Hardy's story of a christening party on a wet March night, three knocks at the door, and a song that nobody should be singing.
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Ten words unlock the story. Work through the four activities — say your answer out loud before you reveal it.
Three words from the story: fugitive · gallows · reprieve. Say the right word, then reveal.
Hardy's story, retold and shortened, with the hangman's song in Hardy's own words. Read each part. After it, there's a quick comprehension check (try the questions from memory first), then one thing to discuss.
Among the high, grassy downs of Wessex there stood, fifty years ago, a lonely cottage called Higher Crowstairs, three miles from the county town of Casterbridge. On the evening of the twenty-eighth of March the rain came down across the hills like arrows, and the sheep stood with their backs to it. But inside, Shepherd Fennel was giving a party. His second daughter had been christened that day, and nineteen neighbours were crowded round a blazing fire while a boy of twelve played the fiddle. Mrs Fennel, a thrifty woman, had worried all week: if the guests danced too long they would drink too much, and if they talked too long they would eat too much. Her old, strong mead she watched with special care.
At about eight o'clock, between two dances, there came a knock. A tall, thin man of about forty stood at the door, drenched, his hat pulled low. Might he come in and rest out of the rain? "Of course," said the shepherd, and the guests made room for him in the chimney corner, the warmest seat in the house. He was pleasant enough, but he answered questions about himself in very few words. He was a wheelwright, he said, on his way somewhere. He took out a pipe and asked if anyone could spare some tobacco. "A pipe but no tobacco?" said the shepherd. "I dropped it on the way," said the man, and the subject was changed.
1. Why is there a party at Higher Crowstairs, and what is Mrs Fennel worried about?
2. What is slightly strange about the first stranger?
1. To celebrate the christening of the Fennels' second daughter. Mrs Fennel is thrifty and worries that the guests will drink or eat too much — especially her old mead.
2. He says very little about himself, keeps his hat low, and has a pipe but no tobacco.
Soon there was another knock. The second stranger was a short, heavy man in a grey suit, cheerful and loud. He too was going to Casterbridge, and he sat down in the chimney corner beside the first stranger, so close that the first man could not have got out if he had wanted to. He drank the mug of mead that was passed to him, and then another. Mrs Fennel watched in silent despair. "And what is your trade, sir?" someone asked. "I'll sing it to you," he said:
O my trade it is the rarest one,
Simple shepherds all —
My trade is a sight to see;
For my customers I tie, and take them up on high,
And waft 'em to a far countree!
The room went very quiet. Only one person joined in the chorus: the first stranger, in a low, strong voice. Then, one by one, the guests understood. This was the hangman. There was to be a hanging at Casterbridge gaol in the morning — a poor watchmaker called Timothy Summers, who had stolen a sheep in broad daylight because his family was starving. Everyone had said it was a hard sentence. And here was the man who would carry it out, warming his feet at their fire and singing about it.
He was halfway through the next verse when there was a third knock. A small, nervous man stood in the doorway and asked the way to a village. Then his eyes fell on the two strangers in the chimney corner. His face went white. His knees shook. He stared for a second, turned, and ran out into the dark.
1. How does the second stranger reveal his job, and what is he going to do tomorrow?
2. What does the third stranger do when he sees the two men by the fire?
1. He sings about tying up his "customers" and taking them "up on high" — he is the hangman, and tomorrow he will hang Timothy Summers, a watchmaker who stole a sheep to feed his starving family.
2. He goes pale, trembles, stares at them, and runs out into the night without a word.
Before anyone could speak, there came the boom of a gun from the direction of Casterbridge. "Be jiggered!" cried the hangman. "That's the gaol gun. A prisoner has escaped — and that's my man!" Every head turned to the open door. The third stranger! Who else would turn white at the sight of the hangman and run? The constable, who was among the guests, was persuaded, rather against his will, to lead a search, and in the confusion nobody thought to keep an eye on the quiet man from the chimney corner.
They found the little man standing under a tree on the hillside and marched him back to the cottage, where a magistrate and two officers from the gaol had now arrived. "This isn't the man," said the officers. "Not a bit like him." "Then why did you run?" asked the magistrate. The prisoner, said the little man, was his brother. He had walked all day to say goodbye to him before the hanging — and when the cottage door opened he had seen his brother, whom he believed to be in the condemned cell, sitting by the fire, hemmed in by the very man who had come to hang him, and singing his own execution song to save appearances. His brother had given him one look that said: Don't speak, or I'm a dead man. And so he had run.
