'Take a Peck of Pickled Ploughmen' by Karen Maitland

Today, the 8th January, is Plough Sunday, which is always the first Sunday after the 6th January. The 6th was the Twelfth Night of the Christmas and the end of the holiday. From Medieval times, right up until the introduction of farm machinery and tractors, Plough Sunday was an important religious feast day in the countryside, taking place before the bawdy and riotous Plough Monday which celebrated the return to work on the farm. 

On Plough Sunday, decorated ploughs would be dragged up to the altars of the churches and even cathedrals to be blessed, and the names of every farm in the parish would be read aloud by the priest, so that they too would be blessed and produce a good harvest in the coming year, for everyone’s life depended on that. The plough was the symbol of life, peace and prosperity. As the old verse says –

"The king he govern all, the parson pray for all, the lawyer plead for all, but the ploughman pay for all and feed all."

Some churches, such as this one in Tickhill, Yorkshire 

have revived the Plough Sunday Services.

Photographer: John Cowie

Although Plough Sunday marked the men’s return to work on the farm and the craftsmen to their workshops, it did not mark the beginning of the ploughing season, but rather the end of it. In the Middle Ages, farmers knew that all the plough work on the farm should be completed before Christmas for the weather usually worsened in January. So, when the last furrow was ploughed before the Twelve Days of Christmas, the plough brist , (the breast or mould-board) would be polished and the shares cleaned and oiled ready for the plough to be stored in a barn. 

There would always be a piece of land left unploughed in the community known as Jack’s Land or Jack’s Green or in Scotland Gudeman’s Fauld (Goodman’s fold). It was left as kind of sop to the Devil or the spirits, so that they had a piece of land which they could inhabit. If greedy humans took all the land, then the spirits would have no abode and would wander across the farms, wreaking havoc on all the ploughed land and making the ground barren. The corpses of those who had been refused burial in consecrated ground, such as suicides or those who'd been excommunicated, were often buried on this land.

Things became a little more rowdy on Plough Monday when the plough men and boys would pin ribbons and trailing rags to their clothes to make a shaggy coat. In some villages, particularly if the ceremony took place at dusk, the lads would blacken their faces and turn their coats inside out. (Wearing clothes turned inside out was an ancient charm to ward off evil and malicious spirits and also to reverse a run of bad luck.) Then the plough men and boys would drag a plough around the village, demanding money or food such as chickens and hams, and ale or cider from each householder, which they would consume in a great feast later that night.

A plough is dragged round the streets in Whittlesey,

Cambridgeshire, as part of Whittlesey Straw Bear Festival

Photographer: Simon Garbutt

If payment was not forthcoming, the householder's front garden would be ‘jagged’, that is ploughed up and ruined, especially the part in front of the cottage door, so that for weeks afterwards the stingy householder would be wading through deep mud to get in or out of their house. It would also be a very visible sign to all their neighbours of their lack of community spirit. 

The leader of the plough men wore a costume which varied from village to village, but usually incorporated an ox tail because oxen generally pulled the plough. Often, the man would dress in drag as a comic woman known as a Bessie. As they processed the men danced and leaped as high as they could, the idea being that the grain would grow as high and as vigorously as they had leaped that year. So, it was in everyone’s interest to encourage the dancers. This tradition is known at least as far back as Saxon times and versions of it are probably as old as the invention of the plough itself.

Christmas Mummers in Haddon Hall

The mummers in the village often performed Plough Plays on Plough Monday, which had nothing to do with farming, but were merely an excuse for mock battles which often degenerated into real and bloody fights egged on by an audience who had already drunk a great deal. The plays had no plots but were simply an array of bizarre characters who introduced themselves to the audience and fought each other. Probably, the mummers would have made mocking references to well-known people in the community or authority figures. The culmination of the play came when characters such as Pickled Herring and Pepper Breeches gathered around the man playing the fool. They’d make an interlocking circle of blades around his neck with six mock swords and pretend to kill him. He’d feign death and then immediately jump up and leap about, showing he was alive. This had echoes of the ancient pre-Christian fertility ceremonies performed during winter months in which the green god was ritually slain and then resurrected to bring about the return of spring and new growth. 

In some villages, it was the tradition to force the man playing fool onto a bonfire of green or wet wood, setting fire to it and to the fool’s trailing rags on his costume in a mock burning. The idea was to produce lots of smoke on the bonfire so that the fool would appear to be consumed on the pyre, but could leap off ‘unharmed.’ But I can’t help thinking that quite a few fools over centuries probably were harmed in the making of these plays, even if it was just from smoke inhalation.

