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But not all men were equally fussed about the exact
time. In a delightful phrase the French social historian
Marc Bloch (a member of the French Resistance he
was shot dead by the Gestapo in 1943) wrote that most
folk during the feudal era continued to exhibit
''une
vaste indiffrance au temps''
.
The Pleasant Peasant Calendar
In the country if you built your farm house (or your
hovel) with the front facing east the early morning sun
would stream in to wake you up. The passing of time
for peasants right through until the industrial age
hadn’t changed much from the Iron-Age communities
that met for the Lammas feasts and although the people
didn’t keep a calendar pinned to the kitchen door post
the passing of the year was very much marked by work
to be done and by innumerable customs and traditions,
each of which had at their core – fun! Winter stretched
from Michaelmas in late September to Christmastide
and you kept busy sowing.
In the blood month, November you slaughtered for the
winter months. Epiphany (or Twelfth Night) to Easter
was Spring and in many areas Plough Monday came
straight after Twelfth Night and the return to serious
labour was marked by the young men dragging their
ploughs round the village begging for money. In a sort
of trick or treat if a householder didn’t cough up he
might find his garden ploughed up. The Englishman’s
enthusiasm for donning women’s clothes for jolly
japes might well date back to occasions like Plough
Monday when boys dressed as old women known as
Bessies or Mollys. Molly Dancers were also a popular
feature of May Day celebrations - recently there has
been a revival in Molly Dancing and great fun it is too.
Hocktide & Horkey Boughs
Come Candlemas at the beginning of February oats,
beans and barley were sown. May Day with the
dancing around the pole to celebrate fertility we all
know about but the tradition of Hocktide two weeks
after Easter, once just about the only holiday in the
agricultural labourers year, and possibly bedded in
an 11
th
Century thanks giving for the massacre of
the Danes, survives today only at Hungerford in
Berkshire where it involves Tutti men and meals
of macaroni cheese and watercress!
Next came Midsummer marked by the Feast of
St John the Baptist. Lammas at the beginning of
August to Michaelmas was harvest time. Lammas
as a celebration ended when Henry VIII split from
Rome and our main harvest festivals moved to
Michaelmas. This was traditionally the last day of
the harvest marked by the making of corn dollies
and in some parts by
Calling the Mare
. As the last
crops were gathered in the farmers wanted to show
off their skill and efficiency so the first farmer to
finish made a mare from the last sheaf and sent it on
to neighbouring farmer. The men would run around
throwing the mare over the hedge into any field
where the farmer was still working, shouting
mare,
mare
! The last farmer with the mare had to keep it
until next harvest. Elsewhere the last load brought in
from the field would be topped out with a bough
from an oak tree. Called the
Horkey Bough
the
horse pulling the cart would be decorated and in
the evening a feast would be held in the barn with
dancing and singing. You can see a Horkey Bough
in the ancient barns at Cressing Temple on our new
Man Made Wonders of Essex
day. The Morris Men
of Little Egypt in Suffolk below, (t’wixt Cavendish
and Long Melford) revived the Horkey Bough feast
in 1996 at a time when at least one local farmer still
put a Horkey Bough on his combine harvester.