Slow Worm

 I found this little beauty in my garden today.

It's a slow worm (Anguis fragilis) of course. It's not a snake but a type of legless lizard (you can tell the difference because slow worms blink - snakes have no eyelids). And finding one is a lovely treat as they spend much of their time burrowing into loose soil and decaying vegetation. Come October, they tunnel underground to hibernate and remain there until March. I often find them in my compost bin but they're very welcome in my garden as they eat the slugs and snails that would otherwise decimate my vegetable patch.

I don't know how old this one was - it's quite large for a slow worm - but they can live to 20 or 30 years old. It is claimed that one lived to be 54 at Copenhagen Zoo. My slow worm also, unusually, had all of its tail. Slow worms discard the tips of their tails as a defence mechanism (it's where the 'fragilis' part of their scientific name came from). The discarded tail thrashes about for several minutes, distracting their attacker and giving the slow worm the chance to get away. Studies have found that 50-70% of wild slow worms have lost their tails, leaving them with a rounded tail rather than a point.

One of my daughters with a slow worm a few years ago

But why are they called slow worms? After all, they're not particularly slow - they can move at speeds of up to 0.5 kilometres per hour (0.3 miles per hour). Firstly, the 'worm' part is easy - the old English word wyrm was applied to anything that crawled or slithered from earthworms to imaginary dragons. As for the 'slow' part, it may simply be derived from 'slowe worm' i.e. a slow snake, which seems sensible. However, some claim that it comes from the word slaw (slay) because people once believed that these animals had a sting that would kill you. Perhaps our ancestors found it difficult to distinguish them from adders or assumed that all 'wyrms' are venomous? Plus, the tip of a complete tail is covered by sharp horny scales and may have felt like a sting of sorts. Perhaps people saw a parallel between bees and slow worms leaving their 'sting' behind them?  Shakespeare's witches even mention 'the blind worm's sting' in Macbeth. 

Blind worm is a common folk name for the slow worm, probably because of its small eyes or the fact that it sometimes shuts its eyes when picked up. They are also known in some parts of the UK as deaf adders and (not so common now) long cripples.

I've never come across a great deal of folklore about slow worms, other than the idea that they are in some way dangerous. George Abbey in his book The Balance of Nature and Modern Conditions of Cultivation (1909) refers to these fears as follows: 

'Country people, like Shakespeare, regard it as the ‘eyeless venomous worm’ and have a dread of the ‘blind-worm’s sting’ but both without cause,as it rarely bites, and scarcely makes any impression on the skin, its teeth being very small.'

Rather, these beautiful elegant creatures are a boon to any garden. And they are a protected species as are all of the UK's native reptiles.

Books worth reading #1: 'Wilder Mann' by Charles Fréger

Around this time of year, about five or six years ago, I was researching some material for a QI Christmas episode (back in the days when I was one of the 'elves' - the people who research and write the award-winning TV show). 

It was always strange recording a Christmas show in May or June when temperatures outside were sometimes in the high twenties and we were in the studio surrounded by fake snow, people in awful jumpers (other than Giles Brandreth), snowmen and Christmas trees covered in baubles. But that's how TV works - you always have to work months ahead. 

What I was researching was the legend of Krampus, Europe and Scandinavia's fearsome anti-Santa that only reads the Naughty List and actually takes presents away from misbehaving kids and punishes them. 

Here's a traditional representation of him from the early 1900s:

People still dress up as Krampus to this day and it was while I was trawling through a pile of images that I came across Charles Fréger's fantastic book Wilder Mann. 

Fréger is a French photographer who travels all over the world taking photographs of people in ethnic costumes designed for festivals and pageants. Some of them are bizarre in the extreme.

The only copy I get get my hands on at the time was the German translation but, as it's a photo book it didn't matter too much. However, an English version is now available and I'm now able to read the intro by novelist Robert McLiam Wilson in which he says:

'Plugged in, neurotically Wi-Fied and 3Ged as we are, we yearn to re-establish contact with the actual, the primal, the old … We languish for the non-mechanical and the pre- or post-industrial. We are pilgrims seeking the past, the genuine, the individual.' 

