6 Cultural Patterns and Technical Change, Unesco, p. 197 ff.
7 The truth, that is, viewed pragmatically as the best for the land and the people who consume its products.
13
Preparing the Ground
THE age, at least, of these beliefs cannot be questioned. ‘That’s been the same since the Year Dot when Owd Hinery were an infant’ – so one of the writer’s informants fixed the age of a custom under discussion; and when it was hinted that the date was a little imprecise he explained that Owd Hinery was the Devil; ‘and as “dot” comes before 1, the Year Dot was somewhere right back at the beginning.’ This was as precise as he could make it; and any estimate of the age of some of these old customs is not likely to come very much nearer to it than that. The custom, for instance, of pouring out a little drink onto the ground is as old as history. It was continued – mechanically perhaps without any appreciation of its origins – right into the present century in East Anglia when drink was taken out of doors, more especially at haysel or harvest time; a little beer, usually the last drop in the horn mug, was poured on the ground with indigenous phlegm, more of a casual than a ritual gesture. But it is recorded that in Herefordshire,1 the purpose of the libation was openly acknowledged as ‘a donation for the gods’; while the countryman in Ireland2 poured out a little of his draught as a compliment to the ‘good people’ or the fairies; and the writer has seen a similar gesture on a Welsh hay-field of forty years ago.
A number of beliefs have centred in flints and flint fossils which are often turned up by the plough in East Anglia. Apart from the significance of unusually shaped stones or fossils to primitive peoples all over the world, it is likely that many beliefs accrued to flints in this region because we can say that in one respect flint is the only truly native stone. Flints were automatically coming to the surface each time the ground was prepared for the seed-corn; and curiously shaped flints and fossils were usually kept; and even today a ploughman will pick up a fossil or a holed flint and keep it in his pocket ‘for luck’, or take it home and place it on the mantel-shelf of the living-room. But not long ago many of these flints and fossils were kept for more specific reasons.
One of these flints was the sea-urchin fossil or fairy-loaf as it was called in Suffolk.3 It was polished and placed on mantel-pieces both as an ornament and a charm that was supposed to ensure there would always be bread in the house – a piece of imitative magic that grew out of the fossil’s resemblance to an old cottage loaf. It was this resemblance, also, that caused the fossil to be used, especially, in north-east Suffolk where it was often picked up on the sandy heathlands, as a charm placed alongside the old brick-oven when the weekly batch of bread was baked. It was believed to be an inducement to the bread to rise and imitate the fossil’s beautifully domed shape. The weekly bake of bread was critical under the old economy; and if, after every precaution, the bread ‘went dumpy’ – as occasionally happened – the failure, like many other inexplicable accidents, was put down to witchcraft. Later mention will be made of a horseman’s wife who attributed the failure of her bread to some of her husband’s secret practices connected with his horses. And here is a witch-story from a west Suffolk village, an apocryphal story but one that illustrates the importance of the bread-baking at a time when if the bread failed one could not go to the shop and buy a substitute: The cook in a big house suddenly began to have difficulty with his bread-making. After a succession of failures he roundly ascribed his poor bread to a village woman who was employed part-time at the house. She was a witch, and it was she who was causing the trouble. It was arranged, therefore, that the priest should exorcise the oven, with members of the household staff standing about it. He had not gone far with the ritual when the apron of the suspected woman caught fire.
