Custom contrived: Slaithwaite Moonraker festival

Slaithwaite is a village much many others in the west Yorkshire area except that through the middle is a canal which is the source of a much heard legend which records the actions of smugglers called moonrakers.

Moonshine?

An account on the Slaithwaite Moonrakers website records the origins of the legend:

“It all started around 1802 when the Slaithwaite Canal was built. As usual, when there are ships there are smugglers, and canal barges are ships of a sort aren’t they. Some of the bargees used to smuggle all sorts of things up the canal. Mostly rum and whisky and other things that had duty on them, and times were hard on the local estate in 1802, so they employed customs men to try and catch the smugglers. Despite this, the chances of getting caught if you were a smart cookie were not very high, and the profits could be so good that many villagers took the risk to make a few bob.”

The said story relates that some rum had been hidden in the reeds:  
“They has just started to rake it out, when a shaft of moonlight pierced the clouds and illuminated the scene. Unknown to Ken, some customs men were secretly keeping watch, having been tipped off by a jealous villager. When the moonlight lit up the scene, one of the customs men shouted ‘What are you lot doing?’ Uncle Fred was quite a quick thinker and as he noticed the Moon reflected on the water, he replied ‘Are you blind? Can’t you see that the Moon has fallen into the water. and we’re trying to rake her out before she drowns!’ Well, the customs men looked at each other and burst out laughing. “Moon fallen in the water! A right lot of Moonrakers you are!” said one.”

Shine on Slaithwaite moon

Roll forward to 1985 and some thought it would be a great idea to commemorate these smugglers with local children making lanterns of all shapes and sizes and following various themes from space in 1989 to vegetables in 2001. The efforts are remarkable and they really light up the street and the faces of those who see them. The Huddersfield examiner summed it up well in 2018:

“In February, people in the community are invited to be creative by being taught to make lanterns, using withy, tissue and glue. For the last festival, 1,500 individual sessions in lantern making were organised. It usually takes at least two sessions to make a lantern.”

The article goes on to describe:

“On the last Saturday of half term all assemble in the village centre with their lanterns. The Moon, which is around 2.5 metres tall, comes floating down the canal on his Moon Barge, and is hoisted out onto dry land by a huge crane, to music and fireworks. He is carried round the village by his gnomes, accompanied by assorted street bands and a large crowd, many carrying lanterns. The parade then heads back to the canal, where the Moon is celebrated by a Finale and Fireworks show.”

Once in a two moon!

The custom has been established to be biennial but 2021 would have been a year for it but sadly like every other custom the pandemic stopped the parade but did not stop the spirit of the custom and it adapted. It was called the Moonshine project where local people did artwork to be placed in the window. In 2021 people in the village lit up their windows so people who appreciate some brightening up those cold and dark February nights when they did they nightly exercise.  It was a great way to continue the community spirit that such customs are designed for.

Custom survived: Eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday

A few years back I was invited to be involved in a Shrove Tuesday live radio broadcast from the Nottinghamshire village of Linby. The aim was to discuss why we ate pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and I’ll explain why in a moment.

The association of pancakes with Shrove Tuesday is unlike perhaps any food associated with a calendar day – Christmas has cakes, mince pies and puddings (and much else I would add), Easter – hot cross buns, biscuits and Simnel cakes – but Shrove Tuesday is really only associated with one type of food. This association having become so great that the actual day is slowly morphing into Pancake day, divorced from its Christian origin and in a way devoid of any sense (or lacking not making any sense) of why it would be so associated.

Of course this metamorphosis is purely a commercial enterprise – which appears to have almost completed its aim. When the Pancake day stamp arose is difficult to work out but certainly by the 1980s adverts,  in the main associated with lemon juice, the secularisation was becoming well established.

But why Pancakes in the first place?

