Category: Folklore

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March 8th International Women’s Day

The Harper Road Burial Southwark a photo of a skeleton in a museum case with grave goods.
The Harper Road Burial Southwark (museum of London web site)

I’ve had a draft of a piece on he Harper Road Burial awaiting a suitable occasion to publish it. And today, International Women’s Day is, perhaps, that occasion. International Women’s Day began, as an idea within Socialist organisations in 1909/1910. Following the February Revolution in Russia and women gaining the vote, March 8th was chosen as the day to celebrate. The wider feminist movement adopted it in the 1960’s followed by the UN in 1977; since when it has been a day to celebrate women’s achievements and campaigns.

The Soviet Union 1949 CPA 1368 stamp (International Women’s Day, March 8. (Wikipedia)

My post was about the Harper’s Road burial, which came up in Dominic Perring’s new book ‘London in the Roman World.’ He uses it to establish that Southwark was a place where people lived both before and after the Roman Conquest in 43AD. The burial was found in the 1970s’ dated to 50 – 70 AD but recent scientific analysis has shown that the burial was of a woman (21 – 38 years of age) with brown eyes and black hair who was brought up in Britain. She was of some wealth by her grave goods. She had both imported Roman pottery and British made objects: a bronze necklace (a torc possibly of Catevalaunian or Trinovantian origin) and a mirror. Dr Rebecca Redfern & Michael Marshall (Human Osteology Curator & Museum of London Archaeology) on the Museum of London’s website make a case for her being: a ‘Powerful women in late Iron Age London’. It’s well worth reading. They make a case for the mirror being ‘used by women for divination and magic, and were a source of knowledge that only women could command. Being able to use and read the mirror meant that the woman was highly regarded by her community.’

https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/powerful-women-late-iron-age-london-harper-road-burial

Iron age burials are often found either with a sword or a mirror and the thinking is that the mirror reflects an equivalent status to a sword. I think we can say that the finds do reflect someone of standing, but as to the use of the mirror that must be speculation. Divination using a mirror is called ‘scrying’ and the British Museum has John Dee’s scrying apparatus. You can buy scrying mirrors on etsy. https://www.etsy.com/uk/market/scrying_mirror.

Melanie Giles & Jody Joy in ‘Mirrors in the British Iron Age: performance, revelation and power published in 2007 (and available to read here) conclude:

‘Iron Age mirrors, whether made of iron or bronze were beautiful,  powerful, and potentially terrifying or dangerous objects. They were used in the  preparation and presentation of the body and prestigious displays, but may also have been associated with powers of augury and insight into the past, or access to ancestral or spiritual worlds.’

The evidence we have for iron communities is for a powerful role for women in contrast to the Romans. The Romans dismissed women when they wrote that Boudicca was ‘uncommonly intelligent for a women’. In fact, she nearly forced the Romans to abandon their conquest of Britain. We also know that Queen Cartimandua of the Brigantes had executive power in the North of Britain. The Britons also worshipped the three Mother Goddesses, which focussed on the value of woman as maidens, mothers, and grand-mothers.

A book to order today is ‘Patriarchs’ in which Angela Saini investigates when the Patriarchy took over. I heard her talk about it and it seems an excellent summary.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/08/the-patriarchs-by-angela-saini-review-the-roots-of-male-domination

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February 20th The Sun Enters the House of Pisces

Attributes of Pisceans selfless, mystical compassionate imaginative sensitive

pisces from the zodiac from kalendar of shepherds
From the zodiac from Kalendar of Shepherds

A man born in Pisces shall be a great goer, a fornicator, a mocker and covetous: he will say one thing and do another. He shall trust is his sapience, he shall have good fortune: He will be a defender of widows and orphans. He shall be fearful on water: he shall soon pass all adversities and live 72 years after nature.

The woman shall be delicious, familiar in jests, pleasant of courage, fervent, a great drinker. She shall have sickness of her eyes and be sorrowful by shame, needlessly. Her husband will leave her and she shall have much trouble with strangers. She shall travel much, have pain in his stomach and live seventy-seven years.

Both man and woman shall live faithfully.

Kalendar of Shepheardes, 1604 (from the Perpetual Almanac by Charles Kightly

What surprises me about the above is that it has to be nearly always wrong as the predictions are too specific.

Now, the Old Moore’s 2023 Almanac had a page on Liz Truss of all people, clearly written before she imploded as Prime Minister, and it is clear they think she has a real chance of being PM. They say she has ‘an almost steely determination and plenty of apparent ambition. …. She has every astrological requirement necessary to keep her nose clean and at this moment in time is certainly among the main contenders.‘. So yes they are right about her being among the main contenders but absolutely no hint of the disaster that her PMship was. Similarly the 2022 Old Moore’s Almanac had no hint of the Ukraine war.