The attractive symmetry of a good specimen of a sea-urchin fossil, with its intricate and delicate markings, has ensured that the fossil has been valued since earliest times. Robert Graves suggests4 that its magical significance explains why it is found in Iron Age burials. It is certain that curiously shaped stones have always had a fascination for the primitive mind; and were used magically in some of their ceremonies as aids to inducing hypnotic trances. Natives in certain parts of Australia,5 for instance, were convinced that great power resided in unusual stones. It is worth noting that the fairy-loaf was sometimes known as the pharisee-loaf in Suffolk and this has been corrupted to farcy-loaf; and it has been suggested that the old farm horsemen who carried the sea-urchin fossil in their pockets did so as a charm against farcy—the disease of glanders in horses. But the word pharisee has no connection with farcy; and its other forms, known in Sussex as well as in East Anglia, farissees or ferrishers are derived from the word ferrisheen which is a development of the Gaelic fear-sidhean (fear-sheen) meaning fairy-men.6
Another type of fossil is often found on the sandy heathlands of east Suffolk: its name is gryphaea incurva and it is known locally as the Devil’s Toe-nail. Its appearance does in fact suggest the nail of some mythical beast, and although it is collected and kept as a curious stone no ascertainable belief is linked with this fossil. With the Devil’s Finger, however, the belemnite fossil, a rich complex is associated. Belemnites are pointed flint cylinders varying from two to five or six inches in length: they are the fossilized guard of an extinct cuttle-fish and are frequently found in the soils of East Anglia where they are called Thunderbolts or Thunderpipes. The main belief linked with belemnites is still actively held by some of the older generation. One old horseman gave the following account of their origin: ‘As the sun draws up water so the clouds draw up substance from the earth – the sulphur and so on. When there’s a clap o’ thunder, down all this comes as thunderbolts.’ Another farm-worker recalled how he was working, singling sugar-beet in the spring of the year and there was a sudden thunderstorm. The lightning struck the ground not very far from the place where he was hoeing. On examining the spot later he discovered a small hole in the soil. His comment was: ‘If I’d ha’ dug down that hole, I’d ha’ found a thunderbolt, you ma’ depend.’ Another farm-worker reported: ‘I picked up one of those thunderbolts after a tempest, and it were right warm.’ But this belief can be placed alongside what a research scientist7 says about the idea of lightning generally held today: ‘In the history of mankind, not many parallels are likely to be found to the concept of the “lightning bolt”. Having appeared in artistic representations or in descriptive terms for several thousand years, it persists in the vocabulary of modern man purporting to describe a material substance conveyed by the lightning discharge. Yet it has no physical reality but merely reflects the reaction of primitive man to a supernatural force which engenders fear. It is just one example of the many superstitions in connexion with lightning and thunder that continue to survive in our age, such as the ringing of church bells and the covering of mirrors to prevent lightning damage or the belief that beech trees are never struck, to mention a few outstanding examples.’
The shape of the fossil, like the name belemnite, suggests a dart; and in one Suffolk village it has been called a ‘prehistoric arrow’. Like the true neolithic flint arrowheads it appears to have been identified with fairy-darts or elf-shots which were at one time considered to be causes of disease in men and cattle. Elf-shots are frequently mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon leechdoms;8 and Frazer confirms the link of the fossil with the artefact:9 ‘Among the peasantry of north east Scotland the prehistoric weapons called celts went by the name of “thunderbolts”, and were coveted as bringers of success, always provided that they were not allowed to fall to the ground.’ A horseman in the Suffolk village of Helmingham used to carry a belemnite in his pocket; and when asked the reason he said: ‘For luck, I reckon.’ But the belief that the belemnite was actually a product of the thunderstorm is recorded by Shakespeare and lends a much richer image to the lines which he gave to Cassius:10 ‘(I) Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone’; and to the sons of Cymbeline:11 ‘Fear no more the lightning-flash Nor
th’all-dreaded thunder-stone’.