Tossing up the origin

Well this brings us back to why I was in Linby where it is said that the custom begun. However, the earliest reference I can find is by a H. E. P. Stuffynwood, near Mansfield in Notes & Queries 2nd S. vol. vii. 1859:

“There is a curious tradition existing in Mansfield, Woodhouse, Bulwell, and several other villages near Sherwood Forest, as to the origin of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. The inhabitants of any of the villages will inform the questioner that when the Danes got to Linby all the Saxon men of the neighbouring villages ran off into the forest, and the Danes took the Saxon women to keep house for them. This happened just before Lent, and the Saxon women, encouraged by their fugitive lords, resolved to massacre their Danish masters on Ash Wednesday. Every woman who agreed to do this was to bake pancakes for this meal on Shrove Tuesday as a kind of pledge to fulfil her vow. This was done, and that the massacre of the Danes did take place on Ash Wednesday is a well-known historical fact. In addition, the villagers will tell you that in this part of the country there were no red haired people before the Danes came; that all were either fair, or black haired before that time. Thinking this tradition as to the origin of pancakes sufficiently curious to be worth preserving, I venture to send it to ” N. & Q.” in the hopes that it may find a place somewhere in the pages of your valuable journal.”

In sort it seems very unlikely even if there was some veracity in the claim that the Linby legend spawned our long association between pancakes and Shrove Tuesday least of all that it cannot be proved it was on the said day.

A race for the origins

What is more evident is that making a pancake would use up the staples which were not part of the fast – namely dairy, eggs, fat and flour.

Certainly the name of Pancake Day for Shrove Tuesday was nothing new. Pancakes features in children’s rhymes at Shrove Tuesday from Skegby Stanton Hill Girl’s school. Nottinghamshire, the local children had a rhyme in the 1900s:

“Pancake day, pancake day if you don’t give us a holiday we’ll all run away. Where shell we run? Down Skegby Lane, here comes the teacher with the big fat cane”

To 1842 in Cornwall:

“Nicka, nicka nan ; Give me some pancake, and then I’ll be gone.”

In 1849 in Devonshire

“Lent Crock, give a pancake, Or a fritter, for my labour.”

And ad nauseum. Similarly, an interesting lost Shrove Tuesday tradition is recorded at Aspley Hall, which may have been more common countrywide. It is noted that the Lord and Lady of the manor would:                                

“provide batter and lard, fire, and frying pans, for all the poor families of Wollaton, Trowell and Cossall, who chose to come and eat their pancakes at his honour’s mansion, The only conditions attached to the feast were, that no quarrelling should take place, and that each wife and mother should fry for her own family, and that when the cake needed turning in the pan, the act should be performed by tossing it in the air and catching it again in the pan with the uncooked side downwards…”

One early origin is in Thomas Tusser’s Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry from 1620 which refers to the separate custom of feeding the first pancake to the hen. However custom magpie Thistleton-Dwyer again comes up with a solution to when it arose. Firstly he states that:

“In connection with the custom of eating pancakes on this day, Fosbroke in his Encyclopaedia of Antiquities (vol. ii. p. 572) says that ” Pancakes, the ” Pancakes, the Norman Crispellae,, are taken from the Fornacalia, on Feb. 18th, in memory of the practice in use before the goddess Fornax invented ovens.”

More significantly perhaps for Linby’s claims he then states:

“The Saxons called February ‘Solmonath,’ which Dr. F. Sayers, in his Disquisitions, says is explained by Bede’s ‘Mensis Placentarum,’ and rendered by Spelman, in an inedited MS., ‘Pancake month’ because in the course of it cakes were offered by the Pagan Saxons to the Sun.”

Whilst it does not mention the Linby story it does place the origins in the same period of time. However, in Robert Thompson Hampson’s  1841 Medii Ævi Kalendarium: Or, Dates, Charters, and Customs of the Middle Ages, Volume 1 is originally Swedish pankaka, an omelette but it has been absurdly derived from the Greek words for all bad in reference to the penitents at confession. If it does have such an origin I am sure that those originators would be amazed to see how the pancake has blossomed and continues to bear fruit in the 20^th and 21^st century and take over the day.

