As Morse Caught The Mare

A mare on Dartmoor - image by lostajy (Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

"As Morse caught the Mare. —I shall be glad to be informed the meaning of this expression — it is to be met with in the translation of Rabelais. There is also a song sung among the farmers of South Devon, of which the !ast line of each verse is " As Morse caught the Mare." 11. S. B."

NOTES AND QUERIES. [No. 20. Mar 16 1850]

Wassail and the worshiping of Heil at Cerne, Dorset

Our Wassail and the wassailing bowl - please attribute this blog if you use this photo.

 

"The following is a note of the same learned writer [Reed, of Reed's Shakspeare] on the Polyolbion, song 9 : "I see," says he, "a custome in some parts among us : I mean the yearly Was-haile in the country on the vigil of the New Yeare, which I conjecture was a usuall ceremony among the Saxons before Hengist, as a note of health-wishing (and so perhaps you might make it Wish-heil), which was exprest among other nations in that form of drinking to the health of their mistresses and friends. " Bene vos, bene vos, bene te, bene me, bene nostram etiam Stephanium," in Plautus, and infinite other testimonies of that nature (in him, Martial, Ovid, Horace, and such more), agreeing nearly with the fashion now used : we calling it a health, as they did also in direct terms ; which, with an idol called Heil, antiently worshipped at Cerne in Dorsetshire, by the English Saxons, in name expresses both the ceremony of drinking and the New Yeare's acclamation, whereto in some parts of this kingdom is joyned also solemnity of drinking out of a cup, ritually composed, deckt, and filled with country liquor," &c.

In Herrick's Hesperides, p. 146, we read,

" Of Christmas sports, the Wassell Boule,
That tost up, after Fox-i'-th'-Hole ;
Of Blind-man-buffe, and of the care
That young men have to shooe the Mare:
Of Ash-heapes, in the which ye use
Husbands and wives by streakes to chuse:
Of crackling laurel, which fore-sounds
A plentious harvest to your grounds."

Brand 1813

 

Map - Cerne

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 Lost Land of Lyinesse, or Lethowsow - Part 6

  The Scillonian ferry regularly crosses the waters above the legendary Lyonesse.  If you wish to use my photo please attribute this blog!

[cont.] "..."That Cornwall once extended further west may be inferred from hence, that about midway between the Land's End and Scilly are rocks called in Cornish Lethowsow; by the English, Seven-stones.

"The Cornish call the places within the stones Tregva, -- i.e., a dwelling;--and it has been reported that windows and other stuff have been fished up, and that fishermen still see tops of houses under water. From the Land's End to Scilly, a tract of thirty miles, is an equal depth of water, and the bottom of the sea a plain, level surface. St Michael's Mount is called in Cornish, Careg cowse in clowse--i.e., the hoary rock in the wood. Large trees with roots and bodies have been driven in by the sea of late years between St Michael's Mount and Penzance; and tradition says that at the time of the inundation which made the separation, one Trevelyan swam from thence on horseback; and in memory thereof the family, now in Somersetshire, bears gules a horse argent, from a less wavy argent, and azure, issuing out of a sea proper,"--Gough's Camden, vol. 1. p. 15...... [cont.]"

Hunt 1903

Map - Land's End

Map - Isles of Scilly

Map - Saint Michael's Mount 

Map - The Seven Stones  

The Lost Land of Lyonesse, or Lethowsow - Part 4

The Scillonian ferry regularly crosses the waters above the legendary Lyonesse.  If you wish to use my photo please attribute this blog!

[cont.] "...and, to increase the wonder, a gentleman, accidentally on horseback, is carried by this animal to the neighbouring shore of Whitsand Bay, or twenty miles further off, to Perranuthnoe, through a sea which had swallowed an entire country, and from which the largest of modern vessels could not possibly have escaped. This idle tale, related by one writer after another, has almost reached our own times. The editor remembers a female relation of a former vicar of St Erth who, instructed by a dream, prepared decoctions of various herbs, and, repairing to the Land's End, poured them into the sea, with certain incantations, expecting to see the Lionesse country rise immediately out of the water, having all its inhabitants alive, notwithstanding their long submersion. But

'Perchance some form was unobserved,
Perchance in prayer or faith she swerved.'

