Things in Jars

by Jess Kidd

With the resurgence of London’s lost rivers and the biblical rainfall, forgotten nursery tales bubble up in many minds. The people start to remember the folk figures of old. Creatures that have long been asleep, in lakes and under bridges, in horse troughs and in ponds, awaken. They trickle and paddle, slip and sneak into London. It’s as if they’ve been summoned. Names from nursery nightmares are remembered and spoken again: Peg Powler, Jenny Greenteeth, Nelly Longarms. Creatures with wild waterweed hair and long sinewy arms; all the better for reaching out and dragging you into the depths. A rash of children, it is said, have been drowned in buckets. Several more have been pulled into wells. A gentleman daren’t walk alone by the Serpentine these days, else some wet-haired floundering beauty will do for him. Three little mud-larks, it is said, were found drowned beside the creek at Deptford, just down by the old ship-chandlery shop.