But since this is the end of the Christmas feasting and all your crackers have now been pulled, perhaps I should sign off with a very traditional medieval riddle –

Riddle - "How many hoof prints does an ox leave in the last furrow when it has ploughed all day?" 

Answer – "None, because the plough is dragged behind the ox and so all hoof prints are obliterated."

'King Holly, Queen Ivy and Murphy's Law' by Karen Maitland

I love dipping into a book by Philip Gooden called "Skyscrapers, Hemlines and the Eddie Murphy Rule." It is a collection and history of those quirky laws that seem to govern every aspect of our life from Murphy's Law - "If anything can go wrong, it will" to the hemline theory - "Hemlines go up with rising stock market and drop with falling one". And the one I really enjoy, Hartman's Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation -

"Any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one error."  

(It has been pointed out that this statement does contain one punctuation error if you are British, though not if you are American.)

It is a delightfully funny and informative collection, but though it contains sets of laws from different genres of writing from crime to ghost stories, there isn't a list of "Historical Novelists' Laws", which I think is a great pity, so I thought I might kick off with one law that might have appeared on that list -

1) The author will discover the most interesting historical snippet which would have been perfect to use in their novel immediately after they emailed the final draft of the manuscript to the publisher.

I can personally attest to the truth of this law. One of the themes running through my new novel, The Plague Charmer, is medieval riddles and I use riddles as some chapter headings. I thought I had scoured every available source of genuine medieval riddles, but the day after I'd submitted the manuscript I discovered two little gems in a museum, recorded in 1460, which perfectly capture the bawdy medieval mind -

Q - What is the most joyful thing in all the world?
A - 'Tis a fart for it sings from its birth until it fades away.

 Q - What the most noble king of all the trees in the forest? 

Sir Gawain beheads the Green Knight

 A - 'Tis the Holly, for no one uses it to wipe his behind.


For the medieval audience, this second riddle would have been a trick question, for they all knew the holly was the king of the forest, but for a very different reason than that given in the answer to the riddle. We will soon be approaching the end of October and the Celtic festival of Samhain, which marks the beginning of the dark months of winter. At Samhain the Holly King defeats Oak King in battle and conquers the land, only to see the Oak triumph at Beltane and rule over the summer.


This ancient myth is symbolised in the medieval tale of "Gawain and the Green Knight," in which the Green Knight comes to King Arthur's court bearing a holly bush. Sir Gawain chops off the Green Knight's head, but the Green Knight still lives on and, as the medieval audience knew, he would return as the year waned, to cut off Sir Gawain's head.

Holly and Oak in winter in Gritnam Wood, New Forest
Photographer: Jim Champion

Another myth involving holly was centred around May Eve, the first night of Beltane, when the Bel-fire, or fire of light, was kindled. This involves not a king but a goddess, the ancient blue ice goddess, Cailleach Bhear, the old woman of darkness, who reigns from Samhain to Beltane. On this night she throws her magic staff under a holly bush for safe-keeping and is turned to stone. In that form she is guarded by the holly and its spirits until she can take up her queenship once more. That is why no grass grows under holly trees.

But the early medieval Church, always pragmatic in these matters, knew they could not suppress the 'pagan' customs of bringing holly into the house and all the many local traditions that went into gathering it, so they Christianised the holly tree. The holly's old names, holeyn, holme, hulvar or hulfere, were probably Old Norse in origin, but the Church decided they must be derived from 'holy' and said that holly bore white flowers to remind the faithful of the white sheet in which the newborn Jesus was wrapped and the shroud in which his crucified body was laid. The prickles represented Christ’s crown of thorns and the red berries, the blood or wounds. In Cornwall, holly was delightfully known as dear Aunt Mary's tree. Aunt Mary being a reverent term for the Virgin Mary.

But as the Middle Ages progressed holly was to become victorious in a different battle, not between summer and winter, but between the sexes. Early medieval troubadours sang of holly as the man and ivy as the woman who each brought different but equal virtues and gifts to the marriage. But as medieval women increasing lost their rights, the holly became the strong, tough, protecting male, and ivy, the clingy little female who couldn't even stand up by herself without his support. As one carol written in 1456 puts it -

"Nay, Ivy, nay: it shall not be, I wys:
Let Holly have the mastery, as the manner is."

By the 16th century we even have a carol that describes how pigeons eat the ivy berries then shit on the ivy, something we are assured they would never do to holly. Although another 15th century carol is more encouraging or perhaps prophetic -

"Ivy, chief of the trees it is,
Veni, coronaberis."

