Enough iconography to make me think

Still on holiday - as well as annual leave I also have TOIL (Time Off In Lieu) to use up.  I have calculated that I get one month off for every five months worked.  Therefore my contract with the NGO will come to an end in November, not December (and then I will be free!).

Above:  during the week I drove to Hertfordshire to look at an underground cave cut into the chalk.  The walls of this cave are covered with hundreds of mysterious carvings.  In this post-Dan Brown period anything medieval and mysterious is immediately accredited to "the Knights Templars" so I was prepared to be unimpressed.

But actually there was enough iconography to make me think there may well be a crusader connection.

Entry is down steep steps and then a narrow passageway.

Above:  the narrow passageway (which is relatively modern) leads into a bell-shaped chamber with a conical roof - the hole you can see was the original entrance, so it was not an easy place to get into.  Only about twenty people are allowed in the cave at any one time, and even with this restriction the place was packed so that we were shuffling around each other.  Pevsner was unable to date the carvings accurately.
 

Above:  the carvings are fairly crude and all jumbled together without perspective (so that they reminded me of prehistoric cave drawings which were intended as ritual magic).  All of them seem to have Christian connotations.  Here you can see the right hand of God releasing a dove.

Above:  this image of St John the Baptist with staff and carrying the Christ child is unmistakeable (the image is more than life size).  The cult of St John the Baptist was venerated by the Templars.  Interestingly the local parish church is dedicated to St John the Baptist.

Above:  another large image, this time of St George - also a cult brought to England by the crusaders.   On the right of the picture is what looks like a maze.  As far as I know the carvings have not received any serious academic study (they may just be folk art - but if so why in such an inaccessible place).

Above:  this section of wall interested me greatly.  At the top is St Catherine of Alexandria and her wheel - the cult of St Catherine was again brought by the crusaders from the Holy Land (the crusader headquarters of the cult was supposedly at the church of St Catherine in Bethlehem).  Below St Catherine you can see (left to right): a large cross, apparently on fire; then two crowned figures which have been interpreted as Queen Berengaria and King Richard the Lion Heart; then a conventional scene of the crucifixion.

Above:  there were dozens of figures wearing heart symbols on their chest.  This picture shows two men with hearts (on the left) next to two women with crosses (you may have to click on the image to enlarge it).  This surely implies devotion to the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary?

Above (screenprint):  drummer Jon Moss (who is Jewish) wearing a shirt with the emblem of the Immaculate Heart.

Above:  Stephanie Germanotta wearing the Immaculate Heart in one of her recent videos (a sword shall pierce your heart also).

The Green Man

Above: article in the Guardian last week (and available on-line) revealed that a genetic variation could have been responsible for legendary stories about tribes of giants occurring in medieval literature. The example quoted referred to Ireland, but it made me wonder whether we can relate this research to the ubiquitous phenomenon of "the Green Man" which is found throughout the British Isles. The Green Man was supposedly a wild giant that lived in the woods and wastelands (also known as Jack-In-The-Green and the Woodwose).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/11/irish-giant-genetic-mutation-growth-disorder



Above: representations of the Green Man can be found everywhere, which is unusual for a legendary character. Given the intolerance in medieval society to disabilities (physical perfection was greatly prized, and any deviation from this was regarded as a curse) it is reasonable to assume that families showing a prevalence for the "giant gene" would have been driven out of society. Is it possible these people formed separate tribes living in the woods and forests that covered much of the country?



Above: most portrayals of the Green Man are found in churches, which has led some folklorists to assume that it is a covert survival of a pre-Christian vegetation cult. However, you can turn this argument around - as most medieval buildings that have survived are churches, they are the only places where you can still see medieval carvings of the Green Man - all the others have been destroyed. Thus there is no basis for saying the Green Man was an ancient religion.



Above: place name evidence often shows Green Man references close to ancient woodland. Notice the brown contour line running through the image which marks the edge of an elevation. To the right of this line is the basin of a vast prehistoric lake, perhaps thirty squares miles in area, which was formed by glacier movement at the end of the last Ice Age (resulting in fluvioglacial deposits of boulder clay, sands and gravels).



Above: Green Man pubs can occasionally be found. Story-telling was a popular entertainment in the pre-modern era, and pubs may have used their signs to advertise these performances (Jack and the Beanstalk etc). There was a famous Green Man pub in Mill Hill, but some idiot seems to have renamed it.



