England’s Weirdest Customs
From wife-carrying in Surrey to cheese-rolling in the Cotswolds, these are some of the quirkiest traditions and village pastimes still alive and well in England today.
Apparently we are a nation of weirdos. To anyone who grew up in England - particularly in a small village in England - there is nothing at all strange about dressing up in ribbons and bells and hitting sticks together in public, or chasing a large cheese down a steep hill, or setting fire to things and running around with them, trying not to get burned.
To outsiders, this is weird. This is wacky. These quirky customs and pastimes, with their roots in customs dating back to the middle ages, are the last bastions of English eccentricity - and are often just a little bit dangerous, too. Third-degree burns, dropping your wife on her head, or knocked out with a wellington boot is all part of the fun. Warning: may contain morris dancing.
DANCING AROUND THE MAYPOLE
Maypole dancing is a serious business. It may look to the untrained eye like a bunch of confused schoolchildren skipping around in a random fashion, but it does in fact involve careful choreography to create complex patterns of woven, multicoloured ribbons around the pole.
This ceremonial folk dance has been done to celebrate May Day and herald the arrival of spring since medieval times. The prettiest girl in the village was selected as the May Queen, and all the other bright young things of the village put on their best sackcloth and danced reels, jigs and hornpipes, accompanied by accordian, pipe and fiddle, winding their ribbons around that garlanded, phallic pole until they ended up kissing-distance close; then afterwards, they lit a funeral pyre with a post-coital cigarette and sacrificed the lucky May Queen to the pagan gods. These days a virgin sacrifice is rare, except perhaps in the remotest wilds of East Anglia.
JACK IN THE GREEN
An excellent chance to follow what looks like a moving hedge through town on the May Bank Holiday. Known as the Jack, he's attended by green-faced 'Bogies' and a Morris group, and later gets 'slain' amid the cliff-top castle ruins. It all began as a form of legalised begging for chimney sweeps out of work during the summer months - the Jack began as a garland but grew and grew until he covered the person beneath.
CHEESE-ROLLING IN THE COTSWOLDS
Gloucestershire's famous Cheese Rolling tradition has attracted such numbers in the past (an estimated 15,000 in 2009) that it's now staged every year by an 'ad-hoc group of enthusiasts' and has been capped at a total of 5,000 attendees. The objective? Simple: to be the first competitor to cross the finish line following a rolling round of Double Gloucester cheese (which can gather furious speeds of up to 70mph). The winner must then perform a shirtless sprint - trophy in hand -back up Cooper's Hill, in a cheese-centric, Circle of Life-type act of symbolism that celebrates the cheese's creation, release, and eventual re-capture.
A note of warning for any wannabe cheese-chasers: despite the seemingly harmless nature of the pastime, multiple injuries have been suffered historically as a result of chasing the cheeses down the hill, ranging from concussion to broken bones.
TAR BARREL RACING
There is not much left in Britain that is dangerous, and tremendously fun, and still legal. The flaming tar barrels of Ottery St Mary - the sweet town in Devon where Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born - is all three of those things.
This is what happens: 17 massive old wood-and-iron barrels are filled with tar, and lit, and then carried, sometimes at great speed, on the shoulders of the burliest Ottregians (mainly men, but not exclusively) around the town. Close to 10,000 people turn up to watch every year; the point seems to be to get as close to the barrel as possible, and pray you don't get run into, or burning tar splashed onto you as it hurtles past.
If there is a set route, or any order to the proceedings - Are they racing? Is there a winner? - it's almost impossible to tell. Go, quick, before health-and-safety end the fun forever - though they'd have to fight a hundred ruddy Devonshire farmers first.
WIFE CARRYING
The practice of Wife Carrying - a race hosted annually in The Nower, Dorking, in which men carry their partner along a hilly 380m course - has a significantly less jovial history than the modern event suggests. Dating back to the Viking invasion of 793 AD, the race evolved out of the Nordics' rampage, in which a monastery was destroyed and local women were carried off against their will. It was only in 2008 that the tradition was revived in the UK - albeit with a whole new, 21st century set of rules (principally that women participate willingly).
The conditions of competing? Wives must weigh at least 50kg - and those lacking in kilos must make up the weight in the equivalent of baked bean cans - and must wear a helmet; and competitors must complete the course (beset by hay-bale hurdles and the occasional cold-water hazard). The prizes? £100 and a barrel of Pilgrim ale for the winning couple, who will go on to participate in the world championships in Finland; a pound of sausage for the carrier of the heaviest wife, and mini-kegs for the runners up. The losers can look forward to receiving a 'ceremonial' tin of dog food and a Pot Noodle.
