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Becket & St. Thomas Day & Wassailing December 29th

Murder of Becket at Canterbury Cathedral 1170
Murder of Becket at Canterbury Cathedral on 29th December 1170 (Late 12th Century Manuscript from British Museum)

On the fifth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
5 Golden Rings; 4 Calling Birds; 3 French Hens; 2 Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

St Thomas Becket

The fifth day of Christmas is dedicated to Thomas Becket, our most famous Archbishop of Canterbury. He was martyred at Canterbury on this day in 1170. But, he was made a Saint in 1173 in double-quick time, in order that the Pope could rub Henry II’s nose in his complicity with the murder.

Becket was a Londoner from a well-known London family, who became a friend of Henry II. Henry was troubled by the freedoms and fees owed to the Catholic Church. So he thought it would be a good idea to make his friend Archbishop. But as soon as Becket became Archbishop he went ‘native’, became a very stubborn and adamant defender of the Pope’s privileges in Britain. After various confrontations, Henry said, in anger, ‘Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?’ And three knights took him at his word, so Becket was murdered in the Cathedral in Canterbury.

Illustration from ‘an old manuscript’ showing Henry II being scourged in penance for his part in the death of Becket

Lousy Becket

Last year,. I wrote: ‘Next year I will add the story of Becket’s lousy habit.’ In November 2023 Katherine Harvey wrote an article, in History Today’ called ‘Lousy Saints’. It began with the discovery that Becket wore a hair shirt:

‘This goat hair underwear was swarming, inside and out, with minute fleas and lice, masses of them all over in large parches, so voraciously attacking his flesh that it was nothing short of a miracle that he was able to tolerate such punishment.’

Becket was a former-sophisticated courtier, and so the assumption was that Becket sought this discomfort deliberately. He also concealed it under magnificent clothes. The monks duly cited the lice as evidence of the piety of the man who was willing to suffer for his religion. They even suggested that the daily agony of the lice was worse than the swift death at the hands of the Knights. Many other pious clerics were similarly lousy by choice. Society as a whole found uncleanliness of this magnitude disgusting and had the technology to avoid it. Becket himself had a manservant to look after his clothes and access to a bath, but limited his baths to once every 40 days by choice. The fact that it was a choice is why people admired such discipline on the part of people like Becket.

Bridge and Pilgrimage

Soon, a new, magnificent bridge was built to replace the wooden London Bridge. In the centre of that Bridge was a grand Chapel dedicated to St Thomas Becket. It was refurbished by the renowned architect Henry Yevele (c. 1320 – 1400). It was here that pilgrims began their pilgrimage to Canterbury. That is, they travelled from where he was born, to where he was martyred.

Stained Glass window showing St Thomas's Chapel on London Bridge (Window is in St Magnus the Martyr's Church on the site of the approach to London Bridge
Stained Glass window showing St Thomas’s Chapel on London Bridge (this window is in St Magnus the Martyr’s Church on the site of the approach to London Bridge

The Legend of the Epic Walk of Mathilda Becket

In London, there was a legend that his mother, Mathilda, was a Muslim who fell in love with Thomas’s dad, Gilbert, during the Crusades. She helped him escape captivity and then found her own way from Acre to London. She made the journey knowing only the name ‘London’ in English and walked most of the way.

On St Thomas Day, people walked around St Paul’s multiple times to commemorate her walk of love. The story was told as true from the 13th Century until the 19th Century. Then researchers found that Mathilda had more prosaic Norman origins. The speculation is that the foundation of the Hospital St Thomas of Acre on the site of Becket’s birthplace led to the story of his connection with Acre. The story is told here:

Medieval St Thomas’s Pilgrim’s Badge showing the murder of Becket. The ampullae contained holy water.

Henry VIII’s hatred of Becket

When Henry VIII began the reform of the Church of England he was particularly keen to end the cult of Becket, this rebel against one of the great Kings of England.

‘Thomas Becket, sometime archbishop of Canterbury, shall no longer be named a saint, as he was really a rebel who fled the realm to France and to the bishop of Rome to procure the abrogation of wholesome laws, and was slain upon a rescue made with resistance to those who counselled him to leave his stubbornness. His pictures throughout the realm are to be plucked down and his festival shall no longer be kept, and the services in his name shall be razed out of all books.‘

Westminster, 16 Nov. 30 Hen. VIII’

A blog post by the British Museum highlights some fascinating research.  Henry’s government ordered the deleting of unacceptable content in church service books. The last phrase of the quotation above show this.  Research into the deletion of content found that it was very varied in extent, except where it concerned Becket.  The vast majority of references to him were either completely defaced or mostly defaced, suggesting that Henry had a particular hatred of Becket.

Henry made a lot of money from the gold and jewels that were stripped from Becket’s magnificent shrine at Canterbury Cathedral.

Another post on Becket is here.

Wassailing

Black and white drawing of a servant Bringing in the Wasaill Bowl (from Washington Irving's 'Old Christmas
Bringing in the Wassail Bowl (from Washington Irving’s ‘Old Christmas’)

The Twelve Days of Christmas are full of wassailing.

Was hail Drinc hail

The name comes from the Anglo-Saxon version of ‘Cheers’ or good health. Its ceremonial use is described by Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing in 1135.

‘From that day to this, the tradition has endured in Britain that the one who drinks first at a banquet says “was hail” and he who drinks next says “drinc hail.”‘

Geoffrey is explaining how Vortigern betrayed Britain for the love of Rowena. She was the Saxon King Hengist’s daughter, and, incidently, speculating on the origins of the tradition of wassail.

Wassail

This has at least two different facets. Firstly, it is a formal drinking tradition at the centre of Christmas hospitality. Secondly, it is part of the tradition of the Waits, the Mummers, and Carol Singers. These groups who go around the village singing or performing in exchange for a drink or some food, or money.

Wassailing is either a gently social activity, or it is an anti-social custom in which the drunkards get to stand outside your house caterwauling and in effect demanding drink with menaces. Imagine a Trick or Treat with the drunkards from the pub!