Above (screenprint): one of the most famous medieval green giant stories is the fourteenth-century Gawain and the Green Knight. This is the cover of the Penguin edition, which I first read when I was seventeen and have re-read ever since. It is an alliterative poem notable for its descriptive passages (particularly the countryside in winter).



Above (screenprint): when I did an image-search on Google it produced thousands of illustrations of Gawain and the Green Knight. You can even get these Gawain and the Green Knight t-shirts, made in America. It is an indication of the power of the myth that it has survived so long and is now spread throughout the world.

The concept of the maze

Recently I have been thinking about the idea of the maze or labyrinth in western culture.



Above: visiting a village in the south-west of the county I went into the church and saw this Norman font that was carved with unusual symbols.



Above: looking more closely at the symbols there seemed to be something familiar about the arrangement of swirls and triangles (also note the symbolic stars on the left).



Above: they reminded me strongly of the symbols I saw on the great stones at Newgrange in the Boyne Valley (in West Britain).



Above: reading more about Knowth, Dowth and Newgrange, the sites are enigmatic and the symbols obscure. The dating seems to be inconsistent (it varies in whichever book you read). I can't really remember much about my own trip to Newgrange except that it was a morning coach tour and the person sitting next to me fell asleep and virtually laid on me - I was only about seventeen, and not very assertive.



Above: this Nuba woman has had her hair cut in a maze design. When I saw the reports of the maze discovered by the National Trust at Lyveden New Bield I thought of this woman's hair. What is going on here?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/nov/06/luftwaffe-spy-tudor-garden-lyveden



Above: in his wonderful book Vergil, Epic and Anthropology W F Jackson Knight analyses the cultural significance of the maze, tracing it back to ancient Illium (Troy).

The film Troy (2004) shows the fight between Achilles (Brad Pitt) and Hector (Eric Bana) but gets wrong the way Achilles drags Hector around the city (according to WF Jackson Knight this is a symbolic ritual connected to the labyrith at Illium).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIxTAqI2CpY



Above: I recently read Clock of the Long Now by Stewart Brand. Brand's argument is that humanity should plan for the next ten thousand years. And this made me think that I have been too self-limited in tracing the origins of modern behaviour back to the medieval period - it should be possible to look back ten thousand years (and perhaps the concept of the maze is a good place to start).

White horses

Recently I have been thinking about white horses.



Above: earlier in the year I was driving with a friend through some of the more obscure villages of the north of the county. We came down a gentle hill and saw these two white horses in a field on the edge of the lane and we had to stop and go up to them. Which has made me ask ever since: what is it about a white horse that arrests the attention.

They are beautiful, but other horses are also beautiful.

Is there some encoded message in our culture that tells us to pay attention when we see a white horse?



Above: ancient thatched pub in a market town in the centre of the county. The pub is called Ye OLDE White Horse, indicating it was old even by the reckoning of our forefathers. Much work needs to be done on the origin of pub names, but often they were the meeting places of retinues, factions, gangs, secret societies, fraternities, guilds etc.

Did some prehistoric clan of the white horse have its drinking hall on this spot, by this important river crossing, ten or eleven millennia ago?



Above: paintings of white horses in a display of amateur art. Why are white horses so favoured? Even the sun throws down a kindly ray of light upon these representations (obviously white horses become dazzling in full sunshine).



Above: the white horse used as a brand name. As a whisky drinker I like the blended versions. Apart from Isle of Jura I don't really care for the single malts.



Above: pictorial representations of white horses have been carved into the sides of chalk hills throughout the southern half of England. Their ritual maintenance is associated with a significant body of folklore. Again one has to ask: what is going on here?

The Uffington white horse: http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-chl/w-countryside_environment/w-archaeology/w-archaeology-places_to_visit/w-archaeology-uffington_white_horse.htm

1960s children's series (black and white) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR6z8GUywyc

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Horse_(whisky)

Mermaids

Recently I've been thinking a lot about mermaids.



Above: mermaids used as heraldic supporters.

Mermaids are mythological creatures that feature in the folklore of the south of the county. Once you start looking for evidence you see portrayals of them everywhere. Sightings of mermaids have occurred regularly since the 14th century, although there is no hard evidence that they exist (and I should put on record that I do not believe in their existence).

Therefore we need to ask: why are people claiming to see these human-fish hybrids?

Are they fantasists and liars? Are they mistaken? Or is there a deeper anthropological need that is satisfied by repeating traditional mermaid folktails?



