St Brigid's Eve

Tomorrow is St Brigid's Day, or Imbolc if you prefer.

On St Brigid's Eve there's a tradition that you should leave a piece of cloth outside overnightto be blessed by the saint as she passes. This is known as Bratog Bride in Irish folklore. The piece of cloth, thus blesssed, can then be used to cure headaches and sore throats.

I wonder if it works for Covid?

Favourite trees and anti-gardening advice

 

May Parade update - The Tourney Horse

Another new character for the May Parade!

This weekend just gone I created a Tourney Horse.

There are three basic types of Hobby Horse that appear at British folk festivals. The first is the Tourney Horse, which looks like a person riding a small horse. An oval frame is suspended around the waist or shoulders with a skirt or caparison draped over it. These horses often have a carved wooden head with snapping jaws. The Padstow ‘Obby ‘Oss is a very stylised form of Tourney. 

Among the many Tourney Horses regularly performing in the UK are the aforementioned Padstow 'osses, the Minehead Sailors' 'oss and the 'oss that hunts the Earl of Rhone in Coombe Martin, Devon.

They also appear regularly alongside Morris Dancers and at festivals like the Wassail. In fact there was one featured on the most recent episode of the BBC Countryfile TV programme (You can just see it behind presenter Adam).

   

The second type is a Sieve Horse, which is a simpler version of the Tourney and only really known from Lincolnshire. They are made from a farm sieve frame, with head and tail attached, suspended from the performer's shoulders. 

The third type is the Mast Horse which has a head on a pole. This can be a carved head or, as in the case of the Welsh Mari Lwyd, a real horse skull. The jaw is usually hinged and the person carrying the mast wears a costume to disguise them. I've already made one of these and you can see it here.

My Tourney Horse was a fairly easy sculpt to do but the Tourney itself proved to be a little problematic. I started by making a couple of furry trousered legs that would protrude from underneath the caparison.

I then made the caparison by adding a ring of cardboard to the lid of a fast food container. But how to create the illusion of hanging drapery or leather? I decided to cover it in a patchwork of papier mache.

Next, I made the horse head using polymer clay and made a separate jaw. I then added a kind of rope collar and a couple of balsa horsey teeth.

The final step was to sculpt the 'human head' mask in polymer clay, spray the whole thing black and then highlight with gold for a bronze effect.

I'll be honest ... it's not my favourite figure and I'm not altogether happy with it. It may be one that I come back to. 

But, meanwhile, he's another addition to the ever-growing May Parade.

The Frances Dove Window - a feminist view

The nearest town to me is High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. It's between two and three miles away and I pop in occasionally. And, in the centre of the town - just at the end of the High Street - you'll find All Saints Church.

There's nothing particularly notable about the church itself. However, it does have a quite extraordinary stained glass window.

It's called the Frances Dove window - or The Lady Window. Frances Dove was the founder of Wycombe Abbey School, all all-girls private school in the town that boasts alumni such as Baroness Howe, Mary Pickford MP, TBaroness Butler-Sloss, Lady Nicholas Windsor, India Knight as well as actress Gabrielle Drake and comedian Sally Phillips. Titanic survivor Elsie Bowerman was the school's historian and Gustav Holst was a music teacher there.

Dove was the First woman elected to the Borough Council and should have been the first woman Mayor but the men panicked at the last minute and elected another man. Frances's response to this was to commission teh church window which celebrates women that have impacted on history. 

It was designed by Caroline Townsend - a former pupil at Wycombe Abbey School and the women depicted include Charlotte Bronte, St Bridget & St, Winifred Elizabeth Fry (prison reformer), Florence Nightingale, Maude Royden and Millucent Fawcett (suffragettes), Agnata Ramsay (first woman to achieve classics tripos at Cambridge), Mary Kingsley, Edith Cavell, St Margaret. Margaret Roper (daughter of Thomas More). Margaret Beaufort (mother of Henry Tudor), Josephine Butler, Octavia Hill, Jenny Lind, Sophia Jex Blake (pioneer for medical education for women), Grace Darling, Queen Victoria, Christina Rosetti, St Hilda & St Frideswide, Mary Slessor, Amy Johnson and more. The window depicts them with books to show that they are educated women.

It's a wonderful thing and it serves as a permanent reminder of how important women are to society.

