The Danish Conquest, Part 11: The Battle of Sherston

The Battle of Sherston in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (BL Cotton MS Tiberius B IV, f.67)

This week marks the 1000th anniversary of one of the most important battles of the Danish Conquest, fought at Sherston in Wiltshire on or around 25-26 June 1016. The Battle of Sherston might be largely forgotten today - though its anniversary is being commemorated in the village this weekend - but it features prominently in medieval narratives of Cnut's conquest of England. In this post we'll look at some of the many accounts of this battle, both the history and (perhaps more interesting!) the legend.

As we saw in the last post in this series, after the death of King Æthelred on 23 April, his son Edmund Ironside was left to lead the English defence against the Danes. Cnut's forces besieged London, unsuccessfully, and then fought a succession of battles with Edmund's army across the south of England during the summer and autumn of 1016. The first major engagements were in the south-west, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (E):

Þa wæs Eadmund cyng ær þam gewend ut. 7 gerad þa West Seaxan. 7 him beah eall folc to. 7 raðe æfter þam he gefeaht wið þone here æt Peonnan wið Gillinga. 7 oðer gefeoht he gefeaht æfter middan sumera æt Sceortstane. 7 þær mycel wæll feoll on ægðre healfe. 7 þa heres him sylfe toeodon on ðam gefeohte. 7 Eadric ealdorman 7 Ælmær Deorlingc wæron þam here on fultume ongean Eadmund cyng.

Then King Edmund had gone out before that [the siege of London] and rode into Wessex, and all that people submitted to him. And quickly after that he fought against the army at Penselwood near Gillingham, and he fought another battle after midsummer [June 24] at Sherston. There was great slaughter on both sides, and the armies themselves broke off the fight. Ealdorman Eadric and Ælfmær Darling were aiding the army against King Edmund.

Sherston is near the Fosse Way, a few miles west of Malmesbury. This was the first major battle between the armies led by Cnut and Edmund, but the outcome was apparently unclear; 'the armies themselves broke off the fight', and sources disagree on who gained the advantage. The Encomium Emmae Reginae, whose version of events we can now rejoin for the first time since September's installment, as usual provides a story sympathetic to Cnut and the Danes. (This text was written for Cnut's queen in the 1040s, and probably drew its information in part from the memories of people who took part in the conquest.) For the Encomium, the battle at Sherston was a great victory for the Danish army, and it was won by one of Cnut's most experienced warriors, Thorkell the Tall, on behalf of his young king:

Then Thorkell, observing the time to have come when he could demonstrate his fidelity to his lord, said: "I will undertake to win this fight for my lord with my troops, and will not permit my king to be involved in this battle, very eager to fight as he is, inasmuch as he is a youth. For if I be victorious, I will win on the king's own behalf; but if I fall or turn my back, it will not be to the glory of the English, for the reason that the king will be left, and he will give battle again, and perhaps as a victor will avenge my injuries." Since this seemed to all to be good reasoning, he disembarked with the king's approval, and directed his force against the army of the English, which was then assembled at the place called Sherston.

The Danish army had disembarked from forty ships and more, but still this number was by no means equal to half the enemy. But the leader, relying on courage rather than numbers, sounded the trumpets without delay, and advancing in the forefront and ever praying in his heart for the help of God, laid low all that came in his way with the sword's point. The English, indeed, were the more bold at first, and cut down the Danes with terrible slaughter, to such an extent, that they nearly won the victory and would have compelled their enemies to flee, if the latter, held back by their leader's words and being mindful of their own bravery, had not regarded flight with shame. For he mentioned that there was no place to which they might flee, that they were, of course, foes in the land, and that their ships were far from the shore, and that accordingly, if they should not conquer, they would necessarily fall together.

After they had been rendered of better courage by this, they forthwith showed in battle how dangerous a thing is desperation. For despairing of a refuge to which to flee, they raged on against the enemy with such madness, that you would have seen not only the bodies of the dead failing, but also of the living, as they avoided the blows. Accordingly they ultimately gained the victory which they desired, and buried such of the remains of their comrades as they could find. After they had also seized the spoils from their foes, they returned and made themselves ready for an invasion of the adjacent country.

This was the first honour which Thorkell brought to the arms of Knutr, and for this he afterwards received a large part of the country.

Encomium Emmae Reginae, ed. and trans. Alistair Campbell (London: Royal Historical Society, 1949), pp. 21-3.

Sherston (source)

While the Encomium talks up Thorkell's loyalty in this battle, other versions of events at Sherston are more interested in disloyalty - specifically, the treachery of the ealdorman Eadric streona, who is roundly blamed for things going badly for the English (as we've seen before in this series). Twelfth-century English historians have various tales to tell about Sherston, most of which centre on Eadric's dirty tricks. Although dating from more than a century after the battle, these sources may preserve some older traditions; if nothing else, they develop some of the narrative possibilities implicit in the earliest sources quoted above. In the following stories, we get different versions of two points in particular: Eadric's betrayal of his king, and the fact mentioned in the Encomium that the Danes were deep in Wessex and potentially in great danger unless they could keep together ('they were foes in the land, and their ships were far from the shore...').

Let's start with John of Worcester's account of Sherston:

[Edmund] went boldly to meet them in Dorset, and in a place called Penselwood, near Gillingham, he gave them battle, won, and put them to flight. After this, when midsummer had passed, and he had mustered an army, one greater than before, he determined to fight vigorously against Cnut, whom he encountered in Hwiccia at a place called Sherston.

When he drew up his army according to the terrain and the forces he had, he moved the best soldiers into the front line, placed the rest of the army in reserve, and addressing each man by name, exhorted and entreated them to remember that they strove for their country, children, wives and homes, and with these most inspiring words he fired the soldiers' spirits. Then he ordered the trumpets to sound, and the troops to advance gradually. The enemy army did the same.

When they arrived at the place where they could join battle they rushed together with their hostile standards and with a great shout. They fought with spear and lance, striving with all their might.  Meanwhile, King Edmund Ironside made his presence felt in fierce hand-to-hand fighting in the front line. He took thought for everything; he himself fought hard, often smote the enemy; he performed at once the duties of a hardy soldier and of an able general. But, because Eadric Streona, the most treacherous ealdorman, and Ælfmær Darling, and Ælfgar, son of Meaw, who ought to have been supporting him with the men of Hampshire and Wiltshire and with an innumerable mass of people, were on the Danish side his army was quite exhausted and quite overstretched.

However, on the first day of battle, that is on Monday, so harsh and cruel was the conflict that both armies were unable for weariness to fight any longer, and they left the place at sunset of their own accord.  But on the following day, the king would have crushed all the Danes if it had not been for the wiles of Eadric Streona, the treacherous ealdorman; for, when the battle was at its height and he observed that the English were stronger, he cut off the head of a certain man called Osmear, very like King Edmund in face and hair, and raising it aloft he shouted, saying that the English fought in vain: 'You men of Dorset, Devon, Wiltshire, flee in haste, for you have lost your leader. Look, I hold here in my hands the head of your lord, King Edmund. Flee as fast you can.'

When the English perceived this they were appalled, more by the horror at the action than by any trust in the announcer, whence it happened that the waverers were on the verge of flight; but as soon as they realized that the king was alive their spirits rose, and they attacked the Danes the more fiercely, and they slew many of them, striving with all their might until dusk.  When that arrived, as on the previous day, they separated voluntarily.  But when the night was far advanced Cnut ordered his men to leave the camp silently and, going back to London, returned to his ships again, and not much later he besieged London again. However, when day came, and King Edmund Ironside perceived that the Danes had fled, he returned at once to Wessex to raise a larger army.

The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. and trans. Jennifer Bray and P. McGurk (Oxford, 1995) vol. ii, pp.487-9 (paragraph breaks added).

This is taking the idea that Eadric 'aided the Danes against King Edmund' to quite an extreme! Henry of Huntingdon gives in English the words Eadric was supposed to have spoken to send the army into chaos: Flet Engle, flet Engle! Ded is Edmund! 'Flee, Englishmen! Edmund is dead!' (However, he attaches this story to the later battle of Assandun, rather than Sherston.) William of Malmesbury also blames the flight at Sherston on Eadric's wiles, although in a slightly different form:

After St John's Day [Edmund] joined battle with them again at Sherston, but it was broken off with the two sides equal, his English troops taking the first steps towards retreat under the influence of Eadric, who stood on the enemy's side brandishing a sword which he had bloodied in the battle by the bold slaughter of some country fellow, and shouting: 'Flee, flee, poor wretches! Look, this is the sword which has killed your king!' And the English would have fled immediately, had not the king heard of this and made for a prominent hill, where he took off his helmet and displayed his bare head to his fellow-soldiers. He then brandished an iron spear with all the force he could muster and hurled it at Eadric; but he saw it coming and dodged it, and it went astray and pierced the soldier who was standing next to him with such violence that it transfixed a second man as well.

Gesta Regum Anglorum, trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thompson and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1998), vol.i, p.315.

This ruse of tricking an army into believing their leader is dead is a common tale, and similar stories are told in medieval sources about the Battle of Hastings - though in that case it's William the invader, and not the English king, who has to display his face to prove he's still alive. There are all kinds of historical irony about that, as we'll see in a moment...

Edmund Ironside in a 14th-century manuscript (BL Royal MS 14 B VI)

Scandinavian sources also have some interesting things to say about the Battle of Sherston. It's mentioned in a poem written in praise of Cnut by the skald Óttarr svarti, which you can read in full here:

Svefn braut svǫrtum hrafni
sunnarr hvǫtuðr gunnar;
olli sókn inn snjalli
Sveins mǫgr at Skorsteini.

The urger of battle broke the sleep of the dark raven further south; the bold son of Sveinn made an attack at Sherston.

Óttarr svarti, Knútsdrápa, ed. and trans. Matthew Townend, in Diana Whaley, ed., Poetry from the Kings' Sagas 1, Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages I (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), Part 2, p.774.

Here it's Cnut himself, 'the bold son of Svein', and not Thorkell, who gets all the credit. (I like the alliteration and near-rhyme of Svein and Skorstein - with this campaign Cnut was, he hoped, repeating his father's conquest of England.)

Quoting this verse, the thirteenth-century Knýtlinga saga goes on to give its own version of Sherston, which it calls 'one of the most famous battles of the time'. It has the same story that the English soldiers fled when they believed Edmund to be dead, 'and though the king shouted to them to turn back no one showed any sign of hearing him'. But more importantly, there's also a fascinating story about the aftermath of the battle. The saga tells how one of Cnut's commanders, his brother-in-law Ulf Thorgilsson, is separated from the rest of the Danish army in the confusion, and loses himself in a forest. He comes upon a boy tending a flock of sheep, and asks him his name. The boy, whose name is Godwine, recognises Ulf as one of Cnut's men, and warns him that if any of the people living nearby find him in the forest, he'll be killed.

Ulf asks Godwine to guide him back to the Danes, and offers him a gold bracelet as a reward. Godwine refuses to take the reward - canny boy! - saying that he would rather have the earl in his debt if he manages to save his life. Godwine takes Ulf home and introduces him to his father, a prosperous farmer named Wulfnoth. (Can you see where this story is going?) The family look after him, feed him, and give him horses to get him back to the army. In return, Wulfnoth asks the earl to take Godwine with him and find him a position in service among the Danes - 'he can't stay here if the locals discover he's helped you escape', he says.

Ulf and Godwine ride off and join Cnut and the rest of the Danish army, at which point Godwine realises that the man he's helped is an important and popular earl. Ulf takes him in, and it ends with Godwine marrying Ulf's sister Gytha and eventually being made an earl when Cnut becomes king of England. He becomes, in fact, Godwine, Earl of Wessex, one of the most powerful men in eleventh-century England.

It's unlikely that much, if any, of this story is true; Godwine's father Wulfnoth was almost certainly not a farmer, but a Sussex thegn. However, it is true that Godwine married Ulf's sister, and from their marriage sprang a family which helped to reshape the ruling dynasties in both England and Scandinavia, long after the conquest we're commemorating here. The children of this Anglo-Danish union outlasted Cnut's rule in England, surviving and holding high positions throughout the reign of Edward the Confessor, with at times greater influence than the king himself. And half a century after 1016, of course, the sons and daughters of Godwine and Gytha were to be important players in another conquest of England: their daughter Edith married Edward the Confessor, and Gytha lived to see (though Godwine did not) her son Harold on the English throne.

Edith and Edward the Confessor (CUL MS Ee.3.59, f.11v)

Today this family is usually called the 'Godwinesons', a testament to their father's dominance of English politics; but Gytha seems to have been a formidable woman in her own right, and her family connections in Scandinavia were an important influence on what happened in 1066 and afterwards. Through their mother, Harold and Edith and their siblings were closely related to the royal family of Denmark, Ulf's children with Cnut's sister Estrith. Exactly fifty years after the Battle of Sherston, in the summer of 1066, Gytha was at once mother of the king of England and aunt of the king of Denmark - although it didn't last, of course. Gytha lost three of her sons in one day at the Battle of Hastings (and one at Stamford Bridge, a few weeks earlier). In 1067 she left England with some of her surviving children and grandchildren, and eventually took refuge with her nephew in Denmark. Her granddaughter, Harold's daughter (also named Gytha), married into a ruling family in Kievan Rus, while in 1069 and 1075 her nephews intervened to aid English rebellions against the Normans. As Knýtlinga saga says, 'many great men from England, Denmark, Sweden and east from Russia are descended from them [Godwine and Gytha]'.

It's not very likely that this all began with a chance encounter between Ulf and a young shepherd-boy, but it's a fascinating origin myth for this hugely important dynasty. And the really interesting thing is that one English source tells a very similar story about Godwine's humble origins: Walter Map in his De Nugis Curialium also has Godwine rising from obscurity through his unwitting attendance on a surprise guest, although in that case it's King Æthelred, who has got lost while hunting and ends up taking the attentive boy into his service. So the story in Knýtlinga saga takes on a shade more credibility; and it's not impossible that at least it was around the time of the Battle of Sherston that Godwine went over to the Danes.

Rattlebone Inn, Sherston (source)

In any case, there were clearly plenty of stories circulating about the Battle of Sherston in the twelfth and thirteenth century, if not before. And later, too: local tradition in Sherston still tells of a man called John Rattlebone, who supposedly fought for Edmund's side against the Danes. This story is first recorded in the seventeenth century by John Aubrey, who says that a small carved figure in Sherston church was believed to represent Rattlebone, and that 'the old women and children have these verses by tradition':

Fight well, Rattlebone,
Thou shalt have Sherston.
What shall I with Sherston do
Without I have all belongs thereto?
Thou shalt have Wych and Wellesley
Easton Town and Pinkeney.

This verse is said to represent what Edmund promised Rattlebone to persuade him to fight. In the battle Rattlebone was mortally wounded, but staunched the flow of blood by pressing a stone tile to his wound, and fought to the bitter end (the pub sign above illustrates him doing so). What a splendid legend - I do like the thought of doughty John Rattlebone going up against Thorkell and Ulf!

Some St Josephs

St Joseph has always been a popular saint, and in the past I've posted various songs and carols, from the medieval period and later, which tell his story: 'Marvel not, Joseph', 'Righteous Joseph', and 'Joseph being an aged man truly'. But today we will forsake words and music for pretty pictures, in other words, depictions of St Joseph in medieval manuscripts.

As you might expect, there are many, many medieval depictions of St Joseph at various points throughout his life. Chronologically speaking, he first appears at his marriage to Mary, shown here in a fifteenth-century French Book of Hours (Yates Thompson 3, f. 37):

The story of Mary and Joseph's marriage is not in the Gospels, but there are abundant apocryphal tales about it - wikipedia summarises them nicely.  The choice of Joseph as Mary's husband came about in this way: the law said that when Mary reached the age of 14 she had to marry, so the high priest gathered together the male descendants of King David and had them bring rods to the temple.  If one of their rods miraculously burst into flower, that man would be Mary's chosen husband.  And so it happened - I think you can see a flowering rod in Joseph's hand in the picture above (the original is very small, so it's not entirely clear).

BL King's 6, f. 27

The marriage of Mary and Joseph forms part of the mystery play cycles, one example of which you can read here - it's utterly delightful. As this story tells it, neither Mary nor Joseph wants to get married at all - Mary having committed herself to virginity, and Joseph believing himself too old - but Mary agrees to submit to the law, and Joseph is badgered by his relatives into bringing his rod to the temple, complaining all the way about how old and feeble he is.  When the priest declares the miracle of the blossoming rod, Joseph is not impressed:

EPISCOPUS Ah, gracious God in heaven's throne,
Right wonderful thy works be!
Here may we see a marvel one —
A dead stock beareth flowers free!
Joseph, in heart without moan,
Thou mayst be blithe with game and glee!
A maid to wed thou must gone [take]
By this miracle I do well see —
Mary is her name.

JOSEPH What, should I wed? God forbid!
I am an old man, so God me speed!
And with a wife now to live in dread,
It were neither sport nor game.

EPISCOPUS Against God, Joseph, thou mayst not strive!
God wills that thou a wife shouldst have.
This fair maid shall be thy wife —
She is buxum and white as lave. [humble and white as bread]

JOSEPH Ah, should I have her? Ye destroy my life!
Alas, dear God, should I now rave?
An old man may never thrive
With a young wife, so God me save!
Nay, nay, sir, let be!
Should I now in age begin to dote?
If I her chide, she would clout my cote,
Blear my eye and pick out a mote, [nag at me]
And thus oftentimes it is seen.

EPISCOPUS Joseph, now as I thee say,
God hath assigned her to thee.
What God will have done, say thou not nay!
Our Lord God wills that it so be.

JOSEPH Against my God not do I may.

The old man/young wife thing is a common source of humour in medieval literature (think of the Miller's Tale!). Having agreed to it, Joseph and Mary are wedded - with vows whose language you may recognise:

EPISCOPUS Say then after me: “Here I take thee, Mary, to wife;
To have, to hold, as God his will with us will make;
And as long as between us lasteth our life,
To love you as myself, my troth I you betake.”
Mary, will ye have this man,
And him to keep as your life?

MARIA In the tenderest wise, father, as I can,
And with all my wits five.

EPISCOPUS Joseph, with this ring now wed thy wife,
And by her hand now thou her take.

JOSEPH Sir, with this ring, I wed her ryff [at once]
And take here now her for my make. [mate]

Sloane 3451, f.19

Having taken Mary 'to have and to hold', Joseph finds a 'little pretty house' for them to live in.  We all know what happened next; and here's Joseph thinking it all over:

'Marvel not, Joseph, at Mary mild;
Forsake her not, though she be with child...'

Moving on to Nativity scenes, of which there are of course a huge number, here are two of my favourites: first, Joseph adjusting Mary's pillow (Royal 1 D X, f.1v):

And here with an impressive beard, not daunted by the doe-eyed fauna above him (Harley 928, f.3v):

Then another angel tells Joseph to flee into Egypt (Yates Thompson 13, f.95):

Here, both angel and flight are shown in one swift scene (Harley 7026, f.7):

Here, Joseph takes off his night-cap and picks up a bundle (Lansdowne 420, f.9):

There are 'Flight into Egypt' traditional carols too, based on the Infancy narratives - here's a good one, where Herod's men are thwarted by Christ miraculously making a farmer's crop to ripen on the day it was sown, so that the farmer can honestly tell the pursuers "He passed this way when my seeds were being sown!".  Herod's men think that must have been at least three quarters of a year ago, and so give up the pursuit. A handy trick.

Later, Joseph appears in scenes of the Presentation in the Temple, usually carrying his bag of three little birds, and often a candle too (Stowe 12, f.242v):

With a hat, gargoyles and a particularly realistic baby Christ (Royal 2 B VII):

And to close with another from the same manuscript, here an aged Joseph and Mary watch in apprehension as the child Christ, mounted on a little stool, disputes with the doctors in the Temple:

Poor St Joseph; his was not an easy task...

Repost: St Kenelm and 'Crabbing the Parson'

A repost from two years ago, concerning an odd little custom from Worcestershire associated with the feast of St Kenelm, 17th July:


The story of St Cynehelm, better known as St Kenelm, is (if any part of it is true) a sad one. According to legend, he was the son of an eighth-century king of Mercia who was murdered at the age of seven by his older sister (some versions say his aunt) who wanted to inherit the kingdom in his place. He was a well-known saint in the Middle Ages, and the place of his burial, Winchcombe in Gloucestershire, was a site of pilgrimage to rival Canterbury. He's even mentioned by Chaucer in the Nun's Priest's Tale, because he famously had a dream warning him of his impending death - Chaucer's learned cockerel Chaunticleer cites Kenelm's story as an example to prove that you ought to pay attention to dreams.

However, this was the bit of lore associated with Kenelm which caught my eye (from wikipedia):

For many years, villagers at Kenelstowe in Worcestershire celebrated St Cynehelm's Day (July 17) with a village fair and the ancient custom of "crabbing the parson" - bombarding the unfortunate cleric with a volley of crab apples.

Well, I was intrigued. Helpful Google led me to a charming book called The Rambler in Worcestershire, or, Stray Notes on Churches and Congregations, by a Mr John Noake, published in 1848. Mr Noake provides the following insight into 'crabbing the parson':

'The last clergyman but one who was subjected to this process was a somewhat eccentric gentleman named Lee. He had been chaplain to a man-of-war, and was a jovial old fellow in his way, who could enter into the spirit of the thing. My informant well recollects the worthy divine, after partaking of dinner at the solitary house near the church, quietly quitting the table when the time for performing the service drew nigh, reconnoitring the angles of the building, and each "buttress and coign of vantage" behind which it was reasonable to suppose the enemy would be posted, and watching for a favourable opportunity, he would start forth at his best walking pace (he scorned to run) to reach the church. Around him, thick and fast, fell from ready hands a shower of crabs, not a few telling with fearful emphasis on his burly person, amid the intense merriment of the rustic assailants; but the distance is small; he reaches the old porch, and the storm is over. Another informant, a man of Clent, states that he has seen the late incumbent, the Rev. John Todd, frequently run the gauntlet, and that on one occasion there were two sacks of crabs, each containing at least three bushels, emptied in the church field, besides large store of other missiles provided by other parties; and it also appears that some of the more wanton not unfrequently threw sticks, stakes, &c., which probably led to the suppression of the practice.

The custom of crabbing the parson is said to have arisen on this wise. "Long, long ago," an incumbent of Frankley, to which St. Kenelm's was attached, was accustomed, through horrid, deep-rutted, miry roads, occasionally to wend his way to the sequestered depository of the remains of the murdered Saint King, to perform divine service. It was his wont to carry creature comforts with him, which he discussed at a lone farmhouse near the scene of his pastoral duties. On one occasion, whether the pastor's wallet was badly furnished, or his stomach more than usually keen, tradition sayeth not, but having eat up his own provision, he was tempted (after he had donned his sacerdotal habit, and in the absence of the good dame) to pry into the secrets of a huge pot in which was simmering the savoury dinner the lady had provided for her household; among the rest, dumplings formed no inconsiderable portion of the contents; whether they were Norfolk or apple dumplings is not mentioned, but the story runs that our parson poached sundry of them, hissing hot, from the cauldron, and hearing the footsteps of his hostess, he, with great dexterity, deposited them in the ample sleeves of his surplice; she, however, was wide awake to her loss, and closely following the parson to the church, by her presence prevented him from disposing of them, and to avoid her accusation ("a guilty conscience needs no accuser") he forthwith entered the reading desk and began to read the service, John Clerk beneath making the responses. Ere long a dumpling slips out of the parson's sleeve, and falls plump on sleek John's head; he looks up with astonishment, but having ascertained that his reverence is not labouring under the effects of an emetic ("vomits" they called them in those days), John took the matter in good part, and proceeded with the service; by and bye, however, John's pate receives a second visitation, to which he, with upturned eyes and ready tongue, responded, "Two can play at that, master!" and suiting the action to the word, he forthwith began pelting the parson with crabs, a store of which he had gathered, intending to take them home in his pocket to foment the sprained leg of his jade of a horse; and so well did the clerk play his part that the parson soon decamped, amid the jeers of the old dame, and the laughter of the few persons who were in attendance; and in commemoration of this event (so saith the legend), "crabbing the parson" has been practised on the wake Sunday from that time till a very recent period.'

Oswald of Northumbria; Bamburgh; Being Born in a Barn

Today is the feast-day of Oswald, king of Northumbria in the seventh century, and one of England's greatest kings; he was something of a favourite hero to the Venerable Bede, and so we know rather a lot about him. An account of his life is available in the usual places. He was a popular saint throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, something of a native Emperor Constantine, promoting Christianity not only by the sword but by the preaching of good bishops: a Christian convert himself, he brought St Aidan from Ireland to spread the Christian faith to the Northumbria people.

(My favourite detail of Bede's story about their work together is that Oswald used to act as interpreter when Aidan preached, translating from Irish to English; Oswald himself had learned Irish as a young man in exile.)

His capital was at Bamburgh, which today has a castle which looks like this:

And a view like this:
(Those are St Cuthbert's Farne Islands out to sea.)

At Bamburgh his incorrupt right arm was once preserved as a relic; Bede explains how this came about:

[I]t is reported, that when he was once sitting at dinner, on the holy day of Easter, with the aforesaid bishop [Aidan], and a silver dish full of dainties before him, and they were just ready to bless the bread, the servant, whom he had appointed to relieve the poor, came in on a sudden, and told the king that a great multitude of needy persons from all parts were sitting in the streets begging some alms of the king; he immediately ordered the meat set before him to be carried to the poor, and the dish to be cut in pieces and divided among them. At which sight, the bishop who sat by him, much taken with such an act of piety, laid hold of his right hand, and said, "May this hand never perish." Which fell out according to his prayer, for his arm and hand, being cut off from his body, when he was slain in battle, remain entire and uncorrupted to this day, and are kept in a silver case, as revered relics, in St. Peter's church in the royal city.

Oswald was killed on the 5th August, 642, in battle against the pagan king Penda of Mercia. Bede claims that it was proverbial that he died in prayer: the proverb was "Lord, have mercy on their souls, said Oswald, as he fell to the ground." The site where his blood fell was considered to be holy, and Bede describes how "many took up the very dust of the place where his body fell, and putting it into water, did much good with it to their friends who were sick. This custom came so much into use, that the earth being carried away by degrees, there remained a hole as deep as the height of a man." Many people were miraculously cured by this holy ground.

Oswald's relics were removed first to Bardney in Lincolnshire and then to Gloucester. Bede tells of the translation to Bardney, but it apparently entered local folklore; excuse me while I repost myself, from last October:

Do you come from Bardney?

Apparently this is a well-known saying in Lincolnshire, used to tell someone they've left a door open (compare, I suppose, 'Were you born in a barn?'). The supposed origin of the phrase is rather strange:

Bardney is a village a few miles east of Lincoln. It was the site of an Anglo-Saxon abbey, and in 679 Osthryth, queen of Mercia, wanted to transfer the bones of her uncle St Oswald to Bardney. The monks, showing a surprising degree of incipient regionalism, refused to accept the relics on the grounds that Oswald, when king of Northumbria, had conquered Lindsey (the Anglo-Saxon kingdom comprising part of modern-day Lincolnshire).

The monks shut the abbey gates against St Oswald's bones and refused to allow the coffin in, but during the night a pillar of light shone out above the body (a common motif; a similar pillar helped reveal the location of the body of Edward the Martyr). The monks, recognising a miracle when they saw one, realised that Oswald really was a saint and they had been wrong to leave him outside, so after that they always left their gates wide open (some say, removed them altogether). Hence the saying.

Some things I learned today

One of the nice things about scholarly research is when the eye wanders to the article next to the article you're supposed to be reading, and you think, 'oh, I'll just have a little look at that...'. I particularly can't resist articles with titles like 'Some Folk Beliefs of the Fens' (by Enid M. Porter, Folklore (1958), 112-122), from which today I learned the following:

Fenmen washed their feet as seldom as possible, believing that washing would impair their strength. Relatives of a deceased husband or father took it as a compliment when told by the one who had prepared the body for burial, that 'she had never seen dirtier feet' - for this implied that the man had been exceptionally strong right up to his death. For the same reason, toenails were seldom cut, nor, in Burwell Fen, was the hair cut more often than once a year, at Reach Fair.

Further, on the subject of the herb yarrow:

To ensure that a baby grew up to be of contented and cheerful disposition, a bunch of yarrow was often tied to its cradle... Cattle were kept docile if they grazed in fields where plenty of yarrow grew.

Yarrow was a well-known love herb in the Fens. The flower, if cut on St Swithin's Day and put into a pillow, would bring great happiness to lovers who slept on it. Women wore bunches of yarrow when in the company of those whose attentions they wished to attract. If a girl wished to bring a young man to the point of proposing marriage, she would go out at midnight, when the moon was full, and walk bare-footed in a patch of yarrow. Then, with eyes closed, she would pick some of the flowers. On her return to the house, she placed them under her bed or in a drawer. The next morning she looked anxiously to see if the dew were still on the flowers, for if so, this meant she would have her wish. If not, the ritual was repeated at the next full moon.

To keep a witch from entering the house, yarrow strewn on the threshold was thought to be effective. If, however, her entry could not be prevented, her powers for evil were nullified if she was made to sit on a cushion stuffed with yarrow.

Imagine trying to induce a witch to sit on a particular cushion...

And finally, a gruesome contraceptive:

One belief was that, if a woman held the hand of a dead man for two minutes, she would not have a child during the next two years.

Whitsun Week

The court of King Arthur (BL Royal 20 D IV f. 1)

The week following Pentecost is a lost holiday. From the Middle Ages until the early 20th century the period around Whitsun was the principal summer holiday of the year - especially Whit-Monday, i.e. today. It was the time for fairs, Morris dancing, games, ale-drinking, school and church processions, weddings, wandering into the countryside, and generally having a good time. Sadly the decision to fix the Spring Bank Holiday to the last Monday in May has pretty much destroyed all sense of the season - even the name 'Whitsun' (the English name for the feast since at least the eleventh century) is increasingly forgotten.

So, like me, you are probably doing nothing to mark this day. But here are some of the things you could once have been doing (from this site):

In medieval Western Europe, Pentecost was a period of great festivity, and was considered a day of more importance than can be easily explained by the incidents connected with it, recorded in the gospel, or by any later Christian legends attached to it. It was one of the great festivals of the kings and great chieftains in the medieval romances. It was that especially on which King Arthur is represented as holding his most splendid court. The sixth chapter of the Morte d’Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory, tells us how, "Then King Arthur removed into Wales, and 'let crie a great feast that it should be holden at Pentecost, after the coronation of him at the citie of Carlion.'" And chapter one hundred and eighteen adds, 'So King Arthur had ever a custome, that at the high feast of Pentecost especially, afore al other high feasts in the yeare, he would not goe that day to meat until he had heard or seene some great adventure or mervaile. And for that custom all manner of strange adventures came before King Arthur at that feast afore all other feasts.'

It was in Arthur's grand cour pleniere at the feast of Pentecost, that the fatal mantle was brought which threw disgrace on so many of the fair ladies of his court. More substantial monarchs than Arthur held Pentecost as one of the grand festivals of the year; and it was always looked upon as the special season of chivalrous adventure of tilt and tournament. In the romance of Bevis of Hampton, Pentecost, or, as it is there termed, Whitsuntide, appears again as the season of festivities:

In somer at Whitsontyde,
Whan knightes most on horsebacke ride,
A tours let they make on a daye,
Steedes and palfraye for to assaye,
Whiche horse that best may ren.

... Whitsuntide still is, and always has been, one of the most popularly festive periods of the year. It was commonly celebrated in all parts of the country by what was termed the Whitsun-ale, and it was the great time for the morris-dancers. In Douce's time, that is, sixty or seventy years ago [before 1869], a Whitsun-ale was conducted in the following manner:

'Two persons are chosen, previously to the meeting, to be lord and lady of the ale, who dress as suitably as they can to the characters they assume. A large empty barn, or some such building, is provided for the lord's hall, and fitted up with seats to accommodate the company. Here they assemble to dance and regale in the best manner their circumstances and the place will afford; and each young fellow treats his girl with a riband or favour. The lord and lady honour the hall with their presence, attended by the steward, sword-bearer, purse-bearer, and mace-bearer, with their several badges or ensigns of office. They have likewise a train-bearer or page, and a fool or jester, drest in a party-coloured jacket, whose ribaldry and gesticulation contribute not a little to the entertainment of some part of the company. The lord's music, consisting of a pipe and tabor, is employed to conduct the dance.'

These festivities were carried on in a much more splendid manner in former times, and they were considered of so much importance, that the expenses were defrayed by the parish, and charged in the churchwardens' accounts. Those of St. Mary's, at Reading, as quoted in Coates's History of that town, contain various entries on this subject, among which we have, in 1557: 'Item payed to the morrys daunsers and the mynstrelles, mete and drink at Whytsontide, iijs. iiijd.' The churchwardens' accounts at Brentford, in the county of Middlesex, also contain many curious entries relating to the annual Whitsun-ales in the seventeenth century; and we learn from them, as quoted by Lysons, that in 1621 there was 'Paid to her that was lady at Whitsontide, by consent, 5s.' Various games were indulged in on these occasions, some of them peculiar to the season, and archery especially was much practised. The money gained from these games seems to have been considered as belonging properly to the parish, and it is usually accounted for in the church-wardens' books, among the receipts, as so much profit for the advantage of the parish, and of the poor...

Ale was so prevalent a drink amongst us in old times, as to become a part of the name of various festal meetings, as Leet-ale, Lamb-ale, Bride-ale, and, as we see, Whitsun-ale. It was the custom of our simple ancestors to have parochial meetings every Whitsuntide, under the auspices of the churchwardens, usually in some barn near the church, all agreeing to be good friends for once in the year, and spend the day in a sober joy. The squire and lady came with their piper and taborer; the young danced or played at bowls; the old looked on, sipping their ale from time to time. It was a kind of pic-nic, for each parishioner brought what victuals he could spare. The ale, which had been brewed pretty strong for the occasion, was sold by the churchwardens, and from its profits a fund arose for the repair of the church. In latter days, the festival degenerated, as has been the case with most of such old observances; but in the old times there was a reverence about it which kept it pure. Shakespeare gives us some idea of this when he adverts to the song in Pericles:

'It hath been sung at festivals,
On ember eves, and holy ales.'

And further, from here:

Whit walks (or simply ‘Whits’), in which church congregations processed through the streets in their best clothes, were popular, and payments of ‘Whitsun farthings’ were often made to churches for repairs. Parishes also held Whitsun Church Ales across Whitsuntide from Whit Monday to Whit Wednesday, to raise money for charity. Whitsun was a popular holiday because of the likelihood of good weather (good weather on the day promises a good harvest), and these festivities tended to be organized affairs. Church Ales became a focus for parades, fairs, markets, circuses, cricket matches, regattas, displays of archery practice, and country sports such as wrestling, climbing the greasy pole, and even sack races and donkey derbies, and of course Morris dancing: Shakespeare mentions Whitsun Morris dancing in Henry V (II.iv.25). Miracle and Mystery Plays were performed, as at Chester (again mentioned by Shakespeare in The Winter’s Tale, IV.iv.134)...

Milk and cream were seasonal fare for Whitsun feasts, as were gooseberries and cheesecakes, and regional food was celebrated, from squab pie in Cornwall to mutton pie in Oxford, to local cakes. As at Easter, it was good luck to wear new clothes at Whitsun, which added to the festivity and colour and general extravagance.

From medieval knights to Shakespeare's Morris dancers and Manchester mill-workers, Whitsuntide is a season hallowed by many centuries of happy holiday. Do something fun today; it's your ancient right.

BL Royal 14 E III f. 89

A Suffolk Superstition, and St Edmund

As an addendum to yesterday's post about Edmund of East Anglia, here is a strange bit of local superstition recorded from Hoxne, Suffolk (traditionally the site of Edmund's martyrdom):

After being beaten by the Danes at Thetford [it was said], Edmund fled, and, being closely pursued, hid beneath a bridge which spanned the river Dove. A newly-married couple, crossing the river, saw the image of the king’s golden spurs reflected in the water. They went and betrayed him to the Danes. When he was caught, Edmund cursed the place. Until a very late date, young people intent on matrimony used to go miles around to avoid the bridge.

Noted in Grant Loomis, ‘The Growth of the Saint Edmund Legend’, Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature 14 (1932), 83-115.

Tooley and Toosey

A little collection of common versions of saints' names, which for some reason I found rather lovely. It's a note to the observation that there was a St Tooley's Church (a corruption of St Olaf) in Norwich, pulled down in 1546.

There is evidence that the t of Saint was similarly prefixed to Olave at St Olave's Bridge, Southwark, Chichester, Bradford-on-Avon, Chester, Dublin and North Widewall (Orkney)... Useful parallels are the form St Twosole recorded by John Aubrey (Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, p. 29) as the Wiltshire country folk's rendering of S. Oswald; the pronunciation [tu 'zi] for St Osyth, in the seventeenth-century Seinte Toosie (PN Essex 348); T'andry cakes, made in Bucks on the feast of S. Andrew (W. Henderson, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties, 2nd ed., p. 98); tawdry, originally applied to laces (neckties) bought at St Audrey's Fair at Ely; Tan Gate (PN. Wilts 22), which was Seynt Anne Gate in 1455.

