Devil’s Jump Stone

Bear with me. It’s for your own good so you know how not to behave.

One day the Devil spied a man playing jumps or leapfrog in his own field upon the Sabbath. By this monstrous crime the Devil recognised him as one of his own. With one jump from the (church) tower he seized him and by another jump bore him to Hell. On the spot where he met his fate there is a stone known as the Devil’s toe-nail. It is a round stump about three feet high.

Miss D.B. Ward writing on Country Legends in the Bedfordshire Times and Independent, 16th July 1965.

At Marston Mortaine, Bedfordshire, one Sunday morning several boys played truant from church and wandered about the fields. A man dressed in black joined them, and proposed a game of hop-skip-and-jump. The boys acceded to the proposal, and commenced the sport, and when his turn came, the man in black took such an extraordinary hop-skip-and-jump, and cleared so much ground that the boys became excessively frightened, and concluded he was the devil. They ran home, and took care never to absent themselves from the services at church ever after; and the inhabitants of the village had stones placed on the spots where the devil’s feet came down to commemorate the event. And these stones remain to this day a testimony against Sabbath-breaking, and a witness of the devil’s prowess at hop-skip-and-jump.

Bedfordshire Times and Independent, 8th March 1873,

If you ask Marston people about the “Jumps” you are fairly certain to get widely-varying accounts of some legendary happenings. At least, when I passed through Marston the other day the stories I had heard came to my mind and I inquired about the legends. Older folk told some hair-raising yarns – in fact, the more the versions recounted, the more hair-raising they became and the more they differed in detail.

Of course this is nothing to complain about. It is a necessary stage in the building of a legend. Various accounts which come to us through the ages are gradually combined into one story, but the process is never completed, for by their very nature the stories acquire new details; generations of people see them in differing lights and read new meanings into them. And so it goes on.

The meanings of such inn signs as “Chequers”, “Rose and Crown”, “Three Horseshoes”, and “Bell” are fairly easy to trace, but the “Jumps” is local to Marston, though the legend of the devil’s leaps appears in various forms and in various districts. My authority tells me that at Marston the devil once appeared to a number of lads who were playing in the fields instead of going to church. After offering them money for jumping the devil is alleged to have exhibited his own agility by making two long jumps of about forty yards each. He then bounded over the church tower and vanished in a blue flame. Presumably there was also a smell of sulphur, but we are not told about that.

The incident caused so much dismay that the venerable Abbot of Woburn had to visit Marston and, with solemn ceremony, “disinfect” the place. Three stone crosses were placed where the devil jumped: the part of an octagonal shaft in the field opposite the inn years ago was said to be one of them. Local imagination long saw the impressions of the devil’s foot on the stone. Has this stone survived Marston’s mechanical navvies?

Marston Church tower stands about fifty feet from the church, the reason for this being wrapped in obscurity. Fanciful minds insist that the devil attempted to carry it away from the church, found it too heavy, and dropped it where it now stands. Apparently Satan is not so accomplished as a strong man as he is in other athletic directions.

Ernest Milton writing in the Bedfordshire Times and Independent, 10th December 1937.

The Principal Meeting of the Bedfordshire Licensing Committee {...} was held at the Shire Hall on Wednesday. Mr Eales represented the Justices, and applications for the renewal of the license of the “Jumps” Inn, Marston Morteyne, was made, on behalf of the owners, Messrs. Charles Wells, Ltd., and the tenant, Alfred Jackson, by Mr C.E. Dyer, instructed by Messrs. H. Tebbs and Son.

Against the renewal it was submitted that the house was isolated, with only a farmhouse and two cottages in its vicinity, and that the trade was small. When Mr Henry Swaffield was giving professional evicence, the Chairman (Mr Harter) said he believed the house obtained its name because the Devil was supposed to have jumped from a certain stone to the house, or from the house to the stone – which was it? – Witness: From the stone to the house. Mr Warren: And has not been seen since, I think? – Mr Swaffield: Not in that locality (laughter).

Mr Dyer pointed out that the trade of the house during the war was no criterion, and to take away this license would leave his client’s competitors in a majority of 2 to 1 in that parish. The house had been lately restored and was in excellent condition. During the last 20 years there had been only 3 transfers. The Bench declined to renew the licence.

Bedfordshire Times and Independent, 31st May 1918.

Henry Bett gives a different version of the legend in English Legends (1950). he says that the Jumps Inn, on the road to the church, was so-called because on the spot where it stands three youths were jumping on a Sunday when a mysterious stranger joined them and offered to teach them how to leap. He made three marvellous leaps, the extent of which, says Bett, was still shown (presumably he is referring to the standing stone or stones). The terrified youths tried to escape, but the Devil seized them and they all vanished in a blue flame.

Retold in Westwood and Simpson’s ‘Lore of the Land’ (2005).

The legend I’ve read about the Marston Moretaine church is that the division of the tower happened when the Devil was trying to steal it; it was too heavy for him so he put it down and left it. Great story!

Burl mentions the site in his book about stone rows ‘From Carnac to Callanish’ – a man was playing leapfrog on a Sunday, and the devil turned him into stone by leapfrogging over him. You wouldn’t think the devil would care about Sunday leapfrogging.
Whatever, it is very unusual to find a stone row in this part of the country -or even a single stone, in amongst the brussels sprout fields. Burl is quoting Dyer’s Penguin book of Prehistoric England and Wales and doesn’t mention what clues there are to this having been part of a row, but I’d like to find out some more. Maybe the idea of the row has got more to do with the game and the legend than any archaeological remains? Also, the stone is near Marston Moretaine, which has an unusual church with the tower separate from the rest of the building: this is blamed on the devil too.

see the legend at the ‘Mysterious Britain’ site at
mysteriousbritain.co.uk/england/bedfordshire/bedfordshire2.html

The map from 1892 shows the nearby pub called the ‘Jumps Inn’.