Spring watch (and Burns Night)

 

Another Burns supper

I was the after-dinner speaker at a Burns Night supper yesterday evening. A local Masonic Lodge based in Little Kimble invited me (though I do not follow the Craft). It was a very enjoyable evening with a live piper, Burns' address to the haggis, some excellent food and an entertaining performance of Scottish comic songs.

They even got in some Cornish Best for me (I promise I don't have a rider!).

My talk was about the Scots language and how it's not a corruption of English but, rather, evolved simultaneously. Both English and Scots are an amalgamation of many language - each constantly layered by new words arriving with invaders, immigrants and by exposure to other cultures. 

What we call English is anything but - it's 43% French, 15% Latin, 5% Old Norse, 33% ‘native’ British (mostly Anglo-Saxon with a smattering of the Celtic tongues) plus a hodge-podge of other languages including Arabic, Indian, Greek etc. 

Scots is much the same but with a slightly higher density of Gaelic and Norse words.

The result of this is that both languages have lots of words - all from different sources - that mean the same thing. In fact, we have so many of these synonyms that we need a Thesaurus. And I was delighted to share with the audience that the word synonym has 19 synonyms. 

We also have homonyms - words that sound the same and are often spelled the same but mean different things. Take the word 'scale'.

When we scale (climb) a wall we're using a word derived fom the Latin Scala (ladder).

When we use a scale to measure something we're using the Norse Skal (a drinking cup of a certain size).

And when  we see scales on a fish or a pangolin we're using a word that began as the French Escale, which means crust or shell.

I then demonstrated how British placenames have often evolved out of the doubling or trebling up of different language words for the same thing. Like the River Avon which gets its name from the Welsh word afon (river) so it's the River River. Or the Wookey Hole Caves that were first called Ogo by the Welsh which mutated into Ochie or Ochy. Then the Anglo-Saxons added their word for cave - Hole. Therefore, the name Wookey Hole Caves basically means Cave Cave Caves.

I gave a few more examples, including the epic Torpenhow Hill (Hill Hill Hill Hill), which I wrote about here. Then I ended by pointing out that whisky comes from the Scots Gaelic word uisce (or uisge) meaning 'water'. 

I then asked people to raise their glasses of water or water with a splash of water to toast the great man.

A fun night.

Slàinte Mhath!

The Cucafera

Just as Western Europe has the Krampus to punish naughty children around Christmas time, Spain and Portugal have the Cucafera.

Also known variously as the Coco, Coca, Cucuy, Cuco, Cuca, Cucu, Cucuí or El-Cucuí. this is a mythical ghost-like monster, equivalent to the bogeyman. The Cucuy is a male being while Cuca is a female version of the mythical monster. The monster will come to the house of disobedient children at night and take them away.

The myth of the Coco originated in northern Portugal and Galicia. According to the Real Academia Española, the word 'coco' derives from the Galician and Portuguese côco, which means 'coconut'. The word 'coco' is used in colloquial speech to refer to the human head in Spanish. Coco also means 'skull' and is cognate with proto-Celtic krowkā (the Cornish for skull is crogen for example). 

In Spain, Portugal, and Latin America, parents sometimes invoke the Coco or Cuca as a way of discouraging their children from misbehaving; they sing lullabies or tell rhymes warning their children that if they don't obey their parents, el Coco will come and get them and then eat them. It is not the way the Coco looks but what it does that scares most. It is a child eater and a kidnapper; it may immediately devour the child, leaving no trace, or it may spirit the child away to a place of no return, but it only does this to disobedient children. It is on the lookout for children's misbehavior from the rooftops; it takes the shape of any dark shadow and stays watching.

The oldest known rhyme about the Coco, which originated in the 17th century, is in the Auto de los desposorios de la Virgen by Juan Caxés. The rhyme has evolved over the years, but still retains its original meaning: 

Duérmete niño, duérmete ya... 

Que viene el Coco y te comerá 

Sleep child, sleep or else... 

Coco will come and eat you 

The coca was an integral part of festivities like All Souls' Day and the ritual begging of Pão-por-Deus. The tradition dates from the 15th century or earlier and is a ritual begging for bread and cakes, done door to door by children, though in the past poor beggars would also take part. Its purpose is to share the bread or treats gathered door to door with the dead of the community, who were eagerly awaited and arrived at night in the shape of butterflies or little animals. This same tradition extends to Galicia, where it is called migallo. It has a close resemblance with the traditions of souling or nowadays trick-or-treating. 