'Of course, you can wade through a million websites about Paris Hilton,' he continues. 'But you can also find an almost equal number of places discussing, analysing or promoting extraordinarily old-fashioned or backwards-leaning pursuits: pilgrimage, Druidism, shamanism, nomadism, transhumance, land-living … Everywhere there are strands and networks of revivalisms and reviewings. Ancient skills and lores, dilettante survivalism and how-to historicism …"

That struck a chord with me as, in my native Cornwall, we celebrate with similar gusto. Obvious examples are the dragon during the Hal-an-Tow on Helston's Flora Day, Golowan's Penglaz, Padstow's Obby Oss Festival and the giant puppet of Bolster the Giant who comes out to play in St Agnes on May Day Bank Holiday.

I think the reason that Fréger's book resonated with me was remembrance of these childhood folk festivals and pageants. Plus, this is folk art - art produced by everyday people - that is celebrated and almost venerated. And the figures and costumes are often made from natural or recycled materials. This goes to the very heart of my personal philosophy of art - that it is for everyone and can be made by everyone using any kind of materials. 

The big take-away from this for me is that this form of art - these costumes and puppets - mean more to the average person than whatever Charles Saatchi chooses to display in his gallery. The Wilder Menn will still be around long after we've stopped talking about most contemporary artists. 

And that, I think, is a very good thing. 

Charles Fréger's website is here (and his other books are also fantastic).

Mayor Weighing in Wycombe

Every town has its unique quirks and follies. 

I live about three miles from High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire - a town that was once the centre of British furniture making. It's where the Windsor chair and many other innovative designs were first produced. And, during the Second World War, the furniture makers (bodgers) adapted their skills to making the wooden frames for the fast Mosquito bomber aircraft. It was so associated with furniture that when Queen Victoria visited in 1877 the bodgers built a triumphal arch for her to drive under. They later repeated the feat in 1884 with an even more impressive arch in celebration of the visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Most recently another, slightly more health and safety conscious, arch was built to mark the Millennium.

The traditional chair industry has now gone but it is commemorated in street names like Gomm Road and Parker Knoll Way and in the nickname of the local Wycombe Wanderers football club - The Chairboys. There's also a sculpture by Deborah Mills on the campus of the local university that's called 'Bodger's Stand' and is based on the form of a Windsor Chair.

However, another unique Wycombe tradition does remain and flourishes - weighing the mayor.

(Sadly the video is silent - Pathé News lost the sound recording that accompanied it.)

The tradition has its roots in the behaviour of one Mr Henry Shepard who, in 1678, was reported as being drunk and disorderly and who 'offered affronts to several gentlemen' while in office. It was decreed that the great Bell should be rung out in testimony of his misdemeanours. Consequently, the Mayor was 'tolled out' and a new mayor appointed. Also introduced was a 'weighing in' ceremony where, from now on, a new mayor would be weighed on a giant set of scales as they took office, and then weighed again after being tolled out. If there had been a weight gain in that year, the person was considered to have been eating and drinking too much at the taxpayers' expense. They were consequently jeered and booed and, once upon a time, pelted with rotten fruit and veg. These days, they pay a donation to a charity. 

The modern ceremony, which usually takes place on the third Saturday in May, begins with a mayor-making ceremony at the Mayor's Parlour in Victoria Road followed by a colourful procession to the Guildhall. Then the newly elected Mayor, the Charter Trustees, Honorary Burgesses and the outgoing Mayor are all publicly weighed. As their weight is recorded the Macebearer shouts out the weight, adding the words 'And some more!' if the Mayor has gained weight, or 'And no more' if there is a weight loss or it remains the same. If the words 'And no more!' are heard, the crowd cheers and claps. If no weight has been gained, or some lost then they must have been working hard for the good of the town.

Here are some photos of this year's ceremony with outgoing mayor Annie 'And no more!' Baughan and incoming mayor, Arif Hussain.

