Folklore of Sussex

by Jacqueline Simpson

  Man, if you will believe us in advising you for your own good, all you that have the least hand in trying to prevent the fire and fireworks in the town would best come off, for it is determined between us to have a fire of some sort, so if you will not agree to let us have it in peace and quietness, with wood and faggots, we must certainly make a fire of some of your houses, for we don’t think it a bit more sin to set your houses afire, and burn you in your beds, than it is to drink when one is thirsty. We don’t do this to make a talk and chavash [i.e. chatter] about Town only, but so sure as it is wrote on paper, so sure by God Almighty we are in earnest. For we should desire no better diversion than to stand at a distance and see your houses all in flames. Gentlemen, we shall take no money nor anything else to go out of the Square, for this is the place we have fixed upon.

  In Worthing in 1852 there was a clash on South Street between the police and Bonfire Boys rolling tar barrels down to the beach; according to the Sussex Agricultural Express, this turned into ‘a violent and tumultuous row, in which many of the ill-conducted portions of the mob assailed the police with missiles and filth of every description.’ In 1859, also in Worthing, the revels took an ugly turn; a large effigy of a local Anglo-Catholic clergyman was paraded and burned, and the home of a rich man was seriously damaged by the crowds, who blamed him for the suicide of a servant he had dismissed. Battles with the Worthing police grew even wilder in the 1870s, until in the 1880s the authorities backed off, leaving the Bonfire Club to regulate the event themselves, after which there was little trouble.

  But episodes of anger and violence do not tell the whole story. For the most part, the Bonfire Night celebrations were thoroughly good-humoured, though extremely noisy. In many towns they were organised by several gangs of ‘Bonfire Boys’, each of which would head a carnival parade of men in fancy costumes, waving torches, dragging tar-barrels, and carrying Guys. Some Guys were huge, ten or twelve feet tall. On their way to the site of the bonfire, these processions would sometimes halt so that one of their leaders could deliver mock speeches denouncing unpopular politicians or foreign enemies, these being often identified with the Guys. The political element was particularly strong at Lewes, and it was there, more than anywhere else, that the anti-Catholic significance of the day was kept alive. Lewes had been the scene of the deaths of seventeen Protestant martyrs, burned to death in the days of Mary Tudor; consequently there was a marked streak of religious bitterness in its Bonfire Night celebrations until quite recent times, with speeches denouncing Popery delivered by mock ‘Bishops’ in surplice and gown. The traditional Guy Fawkes verses, elsewhere often shortened, would certainly be chanted there in their fullest version:

  Remember, remember, the Fifth of November,

  Gunpowder, treason and plot;

  I see no reason why gunpowder treason

  Ever should be forgot.

  Guy Fawkes, Guy, ’twas his intent

  To blow up the King and the Parliament;

  Three score barrels he laid below

  To prove old England’s overthrow.

  By God’s Providence he was catched

  With a dark lantern and lighted match.

  Holla, boys, holla, boys, make the bells ring!

  Holla, boys, holla, boys, God save the King!

  A farthing loaf to feed old Pope,

  A pennorth o’ cheese to choke him,

  A pint o’ beer to wash it down,

  And a faggot o’ wood to burn him!

  Burn him in a tub o’ tar,

  Burn him like a blazing star,

  Burn his body from his head,

  And then we’ll say old Pope is dead!

  Hip, hip, hooray!

  Such were the highly organised revels in the larger towns. But the villages had, and still have, their more informal celebrations. Occasionally these included curious little customs, archaic and inexplicable, which may serve to remind us that November bonfires are a very ancient ritual, far older than Guy Fawkes. Thus at Slaugham in the 1890s, the fire was always built up round a tall, stout green post, specially chosen so that it would char but not burn; it was called ‘the scrag’. When the fire had died down, the scrag would be uprooted and carried away on men’s shoulders; it would be taken to each of the two local pubs, and at each would be ‘sold’ for drinks – but what became of it in the end, we are told, ‘was wropped in mystery’.