The absence of an indigenous rock in East Anglia has also invested with a special interest those boulder stones that have been exposed. One of these has given its name to a village in Suffolk; Chediston, from the Old English Ceddes Stan – Cedd’s Stone; and another near the tower of Wortham church is called ‘Wortham’s Sacred Stone’. And if, as is likely, many of these stones were once regarded with awe, the early Church was careful to make a corner in veneration by having the stone either in the churchyard or even built into the church’s fabric as at Shelley in Suffolk. For the Church’s policy in this respect was quite clear, as we know from a letter12 of Pope Gregory’s giving the advice to St Augustine that pagan temples and shrines should not be destroyed but should be ritually cleansed and used for Christian worship. As well as legends of the sacredness of these stones there is sometimes a belief that a stone has grown on the spot where it has been always standing. A notable example of this comes from the Suffolk village of Blaxhall.13
In connection with ploughing the ground ready for the corn there is a very ancient custom that had its echo in East Anglia during the last century. This was the use of the plough to mark out a plot of land. At Battisford in Suffolk there is a straight length of road running through the parish: it is known locally as Battisford Straight; and there is a tradition that when the road was constructed one of the best ploughmen in the village drew a furrow as a guide to the roadmakers. A similar tradition exists concerning the village of Rickinghall which also has a Straight. Here, too, when the commons were taken in a skilled horseman drew a straight furrow to give the line of the new road. Certainly the ability of the old horse-ploughman to turn a long, straight furrow with only a fraction of an inch deviation commended itself on many occasions as a less troublesome method than the painstaking use of a theodolite; and – provided a good ploughman drew the furrow – a method that was just as accurate. The use of the plough for this purpose is very ancient.14 The original city of Rome was marked out in this way according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus: a primal furrow (sulcus primigenius) was drawn, and gave the rectangular shape of the city; but a plough was equally useful for marking out a circular boundary.
This ceremonial ploughing of the first furrow is also linked with another ancient tradition concerning the boundary of a piece of land. This is the custom which gave the name hide to a unit of land in medieval England. The custom was widely diffused, as it was considered the one method of unalterably fixing the boundary of an enclosure. It was done by cutting up the hide of an ox into narrow thongs and by distributing small lengths of the thong at intervals along the boundary. One of the earliest references to the custom is in Virgil who told15 of Dido’s founding a town in North Africa. Later writers elaborated on the story, and reported that Dido bought from the natives as much land as could be covered by a bull’s hide. After the agreement was made she proceeded to cut up the hide into small thongs, enclosing a large piece of land on which she built a citadel. She called this fortified town Byrsa ( – a hide). But Frazer gave a different explanation of the cutting up of the hide. He suggested that the custom involved the sacrificial slaying of an animal, and cited the practice of a Bechuanaland tribe16 who converted the hide of a bull by a long, spiral cut into one continuous thong. They then cut up this thong into small lengths which they distributed at the vulnerable parts of their own town or citadel in order to protect them from attack by their enemies. The protection was thought to emanate from the sacred beast which was slain and symbolically distributed around the confines. It is not implied that any such custom lasted until medieval times in Britain; but the name certainly did, and a hide denoted a fairly large piece of land the best estimate of whose extent is 120 acres.17
The plough was used, too, on a ritual occasion: on Plough Monday, the Monday after Twelfth Day, the end of the medieval Christmas holidays. On this day the ploughman dragged a gaily decorated plough from door to door in the village, asking for money to buy drink. The men themselves were also bedecked with ribbons, and they wore their shirts over their coats. If any householder refused to contribute to this foolery, the mummers put their shoulders to the plough and ploughed up the greensward in front of his door. There was also a lot of dancing and high-stepping antics performed by the mummers; and this gives the clue to the whole performance: the ploughing and the high leaping was another example of imitative magic, a fertility device to ensure that the corn for the coming year would be well bedded and would reach a good maturity.
It has been suggested that the ritual ploughing on Plough Monday anticipated the real ploughing which was to take place later. But in many parts of East Anglia, before the coming of the motor tractor, it was the aim to complete the ploughing before the advent of Christmas. This was especially so in the heavy clay of central Suffolk; and a horseman of the old school who worked in the Stowmarket area remarked humorously that it was the unalterable law of the land that ‘all ploughing must be done afore Christmas and the brist (breast or mould-board) of the plough must be polished up and put under the bed on Christmas Eve’. There was sound sense in this, as any ploughing done after Christmas in the heavy land districts of East Anglia would be a difficult business under the old horse economy; and there was no surety that any land left unploughed at this season could be worked into a good seed-bed in time for the drilling of the spring corn.