Bruce Dickins, ‘The Cult of S. Olave in the British Isles’, Saga-book of the Viking Society XII (1937-45), 53-80 (61, n.4).

I knew that 'tawdry' came from St Audrey (itself a corruption of St Æthelthryth) but the others are new to me.

See also Tooley St, London...

Turn but a stone

OK, let's see if I can explain this thought coherently; I'm fluey and word-deprived.

My poem-obsession of this week - the one that's taken up residence in my brain and started chattering away in the empty spaces between proper thoughts - is Francis Thompson's 'The Kingdom of God'. Especially this bit:

The angels keep their ancient places;–
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
‘Tis ye, ‘tis your estranged faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry;– and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry;– clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!


Good advice - at least, it's working for me. I haven't seen any angels, but... well, something close. Anyway, today is the feast of St Simon and St Jude, two apostles about whom real information is hard to come by. Everyone knows St Jude, patron saint of hopeless causes (what is it about that which so attracts the imagination?), but St Simon is even more obscure than his obscure companion. The Catholic Encyclopedia entry on him notes what little information there is.

One of the less credible legends about him claims he was martyred at Caistor, in Lincolnshire. By 'less credible' I mean 'absurd'. I'm sure this is a real legend because the internet says so, but I can't find a citation which explains where it might have been recorded; however, it sounds medieval, so I'm going with that. This is what an online history of Caistor says:

"Simon Zelotes was one of the original twelve disciples of Christ. His first visit to Britain was reportedly in the year 44 A.D. during the Claudian War. Evidently his stay was short at this time and he returned to the continent.

In 60 A.D. Simon was recruited by Joseph of Arimathea in Gaul at the beginning of the Boudicean War. Simon arrived in Britain during the first year of the Boudicean War (60 A.D.) when the whole island was convulsed in a deep, burning anger against the Romans.

It is recorded that Simon was unusually bold and fearless, as his name implies. In spite of the turmoil seething through Britain during the Boudicean War, Simon openly defied the Edict of Paulinus, and the brutal Catus Decianus, to destroy anything and anyone Christian.

Simon decided to conduct his work in the eastern part of the Island. This section of Britain was the most sparsely inhabited by the native Britons and consequently more heavily populated by the Romans. He was far beyond the strong protective shield of the Silurian arms in the south and the powerful northern Yorkshire Celts. In this dangerous territory Simon Zelotes was definitely on his own...The evangelizing mission of Simon was short-lived. He was finally arrested under the orders of Catus Decianus. As usual his trial was a mockery. He was condemned to death and was crucified by the Romans at Caistor, Lincolnshire, and buried there on 10 May, 61 A.D."

This is nonsense, of course, but in the light of Francis Thompson and medieval imagination, which I've written about before (and it's complete coincidence that that post also mentions Caistor, perhaps the only two occasions in my life I've given any thought to the place): anyway, in that light, I have to praise a religious mind which can conceive of apostles martyred, not in Edessa, but the Fens.

Do you come from Bardney?

Apparently this is a well-known saying in Lincolnshire, used to tell someone they've left a door open (compare, I suppose, 'Were you born in a barn?'). The supposed origin of the phrase is rather strange:

Bardney is a village a few miles east of Lincoln. It was the site of an Anglo-Saxon abbey, and in 679 Osthryth, queen of Mercia, wanted to transfer the bones of her uncle St Oswald to Bardney. The monks, showing a surprising degree of incipient regionalism, refused to accept the relics on the grounds that Oswald, when king of Northumbria, had conquered Lindsey (the Anglo-Saxon kingdom comprising part of modern-day Lincolnshire).

The monks shut the abbey gates against St Oswald's bones and refused to allow the coffin in, but during the night a pillar of light shone out above the body (a common motif; a similar pillar helped reveal the location of the body of Edward the Martyr). The monks, recognising a miracle when they saw one, realised that Oswald really was a saint and they had been wrong to leave him outside, so after that they always left their gates wide open (some say, removed them altogether). Hence the saying.

I got this from Heritage Lincolnshire, my new favourite people (My whole life is the Danelaw at the moment, it's really quite sad.)

And while I'm on the topic of medieval Fenland abbeys (which I am more often than you might expect), here's a medieval rhyme which commemorates some of their characteristics:

Crowland as courteous as courteous as may bee,
Thorney the bane of many a good tree,
Ramsey the rich, and Peterborough the proud,
Sawtry by the way that poor abbay,
Gave more alms than all they.

I note that even Wikipedia agrees that medieval Sawtry was often in debt; presumably that's why it's poor! Crowland apparently got its 'courteous' nickname from its good hospitality, but the others I can't shed light on. Another version runs:

Ramsey, the rich of gold and of fee,
Thorney, the flower of the fen country.
Crowland, so courteous of meat and of drink;
Peterborough the proud, as all men do think.
And Sawtrey, by the way, that old abbaye
Gave more alms in one day than all they.

These were compiled by contributors to Notes and Queries vi (1852), in the days when such antiquarian delights still counted as academic scholarship. If only they still did!

Folklore Query

Out of my window, I'm watching two magpies shelter from the pouring rain under a gravestone in a churchyard. Do you think they still presage joy in such a cheerless situation?