The Pattern Under the Plough Page 5
5 The side entrance was also preferred for privacy’s sake, as it almost certainly was in the original structure of the Needham house.
6 It is likely that iron pyrites was also mistaken for this.
7 G.B., III, p. 226.
8 G.B., Part VII, Vol. 2, p. 75.
9 Enid Porter, v. Some Folk Beliefs of the Fens, Folklore, Vol. 69, p. 115.
10 M. A. Murray, The God of the Witches, p. 123.
11 E. M. Porter, op. cit., p. 15.
12 Trefor M. Owen, Welsh Folk Customs, p. 173.
5
Trees, Plants and Principles
MANY of the older houses in this area were also protected on the outside against evil influences by the planting of small trees and shrubs near the door or in the hedge surrounding the garden. The elder was the most common tree used for this purpose in East Anglia; and the belief that it is in some way useful to have an elder growing near the door or in the garden is still met among the older generation in East Anglia; and the writer has come across two or three instances in different districts here in recent years. In one village not far from Ipswich a wife asked her husband to trim back an old elder bush that was ‘making the garden look untidy’. He obstinately refused, maintaining it was unlucky to cut the elder. But this is one of the old beliefs that are dying out as the conditions which nourished them in the isolated country communities with unbroken links with the past are quickly disappearing.
In Scotland the elder is the ancient bourtree of the ballads; and it was wood that was never burned. This taboo on burning elder obtains in East Anglia, too; but some country people here say that it is common sense not to burn elder as it is a wood that spits when it is placed on the fire and therefore likely to be dangerous. Elderberries gathered on St John’s Eve – the old pagan, Beltane or Midsummer festival – were believed to prevent the possessor suffering from witchcraft; and elderberries and elder pith were sometimes given in the food of those thought to be bewitched. Like St John’s wort it was a kind of fuga daemonum, putting evil spirits to flight. The old Prussians1 venerated the elder; and Robert Graves suggests2 that the tree was associated with death and the after-life because of the elder-leaf shape of the funerary flints in megalithic long-barrows; and he links the tree with Midsummer because at that time the elder flowers are at their whitest and a true symbol of the White Goddess – or the various names in which she was known: Diana, Hecate, Demeter and so on – whose sacred plant it was.3
There is convincing evidence that this pagan Mother Goddess, in her various guises, was the centre of a widespread cult in Britain, and remained so for centuries after Christianity had been ‘officially’ introduced into these islands. The horse was sacred to her, chiefly in her form of Diana or Epona; and just as the taboo on eating horse-flesh is almost as effective in Britain today as it must have been when the cult was the dominant one, so many of the trees and plants which were also associated with the goddess still preserve some of their ancient favour in the country districts of Britain. Here the importance of fertility and the eclectic attitude of country people to all cults and religions that seem likely to promote abundance conspired to keep alive customs and rituals of the old chthonic deities long after their names had been forgotten; and the old Suffolk country people4 who affirmed that lightning never struck the elder and who believed that a cross made of elder brought into the house secured it against this disaster were invoking protective powers drawn, as often, from entirely different sources.
But there is another theory to explain why country people in Britain regard certain small trees almost with awe. It is summarized by Professor Estyn Evans who stresses the link between long-standing beliefs and the physical conditions in those regions of the world where they evolved:5
‘In Ireland the trees which the older faiths had endowed with magic qualities were all small trees and shrubs – especially the rowan, holly, elderberry, and whitethorn – and the evidence of archaeology and palaeobotany is that these plants first became common in prehistoric landscape as weeds of cultivation following forest clearance by early cultivators. Thus they would have become symbols of the farming year, their white blossoms a sign of spring and the end of killing frosts, their red berries a token of the fulfilment of harvest and the promise of renewed life.’