A Fantasy Train Project - Part 2

Waaaaay back in April 2023 I posted about a fantasy train model that I was scratchbuilding from junk (see here). 

Here's what I eventually made.

I was pretty pleased with it and it went on display in a toy/hobby/craft shop for a few months. But the shop then closed down and the model is back home with me. And, sadly, it has suffered a little. Both of the characters I sculpted broke when I dropped them so I binned them or recycled parts of them into my May Parade characters (see here). 

And that got me thinking ...

Could I now recycle the train for the May Parade project? I reckon so!

I can tweak it and add a few changes here and there. I could make some new characters to drive it. And it would certainly form a striking centrepiece for the parade. 

After all, many events feature floats and traction engines. And Steam Fairs take place in pretty much every county in the UK. In Camborne, Cornwall, on Trevithick Day (last Saturday in April) they drive around the streets in a replica of the great engineer's pioneering steam engine - the Puffing Devil.

So ... watch this space for developments ...

Tigh Nan Cailleach

Back in May 2023 I wrote about a five day visit to Scotland. Towards the end iof the week I went up a mountain to visit a hidden loch. And in doing so, I visited the Tigh Na Cailleach (House of the hag), a curious feature (you can read my blog post here).

Well, a friend sent me a link to this 2020 feature in The Guardian and I'm going to copy and paste it here in case The Guardian archives it. It's very interesting.  

________________________________________

'There is power in them': mysterious stone figures to be moved in Gaelic winter ritual 

Figures of the ‘wise woman’ Cailleach deity and her family are part of a tradition that may be centuries old 

by Libby Brooks Scotland correspondent Fri 30 Oct 2020 12.14 GMT 

The stone family huddle by their turf-roofed shelter, looking eastwards to the shrouded summit of Meall Daill, Perthshire, as the mists roll down from the burnt orange mountainside. The tallest of the figures, still under a foot in height, is a water-worn rock with a feminine torso and slim neck. She is the Cailleach: a seasonal deity in Gaelic mythology who bestrides the winter months, known variously as an earth-shaper, wise woman, storm-raiser and mistress of deer. Around her are ranged her husband, the Bodach, and their children. 

This weekend, at Samhain, the Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season, according to a modest local custom that may span centuries, the figures will be returned to their quartz-studded shieling – a basic shepherd’s hut – to spend the winter months undercover. They will be brought back outside, as they are every year, around Beltane, next May. The unique ritual has deep roots in folklore: after the Cailleach and her family were offered shelter during a snowstorm, she was so grateful that she left their likeness in stone with the promise that, as long as they were well cared for, the glen would remain fertile. As for its modern execution, those directly involved in keeping the stones treat inquiries with understandable caution, concerned that the integrity of the site should be preserved and honoured and anxious lest the area become a place of modern pilgrimage heedless of local sensitivities. The shieling where the figures spend the winter months. 

The shieling where the figures spend the winter months. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Tigh Nam Bodach. The stone figures and inside the building. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian 

Still, while curiosity may thrive online, accessing the place known both as Tigh Nam Bodach (house of the old man) and Tigh Nan Cailleach (house of the old woman) on foot is a far greater challenge, demanding a five-mile (8km) trek into a wild and empty glen north of Loch Lyon over rough track and slippery river ford. The stones have fascinated historians and folklorists for decades. 

The archaeologist Gavin MacGregor, an expert on the heritage of the central Highlands, first learned of them while excavating at similar shielings on nearby Ben Lawers more than 20 years ago. “There was a tradition of special stones in this part of the Highlands, including charms and healing stones, and excavations have found a group of very similar water-worn stones in Glen Quaich, so they are not anomalous but part of a wider culture.” 

Similar stones can also be found on the church gateposts in the village of Fortingall. 

“There’s no evidence that they date back to pre-Christian times, but the stones have clearly remained in memory and probably in active, if perhaps intermittent, tradition for hundreds of years.” As the local author and traditional storyteller Jess Smith describes it: “Water stones mould rather than break up or go jaggy, so they can take on the form of a human or an animal, and there is power in them.” Smith spent much of her childhood on the road around Glen Lyon: “We heard about the drovers throwing meal and bread to the stones or their cattle would get sick. Places like this are very important. They live within the part of our psyche where we keep our respect for the ancients.” 