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Medlars – a Rude Fruit for Winter

Detail of photo from the American Viscountess showing a medlar (link to the site below:)

Medlars were a very common and useful fruit particularly in the Medieval and Early Modern period. They come out in December but can only be eaten when they are rotten and ‘bletted’. They also store well. They, therefore, provide a source of winter sweetness when there were few other fresh sources available.

They are from the Rosaceae family which includes apples, pears, rosehips and quinces. The English called them ‘open arses’ or ‘dog’s arses’ or ‘granny’s arses’ because of the way they looked until the more polite French name the Medlar caught on.

Shakespeare uses both words and uses their sexual connotations as they were thought also to look like female genitalia. A medlar was also a name for a prostitute. So in Romeo and Juliet this speech by Mercutio to Romeo and their mates contains some very bawdy thoughts:

If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.
Now will he sit under a medlar tree
And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit
As maids call medlars when they laugh alone.
O, Romeo, that she were, O that she were
An open-arse and thou a poppering pear!

RJ 2.1.33

I think you can also see how good Shakespeare was at making his allusions available to all classes. For the sophisticated he begins with the reference to the French medlar and in case the groundlings are missing out throws in the ‘open-arse’ so they know what he is alluding to.

Medlars fell out of favour in the 18th and 19th Centuries. For more on medlars have a look at British Food history https://britishfoodhistory.com/2017/11/12/forgotten-foods-7-openarses/

Or watch this video from ‘the American Viscountess’ from which I extracted the picture of the medlar above.

Video on Medlars
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New Irish Bank Holiday for St Bridget/Imbolc! February 6th

The celtic year shown as a circle
The Celtic Year

The Irish have created a brand new Bank Holiday for St Bridget. The first one is today Monday 6th February 2023 and it follows a public holiday given last year for Health Workers in March. The timing of the Bank Holiday is explained by the Irish Post:

St Brigid’s Day itself falls on February 1 each year but going forward the Imbolc/St Brigid’s Day public holiday will fall on the first Monday in February, unless February 1st falls on a Friday.

This means that Ireland now has a public holiday on the 4 Celtic festivals of Samain (Halloween), Imbolc (St Bridget’s Day), Beltane (May Day) and Lughnasa (Lammas Day). These festivals are quarter-days, which mean they fall half way between the Solstices and Equinoxes.

The Independent wrote that ‘then-Tánaiste, Leo Varadkar, said last year‘ ….“This will be the first Irish public holiday named after a woman,”  He also is quoted as saying:

“It marks the half-way point between the winter solstice and the equinox, the beginning of spring and the Celtic New Year.”

Extra Bank Holidays in the UK?

There are occasional calls for a new Bank Holiday in the UK. It’s often a Conservative MP calling for a National Day for the British and they often suggest a date like Trafalgar Day 21st October (commemorating the great Naval battle in 1805 in which Nelson was fatally wounded). It has several virtues in their eyes. Firstly, it is a day that confirmed Britain’s mastery of the Seas and thus is an ideal day for celebrating patriotism. Secondly, it is the school half term, and gives a much needed day off between summer and Christmas. Thirdly, they can suggest the day should be taken from May Day Bank holiday which coincides with the International Worker’s Day, which is obviously ‘a bad thing’.

For example, the Portsmouth MP’s supported a call for Trafalgar Day here: . The report says: ‘there are currently no bank holidays in the UK which celebrate battles or war victories’.

This, I think, leaves the rest of us thinking ‘What planet do these people live on?’ Yes, Trafalgar Day would have been a great day for a Bank Holiday IF this were 1839, maybe even 1939. But in 2023 it is just not on any ordinary person’s radar. We don’t think so very much about the Napoleonic War or Nelson, or nor do we often sing ‘Heart of Oaks, are our Men’ any more. In short, it is a reminder how distant from the rest of us Conservative MPs are, and how progressive Ireland has become by contrast.

Recently, we have been given a few Royal Bank Holidays, last year for the Queen, this year for the King. The Trade Union Congress proposed the need for more bank holidays because we only have the usual eight annual bank holidays for workers in England and Wales. Scotland has nine or ten; the average for the EU is ‘12.3 bank holidays a year. Finland and Romania get 15, while workers in Japan have 16 public holidays in total’.