Above: the mermaid pub is some miles inland from the coast, but alongside a deep freshwater creek. The building is older than it looks, and has for centuries been a centre for the singing of sea shanties and the exchange of drunken stories. Did the mermaid legends result from inebriated boasting of the most salacious kind (the mermaids are always beautiful sirens with flowing golden hair and well-developed breasts).



Above: the folklore provides a good brand identity for this fish and chip shop. There is always a queue in this shop, and the chips are delicious. The Greenland halibut is incredibly good.



Above: representations of mermaids feature regularly in local fetes and pageants. This mermaid effigy has a brassiere of green shells. The creatures are always female.



Above: I was looking round this small remote church last year, which is inland but associated with the placename Seabrook. As you can see, the building contained an impressive set of ornate oil lamps. No-one could explain how old the lamps were, or who put them there (I would guess they were seventeenth-century).



Above: if you look closely at the lamps (you might have to click on the image to enlarge it) you can see that the design includes little mermaids. What are these half-naked mythological figures doing in a Christian church? When you consider how prudish the Victorians were, you would expect them to have been covered up in some way.



Above: probably the mermaid legends in the south of the county are related to the presence of seals along the county's coasts. Foundation myths associate the local people with these beautiful mammals, and anthropomorphic projections would have led (over time) to creation-stories that placed the coastal villages under the protection of hybrid human-seal/fish denizens of the sea. It is also quite likely that local sailors, drunk on rum and spending days without female company, could see these animals and fantasise they were women.

Veil

Newsnight on Monday had an item on whether Muslim women should wear veils in public. The issue became controversial when former Home Secretary Jack Staw said he didn't like speaking to women wearing these veils. In France there are moves to make the wearing of veils in public illegal.

This has made me think about the culture of veil-wearing.



Above: there has been no mention (that I have seen) in this debate about the English custom of wearing veils. Until the Second World War it was quite usual for women in the United Kingdom to veil their faces in public, and the novels of Wilkie Collins, Trollope and Dickens are filled with heavily-veiled characters. The custom still survives in the wedding veil - when my sister got married she wore a huge veil.

There was a sort of revival of veil-wearing in the 1980s, and presumably we will see future revivals.



Above: at a church I visited last year there was an exhibition of wedding dresses over the last hundred years with examples from every decade. This is the 1949 dress - no veil, but you can see in the photo at the foot of the dress that the accompanying veil was voluminous. Several questions were raised in my mind when I saw this item. Considering clothes rationing only ceased in 1949 how was it possible for such an expensive satin-silk garment to have been produced so soon after the war? Also, how has it been stored over the last sixty years without a mark or a crease or a moth-hole? Also, what is the owner keeping it for (or perhaps she sits in it everyday like Miss Haversham)?



Above: at a different church I saw a wedding veil left before the high altar like some kind of votive offering. There was something about this arrangement that seemed familiar. For a long time afterwards I kept trying to recall where I might have seen this before.



Above: then I remembered The Bride by the symbolist painter Johan Thorn Prikker. Nuns are known as the brides of Christ (and they are another group that wears veils). Note the white flowers that resemble skulls ('til death us do part).



Above: John Taverner called one of his most famous works The Protecting Veil. I listen to this CD all the time. He was inspired by the Orthodox Feast of the Protecting Veil, which reminds us that the Muslim practice of wearing veils was originally copied from the Byzantine Greeks.

Anyway, I have no problem with Muslim women wearing veils. I think Jack Straw was playing politics with the issue. He was up for re-election in a seat which has a strong BNP presence, and he no doubt wanted to outmanouvre them by attacking immigrants but without admitting that the Labour policy of unrestricted immigration has been a huge mistake and done a lot of damage to wage rates among the D and E socio-economic groups.

Interesting Demos discussion on the issue: http://www.demos.co.uk/blog/illegalhairandtheburqaban

Shrove Tuesday

Yes, I know this is cheating, but my efforts at cooking pancakes are not universally appreciated.

John Taylor writes about pancakes on Shrove Tuesday in Jack a Lent (1625), the Jack a Lent being a traditional custom of the day.

More: http://www.jstor.org/pss/4174383

Straw man

On Saturday I went into a neighbouring county to see an ancient custom that is held every winter (the custom is not entirely continuous - there was a break for about seventy years before it was revived almost exactly as it had been before).