The first published reference to the site is in a Perthshire history book from 1888, which suggests it was associated with a nearby monastic community, St Meuran. Some believe the writer avoided acknowledging their possible earlier origins for fear of upsetting the kirk. Others suggest 18th-century shepherds created a dolls’ house or seasonal shrine out of stones from the nearby stream, while there are those who dismiss it as a 20th-century folly constructed by estate workers. 

In 2011, local historians successfully campaigned against a hydro scheme that threatened to disturb the shieling. And while the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland’s Canmore database records the stones as a simple pagan shrine, earlier this year Historic Environment Scotland decided that there was insufficient evidence to designate the site. For MacGregor, whether moving the stones is an unbroken historical ritual is but one element of their charm. “Whether you listen to the folklore or consider it a modern invention, the rhythms of tending to the stones also relate to our elemental relationship with the land and the change of seasons. Perhaps one reason the site remains so powerful is that there are multiple truths and stories.”

A Windy Update

Walking in the winds of Storm Isha and an update on my May Parade arts project.

 

A bird-flavoured walk

A new meandering miscellany.

 

Jarramplas - Bring your turnip to the slaughter

The Jarramplas Festival takes place in Piornal, in the Spanish region of Extremadura, every year on the 19th-20th of January. 

The focus of events is the costumed 'cattle rustler' named el Jarrampla, who wears a cloak of multicoloured rags and is adorned with a great horned mask. Played by a 'lucky' volunteer, the thief runs around the 1,200-strong town banging a little drum while local people throw turnips - two tonnes of turnips to be precise - in an attempt to expel him for another year.  

Next day's bruises must be about as colourful as the costume.

Local legend has it that a thief snuck in to the village one night to steal the ranchers' animals, but didn't reckon on the townsfolk who used everything to hand - mainly turnips - to fend him off. The reenactment of that night has been played out every year for over a century. 

 Like most fiestas it also serves as an excuse for music and merrymaking, and the festivities spill out onto the streets for the whole day. Far from ignominy, being selected to be the Jarramplas is a great honour. So much so that many parents sign up their children to the decades-long waiting list of volunteers, so that one day they might have the opportunity to be pelted with root vegetables.

I think we're better off sticking to Morris Dancing here.

The artist who stole a mountain (or a bit of it anyway)

With the Elgin Marbles back in the news recently and the UK's outright refusal to return them to Greece, I was reminded of this story a decade ago.

Back in 2015, artist Ecuadorian-born Oscar Santillan put on an exhibition in a south London gallery. One of the pieces was a modest bit of rock. Unfortunately, the rock also happens to have been taken off the top of Scafell Pike - the highest peak in England at 3,209 feet. The rock in question was about one inch sqiare. But it means that the mountain is now one nch shorter and, incredibly, there were demands for him to put it back.

The artist defended his work, called The Intruder, saying his actions are no different from taking a pebble off the beach.  'Collecting a strange-looking rock during hiking is a very common sensitive thing we all do guided by our curiosity,' he said. 'I can honestly say that I have not harmed such a wonderful place in any way. What I have done is a small suggestive gesture that reflects on the way in which humans have imposed their cultural categories over nature. I am very respectful of nature and was deeply sad to see people leave so much of their trash behind which I did my best to collect on my way down.' 

The gallery's description of the artwork says: 'The artist has taken the uppermost inch of the highest mountain in England. An entire nation's height is modified and its landscape redefined by means of a single precise action. The artist explores the way in which human categories are imposed on nature: the largest, the tallest, the most powerful. 

However, Santillan was accused of  'essentially vandalising the mountain' (police found no evidence of this and no charges were brought) and many people got very angry. Ian Stephens, managing director of Cumbria Tourism, said: 'We are all aware that Cumbria's landscape has long has inspired generations of artists. These include international greats like J M W Turner, Ruskin, Schwitters and Li Yyan-chia. These individuals have all taken a piece of this landscape away in the figurative sense. This is taking the mickey and we want the top of our mountain back.'

It did also lead to calls of 'he who casts the first stone' from countries where artworks were removed during Britain's great age of Empire. Should they all be returned? Probably.

And if Santillan returned the rock to Scafell Pike would anyone have noticed?

Discuss.