Folklore of Yorkshire (34 page)

In the run up to Christmas Eve, the gentler custom of wassailing was particularly widespread amongst children in the county. Groups would proceed from door to door carrying a box called the ‘Vessel Cup’, which contained two dolls representing the Virgin and Child on a bed of crimped paper, silver stars and flowers. Sometimes they would also carry a holly branch decorated with ribbons, dolls and oranges. The party would sing a variety of carols and the ‘Wassailing Song’, the lyrics of which ran:

Here we come a-wassailing

Among the leaves so green

Here we come a wandering

So fair to be seen.

As with all visiting customs, the householders were expected to offer the children a small reward for their performance, typically some small change or appropriate festive fare – indeed, it was considered profoundly unlucky to turn away the first wassailers of the season.

On Christmas Eve it was also tradition for a family to bring the yule log into the house, which should be lit from a fragment of the previous year’s log. Along with a yule candle, it was left to burn all night to represent the Star of Bethlehem. People considered it an ill-omen for the yule log and candle to burn out before the dawn, and it was similarly unlucky to give out light from the house or sweep the ashes from the hearth. In some places, the lighting of the yule log was accompanied by great ceremony. One writer records that the log had first to be laid on the hearthrug, whilst the family gathered round and each made three wishes. Once it was set alight, they feasted on gingerbread, cheese, mince pies and a seasonal dish called ‘frummety’ (a type of porridge made from creaved wheat and milk, fruited with raisins). In South Yorkshire, meanwhile, a posset pot was sent around the table from which each member of the family should drink.

In Dewsbury, the Church of All Saints (now known as Dewsbury Minster) practices a unique bell-ringing custom on Christmas Eve known as ‘Tolling the Devil’s Knell’. First, a bell known as ‘Nine Tellers’ is rung in five sets of five. This arrangement is known as a ‘passing bell’ and was traditionally sounded in rural parishes to indicate the death of somebody in the parish. As the passing bell struck four times for a man and three times for a woman, the number five is supposed to signify the apocryphal belief that Christ’s birth represented the death of the Devil. Somewhat contradictorily, the ringing of the passing bell on Christmas Eve is also supposed to protect the town of Dewsbury from the Devil’s influence in the coming year.

Following the passing bell, the tenor bell is chimed once for every year since the birth of Christ and timed so that the final strike coincides with midnight. Legend claims that the observance remembers a crime of Sir Thomas de Soothill, a fifteenth-century noble who, in a fit of rage, threw a servant boy into an iron forge or a local dam. As a penance, he provided the tenor bell for the church and initiated the tradition of Tolling the Devil’s Knell. However, the truth of this legend is debatable and indeed, the provenance of the custom remains unclear. No references to it exist before the nineteenth century and whilst Reverend John Buckworth is supposed to have ‘revived’ the practice in 1828, he may have invented it entirely.

In some places, it was common to ‘let in Christmas’ at dawn; a practice which had much in common with first-footing on New Year’s Day. Similar rules about behaviour and appearance governed the ritual: a boy of a certain hair colour should be first across a household’s threshold on Christmas morn; he must enter by the front door carrying a sprig of evergreen; then once the family has provided him with a sixpence or some repast, he must leave by the back door. As with first-footing, this became a regular role on Christmas Day for poorer members of the community endowed with the requisite physical characteristics. They were referred to as ‘lucky birds’ and held in great esteem at that time of year.

Long-sword dancers traditionally performed on Boxing Day in many communities across Yorkshire, and the custom endures today in a small number of places including Flamborough, Grenoside and Handsworth. The Handsworth area of South Yorkshire – along with Norton, Woodhouse and Upperthorpe – was also known during this period for a mummers play called ‘T’Owd Tup’. The performance was perhaps more common around neighbouring parishes in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, and when S.O. Addy wrote about the tradition in 1901, it was already dying out in the Sheffield region. However, it has clung on in some isolated pockets and been subject to periodic revival throughout the twentieth century.