A recent radio programme ‘The Bottom Line’ compared Britain with France and revealed that Britain is now 20% less productive than France, (up by 10% since Brexit) and that we make up the deficit by working longer hours. It appears that the French high tax. high worker’s protection regime, means they have to find ways of getting more out of the same hours, while we can just hire and fire, and are happy to make people work in a more inefficient way.

Here is my recent post about St Bridget’s Day

Festival of Imbolc, St. Bridget’s Day February 1st

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January 31st Brexit Addendum

A point I wanted to make earlier about Brexit is on British/English exceptionalism.

When I was at school we were taught the history of ‘This Island Story’, something that is hardly mentioned in the 21st Century. But it was part of the Imperial story of the British Empire and distanced ourselves from Europe.

Britain first was at a distance from Europe when the landbridge that is now called Doggerland was swept away by rising meltwater in about 8,000 years BP and made us an Island.

As farming spread from Asia Minor it took an extra hundred years to bridge the Channel.

The most interesting difference is at the end of the Roman period. When the western part of the Roman Empire fell in the 5th Century, it was taken over by Germanic Kings. The Franks in France and Germany; the Anglo Saxons etc in England; the Lombards in Italy and Goths, Visigoths, Vandals in Spain (and N. Africa).

On the mainland the German Kings became native and the Latin language, and Christian religion maintained a strong tradition of Roman law and culture. French, Italian, Spanish,Roumanian are all romance languages based on Latin.

But cross the Channel to England and our German Kings didn’t adopt the Latin language and indeed the Celtic dialect of Brittonic (except of course in Wales), and changed the religion to pagan. So English culture is Germanic and not Roman.

So we do not have a foundation in Latin culture and Roman law.

In the 16th Century Britain further turned from Catholic Culture. But the next really significant difference was the changes instituted by Napoleon as he subdued and changed and to an extent rationalised and liberalised the continent with dreams of creating United Europe of Nations (in contrast to the Empires that held sway (such as the Holy Roman Empire, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire https://www.napoleon-series.org/research/napoleon/c_unification)

Most legal systems in Europe are based on Roman Law as amended by the Napoleonic code. England by contrast is based on the Common Law.

So these differences combined with our arrogance of Empire, the Industrial Revolution and belief we won World War 2 (not to mention our pride in Shakespeare, Newton and Darwin etc etc) probably lay behind ‘British Exceptionalism’ which led to the misguided belief that we are held back by Europe despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Here is a disillusioned Tory party donor who believes Brexit is a ‘complete disaster…. and total lies.’ And here an economic assessment.

And what is, in some ways, worse is that the government is planning a Bonfire of the EU Regulations. Rees-Moog is responsible to this obscene anti-democratic Bill presented to the House of Commons. He sees it as getting rid of a whole raft of EU regulations that have entered our legal system during our 40 years of membership of the EU.

He claims anyone who opposes his bill is reopening the Brexit debate. This is a natural autocrat’s lie. Brexit was presented as ‘bringing back control to the people and to Parliament’. What this Bill is, is bringing massive power back to Ministers in the Government. All these European regulations will be examined by Ministers and their departments, and THEY decide what to drop and what to not. European Regulations govern of lot of our laws on work, farming and industry and much more. If the Minister decides he does not like a regulation HE or SHE can get rid of it. It does not need parliament to approve it, nor an election. There is not enough time or resources put to this for proper scrutiny by the Department’s Civil Servants, nor the Government, and none for Parliament.

It is an outrage to my mind, and shows that people like Rees-Moog have really been trying to turn Britain into a de-regulated economy for the benefit of people like himself with very little thought for the health of our democracy.

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300th Post & a London Almanack of the Past

The Illustrated London Almanack
The Illustrated London Almanack

This is the 300th Post on this my ‘new’ blog. I thought I would mark it by a reminder of what I am trying to do with it.

Over the years I have given a lot of walks on special occasions: Christmas, New Year, Halloween,Easter, May Day etc. as well as my regular ‘Myths, Legends of the Archaeological Origins of London Walk’. I have always had an interest in the Celtic Year, and when researching for my New Year’s Walks I came across Almanacks, and the more I found out about them the more I plundered them for content! I found that one third of books sold in London in the early modern period were Almanacks. That is how important they were.

So, I decided to create an ‘Almanack of the Year’ which changed title to an ‘Almanack of the Past’. In particular, what I am hoping to do is to create a London Almanack of the Past, where each day is remembered by an interesting and relevant post with a view to enlightening our understanding of London’s past.