Old Christmas riding a goat and crowned
with holly

 Holly was believed to be a shelter for good spirits who entered with it if the boughs were brought into the house, and therefore holly was always be hung before mistletoe at Christmas, otherwise bad luck would follow. Holly protected houses and byres from evil spirits, witchcraft, fire and lightening. So, a staff made from holly was a useful defence when crossing the moors or mashes to protect you from the mysterious glowing sprites such as the Will-o-the-wisp that might lure you into a bog.


Doorsteps were often made of holly wood to prevent witches crossing them and holly hedges, as well as keeping out animals and thieves, would also stop evil spirits from entering. It was useful plant to carry when you were herding livestock too, because if a beast suddenly bolted, and you threw holly after it, the runaway would trot meekly back to the herd, summoned by the power and authority of this royal tree.

But holly bushes can turn nasty. On a road near Claonaig, on the Kintyre peninsular, a holly bush is said to dance out of the woods to confuse travellers into loosing their way, which I imagine they could easily do, if faced with prancing holly bush. In which case, they might do well to remember the laws of survival in very cold climates which Gooden lists in his book -

1) You can survive three hours without shelter.
2) You can survive three days without water.
3) You can survive three weeks without food.

So, in the spirit of dear old Murphy's Law has anyone got a favourite law for the Historical Novelist?

*

(Karen Maitland's new novel - The Plague Charmer - will be published by Headline on

20th Oct 2016.)

Riddles and Oracular speech - Katherine Langrish

You remember of course the riddle scene in ‘The Hobbit’, in which Bilbo Baggins pits his wits against hungry Gollum on the edge of the dark lake at the roots of the Misty Mountains?  And how, after each has guessed a number of traditional riddles (‘Thirty white horses on a red hill/First they champ, then they stamp, then they stand still’[1]) and a number of others which Tolkien obviously enjoyed writing himself (‘Alive without breath/As cold as death/Never thirsting/Ever drinking/Clad in mail/Never clinking’[2]), Bilbo finally foxes his adversary with the simple and thoughtless question, ‘What have I got in my pocket?’

Riddles have a long history, and probably a long prehistory too.  There are riddles in the Bible, such as the one Samson baffled the Philistines with: ‘Out of the eater came something to eat/Out of the strong came something sweet’[3] (Judges 14,14) – still to be found, with its pictorial answer, on the green and gold tins of Tate and Lyle’s Golden Syrup. And one of the earliest known riddles, strikingly similar in form to Samson’s, is written on a Babylonian tablet and reads: ‘Who becomes pregnant without conceiving? Who becomes fat without eating?’[4]

(By the way, all the answers will be found at the bottom of this post.  I’m certain you are going to try and guess them, so I’m not going to provide the answers straight up.)

Everyone remembers the riddle of the Sphinx, which Oedipus guessed; but did you know that Plato refers to a children’s riddle in ‘The Republic’ - ‘A man who was not a man threw a stone that was not a stone at a bird that was not a bird, on a twig that was not a twig’[5]’?  And that there are Sanskrit riddles in the Rig Veda and the Mahabharata?  And what about the Norse riddles of the Elder Edda, such as ‘The Words of the All-wise’ in which the dwarf Alvis (literally ‘All-wise’) – anxious to win the hand of Thor’s daughter – answers a number of questions which might be called riddles in reverse:

Thor:   What is heaven called, that all know

            In all the worlds there are?

Alvis:  Heaven by men, The Arch by gods,

            Wind-weaver by vanes,

            By giants High-earth, by elves Fair-roof,

            By dwarves The Dripping Hall.

Thor:   What is the moon called, that men see

            In all the worlds there are?

Alvis:  Moon by men, The Arch by gods,

            The Whirling Wheel in Hel,

            The Speeder by giants, The Bright One by dwarves,

            By elves Tally-of-Years.

All-wise answers Thor - by W.G. Collingwood

In the illustration above we see how for verse after verse (while Thor's daughter anxiously clutches her father) Alvis provides the kennings – the riddling poetic descriptions – for all the elemental, important things in the world such as fire, rain, the moon and sun, the sea, forests, night and day (and beer)… until at last dawn breaks and he turns to stone.

