Old Devon Customs - Shrove Tuesday Part II

Another Dartmoor view - the view from Hound Tor looking towards Hay Tor.

I couldn't resist adding a few more facts about the Shrove holiday celebrations in old Devon. First some of the ditties that were sung:

Here's another version that was sung in Bridestow:

"Lean crock a pancake,
Flitter for your labour;
Dish a meal, piece a bread,
What you please to give me,.
I see by the string
There's a good dame within.
I see by the latch
There's something to catch.
Trepy, Trapy, Tro,
Please give me mumps and I'll be go;
Nine times, ten times,
I am come a-shroving;
pray, dame, something -
Apple or a dumpling,
Or a piece of truckle cheese of your own making,
Or a piece of pancake of your own baking."

At Hartland in North Devon, around 1891, you might have heard the following rhymes chanted:

"Flish, flash; flish, flash;
Watter, watter, ling.
Hev ee any pancakes?
Plaize vor let us in.
hev ee any best beer?
Hev ee any small?
Plaize vor gie us zomthing'
Or nothin' at all."

"Shrove Toosday, Shrove Toosday,
Poor Jack went to plow,
His mother made pancakes,
Her didn' knaw 'ow;
Her toss'd min, her turn'd min,
Her burnt min zo black,
Her putt zo much pepper,
Her poisoned poor Jack." (Love it!)

I don't know if the following tradition is still adhered to in Gittisham (near Honiton in E. Devon) but apparently it was still carried out at the time Coxhead wrote his book, in the 1950s. This description dates from 1928:

"At Gittisham on Shrove Tuesday the usual custom of tip-toeing by the school children was observed. Marching from the school in pairs, they paraded the village and outlying places, crying, "Tip, tip, toe, please give us a penny and away we'll go." A large sum of money was collected in this way, which was taken to the school and divided amongst the children by Miss Richards (headmistress). "

Coxhead mentions that BBC recordings were made on Tuesday 17th February 1953 of this event at Gittisham still taking place. "The origins of this custom has been lost over the centuries, but 86 year old Mr Charles Bowyer, the village's oldest inhabitant, can remember taking part in it when he was a child and can also recall his father saying that it took place in his younger days. The ceremony has not changed over the past 75 years." I have just done a Google search, and am thrilled to say that this tradition has NOT died out:

Tip-Tip-Toe
This local tradition is carried out annually by local school children on Shrove Tuesday. It is believed to have orginated from the ceremony of beating the bounds.

From Valerie Porter's excellent book 'Yesterday's Countryside', she writes "that several centuries ago, when Shrove Tuesday was the nation's favourite day for sports, a company of saddlers in Chester started presenting the drapers with a wooden ball decked with flowers, held on the point of a lance. In about 1540 the wooden ball was changed into a silver bell, to be awarded to the man who could run the 'best and furthest on horseback' on Shrove Tuesday. later the shoemakers of Chester started presenting the drapers with a leather ball, called a 'foote-ball', and naturally they started kicking it around. But the leather balls had a tendency to break windows and so the ball was changed for a silver trophy and was given for foot races instead of the kick-abouts.

Other Shrove Tuesday games included tug-of-war and cock-throwing. The latter bestial sport involved tying live birds to a stake and throwing things at them until they were dead. In the Scilly Isles, having enjoyed a spot of cock-throwing, the lcoal boys would then chuck stones at people's doors in the evening. In Dorset, on Shrove Tuesday, they went in for the similar pastime of 'Lent crocking'. (As in Devon then . . .)

Shrove Tuesday - some old Devon customs

A view of Hound Tor, taken last summer.

Shrove Tuesday today. I have a lovely old book called Old Devon Customs by J R W Coxhead, which I think I probably brought in one of the Hay-on-Wye bookshops. I shall try and abridge the comments a little, but they make such fascinating reading – I hope you agree.

Shrove Tuesday was always one of the most popular movable folk festivals of the year in Devon, the name of the festival deriving from the verb to shrive – in Medieval times penitents received absolution before preparing themselves for the forty days of the Lenten fasting.

Many of the customs celebrated in days of yore date back to very early times and were once celebrated all over Devon, accompanied by “considerable mirth, rough practical jokes and feasting during Shrovetide.”

Here is an account of what used to take place in Tavistock in 1833:

“Shrove Tuesday is a noted day in our town, though not so much kept as it used to be many years ago. The farmers considered it a great holiday, and every person who was in their employ feasted on pancakes. The great sport of the day was to assemble round the fire and each person to toss a cake before he had it for his supper. The awkwardness of the tossers, who were compelled to eat their share, even it if fell into the fire itself, afforded great diversion. Lent-crocking is a similar sport, still practised in some of the old houses. Parties of young persons would during Lent go to the most noted farm-houses, and sing in order to obtain a crock (cake), an old song beginning:

“I see by the latch

There is something to catch;

I see by the string

The good dame’s within;

Give a cake, for I’ve none;

At the door goes a stone,

Come give, and I’m gone.” (Sounds like an early form of Trick or Treat!)