So in all it is difficult when to exactly to say why when pancakes became a staple all I know is that every year I think to myself I enjoyed those why don’t I have more often than once a year!?

Custom demised: Meltham Collop Monday Penny Scramble

This was a little known lost custom which existed in Meltham near Huddlesfield and apparently unique to there. This was a distribution of new pennies a sort of penny scramble on Collop Monday. The custom is first described in an 1929 edition of the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer 

“Collop Monday.

“Collop Monday” was observed at Meltham, near Huddersfield, yesterday, by giving a newly minted penny to each child who appeared at the gates of Meltham Mills, and later by scattering further coins to an assembly of the young. I nearly assembled myself, but I am afraid it would not have been much use.”

The article goes on to say that:

“Formerly the children made the round of the village, saying, “Pray, dame, a collop or a halfpenny” at each house. But this has been dropped, and the scattering of shining new pence has taken its place. “

Apparently, the custom begun in 1881 by a Mr Edward Brook and was continued after his death in 1904 by his son. It would appear that he can adopted it from other penny scrambles which existed in the town such as at Whitsun. This custom however begun with the distribution of the coins from a leather pouch and then thrown to be scrambled for!  It was clearly popular with the local children as the money could be used to pay for sweets.

The article continues:

“The custom was begun in 1881 by the late Mr. Edward Brook and has been continued since his death in 1904 by his son, Lieut.-Col. Charles Brook. He, however, was absent yesterday, and so his son, Capt. Edward Wm. Brook — who was equerry to the Duke of Gloucester on his recent big game hunting expedition — came to the rescue. Among those present was Mr. John Pogson, foreman joiner at the Mills, who has been present at the ceremony ever since it started, and who has 66 years of working life to his credit.”

An article in the Leed’s Mercury of the same year stated that:

“There is thought for the less burly, too, for before the scattering each child who comes to the works gates receives one of the bright coppers.

But the scrambling provides the real adventure. One or two who would have departed without participating in the riotous joy were rebuked by their colleagues.”

The Leed’s Mercury notes;

“A Happy Crowd.

From a substantial bag, akin to that one sees on racecourses, Captain Brook hurled aloft the pennies, and the crowd surged forward and dashed back with screams of laughter, pushing, plunging and raiding to get the benefit of the shining shower.

Captain Brook was very judicious. Small girls, looking on wistfully, had a shower — several showers — for their special benefit, and one got the impression that only the very lazy or the hopelessly unlucky failed to augment their original capital.

Mr. John Pogson, who is 75, and has worked for 66 years at Meltham Mills, supervised the distribution. He has seen the pennies thrown for fifty years, and his patriarchal beard and paper workman’s can were a picturesque touch.

With his eyes alight with fun, John told me that the custom of scattering coins among children dates back to the period when the Israelites emerged from Egypt in bondage. At any rate there is something jolly and old-world about the business they carry it through in this pleasant Yorkshire village.”

A great glimpse can be felt in the article in the Yorkshire Evening Post from 1938:

“Miniature rugby scrums took place all over the road, the bruised knees and hacked shins were speedily forgotten in the rush for possession.

Tiny tots hardly the size of “threepenn’orth o’ copper,” as one villager described them, fought with as much determination and vigour as the older children, and they seemed almost to enjoy being sat on and stamped on as they rushed to the bottom of the scrum.

Some of the lads are proud of the records they have set up at these Meltham scrambles. I spot to one who picked up a dozen pennies this morning. Others said that on previous occasions they had collected 27 and 30 pennies respectively.

The boys, incidentally, do not have it all their own way, and some of the lassies of Meltham had a very successful morning“

It is not clear how long the Mills continued the custom but clearly understanding that one penny could become two in the hands of the parents perhaps by the time of the Second World War, it was the local shopkeepers who began handing out free sweets to children on the day. Sadly little is reported of the custom but what is remarkable is that it is reported to have continued up until the early 1990s by Mrs Annie Woodhead who ran a newsagents in the market square. Why it then died out is unclear but with her the last of this local scramble and the longest public association with collop Monday died out!