A Wassail bowl would be full of some form of mulled alcohol or hot punch. A couple of pints of ale or cider, a pint of wine/brandy/mead, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. You should have an apple or crab-apple floating in the bowl. To find out more, look at ‘British Food, a History’ here.

‘Into the bowl is first placed half a pound of sugar in which is one pint of warm beer; a little nutmeg and ginger are then grated over the mixture, and 4 glasses of sherry and 5 pints of beer added to it. It is then stirred, sweetened to taste and allowed to stand covered for 2 to 3 hours. Roasted apples are then floated on the creaming mixture and the wassail bowl is ready.‘

The Curiosities of Ale and Beer, by John Bickerdike, published about 1860 from a Jesus College, Oxford recipe of 1732. (From Recipes of Old England by Bernard N. Bessunger

Wassail in the Orchard

It seems particularly associated with apple trees. On New Year’s Eve, wassallers went to the oldest tree in the apple orchard. There they poured a liberal dose of wassail over the roots of the tree. Then they pulled down the branches to dip the end of the branches in the punch. They decorated the tree, and then drank the wassail themselves.

Geoffrey of Monmouth tells us that the word means ‘Good Health’ or as we would say ‘Cheers!’

First Published on 29th December 2022, republished in December 2023, 2024

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Boxing Day & St Stephens Day December 26th

St Stephens, Walbrook. This view of the Church is not normally visible. The brown brick area to the right is much ‘cruder’ than the left. Christopher Wren was saving money by not ‘finishing off’ parts that were not visible from the public thoroughfare. Photo by the Author in 2008

On the second day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
2 Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

Feast Day of St Stephens

Sorry, this post is out of order. But I typed the date in wrong so you didn’t get it on Boxing Day.

It is the Feast day of St Stephen. He was the first Christian Martyr and was stoned to death not long after Jesus’ apotheosis. He was a deacon in the early Church, brought before the Sanhedrin for blasphemy. At the trial, he made a long speech outraging the audience. St Paul was in the audience (aka Saul).

Stephen attacked the importance of the Temple to Judaism, making parallels with idolatry. Perhaps, I wonder, this explains why there are so few early Christian Churches identified in the archaeological record? Were they consciously avoiding large Temple Basilican structures to differentiate themselves from pagan religions?

Wrens & Presents

The 26th is the day when Wrens could be hunted. Read my post about Robins and Wrens and their seasonal importance here. Also, the day, people gave presents (Boxes) to servants and working people. Other days for presents included St Nicholas’s Day (December 6th), Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, and Twelfth Night.

St Stephens Walbrook

Wren’s most beautiful Parish Church is dedicated to St Stephen. It is one of the first Parish Churches to have a dome. It also has a splendid Altar designed by Henry Moore. I took a Swedish Choir around the City of London on a guided walk. St Stephen’s was open, and, once inside, they just fancied the acoustics. So, they sang. I recorded. Listen below:

Swedish Choir singing in St Stephen’s London

If you wish to read the post on St Lucy click here:

Picture of Christmas greenery on a gift box
by Tjana Drndarski-via unsplash

Victorian Boxing Day

In 1858,James Ewing Richie wrote about ‘Boxing Night’ in ‘The Night Side of London’. I’ve mixed it up with another source. So here is a list of the people who might come knocking at the door for their traditional Boxing Day Box.

Richie’s advice was to tie up your knocker to avoid paying these people:

The Chimney sweep.  Then varlets playing French Horns pretending to be the Waits – {The Waits were licensed musical beggars}

Then came the Turncock, who switched the water supply to your side of the street on alternative days. Followed by the Postman, the Dustman; the Road Waterer in summer, and the Road Scrapper in Winter. After this, the real Waits turned up for a musical turn. Then the Lamplighter, the Grocer’s Boy and the Butcher’s Boy.

I imagine the Knocker-upper also got a Box. My grandmother told me about the knocker-upper in Old Street in the early Twentieth Century. He would tap on the window with his long stick to wake up those people without a reliable clock.

Google search image 'knocker-upper', the lady at top left worked in Limehouse
Google search image of the ‘knocker-upper’, the lady at top left worked in Limehouse and is using a pea-shooter.

Richie records that he had to give a tip to 6 people who wished him a Happy Christmas on his way to work. The tip he gave was half a crown each. He thought his wife would be lucky to get away with a shilling per person for the trade men listed above. Strange that he gave more than twice as much to random strangers than his wife gave to people who served them all year. Perhaps this reflects his belief that the size of his tip reflected his position in society. It is all curmudgeonly. This is probably because he believed it would be spent on drink, leading to the miseries of drunkenness.

The Drunkards Children by Cruikshank 1848.
The Drunkards Children by Cruikshank 1848. Cruikshank was a famous illustrator from a dynasty of visual satirists and one of Dickens illustrators. The story shows the effect of alcoholism on a family. It ends with the suicide from London Bridge of the mother.

First Published on Dec 26th 2022, Republished December 2023, 2024

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Birthday Of The Sun December 25th

The First Day of Christmas, my true love sent to me a Partridge in a Pear Tree

Nebra Sun disc from Stonehenge Exhibition British Museum
Nebra Sun disc from Stonehenge Exhibition British Museum (photo Kevin Flude) The Disc shows the Sun, the Moon, the Pleides, and illustrates the Summer and Winter Solstice movements of the Sun.

Dies Natalis Solis Invicti

On the 25th December were born Jesus, Mithras, Attis, Saturn, Apollo, and the Invincible Sun.

The Sun Gods have quite a complicated interrelationship. Zeus, and Apollo are both also considered to be Sun Gods. Apollo is particularly interrelated to Helios, the Greek God who drives the Chariot that carries the Sun across the skies every day. The Romans had a God called Sol who some say was a deity who declined to be of minor importance, until the transexual Emperor Elagabalas and then Aurelian in 274 AD revived the cult. Sol Invictus was the focus of Constantine the Great, and has been suggested as a response of the Romans to a trend towards monotheism in the later Roman period. Sol for Constantine was a gateway God to Christianity.