If invited in, a cake, a cup of cider, and a health followed; if not invited in, the sport consisted in battering the house door with stones, because not open to hospitality. Then the assailant would run away, be followed and caught and brought back again as prisoner, and have to undergo the punishment of roasting the shoe. This consisted in an old shoe being hung up before the fire, which the culprit was obliged to keep in a constant whirl, roasting himself as well as the shoe, till some damsel took compassion on him and let him go; in this case he was to treat her with a little present at the next fair.

Another Shrovetide custom known as Lent-sherd night or Dappy-door night took place on the Monday evening before Shrove Tuesday.

In the neighbourhood of Bridestowe near Okehampton, in the year 1852, the children were in the habit of going round to different houses in the parish on Lent-sherd night, in twos and threes, chanting the following verse in the hope of being given eggs, flour, butter or money as contributions to a feast on Shrove Tuesday:

“Lent crock, give a pancake,

Or a fritter for my labour,

Or a dish of flour, or a piece of bread,

Or what you please to render.

I see by the latch,

There’s something to catch;

I see by the string,

There’s a good dame within,

Trap, trapping throw,

Give me my mumps* and I’ll be go.”

*The "mumps" referred to in the last line comes from the old Devonshire name for a beggar - a 'mumper' and the alms he managed to get became known as 'mumps'. (Many thanks to Legendary Dartmoor - Mystery & History website for this explanation).

About the year 1886, Lentsherds used to be thrown in many of the villages and hamlets of North Devon. The doors of houses of unpopular folk were battered by a shower of pot-sherds which the children had been collecting over the previous twelve months.

Children would also call at farmhouses, singing the following rhyme:

“Tippee tappee toe, tippee tappee toe,

Gie me zom pancake, and I’ll be go.”

If pancakes were given, all went well, but if not a shower of pot-sherds would be accompanied by the children shrieking:

“Skit scat, skit scat;

Take this and take that.”

In Ilfracombe, Lent was ushered in by the observance of “Dappy-door night”. (Shrove Monday). On this night the more unruly spirits of the town were in the habit of going round ringing door-bells or knocking loudly at doors and then running off swiftly before the summons could be answered. The fury of the inmates of the houses can well be imagined when they opened their doors and found nobody in sight.

A further tantalising prank of these “dappy-doorers” was to tie a long length of strong string to a door handle, knock and the door, and then hide. When one of the inmates of the house opened the door, the string would be given a sudden pull, with the result that the handle of the door would be jerked violently from the grasp of the householder. I might add, that this custom was alive and well in the 1920’s when my dad was a lad growing up in Bovey Tracey. He and his pal would do just this, and then run away. One day they got caught by the village bobby and grabbed by the ears and marched back to their homes for a telling off!!!

There is more I could write, but enough is as good as a feast. Enjoy your pancakes tonight.

The Beast of Brechfa.

OK - I haven't got a pic of this one. I wish I had - I would make a fortune selling it to the papers! However, this is a trackway in Brechfa Forest. If you look close enough you may see a Black Panther, or a Puma or a. . . The reports mention various Big Cats which have been seen over the years. A friend of mine from the village says she has seen it crossing the road at the edge of the Forestry and claims it was brown. Yet other reports claim it is black.

There has even been an academic research carried out by a local lady, Prof. Alayne Perrott, whose broodmare was attacked by what was thought to be a Puma - and she was convinced they were breeding in the area. She travelled to America and showed photos of her injured horse to puma experts and they agreed that the only thing which could have been responsible for something like that sort of bite mark on the horse's neck is a puma or a lynx.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/print/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2002/10_october/21/taro9_cats.shtml


Here is a more recent newspaper report on an actual sighting after the Beast, in this case Black Panther perhaps, killed a Whippet. It was spotted at Llangadog Creamery also, and in the Ffairfach area of Llandeilo. This link gives the full report:

http://scottishbigcats.co.uk/welshnews25.htm

A friend of mine has his own answer to the story and here is a link to the previous Vicar of Brechfa with his very own Beast:

http://www.llanegwad-carmarthen.co.uk/bigcat.htm

All the same, I don't go walking on my own up in Brechfa Forest - I might look a tasty meal . . .

Jay's Grave

This is Jay's Grave on Dartmoor, near Hound Tor. Whenever we go to Dartmoor I make a point of visiting this poor lass's grave, and laying whatever wild flowers I can find in the area, as do many others.

