Reimagining the mystery of the ‘Maid of the Haystack’
For more than 250 years we have been fascinated by the mystery of the true identity of a young woman who appeared in Flax Bourton as if from nowhere and spent four years living under a haystack. The story has just inspired a local journalist and author to fictionalise the tale of the “Maid of the Haystack”.
THE story of Louisa, the “Maid of the Haystack” is one of the most enduring and enigmatic of all local mysteries, and now one which has inspired a novel.
Its author, journalist and writer Martin J. Powell, who lives in North Somerset, says he first heard of her when researching articles for a local history magazine in the 1980s.
He says: “For decades I found myself going back from time to time to look at this story again and try to find out who this woman was, why she behaved as she did and which of the many tales about her were true.”
The woman, said to be very beautiful, first appeared in Flax Bourton in 1776. She asked the locals for some milk and then took to living under an old haystack, staying there night after night.
Word of the mysterious lady soon spread. Although she was dressed in rags, many thought that her manner and bearing meant she was some sort of aristocrat, though she would never speak of her family or where she had come from.
She ended up staying under her haystack for four years, with the locals keeping her supplied with life’s necessities, though she refused any kind of accommodation. Becoming an object of great curiosity for miles around, with well-to-do people visiting her. She was painted by a pupil of the great Sir Joshua Reynolds.
By one account she was sometimes given “ornaments and finery … but these she disdained to wear, and she is said to have either hung them on the hedges or exchanged them with the poorer children of the village in return for milk, tea, and simple necessities.”
All sorts of theories as to her identity emerged. Some thought she had a slight foreign accent or that she might even be royalty of some sort.
In the end she was taken to an asylum by philanthropist and poet Hannah More, but the mystery has long outlived her time in Flax Bourton.
“Why did the great and good of
Bristol and London society donate money and items to her?” says Martin Powell.
“I first set out with the intention of writing a factual book about her but there was so much mystery and intrigue and so many conflicting theories that it eventually became a novel, based on true events.
“I always felt that history books often failed to give the reader a real insight into what life was really like in different periods. So, I set out to describe the sights, sounds and smells of Bristol and surrounding villages in the 1770s. I wanted to relate what was important to local people then.”
In the book we meet such contemporary characters as Hannah More, John Wesley, Joshua Reynolds and David Garrick. There’s also some European royalty.
Martin says that he also wanted to look at the attitudes of the time to mental health and the treatment of women before coming to its conclusions on who the mystery woman was and how she came to be in the haystack.
# The Maid of the Haystack by Martin J. Powell is published by Bristol Books and can be bought online, through bookshops or direct from publisher at: www.bristolbooks.org