It is also notable that early worship of Jesus is full of solar metaphors, Jesus being, for example, the light of the world. Churches are also virtually all orientated East West, aligned with the rising and setting suns. The Altar is always at the East End, and effigies on tombs face the East.

Did the Celts have a sun-god? Belenos is a contender, but linguists are proposing his name does not come from words meaning bright but from strong. The God Lugh’s name is suggested to mean ‘shining’ but his attributes are more of a warrior than a sun god. Taranis is probably the best candidate, but he is more of a sky or thunder god than specifically a sun god. However, his symbol is a wheel and the wheel is symbolic of the turning of the year.

The Golden Wheel from Haute Marne in France

The Golden Wheel from Haute Marne in France, (Public Domain, Wikipedia)

His 8 spoked wheel is said to be symbolic of the Sun and it represents the division of the year by the 4 quarterly sun festivals (Winter Solstice, Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox) and the 4 cross-quarter festivals, (Samhain or Halloween, Imbolc or Candlemas, Beltane or May Day, Lughnasa or Harvest Festival).

December 25th is a few days after our reckoning of the Solstice but it was the date of the Roman Solstice.

Christmas Cake

Today, you might be tucking into a Christmas Cake (originally eaten on Twelfth Night). Now, I know many Americans have a bizarre belief that fruit cake is the cake of the devil, something you receive as a gift and give away to someone else, as most Americans hate it. More fool them for missing out on one of the delights of the Christmas period, that and cold turkey sandwiches. Christmas Cake is made on stir up Sunday, the last Sunday in November, to let the ingredients develop their flavour. They are then covered with marzipan and decorative icing.

19th Century Christmas Cake, generally now the icing continues down the side of the cake.

In Germany, they also eat a fruit bread called Stollen or Weihnachtsstollen. The tradition is said to have been started in the 15th Century, when the Pope gave dispensation to allow the use of butter in the fasting period of Advent. The Germans had to use oil to replace the banned butter, but they could only make oil from turnips, so eventually the Pope allowed the use of butter, with which they made bread with added dried fruits.

Stollen By Gürgi – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3720379

In Italy, they eat Panettone, a fruit bread/cake. It is a sourdough, and a cross between a brioche and a cake. It often comes in a beautiful decorative tin, and is delicious. The centre of panettone production is Milan and this year is the 200th Anniversary of Milan’s famous Marchesi 1824 which makes artisanal Panettone from ‘fine ingredients such as six-crown sultanas, naturally candied fruit, Bourbon vanilla from Madagascar, Italian honey and eggs from free-range hens, blended in a slow-rising dough with the exclusive use of Marchesi 1824 sourdough starter‘. Thank you, Mara from Milan, for the heads-up.

Screen shot from website – does not click through to sales!

Which is best? The only way to find out is to eat several slices of each. America, you don’t know what you are missing.

For stir up sunday see the second half of this post of mine.

Stir Up Sunday! November 26th

First Published 24th December 2022, Republished 25th December 2023, 2024

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Drink & Be Merry at a Georgian Christmas December 23rd

Wassail Bowl being brought in by a Servant into a dining hall on Christmas Day
From ‘Old Christmas’ by Washington Irving

The drink of choice was port. Then brandy, claret, punch, rum, porter. So says my source Henry Jeffreys in his book ‘Empire of Booze’ and in this Guardian article:

Claret, probably, originally outsold port. But the wars against France and the difficulty of importing French wine, saw a transfer to wines from our ‘oldest ally’ Portugal. But the travel distance was longer, so the wine was fortified to help preserve it better. Hence, the British addiction to port. Sherry was also popular for similar reasons, being a fortified white wine. Shakespeare calls it ‘sack’ and sometimes ‘Canary’. (Toby Belch ‘says thou lack’st a cup of canary ‘ in ‘Twelfth Night’, which is a Christmas play.) See below for more on Sack and Shakespeare.

Louis Philippe Boitard 'Imports from France' Looking east towards the Tower of London. Barrels at the front right are marked Claret, Burgundy and Champagne
Louis Philippe Boitard‘s satirical engraving ‘Imports from France’ Looking east towards the Tower of London. Barrels at the front right are marked Claret, Burgundy and Champagne.

Consumption was prodigious. Samuel Johnson said, ‘All the decent people in Lichfield (where Johnson came from) got drunk every night and were not the worst thought of’. The Prime Minister. William Pitt the Younger said, ‘I have drunk three bottles of port without being the worst for it. University College has witnessed this.’ He is referring to his college at the Oxford University, and so he might be considered to be another of our Prime Ministers who have first disgraced themselves at Oxbridge only to rise to rule the unfortunate British. However, in those days, Port was sold in pint measures (45cl) and was 16%, while now it is 20% and sold in 75cl bottles. So, not quite that bad?

Even so, three bottles is still a lot and a drunken population would have not only increased the death rate but also increased violence and abuse. Gout was one result of too much drinking and a rich diet.

Gout. 18th Century Bath

However, this is Christmas so let’s end on a high note, so here are a couple of recipes!

To make ye best punch

“Put 1½ a pound of sugar in a quart of water, stir it well yn put in a pint of Brandy, a quarter of a pint of Lime Juice, & a nutmeg grated, yn put in yr tosts or Biskets well toasted.”

Katherine Windham’s Boke of Housekeeping, 1707

And Gin? The cheap gin panic had calmed down by the 1770s after no less than eight Gin Acts of Parliament. Booths and Gordon’s Gins were established in London during this period and Gin almost a respectable drink.

There appears to have been a shortage of Gin punch recipes in the 18th Century, but by the end of that century this recipe survives from London’s Garrick Club

– half a pint of gin, lemon peel, lemon juice, sugar, maraschino, a pint and a quarter of water and two bottles of iced soda water.

You would not need many of these to become quite relaxed quite quickly!

Sack and Falstaff.

Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV eulogies on sack saying it not only makes for excellent wit but also the best soldiers:

“A good sherris sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain, dries me there all the dull and crudy vapors which environ it, makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which, delivered o’er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit“. 