The Plough Monday jollifications were also used as an occasion to raise church funds, and plays were sometimes performed on this day.18 The ‘town’ or parish plough was often used for the ceremony. It was kept at the church not solely for this occasion but chiefly to be hired out to those parishioners who wanted to use it for its ordinary purpose on their own land. In many Cambridgeshire parishes, Duxford, Bassingbourne, Dry Drayton, the plough was housed in the church: the plough at Dry Drayton was remarked on in a 1685 episcopal visitation and was transferred on the instruction of the bishop from the nave to the belfry.19 Ploughs are still taken into church for blessing on Plough Sunday; and this January (1965) an old Norfolk ‘gallows’ horse-plough stood for the ceremony near the chancel arch in the magnificent parish church of Salle in Norfolk.
Also in connection with ploughing there is still in some villages a remnant of the belief that a piece of land in the parish should be left untilled. In English villages this is sometimes called Jack’s Land or No-Man’s Land.20 This custom has its counterpart in many countries of the world: in India, for instance, such a piece of land had been a former burial-ground and it was left as a permanent habitation for the dead. In Nigeria the land was referred to as Bad Bush and was taboo.21 But it is concerning Scotland, however, that we have the fullest evidence about this taboo piece of land. There it was called the Gudeman’s Fauld, the fold or enclosure reserved for the Goodman or the Devil. Not to exploit this land was a kind of due paid to the Devil to divert his attentions from the rest of the farm, thus preventing misfortune befalling it.22
There was a piece of land called Jack’s Green (now built on) in the Suffolk village of Creeting; and it is said to have given its name to part of the village. It is difficult to establish the truth of this but a tradition says there was a graveyard near here for seventeenth-century plague-victims: it also says that the land was infertile. ‘That land wouldn’t even grow damn paigles’ (cowslips, or buttercups in some parts of East Anglia), a farmer said about this piece of land. There was also a Jack’s Pit in the city of Norwich23 at the beginning of this century when it was filled in as part of a building programme. A part of a Cambridgeshire village (Dullingham) is also called Jack’s Gallows which appears to confirm the association.
1 F.L.H., p. 88.
2 I.F.W., p. 304.
3 A.F.C.H., p. 212. This 90 million years old fossil was known as the shepherd’s crown in some counties. Country Life, 7th October, 1965.
4 W.G., p. 39.
5 Ronald Rose, Living Magic, London, 1957, pp. 109, 163.
6 Lewis Spence, The Fairy Tradition in Britain, p. 82.
8 Grattan and Singer, op. cit. passim. cf. The Arrows of Apollo.
9 G.B., Part VII, Vol. 1, p. 14.
10 Julius Caesar, I, iii.
11 IV, ii.
12 v. G. G. Coulton, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 179.
13 A.F.C.H., p. 210.
14 Jung and Kerenyi, op. cit., pp. 11 ff.
15 Aeneid, 1. ll. 367–8.
16 G.B., Part IV, Vol. 2, p. 249.
17 F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, Essay III, The Hide, London, 1960.
18 W. E. Tate, The Parish Chest, p. 279.
19 East Anglian Notes and Queries, Vol. VIII (1899–1900), p. 143.
20 A. and B. Rees, Celtic Heritage, London, 1961, p. 203.
21 Dilim Okafor-Omali, A Nigerian Villager in Two Worlds, p. 87.
22 T. D. Davidson, ‘The Untilled Field’, Agric. Hist. Rev., Vol. III, Part 1.
23 East Anglian Notes and Queries, Vol. XIII, p. 388.
14
Sowing the Seed
The Pattern Under the Plough Page 11
