The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers

The Gallows Pole

Benjamin Myers

Smell the soot, taste the wild garlic, listen to the Yorkshire tongue. You are now in 1767 when the Cragg Vale Coiners defy the establishment. The harsh reality of life on the unforgiving land is about to descend into violence.
And to ascend into myth...

Extract
It took the stubborn scavengers and the stealthy to live up here. The cunning and the vicious. The solitary and the half-mad.
The buzzard and the raven. The polecat and the pine marten.
The hare, the fox and the adder.
Here lived those wild and red in pointed tooth and curled claw, and alongside them were those that walked on two legs and lived in houses but still emulated many of the upland creatures' feral ways. Quarrymen and poachers. Tinkers and trappers and hermits. Men that did not want to be found. Men who made myths of their own mad delusions.
Here they gathered.
Parallels
  • The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
  • Strandloper by Alan Garner
  • The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje
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Violence
Explicit sexual content