Wailing Well

M.R. James wrote "Wailing Well" for the Eton Boy Scouts, and read it at their summer camp at Worbarrow Bay in Dorset (about thirteen miles east of Weymouth) on July 27, 1927. In a letter of July 25 (Letters to a Friend, ed. Gwendolen McBryde, Arnold 1956, p.144), MRJ says: "Tomorrow it is proposed that the Lower Master takes me by car to Worbarrow Bay in Dorset where the Scouts are in camp - it is further proposed that by the camp fire I should read them a story of a terrible nature, which I have made - contrary to my expectation." The tale is therefore only the second that MRJ wrote specifically for reading to children (the other being "A School Story" for the King's College Choir School).