Bandford Forum - A list of Christian Sacrafices - Part 2

Bacon and Eggs - an offering to Christ? - Image from ChildofMidnight at en.wikipedia [CC-BY-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Common

[cont.] "...On Good Friday, they offered unto Christe Egges and Bacon to be in hys favour till Easter Day was past. The Sinnes committed betwene Easter and Whytsontyde they were fullye discharged by the pleasaunt Walkes and Processyons in the rogyng, I should say Rogation Weeke. What offences soever happened from that tyme to Midsomroer,. the fumes of the Fiers dedicated to John, Peter, and Thomas Becket the Traytor, consumed them. And as for all disorders from that tyme to the begynnyng of Christmasse agayne, they were in this Countrey all roonge away, upon All Halloun Day and All Soule's Day at night last past."

He adds, at p. 20,

"So sayth God to the brybyng Papistes, who requireth these thynges at your handes whiche I never commaundcd, as your Candles at Candlemasse, your Popish Penaunce on Ash Wensday, your Egges and Bacon on Good Friday, your Gospelles at superstitious Crosses, decked lyke Idols, your Fires at Midsommer, and your ringyng at Allhallountide for all Christen Soules ? I require, sayth God, a sorrowfull and repentaunt hart, to be mercyfull to the poore, &c.""... 

..." It is stated in a curious Sermon preached at Blanford Forum, in Dorsetshire, January 17th, 1570, by William Kethe, minister, and dedicated to Ambrose Earl of Warwick, Svo. Lond. p. 18. that on Good Friday the Roman Catholics " offered unto Christe Egges and Bacon to be in hys favour till Easter Day was past ;" from which we may at least gather with certainty that Eggs and Bacon composed a usual dish on that day."

Brand 1813

 

Map - Blandford Forum

[Jewish (and Catholic) people had a really horrible time in much of old intolerant England - including facing genocide and expulsion - please take this anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic sermon for its folkloric value only.]  

Common Land of Congrebury, Puxton and Week Saint Lawrence - part 1

A common near Congresbury - not sue if it is the same - by FollowMeChaps [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

"Collinson, in his Somersetshire, vol. iii. p. 586, says : "In the parishes of Congresbury and Puxton, are two large pieces of common land, called East and West Dolemoors, (from the Saxon dal, which signifies a share or portion,) which are divided into single acres, each bearing a peculiar and different mark cut in the turf, such as a horn, four oxen and a mare, two oxen and a mare, a pole-axe, cross, dung-fork, oven, ...." [cont.]

Brand 1813








 

The Four Parish Stone and the Saxons

Watch Croft - a hill near the four parish stone - image by Iain Macaulay [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

"At a point where the four parishes of Zennor. Morvah, Gulval, and Mathon meet, is a flat stone with a cross cut on it. The Saxon kings are also said to have dined on this."

Hunt 1903



Map - The Four Parish Stone

[According to the OS map it looks like there are now only three parishes meeting here - Gulval and Mathon having become Madron County Parish.  

Again this is currently an unfashionable legend, so I could not find a copyright free image of the exact stone. It is tempting to think that the legend itself is not of local origin - why celebrate an invading armies victory, especially when they did not become the local areas dominant culture - but for a non-local legend it seems strange to use an otherwise unknown stone.  To me the Victorians as a whole seem far to enamored with the Celtic - or Keltic - origin of Cornwall to make this up, though they did take ancient historians - including Saxon propagandist Bede - at their word. Perhaps at an earlier date it became temporarily fashionable in Cornwall to look the Saxon influenced east, an then the legend grew and stuck..? Perhaps in the early days of the 'new world' and an expanding empire led from London?  Who knows!]

Devon charm to cure diarrhea

Hot Cross Buns - By Shannon Hobbs (originally posted to Flickr as Hot Cross Buns) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

"TAKE a stale Good-Friday cross-bun and place it in a hot oven to dry. By grating when hard into powder, and, when required, mixing it with cold water and taken as a medicine, it will cure diarrhoea.