No country appeared, and although the love of marvellous events, and of tales exciting the passions, seems not to have diminished in recent times, yet the editor is unaware of any subsequent attempt having been made to rescue those unfortunate people from their protracted state of suspended animation."--The Parochial History of Cornwall, by. Davies Gilbert, vol. iii.pp. 109, 110.

"Although a sweep of ocean, twenty-seven miles in breadth, separates at present the Land's End from the Scilly Islands, there can yet be little doubt of their having been heretofore united to each other by the mainland. The records of history indeed do not rise so high as the era when this disjunction was first effected; but we have documents yet remaining which prove to us that this strait must have been considerably widened, and the number of the Sciilly Islands greatly increased within the last sixteen or seventeen centuries, by the waters of the Atlantic (receding probably from the coast of America) pressing towards this coast of Britain, accumulating upon Bolerium, and overwhelming part of the western shores of Cornwall...." [cont.]

Hunt 1903











Map - Perranuthnoe

Map - Land's End

Map - Isles of Scilly
Map - Whitesand's Bay
Map - Bolerium

The Lost Land of Lyinesse, or Lethowsow - Part 1

The Scillonian ferry regularly crosses the waters above the legendary Lyonesse.  If you wish to use my photo please attribute this blog!

"THOSE who may stand on the extreme point of the Land's End, and, looking over that space where the waters of the Atlantic mix with those of the British Channel, see in the far distance the Scilly Islands, will have to call upon their imagination to conceive that these broad waters roll over a country which has existed within historic time.

A region of extreme fertility, we are told, once united the Scilly Islands with Western Cornwall. A people, known as the Silures, inhabited this tract,--which has been called the Lyonesse, or sometimes Lethowsow,--who were remarkable for their industry and their piety. No less than 140 churches stood over that region, which is now a waste of waters; and the rocks called the Seven Stones are said to mark the place of a large city. Even tradition is silent on the character of this great cataclysm. We have only one hint--and we know not its value--which appears to show that the deluge was comparatively gradual. One of the ancestors of the Trevilians is said to have had time to remove his family and his cattle; but at last he had to fly himself with all the speed which a fleet horse could give him. From this it might appear that, though gradual at first, the waters, having broken down the barriers, burst over the whole at last with uncontrolled fury. ... [cont.]"

Hunt 1903

Map - Land's End

Map - Isles of Scilly
Map - The Seven Stones

The Devil's Doorway

Polperro - image by © Copyright Alan Fleming and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

"In the slate (Killas) formations behind Polperro is a good example of a fault. The geologist, in the pride of his know­ledge, refers this to some movement of the solid mass--a rending of the rocks, produced either by the action of some subterranean force lifting the earth-crust, or by a depression of one division of the rocks. The gray-bearded wisdom of our grandfathers led them to a conclusion widely different from this.

The mighty ruler of the realms of darkness, who is known to have an especial fondness for rides at midnight, "to see how his little ones thrive," ascending from his subterranean country, chose this spot as his point of egress.

As he rose from below in his fiery car, drawn by a gigantic jet black steed, the rocks gave way before him, and the rent at Pol­perro remains to this day to convince all unbelievers. Not only this, as his Satanic majesty burst through the slate rocks, his horse, delighted with the airs of this upper world, reared in wild triumph, and, planting again his hoof upon the ground, made these islands shake as with an earthquake; and he left the deep impres­sion of his burning foot behind. There, any unbeliever may see the hoof-shaped pool, unmistakable evidence of the wisdom of the days gone by."

Hunt 1903

Map - Polperro

Town and country - a Somerset Proverb

"Like a loaders horse that lives among thieves." - Somerset

(The country-man near a town)

Ray 1768

Another prophosy of Merlyn - The Levan Stone

The Levan Stone - image by © Copyright Rod Allday and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

"This bisected mass of granite has been already noticed in con­nection with St Levan.

 "When, with panniers astride,
A pack-horse can ride
Through the Levan Stone,
The world will be done.""

