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The new year rehearsals have begun and a number of gig dates are starting to be sorted out for the coming months. As soon as they are confirmed I will set out dates and locations in the Diary.
Surviving customs most well-known in February are Valentine’s Day on the 14th and Shrove Tuesday and the making of pancakes to use up the remaining milk, eggs and fat before the fasting of Lent. Less well known is the custom surrounding ‘Jack-a-Lent’, who was associated with Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. The Jack figure was made of straw, dressed in old clothes and hung up in public throughout Lent for people to throw all manner of things at and finally burnt. It is thought that the figure is a personification of Lent.
In the Celtic calendar, falling half way between Yule, the Winter Solstice, and Ostara, the Spring Equinox, is Imbolc, a fire festival to mark the beginning of Spring. A time for cows and ewes to give birth and provide the first milk of the year. In Ireland it coincides with St. Brigid’s Day that falls on the 1st of February. On St. Brigid’s Eve families would sit and make Brigid’s Crosses out of rushes to hang over doors to gain protection for the family and their animals for the coming year. Also, St. Brigid’s Eve is when St. Brigid is said to walk the land. People would leave a piece of cloth outside overnight to be blessed by her as she passed by. The next morning this cloth would be brought back inside and used throughout the year for healing, especially for such things as headaches and sore throats.
The 2nd of February is celebrated as Candlemas and was extremely popular in the Middle Ages. Candlemas is also important in weather-lore as the prevailing weather of the day supposedly predicts the opposite to come. Candlemas was also known as Badger’s Day as it was believed it was when badgers woke from their hibernation.
February is also connected to the historic practice of ‘Moonraking’. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, Wiltshire had a reputation for high-quality wool. High profits attracted Dutch merchants and they set up a permanent headquarters in the county. Their favourite drink was Dutch gin, but this was unavailable to locals because it was highly taxed. This led to smuggling and the illegally imported barrels of gin were hidden in church crypts and ponds by day and transported by night from the coast up to Swindon. There is a tale that some smugglers, about to recover their illicit barrels from a pond one moonlit night, were accosted by a patrol of Excisemen. The quick-witted smugglers feigned stupidity and said they were attempting to rake a large cheese out of the pond, which was in fact the reflection of the Moon. Laughing at the apparent rustic simpletons ,the Excisemen rode on. An almost identical tale of moonraking can be found in Yorkshire where contraband alcohol was hidden in the Huddersfield Canal in the 19th century. Every two years, towards the end of February, in the village of Slaithwaite, a lantern parade is held to celebrate the local folk tale. A giant illuminated moon constructed of willow sticks and tissue paper is floated down the canal on a raft. Women with rakes ritually attempt to pull the moon onto the bank – ‘moon raking’ – before the participants, dressed as gnomes with long beards, land the moon and then parade it through the streets, leading a procession of lanterns, musicians and other entertainers.
(My thanks in research to these excellent books: The English Year by the folklorist Steve Roud,
A Dictionary of British Folk Customs by Christina Hole, A Treasury of British Folklore by Dee Dee Chainey and Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain by the Reader’s Digest)
All text, images and music samples on this site are copyright © Childe Rolande.
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