Like many mummers plays, T’Owd Tup is a hero-combat play, performed door-to-door by a group typically comprised of several lads from the local area. ‘Tup’ is an archaic term for a ram and one boy is dressed as the eponymous beast, swaddled in sheets of tarpaulin and carrying a head fashioned from wood, with marbles for eyes and a red flannel for a tongue. The narrative of the play would see the Tup led to market, slaughtered by the Butcher, then restored to life by the Doctor, whilst Our Owd Lass and Little Devil Doubt capered around. The performance would climax with a rendition of the well-known folk song, ‘The Derby Ram’, after which the players would be given donations for their efforts.

A similar custom by the name of the Poor Old Hoss was performed in the North Yorkshire town of Richmond. In this case, the ram became a horse and the other players dressed as huntsmen, forcing it to canter around until the symbolic arrival of winter, when the Hoss lay down to die and was subsequently resurrected. For a time in the mid-twentieth century, the head of the Hoss was an actual horse skull and thoroughly terrified the local children. Performances of the Poor Old Hoss persist today, although rather than tour Richmond’s pubs throughout the festive season, the custom is now confined to Christmas Eve in the marketplace and is thoroughly endorsed by the local council.

Some might argue that like too many surviving calendar customs in the county, such mummery has been sanitised and divorced from its original constituency. Where once they were spontaneous expressions arising from the community itself and often strongly disliked by anyone who aspired to respectability, these traditions have been co-opted by the authorities who now present them as a harmless sideshow for the amusement of tourists and aggrandisement of local dignitaries. They have been taken from the folk and their original subversive function has been lost. As such, they exist purely as whimsical historic relics, whilst living folklore has long since moved on and flows unnoticed in a subtle current all around us.

Addy, Sidney Oldall:
Household Tales with Other Traditional Remains
(1895)

Ahier, Philip:
The Legends and Traditions of Huddersfield and Its District
(1944)

Atkinson, John Christopher:
Forty Years in a Moorland Parish: Reminiscences and Researches in Danby in Cleveland
(1891)

Ibid
.:
The Last of the Giant Killers; Or the Exploits of Sir Jack of Danby Dale
(1891)

Ibid
.:
Memorials of Old Whitby; Or Historical Gleanings from Ancient Whitby Records
(1894)

Baker, Margaret:
Folklore and Customs of Rural England
(1974)

Baring-Gould, Sabine:
Yorkshire Oddities, Incidents and Strange Events
(1890)

Ibid
.:
Strange Survivals: Some Chapter in the History of Man
(1905)

Bennett, Gillian:
Traditions of Belief: Women, Folklore and the Supernatural Today
(1987)

Bennett, Paul:
The Old Stones of Elmet
(2001)

Billingsley, John:
Stony Gaze: Investigating Celtic and Other Stone Heads
(1998)

Ibid
.:
Folk Tales from Calderdale Vol. 1
(2007)

Ibid
.:
The Mixenden Treasure
(2009)

Ibid
.:
Hood, Head and Hag: Further Folk Tales from Calderdale
(2011)

Blakeborough, John Fairfax:
The Hand of Glory and Further Grandfather’s Tales and Legends of Highwaymen and Others
(1924)

Blakeborough, Richard:
Wit, Character, Folklore and Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire
(1898)

Bogg, Edmund:
From Edenvale to the Plains of York: Or A Thousand Miles in the Valleys of the Nidd and Yore
(1894)

Ibid
.:
Wensleydale and the Lower Vale of the Yore, from Ouseburn to Lunds Fell
(1899)

Ibid
.:
The Old Kingdom of Elmet: The Land ‘Twixt Aire and Wharfe
(1902)

Ibid
.:
Higher Wharfeland: The Dale of Romance from Ormscliffe to Cam Fell
(1904)

Ibid
.:
Lower Wharfeland: The Old City of York and the Ainsty
(1904)

Bord, Janet and Colin:
Sacred Waters: Holy Wells and Water Lore in Britain and Ireland
(1985)

Briggs, Katharine:
The Fairies in Tradition and Literature
(1967)

Campbell, Marie:
Curious Tales of Old West Yorkshire
(1999)

Ibid
.:
Strange World of the Brontës
(2001)

