{"id":949,"date":"2020-01-16T14:14:45","date_gmt":"2020-01-16T14:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hebulstrode.co.uk\/?p=949"},"modified":"2020-01-17T11:41:13","modified_gmt":"2020-01-17T11:41:13","slug":"appeasing-the-spirits-of-our-orchards-the-customs-of-old-twelfth-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.hebulstrode.co.uk\/?p=949","title":{"rendered":"Appeasing the Spirits of Our Orchards: the Customs of Old Twelfth Night"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Despite the title, this\narticle has not been penned by The Wicker\nMan<\/em>\u2019s Lord Summerisle, and no police officers, or anyone else, will be\ncallously sacrificed to restore fertility to the orchards of the West Country\nduring the coming days. Tomorrow will be Old Twelfth Night, which is to say the\nfinal day of Christmas as reckoned by the Julian calendar until its replacement\nin Britain by the Gregorian Calendar in September 1752. This change caused an\ninstant \u2018leap forward\u2019 in time from Wednesday 2 September to Thursday 14\nSeptember, bringing the calendar back into line with the Earth\u2019s annual\nprogress around the Sun. Somehow, this seemed neither right nor proper to a\nnumber of rustic celebrants, so they continued to mark Old Twelfth Night long\nafter the reform, as did the Russians until they switched to the Gregorian way\nof doing things in 1918, which is why the October \u2018Revolution\u2019 (more correctly\na Bolshevik coup d\u2019\u00e9tat) actually took place in November.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twelfth\nNight celebrations originally constituted the highpoint of Christmastide\nrevelry, but these have over the years dwindled into insignificance and near\nextinction. It is now little more than a footnote, with only the tradition of wassailing\nkeeping its name alive in some parts of England. Even so, although the wassail\nitself has undergone something of a modest revival in recent decades, it\nremains strongest in its West Country heartland, where it often takes place on\nOld Twelfth Night, which falls on 17 January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wassail ostensibly takes place with a view to propitiating the spirit of the orchard by singing and drinking to the health of the trees, but as this bare outline of the practice illustrates, it is rather more likely to be to the benefit and good cheer of the participants, than to the wellbeing of the trees of the orchard themselves. It involves, most unusually for England, the use of firearms, with gunshots being let off to scare away evil spirits. The ritual of the wassail inspired the disorientating opening scene of a ghost story<\/a>, in which the discharge of a blunderbuss in a Somerset apple orchard on Old Twelfth Night presages the disturbing nature of that which is to come. The local menfolk have lately returned from the trenches of the Great War, and despite the wishes of the local landowner, his reinstitution of the wassail fails to restore the past order. This is but one aspect of the collision between encroaching modernity and tradition dealt with in the story, in which the former unleashes darker and older forces. There is, however, also a marked humorous streak to this tale<\/a> and its follow-up<\/a>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having taken a quick look at this year\u2019s events, I see that wassailing will be celebrated at a number of locations across the West Country, including at the Somerset Rural Life Museum in Glastonbury, and the Avalon Orchard at Glastonbury Tor this Saturday (the selection of Saturday being, presumably, a concession to people\u2019s availability). There will also be a wassail on the traditional date of Friday 17 January at Sheppy\u2019s Cider Farm Shop in Bradford-on-Tone. The picture seen here is of an apple tree in Cotehele\u2019s Old Orchard in Cornwall, which can be found next to its \u2018Mother Orchard\u2019 planted in 2007 to preserve and propagate traditional varieties of West Country apple. A noble undertaking, so let us raise a cup to the endeavours of Mary Martin and James Evans, the apple specialists who conceived this noble undertaking. Wassail!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Old Crotchet<\/a><\/em>: \u2018Clever little story. A hidden gem.\u2019 Malcolm D. (Amazon UK).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018H.E. Bulstrode’s tale of the sinister happenings in an old\nmanor on Twelfth Night makes good reading – the plot is somewhat akin to Wilkie\nCollins work with Agatha Christie characters.\u2019 Plain Jane (Amazon Spain).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018This first book of the West Country Tales series created a\nnew Bulstrode fan.\u2019 Sandy V. (Amazon US).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Old Crotchet\u2019s Return<\/a><\/em>: \u2018Great characters and a totally creepy story. Loved this book. When I first started reading I had to turn back and check the copyright date – it is very well written in the style of the 1920s.\u2019 Bellamy Station (Amazon US).<\/p>\n

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