The custom involves the creation of a man of straw (actually someone dressed up in sheaves of straw) who is paraded through the town and generally celebrated before the straw is burnt in a ritual bonfire. Traditionally a ploughboy was used as the straw man. The expression "straw man" means to create a scapegoat or proxy on which all the ills of a community are placed and then destroyed.



Above: the event has become a folk gathering of some magnitude, with twenty-eight teams of Morris dancers, Molly dancers and Sword dancers performing throughout the town (in the dismal grey weather). The pubs in the town were a focus of these dances. Here you can see some Morris dancers enjoying a drink outside the Black Bull.



Above: in the market place was a plough decorated for the Plough Day celebrations (although technically Plough Day is the Monday following the first Sunday of the year). Later this plough was taken in the procession, immediately behind the straw man. The straw used to decorate these ploughs should be the last sheaf to be harvested the previous summer.



Above: "Old Glory" Molly dancers. The men are dressed in labourer's clothes, in what seems to be an expression of traditional working class culture. The faces are blacked as a disguise (in the past these celebrations were frowned upon by the landowners, mainly because of the heavy drinking and riotous behaviour that accompanied it).



Above: the band of the Old Glory molly dancers. The band consists entirely of women, with blackened faces, wearing heavy black clothes, and wearing hats trimmed with masses of ivy. We are used to the Cecil Sharp / Percy Grainger prettified version of English folk culture - Old Glory recreates the more primeval (and slightly sinister) original tradition.



Above: the straw man leading one of the processions through the town (he has turned to look back).



Above: following on behind the straw man and the plough came the various folk dancers.



Above: more of the procession, which gives you an idea of its picturesque appearance.

Formerly these customs were widespread throughout the country (and all of Europe). Sir James Frazer writes at some length in The Golden Bough about the creation of straw representations of the corn deity (at one point identified with the "dying god" Adonis). In this case the "sacrifice" of the straw man is meant to ensure the fertility of the soil, the return of warm weather, and the prospect of a good harvest in the summer months to come.

More about Old Glory:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXqroWCsGFQ

Robin Hood

Above: Occasionally I have been watching the BBC dramatisation Robin Hood, starring Jonas Armstrong and produced by Dominic Minghella. Although aimed at children, it works as a drama within its own terms (which do not include historical veracity). The dialogue is bad, the plots are far-fetched, the authenticity is poor - and yet it works (although occasionally there is an element of the knights who say ni).



Above: the inclusion of a black character in the third series led to accusations of political correctness and political re-education. There has been a number of these highly suspect (and clunky) attempts to rewrite historical narrative to support modern political policy. I would like to know who is funding the Francis Pryor revisionist documentaries that very persuasively argue that the Anglo-Saxons never existed (persuasive until you realise that the spoken language completely changed in the fourth century, evidence that the population had completely changed).



Above: the most recent versions of the Robin Hood legends locates them in Nottinghamshire, but in reality there were probably many "outlaw" gangs throughout the country, and over a period of time these coalesced into the archetypal "Robin Hood" we know today.



Above: Ronald Hutton has tracked the performance of Robin Hood folk plays in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They show that awareness of the Robin Hood legends was very widespread, and this reinforces the idea that there was more than one "Robin Hood". Sir James Frazer identified Robin Hood with the fertility figure Jack-in-the-Green.



Above: Robin Hood plays have remained popular throughout history - the scene you can see above is from a local play in the 1950s and shows Robin Hood and Maid Marion.



Above: the Robin Hood character still figures in modern pageants, plays and parades.



Above: this pub supposedly has connections with a local version of the legend, although it might be just a marketing invention by the landlord.



Above: the Robin Hood legends include references to a massive hollow oak tree which acted as the outlaws' headquarters. This oak tree is the largest in the county, and fits the description. It is on a local farm.



Above: this is a photo of an old photo which shows the oak tree in Victorian times when a door was fitted to the entrance and the hollow interior was used as a dining room.



Above: to sum up, the Robin Hood legends are a ubiquitous strand of national folklore, continually developing and transmuting into different mediums (folk tale, printed book, television, film, Youtube etc). Possibly they represent a longing to escape the restrictions of urban life and return to the primeval forest life of our ancestors. The United Kingdom has lost much of its broadleaf woods and forests since the Second World War - a situation the Woodland Trust is trying to redress.

More on the series: http://www.bbc.co.uk/robinhood/

The knights who say ni: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTQfGd3G6dg