Cass, Eddie:
The Pace Egg Plays of the Calder Valley
(2004)

Clarke, David:
Strange South Yorkshire: Myth, Magic and Memory In the Don Valley
(1994)

Ibid
.:
A Guide to Britain’s Pagan Heritage
(1995)

Ibid
.:
The Head Cult: Tradition and Folklore Surrounding the Symbol of the Severed Human Head in the British Isles
(1998)

Clarke, David and Roberts, Andy:
Twilight of the Celtic Gods
(1996)

Clarke, David and Wilson, Rob:
Strange Sheffield: Legends, Folklore and Mysteries of Hallamshire
(1987)

Cobley, Fred:
On Foot through Wharfedale
(1882)

Cudworth, William:
Rambles Round Horton: Historical, Topographical and Descriptive
(1886)

Davies, Owen:
The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts
(2007)

Dawson, William Harbutt:
A History of Skipton
(1882)

Dixon, John Henry:
Chronicles and Stories of the Craven Dales
(1881)

Dodd, Gerald:
Ghosts and Legends of Brontë Land
(1986)

Dyer, T.F. Thistleton:
Strange Pages from Family Papers
(1895)

Edwards, Gillian:
Hobgoblin and Sweet Puck: Names and Natures of Fairies
(1974)

Gee, H.L.:
Folk Tales of Yorkshire
(1952)

Gomme, George Laurence:
Folk-lore Reclis or Early Village Life
(1883)

Grainge, William:
The Vale of Mowbray: A Historical and Topographical Account of Thirsk and Its Neighbourhood
(1859)

Grinsell, Leslie:
Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain
(1976)

Gutch, Eliza:
Examples of Printed Folk-lore Concerning the North Riding of Yorkshire, York and the Ainsty
(1901)

Ibid
.:
Examples of Printed Folk-lore Concerning the East Riding of Yorkshire
(1912)

Harker, Bailey John:
Rambles in Upper Wharfedale
(1869)

Harte, Jeremy:
Explore Fairy Traditions
(2004)

Ibid
.:
English Holy Wells: A Sourcebook
(2008)

Hartley, Marie and Ingilby, Joan:
Wensleydale
(1946)

Ibid
.:
Life and Tradition in the Yorkshire Dales
(1981)

Hayman, Richard:
Riddles in Stone: Myths, Archaeology and the Ancient Britons
(2006)

Henderson, William:
Notes on the Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders Vol. 2
(1879)

Heywood, Oliver: The Whole Works of the Rev. Oliver Heywood with Memoirs of His Life’ (1825)

Hole, Christina:
Haunted England
(1940)

Holt, J.C.
Robin Hood
(1989)

Hope, Robert Charles:
The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England
(1893)

Hunter, Joseph:
History of Hallamshire
(1819)

Hutton, Ronald:
The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy
(1993)

Ibid
.:
The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft
(1995)

Ibid
.:
The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400-1700
(1996)

Ibid
.:
Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain
(2001)

Ingram, John Henry:
The Haunted Homes and Family Traditions of Great Britain
(1886)

Jackson, Sidney:
Celtic and Other Stone Heads
(1973)

Leyland, John:
The Yorkshire Coast and the Cleveland Hills and Dales
(1892)

Linahan, Liz:
Pit Ghosts, Padfeet and Poltergeists
(1994)

Ibid
.:
More Pit Ghosts, Padfeet and Poltergeists
(1996)

Lofthouse, Jessica:
North Country Folklore
(1976)

Lucas, Joseph:
Studies in Nidderdale
(1882)

MacQuoid, Thomas and Katharine:
About Yorkshire
(1894)

Merrifield, Ralph:
The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic
(1988)

Mitchell, W.R.:
Haunted Yorkshire
(1990)

Montagu, Frederic:
Gleaning in Craven: A Tour from Bolton Abbey to Ambleside
(1838)

Morris, Marmaduke Charles Frederick:
Yorkshire Folk Talk
(1892)

Moss, Fletcher:
Folk-lore, Old Customs and Tales of My Neighbours
(1898)