  All in all, 5 November is a great day in Sussex. It is not surprising that the Hastings and Brighton fishermen, noting that shoals of herrings make their appearance off our coast at about this season, should declare that they come close inshore to see the bonfires. Similarly, the sprats, which appear slightly later, are said to come to see the Lord Mayor’s Show in London on the 9th.

  The next November date significant in folklore was Martinmas, the 11th, which since 1918 has been totally overshadowed by Armistice Day. At one time, however, it was quite important, particularly as a date for paying customary rents. There were also beliefs connecting it with the weather; thus it was said that there was usually a warm spell at this time, and if by any chance there was frost instead, this indicated that the rest of the winter would be abnormally mild:

  If there’s ice at Martinmas will bear a duck,

  There’ll be nothing after but sludge and muck.

  A variant of this rhyme refers to ‘Hallowtide’, but whether this means 1 November, or, with allowance for the calendar change, 11 November, is not clear:

  If ducks do slide at Hallowtide,

  At Christmas they will swim.

  St Clement’s Day, 23 November, was the particular festival of all blacksmiths; they claimed him as their patron because he is said to have been martyred by being tied to an anchor and drowned. The forges were all closed, and early in the morning the smiths would ‘fire’ their anvils, to the delight of children, and the considerable alarm of horses. To do this, they put a little gunpowder in the hollow of the anvil, and lit it with a slow fuse. The noise of the explosion was meant to frighten off all evil spirits. The smiths would then go to a church service to ask a blessing on themselves and their tools, and in the evening would gather in some local inn to celebrate ‘Old Clem’; the main dish would be a roast leg of pork, stuffed with sage and onions, and known as ‘way-goose’, and there would of course be drink in plenty.

  In some villages and towns the smiths used at one time to make an effigy of their patron saint, representing him as an old man in a brown robe, with beard, wig, and clay pipe, and this they would set up at the door of the inn while their feast was in progress. In Brighton the custom was kept up only till the 1840s, but at Burwash, Steyning and Bramber it was still practised much later in the century; in 1926 Arthur Beckett described a conversation he had with an old woman from Bramber, who told him:

  We uster have some proper fun wi’ Old Clem, I can tell ’ee. The boys made a figure which was meant for Old Clem, with a wig an’ beard an’ pipe in his’n mouth, just as if ’twere a real man. Then they put un in a chair, an’ after firing off their anvils, they carried un round to all the houses, an’ axed for apples an’ beer. Arter they done that, they took the figure of Old Clem to the public, an’ put un up agin the door while they had supper. A proper bit o’ fun it was, to be sure.

  Alternatively, one of the smiths himself might dress up as Old Clem and have himself carried in procession, enthroned on a chair and armed with a wooden hammer and anvil, while his mates carried various tools, and the procession was headed by a drummer.

  Their feast was enlivened by toasts to various famous smiths of ancient times – to Tubal-Cain, mentioned in Genesis 4, to Vulcan, and of course to Old Clem himself. The toast to Vulcan was ironical:

  Here’s to Vulcan, as bold as a lion;

  A large shop and no iron,

  A big hearth and no coals,

  And a large pair of bellowses, all full of holes.

  The proceedings invariably included a hearty rendering of the ‘blacksmiths’ anthem’, variously known as ‘
Old Cole’ or as ‘Twanky Dillo’, of which the first verse and chorus run:

  Here’s health to the jolly blacksmith,

  The best of all fellows,

  Who works at his anvil

  While the boy blows the bellows,

  For it makes his bright hammer to rise and to fall,

  Says the Old Cole to the Young Cole to the Old Cole of all –

  Twanky dillo, twanky dillo, dillo, dillo,

  Dillo, dillo, dillo,

  With a roaring pair of bagpipes made from the green willow.

  The blacksmiths, always very conscious of the prestige of their ancient and highly skilled craft, had a legend which served at the same time to explain the origin of the St Clement’s Day feast and to enhance their own status. The tale was told to Miss Candlin by a blacksmith from Steyning:

  When King Alfred was on the throne, he called together all the tradesmen, and told them to elect one of their number to be king of the trades. There were then only seven trades, and a member of each was to attend at a certain time, complete with one of his tools and the product of his craft.

