Crag Grummock

A shaggy beast that walks on its knuckles, its arms twice as long as its legs and its head sunk into its shoulders, which climbs the steepest hangers and carries sheep and woodmen up the crags to eat.

The verderers' roll of men lost in the hangers is kept because a widow is owed compensation, and needs an entry to show for it. Most entries are falls and felled timber. Some are not, and the roll writes them as taken to the crags, which is the Woodmote's phrase for the Grummock, used by woodwards who would rather not use the name.

It goes on all fours, on its knuckles, its arms twice as long as its legs and as thick as a man's body. Its fur is long, grey and matted with burrs, its head sunk between hunched shoulders, its face a flat snout and small eyes. It never stands upright and it has no use for its hands but climbing and carrying. It climbs a hanger as fast as a man runs down one, and it carries what it takes up to the crag above.

The woodwards say it is a beast of the hangers and has been there as long as the beeches. The keepers who read the Woodmote's roll say the entries began in one decade and in one wood. The chapter calls it vitiate and preaches against the wood, which the woodwards say is a sermon against their own living.

As witnesses describe it

On a steep beech hanger below a white chalk crag, a shaggy grey beast climbs on its knuckles, its arms twice the length of its legs, long matted fur full of burrs, head sunk between hunched shoulders, a flat snout and small eyes, a limp sheep hooked under one arm. Autumn leaves, a woodman's axe dropped on the slope.