Jack o'Kent was a folk hero in the borderland of Herefordshire and Monmouthshire; a wizard with supernatural powers, a trickster who got the better of the Devil himself on more than one occasion, and a giant who could hurl huge stones for miles.
I have retold these stories about him in my own words - feel free to tell them in yours.
When Jack was a young lad, a farmer hired him to keep the birds of his crops, while he went to market in the nearby town.
Jack o' Kent was a clever one, and not even the Devil could get the better of a bargain with him; and it wasn't for want of trying!
One year the Devil saw that Jack had bought a new field, so he came up to him, all friendly like, and proposed that they split the crop between them; Jack would palnt the crop and he, the Devil, would make sure that the rain and the sun all came at the right time of year. Knowing how much damage a spell of bad weather could do, Jack was happy enough with this, and he asked the Devil which half he wanted, tops or bottoms, and the Devil asked for the top half, thinking of fields of waving corn ripening in the sun.
So off went Jack and planted his crop. And fair dues to him, the Devil kept his side of the bargain and the sun shone and the rain poured, until it was time to harvest the crop. There was the Devil with his sickle sharpened specially, but he wasn't so happy when he saw the fine group of useless leaves that were his half of the crop, and even less so when he saw Jack digging up pound after pound of big, healthy potatoes.
So the next year the Devil proposed a similar bargain, only this time he would take the bottoms. And Jack agreed and all went as the previous year until harvest time came around again.
Jack used to find himself most inconvenienced at times, because in those days there wa no bridge across the river in Kentchurch. So he made a bargain with the Devil to build a bridge there, and in return the Devil could take the first living creature to cross it.
The Devil liked this idea, hoping to trick Jack himself into crossing his new bridge, though he would be happy enough with a fat farmer's wife or even a juicy cow [in those pre-BSE days]. So he set to work and built a bridge
For all Jack's success in dealings with the Devil, he knew there was still a chance that Old Nick would triumph in the end and walk off with his soul - and he wouldn't make it pleasant for him in Hell either! The story goes that the two of them had agreed that Jack's soul was forfeit whether he was buried inside the churchyard or outside it.
But Jack still had a trick up his sleeve, and before he died he gave orders that he should be buried across the church wall, so that he would be neither inside nor outside.
And as a sign to his friends of whether or not his soul was safe, he told them to hang up a piece of liver outside the church; a white dove and a black crow would then fight over it, and if the dove won then they would know he had escaped the Devil for good. According to some the result is not known, but according to others those few brave enough to watch after the funeral saw the dove and crow fly down as prophesied, and though at first the crow seemed to be driving the dove away, in the end the white bird triumphed.
Most of these stories were collected in Herefordshire, England in the first decade of the 20th century, and published by Ella Mary FitzGerald in Folklore of Herefordshire. But since Jack o' Kent was equally busy on the Welsh side of the border, I feel justified in including his exploits here.
The motif of avoiding an apparently all-encompassing clause, such as "whether inside or outside", by finding an in-between state is a common one, and shows us not only that lawyers have been around a long time, but that such states bring danger and opportunity.
Many learned men have been transformed into wizards in popular belief; Friar Roger Bacon and Sir Francis Drake in England, Michael Scot in Scotland. For all the presence of the Devil, these are historical traditions with a different level of belief to that given to witches or to the dyn hysbys; there may be a touch of fear at the power to control demons, mixed with pride at the "local boy made good".
In Brittany, similar stories are told about Saints Gwennole and Cado (i.e. our St Cadoc).
A Sion Kent (Sion being the Welsh for John, of which Jack is the diminutive) is recorded in the early 15th century; and there is a theory, not implausible, that he was really the former hero Owain Glyndwr, who vanished after his rebellion was finally suppressed, spending his last days in religious devotion.
There was also a Dr. John Kent of Caerleon in the 15th century.
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