Hunt 1903

Map - Saint Levan's Stone

Some more on the Dartmoor Folk Festival

[As I mentioned before I really love this small and eccentric festival.  It is held in South Zeal,on the edge of Dartmoor

The field before the crowds gathered at Dartmoor Folk Festival 2001.  Some of these photos are by me, some by my wife Lunar Hine - Please accredit one or other of our blogs if you wish to use them.

They help keep alive a number of local traditions. One is the local Step Dancing.  I have come across mentions of this happening in the farmhouses around Dartmoor back into victorian times, and I haeve no dobt there would have been local dance tradition before this.

The winner of the youth section of the step dancing competition 2011

I missed the main competition (I have witnessed it before - preformed on a cart top, with the musician playing a small concertina facing away from the competitor so that he does not favour one person over another. Men and women compete. In the crowd old ladies sit and mutter to each other about how well - or not - a competitor is doing.  It seems they are permitted to bring a bit of their own style in, but if they are seen as going too far into some more mainstream form of tap dancing they frowned on).

 

This video is on its side - sorry!

All I saw this year was the two winners, the adult and the child's category, preforming their dances. Unfortunately it was at very short notice, so soft shoes where used instead of hard.

And this one...  Oh well - the adult winner

The Step Dancing Memorial Cup

The Bob Cann Shield for step dancing.  I am not sure whether this or the cup is for adults...

Talking of shoes - one year I saw a dance off in the Kings Arms for a pair of shoes at this festival - in the corner rumored to be the domain of a Devon gypsy family - it is always full of musicians and dancers anyway!

The winner of the broom dancing took center stage, surrounded by her fellow competitors. This year the fashion for stripy socks added to the display!

Another competition is the children's broom dancing - another local tradition. This year it was almost all girls, and the brooms where decorated. This is a good dance, though it seems to have only one form that is repeated. Personally I would like to see a few adult broom dancers, and maybe an evolving tradition to run alongside the fixed dance - there is a lot you could do with a broom.

The broom dancing shield, 1991-2011 so far, first presented by the Exeter Morris men and Bob Cann - the founder of the festival.

The winner of the Broom dancing championship also wins the years broom - later the girl who won was seen proudly carrying it around the village.  The mini broom has the newish colours of Devon on it (they actually relate to the county sports teams, lord Exmouth and the lush hills and granite of the area, as well as Westcountry saint Petroc.

Morris dancers also abounded, much to the pleasure (and occasional fear) of my litle daughter. She was fine when they danced, even growling and laughing at them when they rushed at us with sticks, but when they milled around unchaperoned by the music she got a little anxious, espesially at the ragged, flower headed, blacked out faced Exmoor Morris Dancers.

Dartmouth?? Morris

Also present where Dartmouth? Morris and Lodestone Morris.  I think there was also one of the genuinely old sides from Oxfordshire that never died out.

Lots of beer was drunk and music played.  Only later was I aware of the irony that while around England young people where drinking heavily and wielding big sticks (baseball bats and truncheons) in the rioting and looting that was happening in the poor areas of our cities here on Dartmoor everyone was actively turning up to watch people hit each other with sticks and drink far, far, far to much...

Sticks and drink - a tamer sort of riot...

Music was everywhere.  This man was from Lodestone morris, and showed me a penny whistle that could be played in only one hand...

Most of the Morris dancing was in the streets and by the pub, but at the end of the day they came on to the main arena. Ths is Lodestone Morris again.

Exmoor Morris dancing again. This group made a big thing about having come sooo very far, from foreign lands... Exmoor...

My daughter learning to walk and dance to the music. She and the other small children saw the dance floor as the place to be, and between dance acts nobody stopped them charging around to the sound of the accordion.

Finally the intimidating Minehead Sailors Horse (a hobby horse) did its wild dance and 'bumbped' its unsuspecting victim...

 The only things I have to add that I can remember was about the stalls - many where stuffed with local crafts - jewelry, prints, bee products...  The one that stuck most in my mind was sett up for one day only. in the street outside the festival, under the bunting, a small boy stood at a workmate with a hammer, chisel and some pots of paint. He has been there a few years that I have been. He had mined some rusty used horseshoes out from behind a barn on his parents farm and did them all up smart. A sign proclaimed "Lucky Devon Horseshoes". Next year I will photograph his wheres.