The second your excellent sherris is the warming of the blood; which
cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the
badge of pusillanimity and cowardice; but the sherris warms
and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extremes.
illumineth the face, which, as a beacon, gives warning to all
rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then the vital
commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their
captain, the heart, who, great and puff’d up with this
doth any deed of courage—and this valour comes of sherris.
that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that
it a-work; and learning, a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil
till sack commences it and sets it in act and use. Hereof
it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did
naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean, sterile,
bare land, manured, husbanded, and till’d, with excellent
endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertile sherris,
that he is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand
the first humane principle I would teach them should be to
forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack.

in the Merry wives of Windsor Falstaff is still always drinking sack.  He asks Bardolph ‘Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in’t.‘ Toast is thought to freshen up stale sack.  Also, it could be drunk hot as suggested by Falstaff asking for:

‘Go brew me a pottle of sack finely.’

Bardolph asks if he wants the sack with eggs but Falstaff refuses asking for his sack to be a

‘Simple of itself; I’ll have no pullet-sperm in my brewage.’

A simple is the opposite of a compound, so pure with no additions (apart from the toast!).  Pullet sperm is, in think, a dismissive reference to eggs. Sack posset was original a medicine but later a popular treat made with eggs, cream, spices and sack. Once concocted, the top would be a foamy or crusty cap, the middle a custard and the bottom a spicy hot alcohol.

First Published in 2022 and revised December 2023 and 2024

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Stage Coach Travel Misery December 22nd

As the Sun enters the House of Capricorn remember the poor Coachman travelling all day everyday in all weathers. Washington Irving in his ‘Old Christmas’ (Originally ‘The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon’ pub. 1819) describes him with a broad red face, a broad body widened by drinking beer; swathed with any numbers of layers of coats trying to keep the cold out. He has many worries on his mind as he has a coach full not only of people who need looking after but also a lot of parcels and commissions that need to be carried out in the many stops along the way. He is delivering parcels, turkeys, geese, presents, children, you name it he is responsible for its safe delivery.

Feel sorry for the people crowded inside the carriage but even sorrier for those sitting on the roof. They have umbrellas in a vain attempt to keep dry, but the umbrella tines will be poking you in your ear, and the run off from the canopy of the umbrella might trickle down your neck. There might be 6 people inside and up to 10 on the roof. 3d for travelling inside and half of that for the roof. voach

Inside, you are next to a large man who is not very salubrious looking, nor too worried about pressing his thighs against you.

John Keats blamed his consumption on his journey on the roof of a stage-coach travelling from London to Hampstead on a cold wet day in February.

Stage coaches became regular sights on the road during the 17th Century and were quite dangerous as the roads were in such a poor condition. It was suggested that passengers made their wills before travelling! From the late 17th and with Parliament increasingly used to set up not-for-profit toll road, the roads got better, and ‘Flyers’ and mail coaches could get up to the tremendous speed of 10 miles an hour, and averaging 7. This happened because improved roads meant improved suspensions, and wheels, and more and faster horses could be harnessed.

This revolutionized travel. It used to take 5 days in around 1700 to get to Manchester from London, by the mid 18th Century the time taken was reduced to 24 hours, and there were many more scheduled coaches, The mail coaches had priority, the coach had a blunderbuss and two pistols to deter highway men, and the guard had a post-horn with which to warn other vehicles to give clear passage, to alert tollgate keepers to open gates, and to announce arrival at a stop. Extra horses would be harnessed to help get up steep hills which, in some cases, like Broadway in the Cotswolds, might mean an additional 10 horses. Passengers might be asked not only to get off the coach to lighten the load but also to push if the going got boggy. On mail coaches, the passengers were not allowed to get off when the horses were changed, and only 4 were allowed inside the coach.

London was ringed by Coaching Inns, which were coach terminals and hotels. The most famous ones, remaining, are in Southwark on the approach road to London Bridge. The Tabard where the Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales started, The White Hart where Dickens’ Sam Wheeler is the Bootboy, and the George, which although not quite so literary is at least still half intact.

Pilgrims leaving the Tabard for the Canterbury Pilgrimage
Pilgrims leaving the Tabard Inn for the Canterbury Pilgrimage
George Inn,Southwark
George Inn,Southwark (photo Kevin Flude)

Capricorn

‘The man born under Capricorn shall be iracundious and a fornicator; a liar, and always labouring.

....The woman shall be honest and fearful, and have children of three men, she will do many pilgrimages in her youth and after have great wit.’

From Kalendar of Shepheards 1604 quoted in ‘The Perpetual Almanac of Folklore by Charles Kightly’.

iracundious is first mentioned in a work published by Caxton in the 15th Century and pretty much obselete by the 17th Century. It means easily angered or irritable.

First published in 2023 and revised in 2024

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December 21 – Reflections on the Solstice

The Solstice and the East Pediment of the Parthenon

British Museum Shop, reproductions of Hestia and Selene’s Horse from the Parthenon Marbles

At the Summer Solstice, I took a group to the British Museum and, a few days later, to Stonehenge, and managed to ‘integrate’ the two into a solstice narrative. At the BM, over years of trying to explain the sculptures, I have been building in my mind an interpretation of the Pediment that gives, I hope, an original insight into the possible intentions of the sculptors. I don’t know how ‘true’ it is, but I do think it gives an insight into metaphor and symbolism in great works of art. Bear in mind that there is a lot of uncertainty about some of the attributions, and, that the male and female virtues that I am talking about are traditional ones, not necessarily how we would express it in the modern world.

Pediment Sculptures Photo by Nicole Baster on Unsplash

At the left of the above photography, you see the horses that take Helios chariot into the sky to bring up the sun to light the world every day. Most sun deities are male, and the Sun gives light and life to the world, without it this earth is an inert block of ice cold stone. The next statue is casually laying back and looking fit, relaxed and not looking as if he is in that position because of the impossible triangular Pediment space he inhabits. He is the epitome of male strength, usually identified with Hercules but other people have other ideas and a young Dionysus is another suggestion. Whoever he is he represents male beauty and strength. So this end of the pediment represents the Sun and male virtues. This is the East Pediment of the Parthenon which is orientated to the rising sun, a little north of east.