The hawthorn or whitethorn still has a place in the mythology of the countryside, and the taboo on bringing the may or hawthorn blossom into the house is well known and still regarded. But in many Suffolk farmhouses there was a custom whereby a servant who first brought a bunch of hawthorn into the house on the first of May was rewarded with a dish of cream for breakfast. The first of May, however, was a special and related occasion, as the name suggests; and it is likely that this can be understood as the ritual breaking of a taboo, the temporary raising of all prohibitions on the holy-day or festival of the goddess. For the hawthorn gets one of its names from the month which in turn celebrates the Greek goddess Maia, the mother of Hermes, and another manifestation of the White Goddess6 to whom the blossom of the may-tree was sacred. Her month was the time of purification in readiness for the Midsummer festival; temples were swept out; houses spring-cleaned; sexual intercourse forbidden; and old clothes were worn until the unlucky month was over. Robert Graves7 derives two modern superstitions from these last two; the unluckiness of the month of May for brides and their husbands, and the injunction against casting a clout until the month of May is over.
Superstition would undoubtedly be a very apt word to denote these perennial beliefs, for the reason that they stand over (super-stant) from a more ancient religion or culture. But the word has too many overtones; for often the bare mention of these seemingly irrational, mythical, or poetic elements in our own culture provokes a surprisingly violent reaction: many people find it hard to discuss them objectively, perhaps assuming that they are being aske to believe in them; and they react strongly against what appears to them as a direct assault on their reason and common sense. The first weapon they catch hold of is the word superstition, and by using it as a kind of dismissive sneer, put out of court any rational discussion either of the belief’s origin, its place in our own society or its relation to similar beliefs elsewhere. We cannot, therefore, use the word superstition in a referential sense without great risk, and in spite of its aptness it would be best in describing these survival to use a less suitable but more neutral phrase such as old beliefs and customs. These, at least, suspend the passing of judgment upon them until examination shows that either they have some value or none at all for the historian or anthropologist. For however infantile an old belief’s content, there is always a prima facie case for looking at it dispassionately and considering, for instance, whether it may be a local variation of an obstinately universal form.
A holly-tree was also considered sacred,8 and to have one growing near the house was like having an elder, a spiritual assurance against evil. The bay-tree was similarly regarded. A Suffolk woman moving house a few years ago transplanted the bay-tree which had been growing near her door to a similar position near the new dwelling. She said that she wouldn’t have been comfortable in the new house without it. The mountain-ash or rowan-tree was looked on as one of the most effective defences against witchcraft, just as potent as iron. In some districts carters kept a rowan-cross in their pockets or wore a sprig of rowan in their hats to safeguard their horses which were supposed to be particularly susceptible to witches.9 But in East Anglia the rowan was not singled out as much as the elder for this protective purpose and appears to have been held in nothing like the same regard as it was in the Celtic countries and in Yorkshire. In this county10 witch-posts made of rowan were built into farmhouses specifically to render them safe against witches; and although there are no witch-posts, as far as is known, in East Anglia, the practice has relevance to this region because of the importance attached to the threshold and the chimney or hearth in this connection. It was believed that a witch, to gain power over the house and its occupants, would try to ent
er through the door, proceed past the hearth and then make her exit through the chimney.11 The witch-post was, therefore, placed on the appropriate side of the hearth as one of the supports to the lintel-beam, and as a deterrent to the witch’s passage through the house. The top of the post was usually moulded and fortified by a carving of a St Andrew’s cross.
The rowan like the oak was one of the sacred trees of Thor. A plant that was also dedicated to him as the thunder- and fire-god was sengren or house-leek. Culpepper regarded it as a herb of Jupiter, and mentioned that it preserves whatever it grows on from fire and lightning. As one of its names suggests, it grows on housetops, a small circular plant that is often seen on old tiled roofs in East Anglia where it was held in special esteem as a folk medicine. But Culpepper’s suggestion that the herb is ‘good for all the inward heats as well as outward’ is undoubtedly influenced by its mythical associations and probably is as much homeopathic magic as empirical medicine. Though many old country people valued it highly, and used it for treating skin complaints, burns and scalds. It is a plant with a long history in this part of England, and as singrenan was recommended as an ingredient of cough-medicine in the old English Lacnunga or Leechdom.12 Yet the prevalence of sengren on East Anglian roofs has brought out the suggestion that it was often deliberately planted there to prevent the tiles from slipping. It is a fact that when the wooden peg or pin of an old pin-tile rots the tile slips away; but this theory looks at first glance suspiciously like the rationalization of a long-standing custom.
Another common insurance against lightning striking an old East Anglian house was the spiral iron; it is shaped something like an elongated S, and some examples show the ends pointed like the conventional representation of lightning or Jove’s ‘thunderbolts’. The iron forms a lock or tie to the tie-rod which helps to prevent outward thrust in many of these high-pitched, heavy-roofed timber buildings. The tie occasionally takes the form of a cross – a conventional cross or a St Andrew’s – but usually it is S-shaped. Sometimes a double-S is found, one arm superimposed at right angles to the other, giving roughly the shape of the swastika, the so-called Hammer of Thor. An old Elizabethan mansion Coldham Hall in Suffolk has an example of this, on the front of the south wing – the swastika design being here enclosed in a circle.
In the eaves near which these irons are found there is often another detail that is supposed to be one of the letters spelling out good fortune to the occupants of these old houses. This is the nest of the swallow or martin. In Suffolk it is interpreted as a good sign if a swallow or martin builds on a house, and it is inviting bad luck to attempt to destroy these nests. This belief may be related to some unidentifiable myth concerning the swallow or martin; on the other hand it may be that the good fortune was directly associated with the happy choice of the house’s site; for it has been observed, notably by Shakespeare,13 that where the martin breeds the air is delicate and pure.
It is clear, however, that we can identify many of the marginal customs and surface details relating to an old house as the remnants of old cults or religions; and as such we can claim them as evidence of the many variegated strands that go to make up the rural culture of the British Isles. Often where a belief or custom cannot be referred to a prior culture it has interest as an illustration of some of the principles underlying primitive beliefs all over the world. One of these is the old use of the association of ideas which underlies sympathetic magic. Sir James Frazer has isolated two aspects of this: homeopathic or imitative magic (like produces like); and contagious or touching magic (things that have once been in contact will always be linked however distant from one another they become.) Although these two aspects have been isolated to form part of a hypothesis and rarely appear in pure form the distinction is a useful one; and there are sufficient examples in connection with the house and home to show that it has great value in helping to discover how a seemingly irrational even nonsensical belief arose.
Here is an example: A Suffolk farmer’s wife was rather annoyed with her young daughter because on a fine day in early spring the child had brought a bunch of primroses into the house. ‘If you are going to bring primroses indoors,’ the mother said tartly, ‘you’ll have to bring in more than that. Take them out and pick a bigger bunch!’ This incident happened in a Suffolk village since the First World War, but there is a record14 of a similar belief in Suffolk during the last century. For some time the writer sought out the principle that lay behind this belief but without any success. Then at an old people’s gathering at the village of Ringshall one of the members told him: ‘Of course, you had to bring in at least thirteen primroses into the house. Do you bring less, it were no use: it didn’t serve. Thirteen was the number – or more. It didn’t matter if you had more; but you dursn’t have less.’ The rationale of the custom was then immediately clear as one of the old people very soon pointed out: thirteen is the number traditional to a clutch of eggs placed under a hen during the spring. Each yellow primrose was, therefore, the analogue of a young chick which would eventually emerge from the egg. If one grants that like produces like – an unquestioned assumption of the primitive mind either in Britain or in Borneo – it is folly then to bring in fewer primroses than you hope to have healthy young chicks.
There was again a persistent belief in East Anglia that a child’s first movement after its birth should be upward. This was easily arranged if the child was born downstairs: the nurse could then take him in her arms and carry him up to the first floor. But in most cases the child was born upstairs and his first natural movement would then be downwards. This difficulty was avoided by the nurse’s taking the baby into her arms and stepping up on a chair before proceeding downstairs. The precaution was not a superstition in the root meaning of the word, simply a logical application of the principle already stated: start the child on an upward path right at the beginning of his life and from henceforth he would tend to continue in that direction. It is not so much the reasoning that is faulty in these old beliefs as their fantastic premisses.
More beliefs connected with the house illustrate the same principles, for instance: ‘You mustn’t sweep the dust out of the room, do you’ll sweep the master out of the house’. Or, ‘Don’t sweep the dust out of the house. Sweep it into a pile in the centre of the room and then burn it’ (a precaution to stop anyone using for an evil purpose the dust that had touched the occupants’ feet). While collecting material the writer came across an example which seems to combine both aspects of sympathetic magic. He was invited inside an old lady’s cottage, and on being asked to sit down promptly chose a very comfortable-looking windsor chair. Just as he was about to settle, the old lady exclaimed, half humorously, half seriously: ‘Oh, don’t set there! Thet’s the maaster’s chair. Dew you set in the maaster’s chair you’ll hev to pay the rent!’ He got up very quickly. But the inference was clear to him: ‘If you infringe the authority of the head of the house by sitting on the chair where it inheres you must also assume his obligations.’
A belief commonly held in East Anglia even today, and not unknown in other parts of Britain, is that in visiting a house ‘you must always go out by the same door as you entered’. If one presses for an explanation the nearest one gets to it is: ‘If you come out by a different door, you’ll never visit that house again.’ It is not easy to discover the basis of this belief but here are some attempts: Christina Hole15 writes:
‘It is, of course, very unlucky for a man to pass through carrying a spade on his shoulder. It is a death omen for someone within. It is the spade which does it in this case – omen of a grave to be dug – but only, I think, if the man goes right through.
‘The Helston Furry Dancers, when they enter a house, sought to go in at the front door and out at the back in order to bring the true luck of Summer to the indwellers. If they can’t then they bow at the householders and go out again the same way. But this is not as powerful a luck-bringing charm as the through journey.
‘At Roadwater in Somerset afte
r the apple-trees have been wassailed on January 17th (old Twelfth Night), the wassailers return to the local inn to drink the health of the house and then depart. It is, apparently, essential that they enter by the back door and leave by the front, otherwise bad luck will come to the inn.
‘In Bygones, 17th January, 1900 a writer says that in Montgomeryshire, if a man happened to be the first visitor on New Year’s Day (a very unlucky omen) little boys had afterwards to walk through the house “To break the witch”.
‘All these are, with the exception of the spade case, ceremonial occasions, either luck-bringing or purifying. I don’t know the reason for the superstition at ordinary times, but it occurs to me that it may be one of the many notions of what visitors may do or not do to ensure their return, e.g. not putting on forgotten gloves without making a new start; not folding a napkin etc. Could it not be that the finality of passing right through the house meant that the person will never return to that house? Or as the ceremonial passage through adds to the life of the house by bringing luck or purifying evil, could it perhaps draw away life (and bring bad luck) when done without ceremonial excuse?’
It seems clear, as already stated, that the taboo was broken only on ceremonial or ritual occasions; and this points to the custom’s link with an older culture – probably Celtic, for although the belief is held all over Britain it seems strongest in the Celtic countries. Here is a relevant custom from the Welsh border:16 ‘As the clock struck twelve it was customary to open the back door first to let the Old Year out; then the front door was opened to let the New Year in’. Probably walking through the house was an analogue of man’s passage through life, and for that reason it was a risky and final exercise except on special occasions. A Suffolk clergyman17 has pointed out that it used to be the custom at funerals for the corpse to be taken through the south porch of the church and then to be brought out through the north porch – wherever a church possessed one. Symbolism has always played a large part in Christian worship; the font, for instance, is the symbol as well as the instrument of entry (through the christening ceremony) into the Church’s body; and for that reason it is placed right at the entrance to the church building. It is, therefore, conceivable that the taking of the corpse right through the church was a purposive piece of ritual; and this would be sufficient to fix immovably in the minds of country people the taboo against walking right through an ordinary dwelling-house.