A BRIEF spell of wonderfully warm autumn sunshine persuaded some butterflies to visit our garden. Where they came from, I do not know, but they settled on a large carmine-pink flowerhead of sedum spectabile, which is one of a huge family of plants known as stonecrop.

This is a type of succulent which can grow to a height of almost 2ft, and when I approached the plant for a closer look at the visitors, I was astonished to see that six varieties of butterfly had settled on a single flowerhead.

Thoroughly enjoying the sunshine and the nectar, they remained long enough for me to call my wife from the house so that she could share this experience, and - hopefully - so that I could find my camera to record the event. By the time I returned with the camera, two of them had flitted to an adjoining flowerhead, albeit on the same clump of stonecrop, and they remained for a long time with their wings open to absorb the sunshine.

The butterflies were: a red admiral, a small tortoiseshell, a peacock, a comma, a small copper and a painted lady, all peacefully sharing a late season treat of nectar. When I looked closer, though, I saw that the same clump of stonecrop bore several honey bees (something of a rare sight this year), a few bumble bees of varying sizes, a red-tailed bumble bee and a stone-fly.

The stone-fly is a type of hoverfly which looks very like a honey bee and which often feeds alongside it. It mimics the bee as a form of protection against predators. I felt this was a remarkably varied collection of insects within such a small area.

The temperature in October can sometimes be very summer-like, often blessed with a period of sunny, very mild weather and long fine days. On frequent occasions, this occurs around the 18th, the feast day of St Luke, and so those few days, rarely more than a week in total, have become known as St Luke's Little Summer. The temperature has been known to reach 80F on occasions, although the normal for this time of year is around 50F - and there can be frosts and fog in the morning.

The latter do remind us that we are now well into the autumn season even if the balmy days of St Luke's Little Summer might tempt otherwise.

In contemplating the effects of this new autumn, I felt our little interlude with the butterflies was a very welcome bonus.

Rogue trader

A Cleveland reader has asked if I can provide any information about the character known as the Stokesley Wiseman.

The man in question was called John Wrightson and he was one of many characters, known as wisemen, who operated in the countryside, and who were called upon to advise and help people with a range of problems. Those problems were generally associated with a belief in witchcraft as it affected both people and cattle, although the wisemen did offer advice on cures for a variety of ailments.

They were in action about 200 years ago and their strength was that the people around them were highly superstitious and, on occasions, very ignorant and untutored. It meant the so-called wisemen could astound simple people with their claims, and in the case of Wrightson, there is no doubt he was a clever rogue.

He claimed he was the seventh son of a seventh son, a fact which gave him powers not granted to ordinary mortals, and he was not afraid to advertise his skills with that as an endorsement for his capabilities. He produced an advertisement in 1808 which said: "The seventh son John Wrightson begs leave to acquaint the public that those who are afflicted with any kind of inward disorder, white swellings, scurvy, or any kind of shortness of breath, may be relieved by sending him their water (likewise cattle that do not thrive). He can then be of service to them." This advert was printed by a Whitby firm.

By profession, Wrightson was a curer of cattle and it seems that people began to ask him to cure their own ailments too and so, recognising the possibility of adding to his income, he obliged. Some of his offerings have survived to this day. For example, one method of curing a sick cow was to make a ky-cake (cow cake) by using the animal's water and to stick into it three needles purified by fire. I do not know the ingredients, nor do I know what it was supposed to cure!

There is little doubt that Wrightson did have an elementary knowledge of herbs which he used in his work but it seems that he attracted a reputation for being something of a magician. Many people believed he was aware of a person's background long before that person actually met him.

There is one story of a Goathland man who wanted to consult Wrightson on some personal matter and who travelled to Stokesley, a long way at the time, only to find that Wrightson knew all about him upon arrival. How he achieved this is not known, but with his reputation as a male witch or magician gradually increasing by such demonstrations, so Wrightson fuelled his personal legend by dressing in a long cloak and wearing a pointed hat for his consultations.

It does seem, however, that the canny Yorkshire folk of the time were not taken in completely. It appears that they "rummled" Wrightson and declared him to be nothing but a fraud, and so he fled to Malton. About 1818, he found himself in trouble with the law, being charged with assault. For his trial, he had to travel to Northallerton quarter sessions but, while en route in a horse-drawn vehicle, he realised he had been exposed and when passing through Hovingham, he committed suicide with poison.

There is just a possibility that more than one "John Wrightson" was operating around this time; it might have been someone making a fraudulent use of his name, or there might have been one or more men with that genuine name. But whatever the truth, the name of John Wrightson lives on as the Stokesley Wiseman.

Orf not wen

These memories of Wrightson remind me that, some time ago, I heard the story of a man from the North York Moors who went to see his doctor because a problem had developed with one of his fingers. The doctor examined the problem and pronounced that it was orf.

He did consider the possibility of it being a wen, the old cure of which was to tie a strand of horsehair around it and to leave it in place until the wen dropped off. But this was orf, which is a type of skin disease contracted from sheep. I did hear of another farmer who had also been infected with orf, but am told he went to the vet!

I believe that orf is a type of scurf and there used to be various ways of pronouncing the dialect name. In many cases, it was orf, but at times it might be hoorf or even orfy or hoorfy. Orfy was really used as an adjective, and a sheep-farmer's skin, infected by this disease, might be described as orfy, as indeed might the fleece of a sheep.

Murrain psalm

Continuing the note about animal diseases, there was a plague called murrain which affected cattle in the mid-18th century. It seems that a farmer or possibly the parish clerk from Osmotherley composed a psalm which was sung in the village church in 1747, and it so moved the congregation that five farmers broke down in tears.

It seems the farming community was devastated by this plague and that the authorities did little to help them, for the final verse of the Osmotherley psalm is:

Yet they do nothing at all,

With all their learning's store;

So Heaven drive this plague away,

And vex us not no more