Next are Demeter, the goddess of fertility, the goddess of the earth. Placed here to remind us that the Sun needs the Earth to create life and sustenance. It reminds us that the universe is not male, the male only works in conjunction with the female. Demeter is cuddling her daughter Persephone, the Goddess of Hades. She reminds us that life is a cycle of death and life. Plants die, turn into soil and create the conditions for future life.

Next is Hebe, daughter of Zeus and Hera, wife of Heracles (Hercules). She is the cupbearer to the Gods and gives them the ambrosia that keeps them forever young. She is the Goddess of Immortality, a reminder that the universe is eternal.

Next to Hebe is a void where there was the central statue of the east pediment depicting the Birth of Athena (according to Pausanias who wrote a guide in the 2nd Century BC to the Temple). Athena was born from the head of her father Zeus- a virgin birth. Athena therefore is, in some ways, the greatest of the Olympians, as she has the virtues of her female sex and the virtues of her father’s masculinity (and, dear Gods, hopefully not the massive ‘Me Too’ vices of her father). She is therefore, wise, nurturing, just, intuitive, decisive, a leader; an ideal combination of male and female.

Zeus (sitting) Hephastus to right (looking back with Axe) Athena just visible above Zeus's head
Zeus (sitting) Hephastus to right (looking back with Axe) Athena just visible above Zeus’s head

So Zeus eats Athena’s mum, Metis, who is pregnant with her. Sometime later he has a cracking headache. Hephaestus, the disabled artificer God hits Zeus over the head to clear the headache. Zeus gives birth to a fully formed Athena from the split in his head. She was known as Athena Parthenos, Athena the Virgin. Her name is originally Athene but it got changed to Athena in 500 BC.

Hestia, Dione, Aphrodite, Horse of Selene’s chariot

To Athene’s left is Hestia (Vesta for the Romans). Her name means “hearth, fireplace, altar” and she is the goddess of the domestic sphere, of the comforts of home, of a warm fire enjoyed by a loving family.

The next set are two beautifully draped women languidly leaning on each other, and these are Dione, with her daughter Aphrodite – the Goddess of Love. Dione is the daughter of Gaia and Uranus daughter of earth and sky. So, here, counterpoised to Hercules, are epitomes of women. Women of power, creation, and love.

Finally, we have the exhausted horse of Selene. Her chariot takes the moon into the sky, positioned opposite to Helios and the Sun. Selene is the Moon goddess, and the Moon is beautiful, powerful as it gives us the tides and fundamental to the life of humans as she presides over the menstrual cycle. Compared to the movements of the Sun which any fool can work out, and which are relentless (symbolising Justice) the movements of the Moon are mysterious to most of us. So Selene is beautiful, powerful, creative and the Goddess of Intuition.

So, if you put it all together, the East Pediment of the Parthenon shows that the world is a union of the male and the female, balanced between the two with Zeus and Athene in the middle, with Athene holding the main part because she, in her person, represents both the male and the female.

Of course, we know that the Athenian society was a patriarchal one with women mostly kept in the domestic sphere. But here, at least, women were given an equal billing in the organisation of the Cosmos.

Sculptures from the east pediment of the Parthenon
Sculptures from the east pediment of the Parthenon

I must end by warning the reader that this is only my interpretation. I am not a scholar of Ancient Greece. I have come to my own conclusion based on spending a lot of time looking at the marbles, doing Solstice Virtual Tours, and mostly informed by the labels in the gallery, with of course, some reading including Mary Beard’s book entitled ‘Parthenon’ and the BM’s guidebook. In particular, I have not incorporated into my ‘story’ the sculptures that were in the gaps that do not survive or only in fragments scattered throughout the Museum world. Mary Beard was cleverer than I, not reaching conclusions on the basis that we don’t know. But what we do know is that in the centre is Zeus and Athene and at the edges are the chariots of the Sun and the Moon. And so fitting to celebrate the Solstice.

Originally written in 2022 and revised 2024

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Christmas with Jane Austen December 20th

Bullet Pudding

Christmas at Godmersham Park

Fanny Austen Knight was the daughter of Jane Austen’s rich older brother Edward. He, rather strangely to our modern minds, was adopted by distant relatives who were childless. ‘Hey! We have enough boys to be going on with – happy for you to take one, particularly as you own two stately homes!’ as Mr and Mrs George Austen probably never said.

One of those homes was Godmersham Park in Kent, the other was in Chawton, a lovely Hampshire Village where Jane, Cassandra and Mum Cassandra lived, and is now a Museum dedicated to Jane Austen.

Fanny also rather cruelly remembers Jane and Cassandra as being unfashionably dressed and not up with upper-class etiquette. She wrote this when she was an old woman. When she was a teenager and being well brought up she wrote letters to friends of the family and relatyives, and here are extracts from her Christmas letters.

1811 to 1812 Fanny writing to a friend, Miss Dorothy Chapman

‘I don’t know whether I told you that Ms Morris’s are at home for the Christmas holidays. They are very nice girls and have contributed a good deal to our entertainment. None of us caught the whooping cough and have been very well the whole time. We have, in general, had cards, snapdragons, bullet pudding etc on any particular evening and Whist, Commerce and others and tickets were the favourite games. I think when cards fail the boys played every evening at draughts, chess, and backgammon.‘

Commerce is a three card poker type game played with counters. Tickets was Lydia Bennett’s favourite game, which is a gambling game based on luck, and in Pride and Prejudice called ‘Lottery Tickets.’

Bullet Pudding is explained by Fanny in another letter

‘You must have a large pewter dish filled with flour which you must pile up into a sort of pudding with a peak at the top, you must then lay a Bullet at the top & everybody cuts a slice of it & the person who is cutting it when the Bullet falls must poke about with their noise & chins until they find it & then take it out with their mouths which makes them strange figures all covered with flour, but the worst is that you must not laugh for fear of the flour getting up your nose & mouth & choking you. You must not use your hands in taking the bullet out.’