Mên-an-Tol

I've visited the Mên-an-Tol (the holed stone) many many times. As child growing up in nearby Penzance, we'd often take family drives out to Madron and Morvah to walk the moors there. In doing so you first pass the dolmen known as Lanyon Quoit and then the strange assembly of stones called the Mên-an-Tol. Walk on a bit further and you find the Mên Scryfa - an inscribed monolith - and then the Boskednan stone circle. It's a wonderful walk and I've been lucky to capture it on camera over the years. Sadly there are no childhood photos of me at the stones  (though there are photos at other Neolithic sites that I'll post at a later date). But there is this one of me (left), my two brothers and Mum in the long cart lane that leads to all the sites. 

The oldest photos I've found that I took date from around 1983 and, predictably, show people passing their bodies through the hole.

The Mên-an-Tol itself is a large flat, fairly round granite stone perched on its edge. Presumably there is a proportion of it buried below ground to give it stability. There is a large hole at its centre and local legend says that passage through the stone will cure a child of rickets (osteomalacia) or prevent the condition developing. For centuries, children with rickets were passed naked through the hole in the middle stone nine times. I've been through many times (never naked though). It was aso supposed to cure scrofula and has a reputation for curing back problems, which earned it the name of 'Crick Stone'. Another legend claims that if a woman passes through the holed stone seven times backwards during a full moon, she will soon become pregnant. 

The stones are also supposed to have a fairy or pisky guardian who can make miraculous cures. In one story, a changeling baby was put through the stone in order for the mother to get the real child back. Skipping along a few years you can here see my youngest - then aged around three - going through the stone. He's now in his mid-thirties. 

The monument today consists of four stones: two upright stones with the holed stone between them, and a fallen stone at the foot of the western upright. Antiquarian representations of the site differ in significant details and it is possible that the elements of the site have been rearranged on several occasions. William Borlase described the monument in the 18th Century as having a triangular layout, and it has been suggested that the holed stone was moved from its earlier position to stand in a direct alignment between the two standing stones. 

In the mid 19th Century, a local antiquarian JT Blight proposed that the site was in fact the remains of a stone circle. This idea was given additional support when a recent site survey identified a number of recumbent stones lying just beneath the modern turf which were arranged along the circumference of a circle 18 metres in diameter. The recumbent stones are somewhat irregularly spaced but the three extant upright stones have smooth inward facing surfaces and are of a similar height to other stone circles in this part of Cornwall. If this is indeed the origin of the site, the holed stone would probably have been aligned along the circumference of the circle and would have had a special ritual significance possibly by providing a lens through which to view other sites or features in the landscape, or as a window onto other worlds. 

There have also been suggestions that it may have been a component of a burial chamber or cist. There are instances of burial chambers close to stone circles, as at nearby Boskednan, and a barrow mound with stone cist has been identified to the north-east of the Mên-an-Tol, so it seems likely that the site was part of a more extensive ritual or ceremonial complex. 

Here are my three kids a few years later, taking their turn to go through the stone. 

You won't be surprised to hear that I can no longer fit through the circle very easily. And a few Cornish pasties don't help matters. But I do still visit quite regularly and here are some up-to-date photos from 2020.

Holed stones like this are something of a rarity and the holes are usually too small for a person to climb through. The only other Cornish holed stone of any size that I know of is at Gweek on the Lizard Peninsula. Known as the Tolvan Stone, it's also said to have curative properties but, as the hole is so small, only for very small children and babies. It's also in someone's back garden so it's polite to ask before visiting.

Meanwhile there's a good scattering of stones with small holes in them such as the five holed stones of Kenidjack Common ...

... and the Boleigh Stone that's now a gate post near to where the Merry Maidens stone circle stands.

