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The word Rogation comes from the Latin verb
rogare
meaning to ask because at this time in the
liturgical year the Gospel reading included the
passage
Ask and ye shall receive
(Gospel of St John
16:24). The major Rogation Day is always 25 April
and Rogationtide starts with Rogation Sunday, also
known as Chestnut Sunday. The following Monday,
Tuesday and Wednesday are known as minor
Rogation Days with Rogationtide ending on
Ascension Day marking the last appearance of Jesus
to the disciples after his resurrection at Easter.
So like Easter itself Ascension Day is one of those
tricky movable feasts. If you’d like to have a go
at calculating the minor Rogation Days for 2013 it
might (or might not) help to know that they fall on
the four days from the fifth Sunday after Easter
which itself always falls on the Sunday after the first
full moon following the vernal equinox.
Strange Goings On in Marks’s
If you happen to be shopping in Marks & Spencer in
Oxford on Ascension Day 9 May 2013 don’t be
surprised if a rowdy troop of choristers, clergy and
academics enter the lingerie department and proceed
to beat a spot on the carpet with long canes, yelling
"Mark! Mark! Mark!" The store was built directly
over the boundary of the parish of St Michael's.
Thirty one other venues in the city are visited
including the Town Hall, Boots the Chemist, the
inside of a bike shop and a pub! The procession ends
with of ivy beer, doughnuts and a scramble for hot
pennies thrown from the roof of Lincoln College.
Don’t you just love being British!
The annual Ascension Day Beating Party of the church
of All Hallows By The Tower of London includes
students from St Dunstan's College in Catford returning
to their roots in the neighbouring parish of St Dunstan-
in-the-East. The southern parish boundary is
mid-stream in the Thames so a young boy was
traditionally rowed out by boat to be held upside down
by the heels! Returning to shore the procession moves
around the parish, stopping at various points for the
beating party to mark the boundaries with a thrashing
of canes. Every third year the ceremony includes a
'confrontation' with the Governor and Yeomen Warders
of HM Tower of London at the boundary mark the
parish shares with the Liberty of the Tower (once
defined as an arrow’s flight from the outer walls of
the Tower) and the Church. During the middle ages this
boundary was always in dispute and this ceremonial
confrontation commemorates an occasion in 1698
when a riot took place between the people of the Tower
and those of the parish. They’ll next meet the folk from
the Tower on their rounds in June 2014.
Go to
and type
beating the
bounds
into the search box to watch fascinating old
film of Beating the Bounds at the Tower and All
Hallows in the 1920s and 1930s.
Beating the Bounds at Canterbury 1910