes he's so nameless" 
This poem is about the fields across the road from my childhood home: the tiny hamlet of Fakenham Magna on the Euston estate, not the much bigger Fakenham up Norwich way. Some of my relatives sleep in the graveyard at Barnham probably with those who knew the foal, the lady and Bromefield in life.
It reminded me of the occasion at Euston my father was teaching me to drive in his little white lorry, when I suddenly saw a strange misshapen beastie among the deer, and contrary to all possibility thought it a wild boar.
So I went off road and after it across a field and in to an ash wood, only to find dad had jumped out of the moving lorry! I never caught it and he said it was a probably Muntjac, but I have seen Muntjac. Maybe the ghost of the tame goblin still haunts the herds 😉