As we nervously entered the abattoir as part of our writers’ week experience, two freshly killed pigs swung from hooks directly in our path. We stopped in our tracks and I heard someone behind me say ‘god, they look like people.’ It was true - whether it was simply the size of the carcasses, or their pale flesh, hairless and vulnerable - there was definitely something about them that felt human. The abattoir worker lifted an electric saw and started to expertly split the first animal in two - the head neatly divided, exposing half the brain. As we continued to watch the animal being butchered, and we then moved to the shop next door to see the finished joints of meat, I thought about what had been said and remembered the story of ‘A Joint of Wyffe.’
The ‘wyffe’ in question is Constantia de Pauncefort who married her husband Grimbald at Much Cowarne church in rural Herefordshire in 1253. The legend goes that Grimbald, a brave knight, was captured during the crusades by the great Muslim leader Saladin. On hearing of Constantia’s beauty and devotion, Saladin demanded a ‘ransom of a joint of wyffe’ in return for Grimbald’s release. Constantia immediately sent for a surgeon from Gloucester Priory and instructed him to cut off her arm below the elbow. The severed limb was then packed in salt and despatched overseas. Saladin, impressed by Constantia’s wifely devotion, immediately released Grimbald, and husband and wife were reunited. Grimbald and Constantia lived happily for many years and were eventually buried together in the south aisle of Much Cowarne church - and an alter monument with their effigies was mounted over them. According to legend, the effigies lay on their sides gazing at each other rather than up at heaven - with Constantia’s right arm ‘couped betwixt the wrist and the elbow’ and her stump elevated so that all could witness her great sacrifice. Sadly, Constantia’s effigy is long gone (although when I first recalled the story I was convinced that I had seen her lying there, love-struck and one-armed) and Grimbald now lies alone in a corner of the church gazing miserably at a wall. The disappearance of Constantia’s effigy remains a mystery - some claiming it was stolen during the civil war, others blaming the local inhabitants for allowing it to go missing following a fire in more recent times (by which we mean the 1840’s) and there is even a rather unfair rhyme about the village which, given they are neighbours of mine, I will not repeat here. Others think the effigy - like the story - is a romantic fiction and that it never existed at all. I suppose the fact that people even remember Constantia de Pauncefort and the story of the ‘joint of wyffe’ eight hundred years later tells us that - like all the best love stories - it still says something important today about the nature of love and sacrifice.
Nicola Jones