I used to play this as a child at Christmas. We used a coin not a bullet. The contestants walk around the table with the flour pudding on which has a knife ready for cutting the pudding. The Music plays and when it stops the one the knife is pointing at cuts a slice of the flour hoping not to make the flour collapse and the coin fall. Snapdragons is a lively game, you put some brandy in a tray or flat dish, add a few raisins, light the brandy and the game is to pick up and eat the raisins without getting burnt!

Other games mentioned by Fanny

Hunt the Slipper, Oranges and Lemons, Wind the Jack; Lighting a Candle in Haste; Spare Old Noll.

Eventually, the coin will collapse, and the hapless winner, according to Jane’s niece, Fanny.

‘must poke about with their noise & chins until they find it & then take it out with their mouths, which makes them strange figures all covered with flour, but the worst is that you must not laugh for fear of the flour getting up your nose & mouth & choking you. You must not use your hands in taking the bullet out.’

In my family, we pushed the winner’s head into the flour to maximise the fun.

Another niece Anna received Jane Austen’s advice on writing a novel:

‘You are now collecting your people delightfully, getting them exactly into such a spot as is the delight of my life. Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on, and I hope you will do a great deal more, and make full use of them while they are so very favourably arranged.’

Jane Austen Virtual Tours Coming up!

Georgian female engraving

Jane Austen’s ‘A Picture of London in 1809’ Virtual Walk

7.30 27th January 2025

With the help of a contemporary Guide Book, Jane Austen’s letters, and works we explore London in 1809

For more details and to book

A Virtual Tour of Jane Austen’s Bath

7.30pm 10th February 2025

A tour of the City of Bath, and a look at the Georgian City that Jane Austen knew and lived in

For more details and to book

Tomorrow I turn towards the Solstice.

The London Winter Solstice Virtual Tour

Druids at All Hallows, by the Tower
Druids at All Hallows, by the Tower

Sat 21 Dec 2024 19:30

We explore London’s History through its celebrations, festivals, calendars, and almanacs of the Winter Solstice

To book

First Published 20th December 2022, revised and republished December 2023, 2024

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Collect your Holly & Ivy December 18th

Picture of Christmas greenery on a gift box
by Tjana Drndarski-via unsplash

So, the old Sun is dying, and if the Sun keeps going down we are all going to die. To keep our anxiety to a minimum with all of nature seeming to be dying or hibernating, evergreens are a symbol of a promise/proof that life will continue through the dark days. So, with its bright-green leaves and its luminous berries, Holly is the ideal evergreen for the Solstice. And as the prickles symbolise Christ’s Crown of Thorns, and the berries the red blood of Jesus, the symbolism works, too, for Christians.

‘Ivy’ says Culpeper in his Herbal of 1653, says its winter-ripening berries are useful to drink before you ‘set to drink hard’ because it will ‘preserve from drunkenness’. And, moreover, the leaves (bruised and boiled) and dropped into the same wine you had a ‘surfeit’ of the night before provides the ‘speediest cure’. (The Perpetual Almanac of Charles Kightly)

Henry Mayhew (editor of Punch) in his ‘London Labour and London Poor’ (1851–62) talks of Christmasing for Laurel, Ivy, Holly, and Mistletoe. He calculated that 250,000 branches of Holly were purchased from street coster mongers every Christmas. He says that every housekeeper will expend something from 2d to 1s 6d, while the poor buy a pennyworth or halfpennyworth each. He says that every room will have the cheery decoration of holly. St Pauls Cathedral would take 50 to a 100 shillings worth.

He also calculates that 100,000 plum puddings are eaten. Mistletoe he believes is less often used than it used to be, and he hopes that ‘No Popery’ campaigners will not attack Christmassing again.

Hot plum pudding seller from Sam Syntax Cries of London 1820s from the Gentle Author Spitalfields Life web site
Hot plum pudding seller from Sam Syntax Cries of London, 1820s
from the Gentle Author Spitalfields Life website

Culpeper on Ivy (1814 edition):

It is so well known to every child almost, to grow in woods upon the trees, and upon the stone walls of churches, houses, &c. and sometimes to grow alone of itself, though but seldom.

Time. It flowers not until July, and the berries are not ripe until Christmas, when they have felt Winter frosts.

Government and virtues. It is under the dominion of Saturn. A pugil of the flowers, which may be about a dram, (saith Dioscorides) drank twice a day in red wine, helps the lask, and bloody flux. It is an enemy to the nerves and sinews, being much taken inwardly, out very helpful to them, being outwardly applied. Pliny saith, the yellow berries are good against the jaundice; and taken before one be set to drink hard, preserves from drunkenness, and helps those that spit blood; and that the white berries being taken inwardly, or applied outwardly, kills the worms in the belly. The berries are a singular remedy to prevent the plague, as also to free them from it that have got it, by drinking the berries thereof made into a powder, for two or three days together. They being taken in wine, do certainly help to break the stone, provoke urine, and women’s courses. The fresh leaves of Ivy, boiled in vinegar, and applied warm to the sides of those that are troubled with the spleen, ache, or stitch in the sides, do give much ease. The same applied with some Rosewater, and oil of Roses, to the temples and forehead, eases the head-ache, though it be of long continuance. The fresh leaves boiled in wine, and old filthy ulcers hard to be cured washed therewith, do wonderfully help to cleanse them. It also quickly heals green wounds, and is effectual to heal all burnings and scaldings, and all kinds of exulcerations coming thereby, or by salt phlegm or humours in other parts of the body. The juice of the berries or leaves snuffed up into the nose, purges the head and brain of thin rheum that makes defluxions into the eyes and nose, and curing the ulcers and stench therein; the same dropped into the ears helps the old and running sores of them; those that are troubled with the spleen shall find much ease by continual drinking out of a cup made of Ivy, so as the drink may stand some small time therein before it be drank. Cato saith, That wine put into such a cup, will soak through it, by reason of the antipathy that is between them.