When Good-Friday comes, an old woman runs
With one, or two-a-penny hot-cross-buns.
Whose virtue is, if you'll believe what's said,
They'll not grow mouldy like the common bread."

Hewett 1900

Devon charm for seeing ones husband via the moon.

The moon

"ON seeing the new moon, make the sign of the cross three times in the air, and once on your forehead. Clasp both hands tightly together and hold them in a supplicating attitude, uplifted towards the moon. Then repeat :

All hail, all hail, to thee,
All hail to thee, new moon,
I pray to thee, new moon,
Before thou growest old,
To reveal unto me,
Who my true love shall be!

Before the moon is at full the suppliant will see her true love."

Hewett 1900

Unlucky in Devon - 21

Crossed knives - Municipal coat of arms of Sobotovice village,  Czech Republic.

It is unlucky

"To cross knives."

Hewett 1900

Unlucky in Devon - 14 & 15 - (Sunday)

Hillerton Cross, Devon - Martin Bodman [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Common

It is unlucky

"To turn a feather-bed on Sunday.

To cut one's nails on Sunday."

Hewett 1900

Unlucky in Devon - 3

Ladder of Devine Assent - 12th century Icon from Egypt

It is unlucky to -

"To pass under a lean-to ladder without first crossing the middle fingers over the front ones.
 

"This superstition," says the Weekly Western News, Plymouth, "originates from an old coarse joke formerly frequent among the lower class. It took its rise from the fact that at the gallows at Tyburn the culprit had to walk up a ladder, there being no platform. The ladder was afterwards withdrawn and he was left suspended.""

Hewett 1900

Spilled Salt in Devon

Salt

"Salt, in country districts, is held as a sacred article, and the vessel used to contain it is considered hallowed and looked upon as a valuable possession. Dire calamities follow on spilling salt, and a charm is used to counteract the dread consequences...

...An old Devonshire friend has sent me the following lines, which he is in the habit of repeating when small matters go wrong in his household. I believe they were written by the poet Gay, from whom he must have learnt them when a child.

 

Alas, you know the cause too well !
The salt is spilt : to me it fell ;
Then, to contribute to my loss,
My knife and fork were laid across :
On Friday, too, the day I dread.
Would I were safe at home in bed !
Last night (I vow to heaven 'tis true)
Bounce from the fire a coffin flew.
Next post some fatal news shall tell
God send my absent friends are well !""

Hewett 1900

Map - Bristol

[I was told in Bristol that salt should be put over the left shoulder "into the eye of the devil" who was looking over it, or else to make sure the salt passed you by and was not used for salting you down like a pharaoh... My wife, however, puts the salt over her shoulder as a gift for the pixies!] 

Devon marriage days of the week

We were married on Sunday - Hooray! This was our 'proper' wedding - our legal one was on a Thursday - not so good...If you want to use my photographs please attribute this website

 

"The days of the week, too, on which the ceremony is performed, influence their future, as the following lines testify :

Monday for wealth,
Tuesday for health,
Wednesday is the best day of all,
Thursday for crosses,
Friday for losses,
Saturday no luck at all.

Sunday is an exceptionally fortunate day upon which to enter the holy state."

Hewett 1900

Letters that cross in the post... AND DEATH! (in Devon)

The Pillar of Doom.... By Green Lane (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

"If letters cross in the post it is a sign of death."

Hewett 1900

How to bring about your master or mistress' death in Devon

The deadly fold...  From Hewett 1900

"If a sheet or tablecloth is returned from the laundry with a square fold in the centre, so, it is said to portend the death of the master or mistress of the house."

Hewett 1900

The grave of Arthur and Guinever - part 1

Arthur Rackham (1917). "How Mordred was Slain by Arthur, and How by Him Arthur was Hurt to the Death". - Public Domain, from The Romance of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table Alfred W. Pollard. New York: The Macmillan Company.

