Cheese-rolling, horse skulls & morris dancers: Britain's strange folk customs

Summary

History Extra Podcast: "Cheese-rolling, horse skulls & morris dancers: Britain's strange folk customs" Summary

Release Date: March 10, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of the History Extra Podcast, produced by Immediate Media, host Ellie Cawthorn delves into the intriguing world of Britain's folk customs. Featuring insights from Liz Williams, author of Rough Music: Folk Customs, Transgression and Alternative Britain, the conversation explores the origins, evolution, and modern revival of various British folk traditions. From the energetic chaos of cheese rolling to the mysterious rituals of Morris dancing, Williams provides a comprehensive analysis of these unique cultural practices.

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Defining Folklore

Liz Williams begins by addressing the broad and complex nature of folklore. She emphasizes that folklore encompasses both historical and contemporary practices, blending ancient traditions with modern adaptations.

"It's not just practices of the past, but also practices of the present... the customs of the country, what people actually get out onto the streets and into the fields and do to celebrate the turning seasons or current events or historical events."
— Liz Williams [03:02]

Williams highlights that folklore includes both written traditions, such as Arthurian legends and grimoires, and unwritten, oral traditions like supernatural beliefs and seasonal customs.

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Evolution and Nature of Folk Customs

Williams discusses the dynamic nature of folk customs, challenging the notion that these traditions remain static over time. She asserts that many customs evolve, adapting to societal changes and contemporary contexts.

"They evolve a lot more than people think they do... it's an evolving, fluid thing, like most customs."
— Liz Williams [10:54]

She also addresses the misconception that all British folk traditions have pre-Christian or pagan origins, clarifying that many are rooted in the medieval period or later.

"A lot of them are sort of medieval at the latest... Some of them can be traced reasonably easily back to much more recent times."
— Liz Williams [04:26]

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Examples of British Folk Customs

The episode explores several distinct British folk traditions, each with its unique characteristics and historical significance.

Morris Dancing

Morris dancing is one of Britain's most recognizable folk customs. Williams explains its origins and contemporary practices, including the lesser-known "molly dancing" where men dress in women's clothing.

"Molly dancing is a form of Morris dancing in which men dress up in women's clothing... it gives them the opportunity to do something that not violate that, but stretch it."
— Liz Williams [07:26]

She also touches on recent controversies, such as the use of blackface in Morris dancing, attributing varying theories to its origins and advocating for more culturally sensitive adaptations.

"A lot of Morris teams have taken to blueface or greenface now rather than blackface."
— Liz Williams [10:42]

Charivari (Rough Music)

Charivari, also known as Rough Music, was a form of social control in historical Britain. Williams describes it as a public shaming ritual used to punish individuals who transgressed social norms.

"The Charivari is basically where you shame somebody. You make an effigy of them... paraded through the town with everybody shouting and yelling."
— Liz Williams [11:49]

She underscores the intimidating and often traumatic impact these rituals had on their targets, linking them to broader themes of bullying and social conformity.

Mari Lloyd

Moving to Wales, the Mari Lloyd tradition involves processions featuring figures with horse skulls. Williams recounts her personal experiences observing these events and discusses their symbolic complexity.

"The Mari Lloyd... dressed in long white robes with a horse's skull on the top... it's creepy, but they're also jolly and they're also quite funny."
— Liz Williams [15:51]

She draws parallels between these processions and other global traditions, noting their evolving nature and growing popularity.

Cheese Rolling

Perhaps one of the most eccentric British traditions, cheese rolling takes place annually at Cooper's Hill near Gloucester. Williams provides a vivid description of the event and speculates on its origins.

"It's just something that happened every year... extremely steep hill, big wheel of cheese, everybody runs after it... completely bonkers British exercise."
— Liz Williams [23:38]

She dismisses the romantic notion that cheese rolling is an ancient Celtic solar festival, suggesting instead that it simply became a tradition through repeated annual participation.

Green Man

The Green Man is another enduring figure in British folklore, symbolizing the connection to nature and seasonal cycles. Williams differentiates between the Green Man representations in medieval church carvings and contemporary folklore processions.

"There are two types of Green Man... the heads found in churches and the ones seen in folklore processions like Hastings' Jack in the Green festival."
— Liz Williams [19:06]

She acknowledges the unclear origins of the Green Man but emphasizes its enduring presence in British cultural expressions.

Beltane

Beltane, traditionally a Gaelic festival marking the beginning of summer, has seen a revival in modern pagan celebrations. Williams discusses its transformation from a fertility festival to a more generalized celebration of spring.

