Home page
News
Albums
History
Musicians
Work in progress
FAQ
Ordering
Contacts
A Happy New Year to one and all!
A new year and the band is organising rehearsals in anticipation of the gigs being finalised for the coming months. Keep an eye on the website for announcement of gig dates and venues.
Twelfth Night, 5th/6th January, is one of those festivals that has dwindled into insignificance and is mostly only remembered now as the title of one of Shakespeare’s plays and the time when all the Christmas decorations should have been taken down. As the name suggests it marks the end of the twelve days of Christmas. The duration of the Christmas festival was officially set at twelve days by the Council of Tours in AD 567 when it was laid down that that the whole period should be spent in celebration, revelry and thanks and that no one should be made to work during that time. Things got confusing when the Gregorian calendar was introduced in September of 1752 and eleven days were ‘lost’, which almost coincided with the traditional twelve days of Christmas and the Old Style Christmas Eve became entangled with the New Style Twelfth Night and for many years people rebelled and continued to celebrate Christmas Day on the 6th January and Twelfth Night on the 17th/18th January. The belief that the Holy Thorn, which sprang from Joseph’s staff when he thrust it into the ground on arrival at Glastonbury, blossomed on Christmas Day helped to legitimise the Anti-Gregorian sentiments of many sections of the population and allowed the celebration of the Old Christmas Day to continue as a deep-rooted tradition.
It seems to me that country folk didn’t need much of an excuse to have a good fire, and Twelfth Night was no exception. Fires were lit out in the fields to bring luck to the crops in the coming year. A similar outcome is hoped for with the tradition of wassailing apple trees in orchards.
The first Monday after the 6th January is Plough Monday and the time for the plough to be taken round the village and for the local mummers to enact their traditional mummers’ play at various houses in return for money for the church or to supplement the farm workers’ wages. Plough Monday marked the start of the agricultural year.
One of the weirder customs that takes place in January is Hunting the Mallard. Once held annually it now takes place once a century. Held on the 14th January at All Soul’s College, Oxford, the Fellows elect a Lord Mallard and six officers, who carry white staves and wear special Mallard medals. After a feast the company sets out at midnight on a torch-lit procession to hunt the mythical Mallard all over the college, including the roof, singing a special Mallard Song. The hunt can go on for several hours. Apparently, things used to get a bit boisterous and destructive, which is probably why it only now happens once every hundred years. The last Hunt was in 2001.
Returning to the theme of Twelfth Night, completely by chance, I came across a song on an old sampler CD of 2008 and a track by Spiers and Boden called ‘The Rain it Rains’. The music is by John Boden and the words are adapted from William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and the song sung by the Jester, Feste, at the conclusion of the play. As it was appropriate for the month of January I couldn’t miss the opportunity to work it out and make a scratch recording of it for the Diary. Take a listen.
(My thanks in research to the excellent books The English Year by the folklorist Steve Roud and A Dictionary of British Folk Customs by Christina Hole).
All text, images and music samples on this site are copyright © Childe Rolande.
December
November
October
September
August
Poster for Lucy Anna Martin
(click to watch the video)