These things are strangely fascinating aren't they? I wonder whether they evolved from our ancient ancestors' interest in naturally-formed holed stones? Known as witch stones or hagstones, they were popular talismans that were hung over a door for luck - much as people do with horseshoes. Some said that looking through the hole might allow you to see into other mystical worlds. Perhaps that's the origin of the larger stones - an attempt to magnify this power? In Cornwall these stones are called  milpreves, or adder stones due to a belief that they were made by snakes. In Robert Hunt's Popular Romances of the West of England (1865) he wrote:

'The country people around the Land's End say that in old times no one could live in the low grounds, which were then covered with thickets, and these swarming with adders. Even at a much later period, in the summer-time, it was not safe to venture amongst the furze on the Downs without a milpreve. (I have never seen a milpreve; but it is described to me as being about the size of a pigeon's egg, and I am told that it is made by the adders when they get together in great numbers. Is it not pro­bable that the milpreve may be one of the madrepore corals-- millepore-- found sometimes on the beaches around Land's End?) A friend writes me, " I was once shown a milpreve; it was nothing more than a beautiful ball of coralline lime-stone, the section of the coral being thought to be entangled young snakes."'

I've always liked the form of hagstones and I can't resist picking one up and keeping it if I find one. The great sculptor Dame Barbara Hepworth did the same and it's easy to see how these natural shapes might have inspired her work. Here's some of my collection and some of her pieces.

I was lucky enough to meet Hepworth when I was a boy ... 

But that's a story for another blogpost.

Healing Trees and PPE

Following on from the previous blog post and talk of hanging shoes in trees (see here) I thought I'd mention Healing Trees. 

Also known as Rag Trees, Witch Trees or Clootie Trees, these are places - usually with some significance, such as at the site of a natural well - where people hang items in the hope of a cure or to ward off sickness. The tradition dates back to pagan times, and says that if an ill person hangs a strip of cloth at a holy well, and either bathes in the water or drinks it, then as the cloth disintegrates the illness will pass. It's a practice found all over Western Europe and the tradition is still very strong in the Celtic countries of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall and the Isle of Man. It's also found in northern France where arbres à loques are still decorated today. In fact, the French trees have recently been seen to sport a very modern twist on a very old idea. People are filling the Healing Trees with PPE masks. 

'The new development is COVID masks,' says Bertrand Bosio, who runs Nord Fantastique, a Facebook page devoted to the region's ancient sites and lore. 'Tied to the branches of the healing tree in Hasnon, southwest of Lille, surgical masks can be clearly seen among items of clothing that range from socks to underwear - often left by people suffering from fertility problems. The votive masks are hung preventatively, rather than by COVID-19 sufferers who ought to be self-isolating. What's interesting is that the ritual is still very much alive in our times. People turn to the Healing Trees when medicine has reached its limits, and when science has let them down.' 

It's certainly true that the tradition is still very much alive. I was visiting my folks in Cornwall back in 2011 and, while driving through a little village near Penzance called Sancreed, I came across a Holy Well and Healing tree. It is festooned with strips of cloth or 'clouties' (clooties in Ireland & Scotland)) and other paraphernalia and it's quite beautiful to see - a living, ever-evolving work of art. Here are some photos that I took: 

There are over 600 sacred holy wells in the UK and nearly 200 of them are in Cornwall. And, sure enough,  not far from Sancreed, you come to the Well of St Maddern, in the village of Madron, which is even more striking being set in marshy lands around an ancient pond and well. 

Old habits never die and it's notable that, during this pandemic and its extended periods of lockdown, many people have developed a greater appreciation for Nature and have returned to simpler ways of living, such as growing their own vegetables, learning to bake, making art etc. that require no modern technology. 

Now, I wouldn't for a minute swap my vaccine for hanging a cloutie in a tree but I understand people's need to reconnect with the past and with the idea of wishing and magic. The simple act of doing something - even something as simple as hanging a rag on a branch - feels positive and proactive even if it is a placebo. As someone once said, we are cave people living in skyscrapers and, in evolutionary terms, our brains are no different to our late Stone Age ancestors. The veneer of civilisation is very thin and we have come so far, so fast, in the last couple of thousand years that it's been nice, in some ways, to be forced to slow down and take stock of what's important. 

And what is more important than hope and wishing our loved ones to be safe?