Mary Jay was apparently an orphaned baby taken into the Newton Abbot Poor House in the late 18th century. She remained there until she was old enough to go out to work and was sent to Canna farm, near Manaton, where she looked after young children. It was probably here that she became known as "Kitty" rather than Mary. Sadly, her story is that of many a young girl, at the mercy of the whims and attentions of one of the menfolk where they worked - in this case the farmer's son. Naturally news of her pregnancy resulted in her being thrown off the farm with a bad reputation, and with no prospect of another job and only the workhouse as an alternative, Kitty Jay, in desperation, hung herself in one of the barns at Canna.

In those days suicides could not be buried in consecrated ground and it was the custom to bury them at a crossroads, so that the restless soul of the departed would not return as a ghost. Kitty Jay's resting place is where a trackway from Hayne Down and Cripdon Down crosses the moorland road and continues on to the hut circles at Grimspound via Natsworthy. Fresh flowers began appearing daily on the grave . No-one knew who left them, but even to this day there are always flowers to be seen - even if it is just a sprig of leaves from an evergreen.

But even in her final resting place, poor Kitty Jay was not safe and William Crossing, writing in late Victorian times, said that her grave had been exhumed by a local farmer called James Bryant, who found a human skull and bones, later proved to be that of a young female. The remains were re-interred in a box and now Kitty Jay rests safely, visited almost as a place of pilgrimage by people who have read about her story.

The amazing site "Legendary Dartmoor - Mystery & History", from whence I gleaned these brief details:

http://www.legendarydartmoor.co.uk/kitty_Jay.htm

will give you a fuller picture, and there is SO much to read about my beloved Dartmoor, that I hope you will spend a while there. If you visit Leanne's site, you can listen to Seth Lakeman singing a song called "Kitty Jay".

The Sweety Shop . . .

If you were my dentist, you would know exactly what sort of childhood I had, as I have umpteen fillings and the two teeth I chomped sweeties most with are No Longer There! Boiled sweets were my downfall . . . I might have gone for chocolate, but the only chocolate bars I remember were Peppermint Creams (which I didn't really like) or the little bars of 5 boys chocolate. When I got to Secondary school, I used to walk to school and save my bus money for sweets. Ooh, that sweet-shop, I can still remember jar after jar of sweets against the wall. They were nearly all 6d a quarter. That would be 2 1/2 pence in new money. My favourite sweets were kola cubes, or toffee crunch, or blackberries and raspberries, or rhubarb and custard or . . . We never bought Quality Street - they were 2/6d (12 1/2p) per quarter. I never liked the strong-tasting things - aniseed balls (ugh), clove balls (double UGH), Coltsfoot rock, Fox's glacier mints. Even polos were too strong. Sugared Almonds were favoured by a couple of my friends, but I never bought those. Guaranteed to remove dodgy fillings were the assorted toffees (mint ones were best).

In the flat trays at the front of the counter were the 4 a penny type sweets (and yes, I am old enough to remember spending a farthing). You could choose from Black Jacks or Fruit Mix and then the sort of thing which usually turns up in packets in supermarkets today - the fried eggs, jelly rings, and assorted jelly shapes. Then there were bananas, shrimps, false teeth, bright red jelly lips, packets of pretend cigarettes, Spanish Gold which was meant to look like tobacco, jelly babies, Bassetts Allsorts, lollies on sticks, Fizzer bars, and packeted sweets like Lovehearts, Refreshers, Opal Fruits, Fruit Gums, Fruit Pastilles. You could buy gobstoppers, which lasted all day if the teacher didn't catch you, barley twist and choc stix which were like toffee crunch only in a barley twist shape. You could have multi-coloured fingers if you chose to buy lemonade powder which came in a plain variety or rainbow-hued. There were Sherbert Fountains with a liquorice "straw", and Sherbert Dabs which had a toffee on a stick which you sucked and then put back into the sherbert. There were Bootlaces - long thin strings of liquorice in strawberry or black. There were Lucky Bags or Jamboree Bags which had an assortment of sweets in them, but you never knew what until you opened them.

On hot summer days we would go down in our lunch hour and buy frozen Jubbly drinks, which were an almost triangular shape and lasted ages, though it paid not to suck all the flavour out so you were just left with a lump of ice!

The one sweet I remember - though from another shop - that no-one I have ever mentioned them to has ever heard of were Gooseberry Balls. They smelt ghastly, but tasted wonderful. Did they sell them in your sweety shop?

Today's photo is from Ross-on-Wye - OK, you've noticed it's a pub and not a sweety shop, but it's a lovely building all the same.