That reminds me - on the bus through Drewsteinton I noticed three old horseshoes, all toe down, on the same barn door. They had been painted over many times. A very lucky barn I think, considering the folkloric power of three.]

Sailors Horse from Minehead appears in South Zeal at the Dartmoor Folk Festival

The Sailors Horse

[I went to the Dartmoor Folk Festival this year (August 2011).  A full account (with lush pictures!) will come later when I have more time. But suffice to say for now that I saw plenty of Morris dancing (border and the Oxford sort), clog dancing and appellation flat footing, plus the local Dartmoor step dancing and Broom dancing. 

Flowery Morris hat my daughter liked smelling on a Lodestone Morris Man

The pub was stuffed with musicians playing what seemed like 24 hrs a day, in at least five different sessions, with such incredible skill I was too overawed to get out my own humble fiddle. One man in particular caught my eye, Nick Scott, the bagpipe player from Last Nights Fun, who day and night seemed to be flowing out the music, eyes closed, or opened into a deep trance, sweat pouring form his brow and music like the ocean flooding from his pipes. Always he was surrounded with 10 to 40 other musicians emptying their souls into the raging air.

Exmoor Border Morris in a South Zeal road

In the corridors I was shouldering through men booming out sea shanties with skillful harmonies...

But best of all for me, and the reason for this short preliminary post was the unexpected appearance of the Sailors Horse, from Minehead. Sitting and watching it shake and dance and bow was a truely awe inspiring sight, and the adrenalin of watching it select its sacrificial (and unwilling?) victim had the adrenaline pumping through my veins. Was the young woman really panicking and in pain?  Should I stand up and intervene? here is the small video I managed to eke out of my dieing batteries -

Here is a more competent video someone else shot...

As a footnote I should say I saw the young woman half an hour later being talked to by the Minehead Sailors Horse lot, and surrounded by her friends. Although she still seemed a little on edge there appeared to be no hard feelings. As a truly visceral spectacle it completely worked. Dartmoor folk festival is amazing for raising the 'wild' and the 'civilized' in me whenever I go. I sit in rows of old grey haired people listning to musical eloquence one moment, the next I am protecting my eyes from the splinters of massive wooden cudgels being hurled at each other by the ragged burly men of Grimspound Morris the next (as happened a few years ago).  

I love it.]

Some more Chagford Pixies

A Pixie Door I made - more here

 [Someone told me recently that when the pixies are about she finds it hard to get her horses out of the stable. She cannot see anything but the horses behave very differently. She also said that there where?boggarts? that got inside the plastic feedbags on windy days and would drag them around, like the wind would, only with more sentience, deliberately moving them just beyond her reach!.

She also reported a mother and daughter who lived in the parish ("who looked a bit fey") who frequently saw pixies. I know which hamlet they live in but I wont say it here, for I haven't asked them permission.

She also talked of several ghosts in the parish, one of whom could be detected by the sent of his pipe, who was a very friendly and amenable sort of fellow. She had a name for him (he may have been the shade of a former resident - not sure) but I have mislaid the paper I wrote it on. The scent was unusual because the whole hose had been redecorated and carpeted, and the pipe smell would move through the building!]

Dorset Dorsers - dialect and origen of pack horses

A 14th century European depiction of a pack horse, from a copy of the Tacuina sanitati, a book on health.  From Wikipedia, public domain

 

"Dorsetshire Dorsers.

Dorsers are peds or paniers carried on the backs of horses, on which higiers use to ride and carry their commodities. It seems this homely, but most useful instrument, was either first found out, or is the most generally used in this county, where Fish-jobbers bring up their fish in such contrivances, above an hundred miles from Lime to London."