There seems to be a very great antipathy between wine and Ivy; for if one hath got a surfeit by drinking of wine, his speediest cure is to drink a draught of the same wine wherein a handful of Ivy leaves, being first bruised, have been boiled.

Happy Eponalia

Roman Horse from Bunwell, Norfolk. Illustration by Sue Walker.

In 2021 I posted about Eponalia for the 18th Dec but I have now added it here and this is what I said:

I’ve been too busy working on my Jane Austen and Christmas Virtual Tour (I have just done that again this year) to post over the last few days. And I have, therefore, shamelessly stolen this post off my Facebook friend Sue Walker, who is a talented archaeological illustrator, artist and a very good photographer.

She wrote: ‘the 18th December is the festival of the Celtic goddess Epona, the protector of horses, she was adopted by the Romans and became a favourite with the cavalry. This finely sculpted bronze horse with a head dress and symbol on its chest is 37mm high – found in Bunwell #Norfolk #Archaeology’

https://www.complete-herbal.com/culpepper/ivy.htm

First published on December 17th 2022, Revised and republished December 2023

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Trotty Veck, the Chimes and Charles Dickens’ Christmas Books December 16th

Dickens character Trotty Veck waits to run a message
Trotty Veck 1889 Dickens The Chimes by Kyd (Joseph Clayton Clarke)

As Christmas looms, seasonal publications have a mixture of wonder and joy at the coming family reunions and festivities mingled with an awareness that, for some, Christmas will depend on the Food Bank or the Charity Shelter. The weather is now cold, living costs continue to rise at the very time extra spending is needed to unlock the joy of the Season, and to counter the dark, the cold and the spectre of death which, in fact, has always been central to the season of winter.

Charles Dickens’ Christmas Books epitomise this dichotomy and adding an element of the supernatural, provided a vehicle for joy and hope, but with a forceful political message that the authorities and the rich were not doing their Christian duty to alleviate poverty. Christmas Carol contrasts the wealth of a mean rich Stockbroker with the family of his poor employee Bob Cratchit, and provides a powerful tale of redemption.

But in this post I want to concentrate on his second Christmas Book, ‘The Chimes’. It was published on December 16th, 1844. It tells the story of the stick-thin Trotty Veck who is an aged City messenger, nicknamed Trotty because of his habit of keeping himself warm by running on the spot. He is afraid to let his daughter, Meg, to marry as he has so little hope for the future. While he is worrying, he, Meg and her intended Richard are approached by Alderman Cute and Mr Filer.

Cute represents the financial industries in the City of London and the Law. Filer the new breed of political economists. These, working with the idea of Malthus and the new science of Statistics, had proved, that generous support for the poor would, inevitably, lead to a country full of poor people and no rich people. And thus, they justified the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1832 which Dickens observed as a Parliamentary reporter (1831-1834). This set up the cruel Workhouse system which provided the lowest possible level of support offering separation from family, meagre food, and sparse comforts to encourage them to stop being lazy and get back out there to earn their own living and allow taxes to fall. (brilliantly satirised by Dickens’ Oliver Twist, asking for ‘More’).

Meg, Richard, Mr Filer, Gentleman, Alderman Cute and Trotty Veck. Probably located by the door of St Nicholas, Colechurch, City of London.

Below, I enclose the scene from the Chimes, which satirises the attitude of the governing classes.

‘And you’re making love to her, are you?’ said Cute to the young smith.

‘Yes,’ returned Richard quickly, for he was nettled by the question.
‘And we are going to be married on New Year’s Day.’

‘What do you mean!’ cried Filer sharply?Enough  ‘Married!’

‘Why, yes, we’re thinking of it, Master,’ said Richard.  ‘We’re rather in a hurry, you see, in case it should be Put Down first.’

‘Ah!’ cried Filer, with a groan.  ‘Put that down indeed, Alderman, and you’ll do something.  Married!  Married!!  The ignorance of the first principles of political economy on the part of these people; their improvidence; their wickedness; is, by Heavens! enough to—Now look at that couple, will you!’

...

‘A man may live to be as old as Methuselah,’ said Mr. Filer, ‘and may
labour all his life for the benefit of such people as those; and may heap up facts on figures, facts on figures, facts on figures, mountains high and dry; and he can no more hope to persuade ’em that they have no right or business to be married, than he can hope to persuade ’em that they have no earthly right or business to be born.  And that we know they haven’t.  We reduced it to a mathematical certainty long ago!’

Alderman Cute was mightily diverted, and laid his right forefinger on the side of his nose, as much as to say to both his friends, ‘Observe me, will you!  Keep your eye on the practical man!’—and called Meg to him. 

...

‘Now, I’m going to give you a word or two of good advice, my girl,’ said the Alderman, in his nice easy way.  ‘It’s my place to give advice, you know, because I’m a Justice. ...

‘You are going to be married, you say,’ pursued the Alderman.  ‘Very
unbecoming and indelicate in one of your sex!  But never mind that.
After you are married, you’ll quarrel with your husband and come to be a distressed wife.  You may think not; but you will, because I tell you so. Now, I give you fair warning, that I have made up my mind to Put distressed wives Down.  So, don’t be brought before me.  

You’ll have children—boys.  Those boys will grow up bad, of course, and run wild in the streets, without shoes and stockings.  Mind, my young friend!  I’ll convict ’em summarily, every one, for I am determined to Put boys without shoes and stockings, Down.  Perhaps your husband will die young (most likely) and leave you with a baby.  Then you’ll be turned out of doors, and wander up and down the streets.  Now, don’t wander near me, my dear, for I am resolved, to Put all wandering mothers Down.  All young mothers,of all sorts and kinds, it’s my determination to Put Down.  Don’t think
to plead illness as an excuse with me; or babies as an excuse with me;
for all sick persons and young children (I hope you know the
church-service, but I’m afraid not) I am determined to Put Down.  

