The Magic Pike
Parents want only the best for their children. But sometimes, if you are poor, it can be very difficult. A long time ago there was a cloth-maker called John Abbot. His wife was called Mary, and together they lived in a cottage in Guildford. They were expecting their first child. They were poor, but they were happy.
But Mary had a strange dream. She dreamed that if she ate a kind of fish called a pike, then when her son was born, he would grow up to be a great man. When she woke up, Mary decided that she would get a pike and eat it.
In the River Wey, there was a pike that everyone had seen, but no one had been able to catch. Mary asked her husband to catch it for her. He tried very hard, lying down on the river bank trying to catch the fish with his fingers, but it was very slippery and he fell into the water. He was very wet and muddy!
She asked the local boys if they could try and catch it. They tried with rods and nets, but still they couldn’t catch it.
Mary was very upset. Her baby was very nearly due- and she hadn’t eaten the fish. What was she to do?
She thought to herself- “If I am really supposed to eat this fish, then I will have to catch it myself.” She didn’t have a rod, or a net and she was not going to lie down on the bank. So she got a bucket and a piece of string. She tied the string to the bucket, and then just let the bucket drift in the river while she held the string tight.
And she did it! She caught the pike in her bucket! It jumped around and tried to get out, but she put her apron over the top of the bucket and went home to cook it. It was a bit tough- but it tasted delicious to Mary. Soon all the neighbours heard that she had managed to catch the fish, and they told their friends and their friends told more people. The entire town soon knew that Mary had caught the fish and ate it because a dream told her that her son would be a great man.
When her son was born they called him George. Now some of the townspeople had thought to themselves – “If this boy grows up to be a great man, how grateful will he be to the people who helped him when he was young.”
To John’s surprise and Mary’s delight (because she wasn’t surprised), several people offered to help pay towards George’s education in school and onto university. On his christening day his parents chose three of the people “of quality” to be his sponsors.
John and Mary had two more sons and other people “of quality” offered to do the same thing for each of them. For a poor cloth-maker and his wife this was very welcome.
And when George grew up he became Archbishop of Canterbury- one of the greatest posts in the land. And when his brothers were older, one became Lord Mayor of London and the other became Bishop of Salisbury.
Mary’s dream about eating the pike had come true, and she had not one but three great sons. The greatest of them all, George, did not forget he had come from a poor home- and he knew that there were not enough magic pikes for everyone. He established Abbot’s Hospital in Guildford to help the poor who needed somewhere to live. You can see his tomb today in the Holy Trinity church, just opposite the Abbots Hospital on Guildford High Street.