"King Arthur, wounded in one of his battles, was taken to Glastonbury to be cured of his wounds by these healing waters. And after his last fatal battle, that of Camlan in Cornwall, in which he fell, he was conveyed by sea to Glastonbury to be buried. In course of time the spot where he slept was forgotten; but a Welsh bard singing to Henry II., as he passed through Wales on his way to Ireland, of the great British king, declared that Arthur slept between two pyramids at Glastonbury. When the king returned to England he told the abbot what the bard had sung, and search was at once made for the grave. One of our chroniclers, Giraldus Cambrensis, was an eye-witness of what ensued, and has recorded it.

Digging down seven feet below the surface, a huge broad stone was found with a small thin plate of lead in the form of a cross, bearing in rude letters the Latin inscription: "Hic jacet sepultus Inclytus Rex Arturius in Insula Avalonia." Nine feet deeper they found the trunk of a large tree hollowed out for a coffin, in which lay Arthur, and by his side Guinever..."  [cont..]

Valentine (undated)

"Dunstan, the Devil and Glastonbury Abbey

Carving of a Devil Woman from Cambridge - Photograph © Andrew Dunn, 15 February 2006.This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

"The celebrated and undoubtedly gifted Dunstan was born within the precincts of the abbey, and received the tonsure within its walls. He left it for the court of Athelstane, but seems to have been disgusted with court life and returned to Avalon, where, near the abbey, he built himself a cell or hermitage with an oratory attached, where he dwelt, spending great part of his day in devotion, and the rest in making crosses, censers, or vestments for the abbey; for Dunstan was a skilled artist and a fine musician. It was in this hermitage that tradition said he had his contests with Satan, who (the Golden Legend, printed by Caxton, tells us) appeared to the hermit in the form of a beautiful woman."

Valentine (Undated)

Map - Glastonbury Abbey

Our Lady of Nantswell, Saint Colan

A floating Palm Cross in Nantswell (the forms are imagined!) - Please credit this website if you wish to use my drawing

"In former days "Our Lady of Nantswell," in St. Colan's parish, near St. Columb Major, was resorted to by men, women, and children, to foreknow of the Lady of the Well, on Palm Sunday, what should befall them that year. These pilgrims bore a palm cross in one hand and an offering in the other. The offering fell to the priest's share: the cross was thrown into the well, and if it swam was regarded as an omen that the person who threw it would outlive the year; if, however, it sank, a shortly ensuing death was foreboded."

Hope 1893

Map -Saint Colan

Saint Cleer, Liskeard

"The well of St. Cleer, the baptistery or chapel by which it was enclosed, and an ancient cross about 9 feet high, form a group by the roadside 100 yards eastward below the church, north of Liskeard. The chapel was destroyed by fanatics in the Civil War, but appears to have been similar in size and construction to that which now stands by Dupath Well, near Callington. It was restored in 1864 as a memorial to the Rev. John Jope, sixty-seven years Vicar of St. Cleer. The well is said to have been once used as a boussening or ducking pool, for the cure of mad people. Attempts have from time to time been made to cart away some of the stones of the chapel, but mysterious power has always returned them at night. The entrance is under two low round arches, the roof covered with ivy and brushwood. The water flowing out of the well fills a pool or basin, supposed to have been used as a boussening pool for curing mad people. St. Clare was born about 1200, in Italy, and died 1252. She became the abbess of a monastery of Benedictine nuns, and was foundress of the order of the Poor Clares.--E. Ashworth, Esq."