And if you attempt, desperately, and ungratefully, and impiously, and
fraudulently attempt, to drown yourself, or hang yourself, I’ll have no pity for you, for I have made up my mind to Put all suicide Down!  If there is one thing,’ said the Alderman, with his self-satisfied smile, ‘on which I can be said to have made up my mind more than on another, it is to Put suicide Down.  So don’t try it on.  That’s the phrase, isn’t it?  Ha, ha! now we understand each other.’

Project Gutenberg - The Chimes by Charles Dickens

It is a savage burlesque of a satire but at its core, Filer provides the economic/statistical justification. Cute enforces it by legal harassment of the poor. Dickens was writing after a recent introduction of legislation making suicide a punishable offence.

This has a contemporary resonance. During my lifetime, the first British Government to be cruel in its provision, in my opinion, for the poor was Teresa May’s Conservative Government. Her laws made getting help so difficult that people died as a result of the deliberately difficult system. ‘I, Daniel Blake’ a 2016 film by Ken Loach brilliantly captured the essence of this system. That government’s treatment of the Windrush generation was a similar example of bureaucratic cruelty. And the continual decline of the benefit system over the 14 years of Conservative Government meant that the poor have borne the brunt of austerity.

The piece above reminds us what a brilliant propagandist Dickens was. Every generation of children, since he wrote Christmas Carol, has read it or seen it in popular retellings such as The Muppet Movie. I think it could be argued that the ‘More’ scene in Oliver Twist and the Christmas Carol have made the case for compassionate care and redemption far better than contemporary Christianity or political parties.

In the Chimes. these two men discourage Trotty from letting the young ones marry. He has a dream and sees the hopeless result of his decision: suicide, prostitution, crime. When he wakes up, he realises that what they do have is hope. Hope springs eternal and he lets them marry.

For more on this scene, have a look at the Victorian Web

Dickens was not a socialist. ‘Hard Times’ shows that Dickens was against strikes, despite leading a strike when he was a young newspaper man. He was a free trade Liberal; a reformer who believed that the rich needed to do their Christian duty and provide charitable support, pay decent wages and look after their dependents and servants. He thought society should care less about the dogma of Christianity but look to its essence, ‘love your neighbour like yourself’. This, alone, was sufficient to right the wrongs caused by the selfish.

First Published on December 16th 2022, republished and revised in December 2023, 2024

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St. Lucy & Eye Care through the Ages December 14th

Medieval Cataract Surgery – calling couching.

So, yesterday, you, being someone worried about your eyes, might have sought out an altar dedicated to St Lucy, the patron saint of eye health. (see December 13th’s Post on St Lucy) Although you may be disappointed that there has been no miraculous cure, you might have been encouraged to do something about it. So that’s what this post is about.

Cataract operations have been carried out since 800 BC using a method called ‘couching’.

“The practitioner would sit facing the patient and pass a long needle through the cornea to impale the lens. “He would then forcibly dislodge the lens — rupturing the zonules — and push it into the vitreous cavity, where it would hopefully float to the bottom of the eye and out of the visual axis.”

Evolution of Cataract Surgery.

This was a last resort when the cataract was opaque and the patients nearly blind. It would mean they would need very thick lenses to see well again but, crude as it seems, it worked. But the operation, without anaesthetics must have been a considerable ordeal, and the recovery (still required today for those suffering from a displaced retina) means that the patient has to lie on their back for a week with supports on either side of the head to prevent movement. Of course, there was also a serious risk of infection, so prophylactic visits to a chapel of St Lucy would be called for.

The modern system was established in the 1940s and offers a great solution in 15 minutes surgery. Currently, the NHS has been having trouble dealing with all the cases required, (6% of surgery is for cataract operations. Before COVID-19, there was some talk about cataracts being, in practice, not readily available on the NHS. The waiting time is supposed to be 18 weeks but, for example, at NHS Chesterfield Royal Hospital the waiting time approaches almost 10 months. But waiting times vary from 10 weeks to over a year.

Pink Eye

The Perpetual Calendar of Folklore by Charles Kightly has dug up some other folk cures of interest.

For the redness of eyes, or bloodshot. Take red wine, rosewater, and women’s milk, and mingle all these together: and put a piece of wheaten bread leavened, as much as will cover the eye, and lay it in the mixture. When you go to bed, lay the bread upon your eyes calmer and it will help them.

Fairfax Household book, 17th/ 18th century.

There are many household books still, existing, which show that much of medical practice was carried out in the home, and that men and women, more often women, actively not only collected useful recipes and cures, but also tested them out and improved them.

As a matter of curiosity, there is a significant document found at the Roman Fort of Vindolanda which lists the troops of the Cohort in occupation, which notes that of the garrison of 750, 474 are absent with 276 in the fort of which 38 are sick, 10 with ‘pink eye’, probably conjunctivitis

Prevention is better than cure

Things hurtful to the eyes. Garlic, onions, radish, drunkenness, lechery, sweet wines, salt meats, coleworts, dust, smoke, and reading presently after supper.

Good for the eyes. fennel, celandine, eyebright, vervain, roses, cloves and cold water.

Whites Almanack 1627

Looking through Samuel Pepys’s eye

You will note, above, that it was considered bad for the eyes to read in low light. It is a myth and not true. Samuel Pepys was continually worried about his reading and writing habits ruining his eyesight. This is an extract from the poignant last entry in his famous diary:

And thus ends all that I doubt I should ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my journal, I being not able to do it any longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and therefore, whatever comes of it, I must forbear: and therefore resolve from this time forward to have it kept by my people in long-hand. I must be consented to sit down no more than is fit for them and all the world to know; or, if they be anything, which cannot be much now my amores are past and my eyes hindering me almost all other pleasures. I must endeavour to keep a margin in my book open, to add, here and there, a note in shorthand with my own hand.

Samuel Pepys Diary, May 31st

The sad thing is that Pepys had another 38 years before he went blind, and what glorious diary entries have we missed because of his false fears of the effect of eye strain.

St Lucy

There are only two churches in the UK dedicated to St Lucy or St Lucia. One run by the National Trust in Upton Magna, Shropshire, but there must have been a few chapels in Cathedrals and Abbeys dedicated to her.

First published in 2022, updates 2023, and 2024