  The blacksmith came with a horseshoe and a hammer; the baker with a loaf and his peel; the shoemaker with a new pair of shoes and an awl; the carpenter brought a deal bunk and his saw; the butcher a joint of meat and a chopper; the mason his chisel and a cornerstone; and the tailor, having always been an artful dodger, brought his scissors, and dressed himself in a new suit fit for a king.

  When the rest of the traders saw the tailor, they at once voted him to be king, seeing that he was dressed for the part. All, that is, but the blacksmith. He knew without any manner of doubt who was fit for king, and in high dudgeon he exclaimed, ‘You will see who is king when you break your tools! I won’t mend them all the while that silly man is king!’ And with that he went off and closed his forge, and all the other forges in the land.

  Soon the men began to break their tools, and when King Alfred’s own horse cast a shoe, it was really more than a joke. In desperation the men decided to break open the forge and to mend their own tools. But things went wrong right at the start. As the king began to shoe his horse and the tailor to mend his shears, the horse kicked the king and the tailor hit his thumb. The butcher lost his temper and pushed the baker. The baker pushed the shoemaker and the shoemaker pushed the carpenter. The carpenter pushed the tailor, and he, having no one else to push, fell against the anvil, which toppled over and exploded.

  The noise brought the blacksmith to the door, and also St Clement, whose birthday it was. When the saint saw what a mess things were in, he tried to persuade the blacksmith to mend their tools. At last he relented, and did the work. The other tradesmen then said they had made a terrible mistake, and begged the blacksmith to be their king. The saint gave them his blessing, and because things had ended so amicably invited them all to a feast. At the feast everyone was in good form, except the tailor, whose nose was a bit out of joint, and while the rest were enjoying themselves he crawled under the table and snipped away at the bottom of the blacksmith’s apron. That is why, to this day, a blacksmith has a fringe at the bottom of his leather apron.

  As has already been noted, the blacksmiths of Steyning and Bramber took occasion of this feast to go from house to house ‘to ask for apples and beer’. This custom, known as ‘clemmening’, was often kept up by children in places where the smith had discarded it; alternatively, they might go round two days later, on St Catherine’s Day (25 November), in which case they called it ‘catterning’. The children asked for ‘apples and pears’ rather than ‘apples and beer’, but the verse used was otherwise the same:

  Cattern and Clemen be here, here, here,

  Give us your apples and give us your beer [or pears];

  One for Peter, two for Paul,

  Three for Him who made us all.

  Clemen was a good man,

  Cattern was his mother.

  Give us your best,

  And not your worst,

  And God give your soul good rest.

  They would then be given fruit, nuts, cakes or sweets.

  The last of the November saints is Andrew, with his feast on the 30th. Early in the nineteenth century, the bricklayers used to take their annual holiday on this day, and would go in gangs into the woods to hunt squirrels and other small animals by the primitive but effective method of stunning them with short, stout sticks; this they called ‘going St Andring’. Afterwards, they went to an inn for a celebratory supper and drinking session. The dead squirrels were taken home to be eaten. This rather brutal custom grew rare in the course of the century, not out of consideration for squirrels, but because more land was enclosed as game preserves, and the gamekeepers did not relish the disorderly incursions of the bricklayers. But even so, the squirrel hunts lasted surprisingly long; one writer describing Mayfield in 1903 evidently knew of the custom, though on a different date, since when commenting on the disappearance of cock-throwing, he added, ‘Would that the custom of squirrel hunting on Good Friday were also numbered among the things of the past!’

  To turn to pleasanter subjects, the last Sunday before Advent has long been known, and still is, as ‘Stir-up Sunday’. The collect for the day begins ‘Stir up, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the hearts of Thy faithful people…’ and this was jokingly associated with the idea that it was time for the housewives to prepare the mixtures for the Christmas puddings and pies, if they were to have time to grow rich and mellow by waiting. So, on the way home, the children sang:

  Stir up, we beseech thee,

  The pudding in the pot,

  And when we get home,

  We’ll eat it all hot.