Content is around these ideas and themes:

Folklore
Seasons & Nature
Measurement of Time
Calendars
Religion
Mythology
Legend
Anniversaries of Famous & Important events in the past
Historical & Archaeological news
News of my Walks

What I am aiming for is a really focussed London version of an Almanack of the Past. I need a good entry for every day of the year, and I’m hoping to do that over a three year period, and then get it published.

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New Year’s Eve, Old Style & Carmentalia January 11th

1375, French Caesarian Birth, (most likely to have killed the mother or be performed when she was already dead or dying.)

When Britain reluctantly joined the Gregorian Calendar, in 1752, we lost 11 days, so if you add 11 to 31st December you get to New Year Old Style. You can do this with any date, and when celebrating feel you are being really authentic.

So, anything you did on the New Year’s Eve New Style (31st Dec). you can do today – except, of course, you need to convince your boss of the illegitimacy of the Gregorian Calendar, when you call in sick because of a hangover! In case you have forgotten what you should be doing on New Year’s Eve you can look here to look back on for New Year’s Eve, New Style.

It’s a particularly ‘witchy’ evening because it is the traditional Eve, not the new-fangled one. Reginald Scot in his ‘Discovery of Witchcraft’ first published in 1584 reports

‘a charm to find who has bewitched your cattle’. Put a pair of breeches upon the cow’s head, and beat her out of the pasture with a good cudgel upon a Friday and she will run right to the witch’s door and strike it with her horns‘

Reginald Scott’s book is available on this web site and is a fascinating read. https://archive.org/details/discoverieofwitc00scot/page/n55/mode/2up

When I first posted this post 2023. I did not, to my shame, know the background to the book.  I assumed the author ‘believed’ this nonsense that a cow could lead you its bewitcher. On the contrary. Reginald Scot was debunking the absurd claims for witchcraft and magic. His book tries to prove that witchcraft and magic were rejected both by reason and religion.  Manifestations of either were ‘wilful impostures or illusions due to mental disturbance in the observers’ .

Given the number of people who were executed as witches in the 16th and 17th Century it makes you realise that it was a very divisive topic. With only part of the country that was convinced by the QAnon like conspiracy that there are people in this world with diabolical intentions. Have a good look at the cover of this 17th Century edition of Member of Parliament Reginald Scot’s book to get an idea of his standpoint.

Carmentalia

It is also Carmentalia, the festival for the Roman Goddess of prophecy and childbirth. She was a much loved Goddess in the Roman pantheon But little is known about her perhaps because she had no clear match in the Greek pantheon.

She has a long history in Roman history being said to be the mother of…. Well this may surprise you, she was the mother of Evander.  Evander is the founder of Pallantium, which was a City on the site of Rome that predated Rome!

Who knew that? (the people at Vindolanda Roman Fort know and they have a great page on Carmenta here. ) Carmenta had two sidekicks who were her sisters and attendants. Postvorta and Antevorta, They might be explained as Past and Future. Or after and before as part of her role in prophecy. Ot the two figures might represent babies that are either born head or legs first.

She was important enough to command one of the the fifteen flamen. These were priests of state sponsored religions. One of their jobs was to ensure no one came to the temple wearing anything of leather because leather was created from death, and not suitable for the Goddess of Childbirth.

Vindolanda make the point that 2% of births in the past are likely to have caused the death of the mother, and, because of a high mortality in the children, to keep a population stable a mother might have to have 5 children on average, giving her a 12% chance of death by giving birth.

Good reason to have a Goddess on the Mum’s side.

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December 10 Time for your Beetle & Wedge

The Beetle and Wedge Boathouse Restaurant, Moulsford, Oxfordshire
Photo by Stephanie Musk (Wikipedia)

No season to hedge
get béetle and wedge
Cleaue logs now all
for kitchen and hall.

Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie by Thomas Tusser www.gutenberg.org

A beetle is a hammer and a wedge is used to split logs, so the first thing Tusser enjoins his readers to do for December is to stop digging and hedging and, instead, cut firewood.

He also suggests (if I read the Tudor writing correctly):

Sharpen dull working tooles

Leaue off tittle tattle and looke to thy cattle

and suggests:

Howse cow that is old, while winter doth hold.

But don’t forget:

Out once in a day, to drinke and to play.

He suggests covering strawberries with straw to protect them; Making sure your dried cod and ling don’t rot. Store the products of the Orchard in the attic. Bleed the horse and help the bees with ‘liquor and honie’.

‘Thus endeth Decembers abstract, agréeing with Decembers husbandrie.’

Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie by Thomas Tusser www.gutenbe