When I talk to schoolchildren I like to tell them about Norse kennings, and ask them some Anglo-Saxon riddles from the 10th century Exeter Book (carefully chosen: many of them contain bawdy double-entendres).  These riddles are of course also poems: and it seems to me one of the best and easiest ways to show children what poetry is and why it might be fun to read. “So,” I explain, “in a poem about the sea a Viking wouldn’t say ‘the sea.’  He’d call it the ‘whale’s home’ or the ‘swan’s bath’, and his audience would know what he meant. If you wanted to make a poem in which a king rewards one of his men with gold, you wouldn’t say ‘The king gave gold to his warrior.’  That would be plain boring.  Instead you would have to say something like ‘The Land-ruler gave Sif’s Hair to his Raven-feeder.’

How Loki Wrought Mischief in Asgard - by Willy Pogany

“For your listeners to understand it, they’d have to know the story of how the trickster god Loki cut off the goddess Sif’s beautiful hair.  The other gods were so angry with him that he went to the dwarfs and got them to make Sif some beautiful new hair out of pure gold, which magically grew just like real hair." (You'd also have to understand that a warrior who killed men on the battlefield and left them for the crows to eat was - a Raven-feeder.)

 

But there were plenty of other ‘kennings’ for gold.  For example, you could call it ‘Frodi’s flour.’ And to understand that, your audience would remember a completely different story, about a Danish king called Frodi who bought two giant slaves and set them to turn two huge magic millstones which would grind out whatever you told them to grind.  Instead of flour, King Frodi told them to grind out peace, prosperity and gold. (That’s why gold could be called ‘Frodi’s flour’.)  For a time, King Frodi’s people enjoyed a golden age.  Unfortunately, however, Frodi made the two giants work almost non-stop, not allowing them rest or sleep ‘for longer than it takes to hear a cuckoo call.’  In revenge, the two giants asked the millstones to grind out an army which attacked King Frodi and killed him.  And that was the end of his peaceful reign.

The Vikings thought more of a man if he could weave words: some of their most renowned warriors were also poets, like Egil Skallagrimsson, and Grettir the Strong. The murderous Harald Silkenhair in my book ‘Troll Blood’ - the third part of 'West of the Moon' - is a warrior poet in this tradition, and keeps his men happy by asking them riddles (here are two I made up for him):

“I know a stranger, a bright gold-giver

He strides in splendour over the world’s walls.

            All day he hurries between two bonfires.

            No man knows where he builds his bedchamber.”[6]

            “I know another, high in the heavens

            Two horns he wears on his hallowed head

            A wandering wizard, a wild night-farer,

            Sometimes he feasts, sometimes he fasts.”[7]

Spells, words, similes, riddles… the very word spell itself in Old English and Old Norse simply means speech.  To describe the world is to apprehend it, to understand it.  To this day we retain this double meaning.  A magician may cast a spell, but children spell out words aloud, syllable by syllable.  Words do not only give power, words are power.  Even in the Judaeo-Christian sense: God creates the world with the words ‘Let there be light,’ and St John describes Christ as the ‘Word of the Father’. 

It seems to me that riddles may always have had dual purpose.  They amuse us, but they do so in a different way from puns and jokes. If I ask you a riddle – even a simple child’s riddle like ‘What’s green and goes up and down?’[8] – and you can’t guess it, I score a point over you. More than that: I retain knowledge which I may or may not choose to tell you. I have the power to reveal or conceal. The riddle game is a contest which may once – as with Bilbo and Gollum, Thor and Alvis, Oedipus and the Sphinx – have had serious consequences.

And the Delphic Oracle was often delivered in riddling form. In 403 the Spartan general Lysander was warned by the oracle to beware the dragon (serpent), earthborn, in craftiness coming behind thee. The warning didn't help: he was killed from behind in 395 BC by - supposedly - a soldier who had a serpent painted on his shield.  Today we may suspect that oracular utterances were made deliberately vague so as to be applicable to any variety of future events – but that seems to me false to the ancient way of thinking.  Much more likely the sibyl or seer regarded riddling, poetic speech as sacred, the authentic voice of God.  Just as with poetry today, whoever heard it had to find their own meaning in what was uttered, follow the clue through the maze to the centre of themselves.  Riddling speech, like poetry, may have been thought of as the truest, the most revelatory way of communicating.

“Look how the floor of heaven’s thick inlaid

With patines of bright gold…”

“Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths…”

“Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!

   O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!

   The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!"

To describe the night sky in this way is to use riddles as riddles were meant to be used.  You can still feel the shiver of power. 

---

[1] Teeth

[2] Fish

[3] A bee’s nest full of honey in the ribcage of a dead lion

[4] Clouds

[5] A eunuch throwing a piece of pumice at a bat on a reed.  (Yes.  Really.)

[6] The sun (and the two bonfires are sunrise and sunset)

[7] The moon

[8] A frog on a trampoline