"Then the man in the corner was the prisoner!" said the shepherd. "A wheelwright, he said." "A watchmaker," said the brother. "He meant the wheels of clocks." Next morning a search was made, but somehow it was not a very energetic one. The people of the district had heard about the starving family and the stolen sheep. He was never found. But the story of the night when three strangers came to Higher Crowstairs is told there to this day — and the baby whose christening it was is now an old woman.
1. Why does everyone assume the third stranger is the escaped prisoner — and who is he really?
2. Who was the first stranger, and why was the search for him "not a very energetic one"?
1. Because he turned pale and ran when he saw the hangman, just before the gaol gun announced an escape. He was the prisoner's brother, who had come to say goodbye.
2. The escaped prisoner, Timothy Summers, sitting beside his own hangman. Local people sympathised with a man sentenced to death for stealing a sheep to feed his family, so nobody tried very hard to catch him.
Everyone at Higher Crowstairs wants to know who the strangers are — without being rude. In English, the politest way to ask is often not to ask at all, but to make a statement and add a tiny question at the end: "You're not from round here, are you?"
Write only the tag.
1. "You're not from round here, ?"
2. "Your friend left in a hurry, ?"
3. "Nobody recognised him, ?"
1. are you 2. didn't he 3. did they
Write only the tag.
1. "I'm the only one who knows the song, ?"
2. "Let's have one more dance, ?"
3. "Pass me the mead, ?"
1. aren't I 2. shall we 3. will you (or would you / could you — more polite)
Shepherd Fennel chats to the first stranger by the fire. Complete each gap with a tag or a reply question, then read it aloud with two voices — and decide which tags should rise and which should fall.
Fennel: Terrible night, ? Stranger: It is. I've walked a long way. Fennel: ? From Casterbridge, I suppose? Stranger: From that direction. Fennel: You're a wheelwright, you said, ? Your hands don't look like it. Stranger: Don't they? Fennel: And you've got a pipe but no tobacco, ? Stranger: I dropped it. Nobody here's got any, ? Fennel: I'm afraid not. You'll stay for a song, ?
isn't it ↘ · Have you? · didn't you ↗ · have you (same-way tag: suspicion) · have they ↗ · won't you ↘
The shepherd questions the stranger without asking a single direct question — and the stranger answers with a reply question ("Don't they?") that gives nothing away.
Hold on to these structures — in the Speak tab you'll narrate the story and then question a mysterious stranger of your own.
Thomas Hardy published "The Three Strangers" in Longman's Magazine in 1883 and collected it in Wessex Tales in 1888. "Wessex" was his name for the south-west of England, mainly his native Dorset, and "Casterbridge" is Dorchester. The story is set "fifty years ago", around the 1820s, when stealing a sheep could still be punished by death in England; that penalty was abolished in 1832. As a boy of sixteen, Hardy watched a public hanging in Dorchester, and he never forgot it.
This is the heart of the lesson — do all of it out loud. The timer is there to keep you going: fill the time with detail rather than racing through it.
Tell The Three Strangers as if to someone who has never read it, and keep the secret of the first stranger until the very end, as Hardy does. Move through the arc: the lonely cottage, the rain, the christening party → knock one: the thin man and the empty pipe → knock two: the hangman, the mead, the song → knock three: the pale man who runs → the gaol gun and the search → "this isn't the man" → the brother's story → the search nobody wanted to win.
Include at least three question tags in dialogue (one a same-way tag of suspicion), one reply question, and at least five key words (drenched, convivial, furtive, fugitive, gallows, reprieve, thrifty, at large, hanged, speak in riddles).
Build an argument. One view: the law is the law; a community that decides for itself which criminals to catch has no law at all. Another: a law that hangs a starving man for a sheep has lost its authority, and the villagers' half-hearted search was the most just thing that happened that night. Take a side, give three reasons, deal with the strongest objection, and say what Hardy himself seems to think.
Then argue the opposite for one minute — the harder direction is where the language comes from.
The story is about who we trust, and how easily we miss what's in front of us. Talk about it in today's world.
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