Loos I have known . . .

I tried to think of a different title, I really did, but somehow Lavatorial experiences sounds a shade too close to the mark; the Toilets of Hampshire and Dorset a little too staid and not quite geographically broad enough and Pass the Toilet Roll please bound to put people off. If you are of a sensitive nature, perhaps it is best not to read on . . .

Many of us, in desperation, will resort to going behind a bush when out in the middle of nowhere - providing, of course, that the bush isn't a) smaller than you; b) next to a bull, or c) capable of being overlooked from every angle, especially from higher ground nearby . . . Come to think of it, I should add d) next to an electric fence. I have also found that e) by a patch of stinging nettles, has been the only option on far too many occasions, especially in my childhood when I drank squash like it was going out of style, and was forever in search of that elusive bush . . . My late ma-in-law, bless her multi-layered tights, would NEVER have even remotely considered this option and would have just gone puce . . .

No, what I am going share with you today - that is, if you are still reading my blog, and haven't hurriedly clicked on "Botox in your lunch-hour" or "How to chop onions fast without losing your fingernails", is my experiences of the sort of loos provided at - usually - horse-shows, though there are some notable exceptions (but I shall leave the best till last . . .) When I was young, I was undaunted by the "long drop" sanitation provided at major horse shows - in other words, the facilities were put in place over a recently-excavated ditch. Mind you, this was the best part of 50 years ago, so things were a little primitive then. At smaller shows, the "facilities" were sometimes a little more basic. At one show, the organizers had seen fit to put the ablutions inside a borrowed tent - you had to zip yourself into the "bedroom" and hold your breath against the chemical pong. All I can say is we had record temperatures that day, and whoever loaned the tent, probably never EVER used it to go camping in again . . .

Then there were the "worked out on the back of a postage stamp" style toilets. Whoever thought that a canvas barrier at shoulder height (for the gents) and a similar height of canvas with a piece draped over the top (for the ladies) would be sufficient, was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. In fact, I think they shouldn't have been allowed out on their own, as the actual, erhmmm, container provided for the ladies was a 40 gallon oil drum with a loo-seat somehow tied to the top. Imagine, if you will, the full array of toiletry facilities once the men had been to the beer tent - a long line of somewhat self-conscious blokes, pretending they were looking at the view, and whistling all the while . . . whilst the poor women were obvious by a canvas-draped figure and the fact that they could be heard clear across the showground and easily mistaken for a visiting Steel Band!

When helping a friend with her show horses, we could always pop inside the lorry if sufficiently desperate, though the chap we had showing with us did this one day and found himself being watched by a skinny lady wearing a long calf-length knitted jacket, who then, hands in pockets, threw her arms open wide and he was horrified to find his admirer was stark naked beneath! She took quite a shine to ***, and was most upset when she was led back to the local asylum, from whence she had managed to wander . . .

Wandering further afield, to Wales in fact, on a coach trip, I was surprised to find that the further we proceeded from home, the worse the facilities became until, upon reaching Ab**ga*v*n*y (which I'm sure now has super toilets at their bus station), there was not only no toilet paper, and no catch on the door, so that you had to jam it shut with one foot, but most of the loos didn't even have a toilet seat! But these were luxury, compared to my experiences the one time I went to Glastonbury Festival - perhaps the 2nd or 3rd year it was ever held. By day two, all the wooden doors had been removed to use as firewood by the people camping there and so you were in full view of whoever passed. I couldn't wait to get home again!

However, the red rosette for worst-planned inconveniences, must go to a reasonably civilized portaloo at Braishfield Country Fair, or rather, at the Barndance and shindig in the evening. There was only one portaloo, if my memory serves me correctly, and it had unfortunately been placed on a slight incline. By 10.30p.m., there was a permanent queue for it. As I drew closer, I became aware of the unfortunate position of the portaloo, as it would rock dementedly every time a woman went in. The very act of struggling with tights sent it tipping first one way and then the other, threatening to upend entirely, with obvious dire consequences. When it was my turn, I went inside and began to giggle, in fact I struggled not to laugh out loud, as it began to emulate a rocking horse, and I struggled to move my feet to stabilise it. From outside I heard guffaws of laughter and when I finally emerged, scarlet in the face from embarassment, I vowed never again - next time I would go behind a bush!

Wishful thinking!

The forecast for "oop North" was snow. A friend in Orkney is clinging to the rafters in a Severe Storm Force 11 (that doesn't bear thinking about). I have woken up to the usual black wet Welsh morning, but the gales have at least ceased.

The pictures at the top were what I hoped to see when I came down this morning. Snow is such a rare occurrence here, that I am still very childish and excited when it happens!