HURLING THE SILVER BALL
One of many parish 'mob' games taking place around Shrove Tuesday, for some reason this never caught on outside Cornwall. The aim? To throw a small silver ball across the parish boundary and into one of two goals set roughly two miles (yes, miles) apart. The winner is carried to the Market Square and later the ball is immersed in jugs of beer, which gets shared amongst the players.
MORRIS DANCING
The roots of morris dancing are as strange as the dance itself. OK, that's not true, there is perhaps nothing as strange as morris dancing. Historically, the dance may come from a Spanish celebration of the removal of Moors from Spain in the 15th century - but that's just speculation. Morris aficionados will know that there are at least six different styles of morris dancing, so nailing it down to one formula is difficult. Usually it involves men (and occasionally women) dressed in white trousers (or breeches) and tops with red braces, dancing with a folky hop-and-a-skip while carrying sticks, handkerchiefs or possibly swords.
It's most popular in villages around the Cotswolds and Welsh borders, though it's also common in the north-west and can often be found in even the remotest parts of rural England. Some dancers in the borders with Wales paint their faces black, while elsewhere it is not unusual to find one of the male dancers (the Morris fool) to be dressed as a woman.
Banned by the puritans led by Oliver Cromwell, the dance is steeped in folklore, and can most commonly be found amidst May Day celebrations - usually near a pub. Beer is a common accompaniment for both dancers and audiences.
LEWES FIREWORKS
For 364 days of the year, Lewes, near Brighton in Sussex, is the sort of town to take afternoon tea in. Maybe browse an antiques shop, visit the castle, wander its pretty ancient streets and, if you're feeling reckless, perhaps make a visit to the local brewery. But on 5 November, the town takes on a very different personality. Steeped in traditions going back 500 years, Lewes takes fireworks night very seriously, and only those ready for a night of protestant, flame-throwing revelry, fraught with raucousness and danger, should enter.
In a world ruled by health and safety regulations it is amazing that Lewes fireworks night (public injury count: approximately 80 per year) is allowed to exist at all. This is now known as one of Britain's most anarchic nights of the year, when 30 rival fireworks societies march the streets with burning crosses, effigies of (often famous) people stuffed to the brim with fireworks, and messages against the pope.
The tradition of fireworks follows the foiling of Guy Fawkes' gunpowder plot to blow up Parliament in 1605, celebrated across England on the same night. However, Lewes also remembers the burning of the seven 'Lollard' martyrs, who died at the stake during the reign of Henry VIII. They were sentenced to death for teaching the bible in English rather than Latin, and rejecting the concept of church wealth and holy communion. It's this that gives the night its edge beyond anything you'll find in your local park.
PANCAKE FLIPPING
While the rest of the world carnivals Shrove Tuesday away with colourful Mardi Gras celebrations, the English - in classic, off-the-wall style - get out their frying pans to flip pancakes.
There are religious roots behind the consumption of the sweet and savoury treats on Shrove Tuesday: pancakes were historically served as a means of using up fatty foods prior to fasting for Lent. It's the zany racing element of the tradition that is quintessentially quirky: the practise is said to have originated with a housewife from Olney, Buckinghamshire, who became so absorbed in her cooking that when the bells rang for church, she made a dash for the service with her pan still in hand.
Races have taken place across the country ever since. Even the House of Lords and House of Commons pit themselves against one another in the highly competitive Parliamentary Pancake Race in aid of charity (the House of Commons lot are the current reigning champions). In Buckinghamshire, the town of Olney still hosts an annual all-female Pancake Race, too - and, bizarrely, the town also participates in a transatlantic pancake race-off with the Kansas town of Liberal, in the USA.
The best bit of the pancake race tradition is that after all the strenuous athleticism is over, there's a tasty reward ready and waiting in the pan - preferably to be doused in lemon and sugar.
WHITTLESEA STRAW BEAR FESTIVAL
Not to be confused with the Wicker Man (a Scottish wicker effigy used in human sacrifice that inspired a horror movie of the same name), the Whittlesea Straw Bear is a much tamer fashioning of agricultural by-product.
The town's Straw Bear Festival, held in January every year, sees a performer don a five-stone metal and straw costume and parade through the town's streets, accompanied by a motley crew of Appalachian dancers, Morris dancers and a decorative plough. The curious tradition - more than 200 years old, and with unknown origins - was banned in 1909 for its association with begging (the bear used to dance in exchange for money, food or beer), and was only revived in 1980.
Reawakening the bear has proven to be a resounding success. In 1999, it made friends with a German contemporary from Walldürn (dressing people up in straw is in fact a Europe-wide phenomenon, thought to have originated in Bavaria); and this year, more 6,000 people turned out to revel with the straw incarnation.