Hope 1893

Map - St Cleer's Well
Map - Dupath Well

Pelynt - Saint Nun's Well - part 1

"On the western side of the beautiful valley through which flows the Trelawny River, and near Hobb's Park, in the parish of Pelynt, Cornwall, is St. Nunn's or St. Ninnie's Well. Its position was, until very lately, to be discovered by the oak and bramble which grew upon its roof. It is entered by a doorway with a stone lintel, and overshadowed by an oak. The front of the well is of a pointed form, and has a rude entrance about 4 feet high, and is spanned above by a single flat stone, which leads into a grotto, with an arched roof. The walls on the interior are draped with the luxuriant fronds of spleen-wort, hart's tongue, and a rich undercovering of liverwort. At the farther end of the floor is a round granite basin with a deeply moulded rim, and ornamented with a series of rings, each enclosing a cross or a ball. The water weeps into it from an opening at the back, and escapes again by a hole in the bottom. This interesting piece of antiquity has been protected by a tradition which we could almost wish to attach to some of our cromlechs and circles in danger of spoliation. 

An old farmer (so runs the legend) once set his eyes upon the granite basin and coveted it, for it was no wrong in his eyes to convert the holy font to the base uses of a Pigsty and accordingly he drove his oxen and wain to the gateway above for the purpose of removing it. Taking his beasts to the entrance of the well, he essayed to drag the trough from its ancient bed. For a long time it resisted the efforts of the oxen, but at length they succeeded in starting it, and dragged it slowly up the hillside to where the wain was standing. Here, however, it burst away from the chains which held it, and, rolling back again to the well, made a sharp turn and regained its old positions, where it has remained ever since. Nor will anyone again attempt its removal, seeing that the farmer, who was previously well-to-do in the world, never prospered from that day forward. Some people say, indeed, that retribution overtook him on the spot, the oxen falling dead, and the owner being struck lame and speechless..." [cont.]

Hope 1893

Cornish Holy Wells - Part 1

"A CORRESPONDENT of the Gentleman's Magazine, writing on this interesting subject, says: "In Cornwall there are several wells which bear the name of some patron saint, who appears to have had a chapel consecrated to him or her on the spot. This appears by the name of Chapel Saint-attached by tradition to the spot. These chapels were most probably mere oratories; but in the parish of Maddern there is a well called Maddern Well, which is inclosed in a complete baptistery, the walls, seats, doorway, and altar of which still remain. The socket which received the base of the crucifix or pedestal of the saint's image is perfect. The foundations of the outer walls are apparent. The whole ruin is very picturesque, and I wonder that it is passed in so slight a manner by all Cornish historians, and particularly by Dr. Borlase, who speaks merely of the virtues superstitiously ascribed to the waters. This neglect in Borlase is the more to be wondered at, as the ruin is situated' in his native parish. I was struck with being informed that the superstitious of the neighbourhood attend on the first Thursday in May to consult this oracle by dropping pins, etc. Why on Thursday? May not this be some vestige of the day on which baptisteries were opened after their being kept shut and scaled during Lent, which was on Maundy Thursday ? My informant told me that Thursday was the particular day of the week, though some came on the second and third Thursday..." [to be cont.]

Hope 1893

The Coffin Stone above Dartmeet

"So we may as well turn off the road as we descend, and look on the left-hand side for a grassy track whereon stands the Coffin Stone, used for generations as a resting-place when a funeral is on its way from parts of the forest to Widecombe. A sense of reverence creeps upon us as we look at the block, cut with rude crosses. Around us is scenery the grandest that can be conceived. It should bring consolation with it, for surely those who come here with their dead must have a sense of the nearness of God."

Cresswell 1921

Map - The Coffin Stone

Abbots' Way, or Jobbers' Path

"Petre's Cross is near to the Abbots' Way, or Jobbers' Path, as it is sometimes called, the track from Buckfast to Buckland and Tavistock Abbeys, now only a green path. The wool trade, which still prospers at Buckfastleigh, was formerly carried on by the monks of Buckfast, and it has been conjectured that over Jobber's Path bales of their merchandise were conveyed."

Cresswell 1921

Map - Petre's Cross
Map - Buckfast Abbey
Map - Buckland Abbey
Map - Tavistock Abbey ruins