How Her Story Echoes Through the Brontës and Victorian Gothic
In the patchwork fields and old lanes between Thornton, Denholme, Great Horton, and Hollingwood, a ghost story has long clung to stone walls, disused pits, and the moorland edge. It is the tale of Fair Becca – a beautiful young woman loved, betrayed, murdered, and doomed to walk the Yorkshire night.
But there is not one Fair Becca.
There are multiple major versions of her story Here, I shall focus on two quite distinct versions:
- The local legend recorded by Phil Robinson, rooted deeply in Thornton geography and oral tradition [1].
- The long narrative broadside-style ballad, The Ballad of Fair Rebecca, recorded in James Burnley’s “Yorkshire Stories Retold”, a Victorian moral tale of seduction, deceit, and ghostly vengeance.[2]
Both versions end with a spectral Becca wandering the moors – yet the emotional worlds they inhabit could not be more different. And when set beside the themes of the Brontë sisters, who were born in Thornton itself, the story becomes a window into the emotional landscape of Victorian Yorkshire.
This post explores both tales, their contrasts, and their Brontëan echoes.
Two Beccas: Love Story and Cautionary Ballad
1. Becca and Her Lover: Mutual Romance vs Predatory Pursuit
Phil Robinson’s Version: A True, Forbidden Love
In Robinson’s retelling, Becca and Thomas Foster are deeply committed lovers.
They ride together, plan their future, and exchange whispered promises. Their relationship is mutual, passionate, and longstanding.
But Thomas is the son of a wealthy Denholme mill-owner, and his father has arranged a marriage with a woman of better social standing. When he realises he cannot escape this fate, despair consumes him.
This is a Brontë-style doomed romance, not a seduction tale.
The Ballad: The False and Faithless Hunter
In contrast, the ballad gives us a classic Victorian narrative:
- Rebecca is a yeoman farmer’s daughter.
- A wealthy young hunter repeatedly tempts her with jewels, dresses, and promises.
- She rejects him at first: “Words are but wind.”
- After months of attention, she finally yields – only to find herself pregnant and abandoned.
This is the old folkloric motif of the false-hearted lover, closer to “The Cruel Miller” than to Jane Eyre.
2. Motive for Murder: Desperation vs Calculated Betrayal
Robinson: A Moment of Weakness and Horror
Thomas kills Becca near the disused pits at Old Allen.
He pushes her from his horse in a moment of drink-fuelled panic and existential despair.
There is horror, but also pity.
He becomes a tragic figure: haunted, broken, and eventually dying in Menston Asylum.
This murder is catastrophic emotional collapse, not villainy.
The Ballad: Cold, Premeditated Murder
Walter, the suitor, leads Rebecca over the moor at night, to the very pit where she had dreamed her death. He murders her and her unborn child with chilling deliberation.
After this, he vanishes from the tale entirely.
No remorse. No guilt. No consequence.
This is folk-morality melodrama, not psychological realism.
3. Pregnancy and Innocence
The ballad makes Rebecca pregnant, heightening the tragedy and firmly positioning her as a wronged, innocent victim.
Robinson’s version contains pregnancy, but here it acts as a catalyst, shifting the emphasis to social repression and emotional collapse rather than seduction and consequence.
4. Geography: Local Topography vs Folk Symbolism
Robinson’s Version
Deeply rooted in real Thornton geography:
- Hew Clews farm
- Hollingwood Lane
- Old Allen moor
- The pits and quarries
- The Bell Chapel burial ground
- Thornton Viaduct
- Menston Asylum
This is a local ghost legend, grounded in place.
The Ballad
Geography is evocative but unspecific:
- Horton hills
- Bradford-dale
- Bracken Hall Farm
- “Where Ellison hanged hissen”
This is the symbolic landscape of the ballad tradition.
5. The Ghost: A Haunting of Guilt vs a Haunting of Terror
Robinson: The Ghost as Conscience
Becca haunts Thomas alone:
- reflected in windows,
- glimpsed in mirrors,
- seen in the corners of pubs.
Her presence is a manifestation of his guilt and grief.
This ghost belongs beside the Brontës’ psychological hauntings.
The Ballad: The Ghost as Public Terror
Becca walks the moor “in spotless white,” shrieks at weddings and childbirths, and terrifies travellers.
She becomes part of the shared supernatural folklore of rural communities.
This ghost is a revenant, not a moral mirror.
How the Fair Becca Legends Echo the Brontës
Thornton, of course, is Brontë country, birthplace of Charlotte, Emily and Anne, and the emotional DNA of the region saturates both versions of the tale.
1. Love vs Duty
Charlotte Brontë often wrote about desire entangled with social obligation:
- Jane and Rochester
- Lucy Snowe and M. Paul
- Caroline Helstone and Louis Moore
Robinson’s version mirrors this perfectly: lovers torn apart by family expectations.
2. Weak Men Destroying the Women They Love
The Brontës’ worlds are full of emotionally weak or morally compromised men:
- Arthur Huntingdon
- Edgar Linton
- Rochester
- Branwell as inspiration
Thomas Foster fits this mould: not a villain, but a man broken by his own inability to act rightly.
3. The Ghost as Emotional Truth
Emily Brontë’s ghosts are rarely literal; they are:
- sorrow,
- longing,
- memory,
- unresolved feeling.
Becca’s reflection in windows belongs firmly in this tradition of hauntings that are psychological, not monstrous.
4. Landscape as Emotional Force
Both legends share with the Brontës:
- wild moorland edges,
- liminal spaces,
- windswept thresholds where passion becomes danger.
The land is never neutral.
It absorbs the emotion and returns it as haunting.
Two Traditions, One Haunting
Taken together, these two Fair Becca versions show how a single Yorkshire legend can evolve into two powerful yet distinct narratives:
Robinson’s Version
- A tragic romance
- A psychologically complex murderer
- A ghost of guilt
- A story in step with the emotional landscapes of the Brontës
The Ballad Version
- A moralised Victorian cautionary tale
- A false and faithless seducer
- A ghost of vengeance
- Folk melodrama with supernatural consequences
Yet in both, Fair Becca endures:
on the moor,
in the old lanes,
in whispered stories,
and in the shared imagination of a region where love, tragedy, and haunting walk hand in hand.
If the Brontës had ever written her story, it might have looked very much like Robinson’s version:
a tale of passion, repression, fatal weakness, and a ghost whose footsteps echo long after the tragedy is done.
[1] Phil Robinson’s Fair Becca, captured on the Wayback Machine Archive
[2] James Burnley’s “Yorkshire Stories Retold”