  Next day, the grocers’ windows would be filled with raisins, currants, spices, almonds, dried fruit, and all the other ingredients needed, and the women would set about their task. The actual stirring of these mixtures was a pleasant family ritual in which everyone took part. When they were already partially blended, everyone would be called in to help stir – mother first, then father, then the children in order of age, then all other members of the household, including servants, if any. Even babies stirred; the author has been informed that she stirred her first Christmas pudding in 1931, at the age of one. The way it was done was important; one must use a wooden spoon and turn it sunwise, from left to right – some say, because Christ’s manger was of wood and because the Magi travelled sunwise as they searched for Bethlehem. And one should stir silently, with one’s eyes shut, and make a secret wish.

  The mince-pie mixture was also made in the week after Stir-up Sunday, and it too had some legends attached to it. For instance, many women put a little powdered rosemary into the mincemeat (which at one time included real meat, as well as fruit and spices) because of the tale that when Mary fled into Egypt with her Child, a rosemary bush by the wayside held out its branches for her to hang out the baby’s clothes to dry on. At one time, too, the pies were baked in special little oblong tins with rounded corners, representing a cradle – no true Sussex cook would have made a round mince pie! The spicy filling represented the gifts of the Magi. And as for the eating of these pies, that is a subject to be considered under December.

  DECEMBER

  This month was, naturally, dominated by the approach of Christmas, but just before that great day there is another feast that was once of importance to the poorer sections of the community – St Thomas’ Day, 21 December, popularly known as Gooding Day, or, sometimes, Doling Day or Mumping Day (‘mumping’ being an old slang word for ‘begging’). As M.A. Lower says, writing in 1861:

  Formerly, the old women of every parish went from house to house to beg something wherewith to provide for the festivities of Christmas. The miller gave each dame a little flour, the grocer a few raisins, the butcher an odd bit of beef, and so on. From persons not in trade a donation in money was expected.

  Lower asserted that the custom was in his time ‘almost obsolescent’, but in this he was certainly mistaken; several other writers mention it as prev
alent in their own districts later in the nineteenth century, and indeed it was not wholly extinct even in living memory – the hardships of the elderly poor, especially widows, are not so easily disposed of. Moreover, ‘going a-gooding’ was and remained a serious custom, springing from real need, unlike the more light-hearted ‘clemmening’, Guy Fawkes begging, or carol-singing nowadays, though the latter, interestingly, is now often done to raise money for charities.

  The type of goods distributed varied. At Horsham, in the nineteenth century, the gentry used to give out food, warm clothing, and sometimes money; at Lewes in the 1870s, surplus stocks of discarded clothes and hats would be left outside certain shops, and anyone who needed them could take them; at Mayfield, where the custom still existed in 1903, there was one old gentleman who had made it his life-long habit to save up all the fourpenny pieces which came his way throughout the year, to distribute them to the old women on Gooding Day. In one village, the name of which is unfortunately not given in the source, the widows went to church on this day with sprigs of holly or mistletoe, which they handed to anyone who gave them money – a pleasant fiction, no doubt, to soften stark ‘charity’ into a form of ‘selling’. Similarly at Beeding, in the first half of the nineteenth century, the vicar used to sit at his study window handing out half-crowns to any old woman who ‘sold’ him a sprig of evergreens. At Arundel, on the other hand, the distribution of alms was official; the money given out was the yearly interest on the sum of £15 which had been found on the body of a dead tramp in 1824, and which had been put into trust for this purpose.

  As for the observance of Christmas, with its customary foods, carol-singing, present-giving, Christmas tree, evergreen decorations, and so forth, it does not present any particular or unusual features in Sussex. One picturesque custom, now presumably fallen into disuse, was that of welcoming Christmas Day into the house. In some families, the head of the house was expected to be the first person to come down in the morning, and he had to set the front door wide open and bid Christmas come in; in others, the first person down had to take a broom, open the door, and sweep trouble away from the threshold. There might well be some competition for the privilege, as Mrs Latham implies, writing in 1878: