British folk traditions

Fans of British folklore are championing a campaign to safeguard a unique archive cataloguing traditions from Britain and Ireland. The collection – of more than 20,000 books, 4,000 tape cassettes and 3,500 hours of reel-to-reel audio – has been amassed by one man. David “Doc” Rowe is a 79-year-old folklorist who has travelled the UK since the 1960s, visiting calendar customs such as the Straw Bear Festival, the Krampus Run or the Hunting of the Earl of Rone.

Director Rob Curry and actor/director Tim Plester set up the crowdfunder, which has been supported by Eliza Carthy, Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. The co-directors previously collaborated on two acclaimed documentaries about the British folk scene – Way of the Morris and The Ballad of Shirley Collins. They started work at the end of lockdown on a film about Rowe and his annual odyssey around the rituals of Britain, then expanded the project to help him find a permanent home for his archive.

Lovers of old customs lament the disappearance of the old customs associated with All Hallows' Eve, but it is forgotten that two of the chief pieces of ritual, the lighting of fires and the eating of cakes, have been transferred from October 31 to the 5th of November.

Long before the Gunpowder Plot affair, bonfires were lighted on the hilltops of Ireland and Scotland; Sir John Sinclair in his Statistical Account of Scotland, published in 1793, mentioned that in the Highlands bonfires used to be lighted and consecrated cakes baked on the 1st of November (the first day of winter), and also on the 1st of May (the first day of spring). In North Wales the autumnal fire was called Coel Coeth; it was accompanied by such ceremonies as leaping through the fire (as on St. John's Eve in Germany and other countries), throwing nuts in the fire, and biting at apples suspended from a string. One sometimes sees people leap across a half-consumed bonfire on the 5th of November, saying in excuse that it was an old custom.

Even the parkin and toffee of the 5th of November may be relics of the ceremonial cakes formerly offered - perhaps a symbol of sacrifice dating from pagan times. On All Hallows' Eve "soul-cakes," a kind of oatcake, used to be given to the poor in Catholic Lancashire, and Yorkshire parkin, a compound of oatmeal and treacle, is perhaps a development of the soul-cake. In parts of Yorkshire All Hallows' Eve is still called "cake night," and an old Halloween custom everywhere was "going a-soul-ing," or begging for soul-cakes. In remote parts of the Highlands and of Western Ireland it used to be customary to provide cakes for the souls of the departed on All Hallows' E'en, that being the only night upon which they could speak and eat.

From Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native:

While the men and lads were building the pile, a change took place in the mass of shade which denoted the distant landscape. Red suns and tufts of fire one by one began to arise, flecking the whole country round. They were the bonfires of other parishes and hamlets that were engaged in the same sort of commemoration. Perhaps as many as thirty bonfires could be counted within the whole bounds of the district.

It was as if these men and boys had suddenly dived into past ages, and fetched therefrom an hour and deed which had before been familiar with this spot. The ashes of the original British pyre which blazed from that summit lay fresh and undisturbed in the barrow beneath their tread. Festival fires to Thor and Woden had followed on the same ground and duly had their day. Indeed, it is pretty well known that such blazes as this the heathmen were now enjoying are rather the lineal descendants from jumbled Druidical rites and Saxon ceremonies than the invention of popular feeling about the Gunpowder Plot.

Moreover to light a fire is the instinctive and resistant act of man when, at the winter ingress, the curfew is sounded throughout Nature. It indicates a spontaneous, Promethean rebelliousness against that fiat that this recurrent season shall bring foul times, cold darkness, misery and death. Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, Let there be light.

And we'll pop over to Wikipedia for a quick summary:

Historians have often suggested that Guy Fawkes Day served as a Protestant replacement for the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain or Calan Gaeaf, pagan events that the church absorbed and transformed into All Hallow's Eve and All Souls' Day. In The Golden Bough, the Scottish anthropologist James George Frazer suggested that Guy Fawkes Day exemplifies "the recrudescence of old customs in modern shapes". David Underdown, writing in his 1987 work Revel, Riot, and Rebellion, viewed Gunpowder Treason Day as a replacement for Hallowe'en: "just as the early church had taken over many of the pagan feasts, so did Protestants acquire their own rituals, adapting older forms or providing substitutes for them". While the use of bonfires to mark the occasion was most likely taken from the ancient practice of lighting celebratory bonfires, the idea that the commemoration of 5 November 1605 ever originated from anything other than the safety of James I is, according to David Cressy, "speculative nonsense". Citing Cressy's work, Ronald Hutton agrees with his conclusion, writing, "There is, in brief, nothing to link the Hallowe'en fires of North Wales, Man, and central Scotland with those which appeared in England upon 5 November."

The annual ceremony of the Cutty Wren was revived by Old Glory Molly Dancers and Musicians, together with folklorist Pete Jennings, on St. Stephen's day (26th December), 1994. The village of Middleton, in East Suffolk, is believed to be one of the last places in England where the ritual of the hunting of the Cutty Wren ("cutty" means small) could be seen at the beginning of the 20th century.

Further info - and video - at Calendar Customs.

If you’ve never danced with the “obby oss” or been daubed by a bogie, then a new show at Compton Verney art gallery in Warwickshire is for you. Making Mischief is the first exhibition dedicated to British folk costume and the traditions celebrated by communities all over the UK.

There you can learn about the game of Haxey Hood played in Lincolnshire each January or Padstow’s May Day celebrations and the stylised obby osses that lead the celebration. Or there’s the Jack in the Green festival in Hastings where the bogies splatter onlookers with green paint.

Making Mischief’s aim is not just to document community folklore traditions but also to show how they are revived and updated for the modern world – one that includes female morris dancers and LGBTQ+ performers. The Jack in the Green festival has featured gay bogies for the last 30 years. These changes come thanks to the growing interest from new, younger generations in making the customs their own.

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Folk traditions echo through many new elements of popular culture. As well as the current wave of folk horror films, including box-office hit Enys Men, there are club nights starting up such as Klub Nos Lowen, which champions Cornish folk music and dance, and breakout folk music stars such as Gwenno, who has released albums in Welsh and Cornish and was nominated for the 2022 Mercury prize. New clubs and social groups are also bringing like-minded people together.

Stone Club, founded by artists Lally MacBeth and Matthew Shaw in 2021, organises walks and gatherings for people fascinated by prehistoric pagan Britain. There’s also the Wiltshire-based magazine Weird Walk, which was started in 2019 by musician Owen Tromans, designer Alex Hornsby and James Nicholls who runs a record label. It’s dubbed a “journal of wonderings and wanderings” and showcases writing about Britain’s pathways, ley lines and mystical histories.

Contributors include comedian and Observer columnist Stewart Lee and artist Jeremy Deller. Art is Magic, a book of Deller’s work to be published in May, will feature his exhibition of folk art, and Sacrilege, his bouncy castle Stonehenge.

“People are drawn to ancient sites, stories and traditions,” says Weird Walk co-founder Hornsby. “Sacred landscapes and their lore offer respite, reconnection and an enjoyable yomp. There’s usually a decent pub nearby, too. Someone recently told me that in previous years their mates used to post about going to gigs or to football on the weekend, then all of a sudden it was hikes up mountains and rituals at standing stones … folklore and ancient history is gaining a foothold in the era of social media.”