The legend of Nanny Rutt

Nanny Rutt is a character in a cautionary tale associated with Nanny Rutt's well, an artesian spring in Math Wood on the outskirts of Northorpe, near Bourne, although some versions suggest that it is in the nearby Elsea Wood.

The story goes that a girl went into the wood to the well and disappeared, having been taken off by Nanny Rutt, a tale of oral tradition and one that varies depending on who is telling it but some features are common to all versions.

It begins with the young girl who had arranged to meet with a lover at the well in the wood. She sets off in the early evening but on her way meets an old woman wrapped in a shawl that casts a deep shadow on her face in the evening light. A conversation ensues and she is warned about the dangers of the wood at night as well as those of eloping without the permission of her parents.

Ignoring these warnings, the girl continues on her way and reaches the well deep inside the wood where she had arranged to meet her lover. Here she waits for a long time and soon realises that he is not coming. By then, it is very dark and as tears cloud her vision, she becomes hopelessly lost.

Eventually, she stumbles upon a clearing in the woods with an overgrown stone building, little bigger than a small shack. In the doorway stands the old woman, her shawl now pulled back to reveal a hideous face lit by the ghostly moonlight. As the girl turns to run she stumbles and falls. The old woman’s shadow falls on her as she advances, freezing her body with a paralysing chill, and her throat goes dry as she tries to scream. The girl is never seen again.

The date of the story's origin is obscure but it was current in the 1920s and is likely to be earlier. Parents used to use it to warn their children against wandering in the wood. In this respect, Nanny Rutt was a form of the bogeyman. It is probably not coincidental that le rut is a French word derived from the Latin rugitus meaning sexual drive. The word occurs too in English but is used for male non-human mammals, especially of the deer group, and goats. The males are said to be in rut while female mammals are on heat.

The French word applies to either sex and may include people. Rodin included it among the sins scattered on a version of his Gates of Hell. Nanny Rutt's first name is perhaps a little less explicit. Goats are sometimes used as a byword for male sexuality but a nanny goat is a female one. The word Nanny is also used both as a colloquial term for a grandmother and can also mean child-minder.

It may be possible to suggest an explanation for the story of the disappearance. Perhaps at some date, a girl took her developing sexuality into Math Wood, met someone who complemented it and was soon taken off to a home for unmarried mothers never to return to Northorpe. An explanation was required for the other young people and at a time of reticence about sexuality, Nanny Rutt was invented. If this happened when the use of the French language in England was remembered, the story is mediaeval. Nanny Rutt could also be based on a real woman who once lived in the woods.

NOTE: This is an edited version reproduced from Wikipedia.

The legend of Nanny Rutt
A LOCAL VERSION

Elsea Wood and Math Wood are similar, small clumps of woodland alongside the A15, the road between London and Lincoln, south of the town. Both are Sites of Special Scientific Interest and were once part of the large forest which covered this landscape and although its isolation and restricted access has left the woodland largely unfrequented in recent years except by nature lovers,

Bluebells grow here in the spring, a sure sign of an ancient woodland, while thousands of birds nest in the trees and its hidden places are full of small mammals. Fallow deer can also be seen hereabouts, often making their way across the countryside from Auster Wood and Pillow Wood to the north east along tracks they have trod for centuries past. 

It is an idyllic place but is reputed to be haunted by the ghost of Nanny Rut, a mysterious female hermit whose fate was determined by the social mores of 19th century England. Her real name was Nancy Rutter who was employed as a servant girl and who lived and worked at a farmhouse in Northorpe village nearby but as was so often the case with girls in her position, the farmer who employed her had his way with her and she became pregnant.

Such an occurrence was a familiar one in Victorian England where the public attitude of the middle classes towards sex was prudish yet beneath the surface a wholly different culture existed. To have a baby out of wedlock was considered disgraceful and could lead to many different penalties imposed by the Poor Law authorities and the saddest figures of all were servant girls who endured long working hours and had little opportunity for social life. They also had to cope with sexual pressures from male employers and to refuse an advance could result in dismissal while to accept them might end with an unwanted pregnancy and again the loss of their job. 

For such girls, pregnancy inevitably led to social disgrace and ostracism and so it was with Nancy. When her condition became known, she was shunned by villagers and took refuge in Elsea Wood where she lived until the baby was born. The child died young but Nanny, as Nancy became known, was still avoided by family and friends and remained in the wood, living there as a hermit for the rest of her life. 

She became the subject of myth and legend during her lifetime and was forced to live on what she could find around her, the roots, seeds and fruits of her woodland landscape, and she quickly came to know the ways of the countryside, producing various remedies from herbs and plants which she traded for food with the villagers. Her knowledge and treatment of illness spread throughout the locality and soon inquisitive people were travelling from far distances for advice about their ailments and to buy her potions. Men in the village, gossiping and speculating about her in the local inn, shortened her name to Rut which referred to the mating season of the fallow deer that frequented the wood and so the name Nanny Rut became part of the folklore of this area and her wild and unkempt appearance earned her a reputation as a witch. 

She died alone, spurned and unloved by villagers and even those she had helped with her medications. Her reputation as a strange and wayward outcast of society persists to this day because many people remember being scolded by parents for being naughty and were told to stop misbehaving with the warning: "If you are not good, Nanny Rut will get you". 

True or false, this is a cautionary tale and one that demonstrates changing moral and social attitudes. Today, instead of being an object of scorn and superstition, Nancy Rutter and her baby would have been cared for by the local authorities, given cash benefits and a council flat, and would have found many soul mates in our permissive society that would have enabled her live a perfectly ordinary life. She could happily have shopped at Woolworth's and Sainsburys with her baby without an eyebrow being raised.