Ray 1768

Map - Lyme Regis

Jan Pook, a Moretonhampstead Folksong (part two)

 

Leat on the road between Two Bridges and Princetown - by Tom Jolliffe [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

 

[cont...] "...Es likker 'ad warmed en to that there degree,
That he vailed vast asleep, and his osses you zee,
Forgetting the whip, stapped and grazed 'pon the road,
But how long they bided there nobody knowed.
Jan dreamed 'bout some pixies
And other strange folk,
When the miners corned up,
All alive for a joke.
They unharnessed his osses,
And drove mun away,
Leaving Jan vast asleep
On the porch of the shay.
When the zun in the East wuz beginning to rise,
Jan Pook, half awake,
Vailed to rubbing his eyes.
" Who be I ? Where be I ?"
Zed Jan in a maze :
" Here's a drunken old zun-
Of-a-gun on a shays.
If I be Jan Pook,
I may zay to my cost
A pair of post osses
I've sartinly lost.
If I baint Jan Pook
'Tez a fortinite day,
For I'm burned if I aint
Been and found a post shay."

MORAL.
 

Don't drink wey no miners,
Now mind what I zay,
Don't nivver pull up
To no Saracen's Head,
Spurn alcoholic drinks
Vur the rest of your days,
And you'll not lost no osses,
Nor vind a post shays."

Hewett 1900

Map - Moretonhampstead

Map - Princetown

Map - Saracens Head at Two Bridges

[Pook puts me in mind of Shakespearean Puck, and also of the Puggie stone in Chagford, said to be etymologically mid way between Puck and Pixie - Devonian speakers have a habit of retaining the Olde English ee sound in words -  "Dart-ee-moor" "Chag-ee-Vord", hence the thought that Pixie might be Puck-ee...]

Jan Pook, a Moretonhampstead Folksong (part one)

Leat on the road between Two Bridges and Princetown - by Tom Jolliffe [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

"The following, which appeared in a recent number of the Western Morning News, is from the pen of the late Dr. Puddicombe, of Moreton. The subject, Jan Pook, was post boy at the Saracen's Head, Two Bridges, Dartmoor. The poem gives a clear idea of the habits of the convivial souls who inhabit and divert themselves in that neighbourhood.

 

JAN POOK.
 

JAN Pook wuz a post-boy,
The vokes where he stapped
Zed a hardier 'osebird,
There nivver wuz drapped.
He ciide laugh, he cude zing,
He cude smoke, he cude tell,
And whativver he diied,
He alwes diied well.
He wuz loved by his guv'ner,
Samuel Cann,
Of " The White Hart," in Moreton,
A merciful man,
Who trated his 'osses,
And customers, too,
And trated Jan Pook,
When he'd nort else to do.
Jan Pook druv a party
To Princetown one day,
Returning wherefrom,
On his empty post shay,
To the " Saracen's Head,"
He pulled up for a wet,
Refreshment 'es zel
And his osses to get.
Jan drinked wey some miners
Until, as he zed,
The liquor he drinked
Had got into his head.
When he started again,
To his home to return,
What arterwards happened,
You'll presently learn..." [cont...]

Hewett 1900

Barnstaple Fair - a song - (part 5)

Fairground ride - By Iantresman (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

 

[cont...] "...Then sing of merry England, and roast beef, old English fare, Sir !
A bumper to the town and trade of Barum and its Mayor, Sir !
Boiled beef, roast beef, squab pie, pear pie, and figgy pudden, plenty,

When eight or nine sit down to dine, they'll find enough for twenty,

And after dinner for dessert, the choicest fruits you'll share, Sir !
E'en walnuts come from Somerset to Barnstaple Fair, Sir!
Then sing of Barum's jolly town, and Barum's jolly Mayor, too,
No town in England can be found old Barum to compare to!

I will not sing of Bullock fair, and brutes whose horrid trade is
To shut our window blinds, and block up all the ladies,
Nor of the North walk, rush and crush, where fools at horses stare, Sir ! 

When Mister Murray brings his nags to Barnstaple Fair, Sir !

But sing of Barum's jolly town and Barum's jolly Mayor, too !
No town in England can be found, old Barum to compare to !
The "Ball" one night, the "Play" the next, with private parties numerous,
Prove Barnstaple people's endless efforts, Sir, to humour us,

And endless, too, would be my song, if I should now declare,
All the gaieties, and rarities of BARNSTAPLE FAIR!
Then loudly sing "God save the King," and long may Barum thrive O !
May we all live to see the "Fair," and then be all alive O !."

 

Hewett 19000

Map - Barnstaple

Map - Bratton (Flemming? Down?)

Map - Ilfracombe