"Beltane is a revivalist term... pagans use it instead of May Day... it's becoming increasingly regarded in paganism as a festival of fertility."
— Liz Williams [20:39]

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Bonfire Night

Another quintessentially British tradition, Bonfire Night commemorates the failure of Guy Fawkes' plot to blow up the British Parliament. Williams describes the elaborate celebrations in towns like Lewes, highlighting both their historical roots and contemporary manifestations.

"Bonfire Night commemorates the failure of a plotter, Guy Fawkes, to blow up the British Parliament... people started rolling barrels of gunpowder through the streets and holding bonfires."
— Liz Williams [26:14]

She notes the continued popularity of these events despite their inherent dangers, attributing their longevity to their deep cultural significance.

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Significance and Modern Revival

Williams emphasizes that these folk customs offer valuable insights into both historical and contemporary British society. They serve as windows into communal values, social structures, and the human desire for connection and celebration.

"They are a window into the past... and how we see our own culture."
— Liz Williams [28:05]

She observes that modern revivals of these traditions often aim to be inclusive, reflecting younger generations' values of diversity and community.

"Younger people... are much more inclusive. They want to celebrate it, but not at the exclusion of anybody else."
— Liz Williams [29:07]

Williams argues that the enduring nature of these customs lies in their ability to provide a sense of belonging and to reconnect individuals with their heritage and the natural world.

"People do want something to do, but they also want to feel part of something... celebrate the land and the trees and the fruit and the harvest around you."
— Liz Williams [29:13]

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with Liz Williams advocating for the support and participation in ongoing folk traditions. She highlights some of her favorite modern celebrations and encourages listeners to engage with their local customs to preserve and appreciate these vibrant aspects of British culture.

"Some of these things are organic community enterprises and they really need a bit of support. So yeah, go out and see what's going on in your locality."
— Liz Williams [30:14]

Ellie Cawthorn thanks Williams for her insightful contributions, wrapping up an episode that not only celebrates Britain's peculiar folk customs but also underscores their cultural and historical importance.

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Notable Quotes

• "Folklore encompasses both historical and contemporary practices, blending ancient traditions with modern adaptations."
  — Liz Williams [03:02]

• "They evolve a lot more than people think they do... it's an evolving, fluid thing, like most customs."
  — Liz Williams [10:54]

• "A lot of these things are harvest oriented, and I think people like that because we become very attenuated from the natural world."
  — Liz Williams [29:13]

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Recommended Listening

For enthusiasts looking to explore British folk customs further, Liz Williams' book Rough Music: Folk Customs, Transgression and Alternative Britain provides an in-depth examination of these traditions. Additionally, attending local folk festivals and processions can offer firsthand experience of these vibrant cultural practices.

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This summary was crafted based on the transcript provided, focusing solely on the content delivered by host Ellie Cawthorn and guest Liz Williams, and excluding all advertisement segments.

Transcript

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[Host]

Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. From green men and jolly horse schools to chasing cheeses down hills and burning effigies, Britain has a rich tradition of folk customs. Some are strange, some downright silly. But as Liz Williams explores in her book Rough Music, some of these traditions can also have a darker aspect based on shame, judgment and social conformity. I spoke to Liz to find out more. Let's Start with the title of the first chapter of your book, Rough Music, which is what is folklore? And I mean, I thought that seems like a good place to start. How do you define folklore?

[Liz Williams]

It's a very interesting question because it's such a broad issue and I take it to mean not just practices of the past, but also practices of the present. Things that we're doing today that may draw upon the past, that may have come completely out of left field. And it's partly the actual textual law of the country. So things that are written down, like the Arthurian matter of Britain, for example, I think that feeds into folklore. Grimoires, you know, how to magical guides, feed into folklore. And so do the efforts of early historians who write things down. But there's an awful lot of folklore that's unwritten, that's verbal, that's oral, that gets passed down into the culture, that mutates and changes and shifts. And these are things like the belief in the supernatural, for example, and customs, which is really what Rough Music is all about. Follows the year around from January to December and it's essentially about the customs of the country, what people actually get out onto the streets and into the fields and do to celebrate the turning seasons or current events or historical events.

[Host]

Absolutely. And those customs are what we're going to be talking about in today's episode. A lot of these folk customs or folk traditions, as you say in your book, they have a reputation for being ancient, pre Christian, pagan origins often are cited. But is that always true with the ones that you've looked at?

[Liz Williams]

No, it's not. I mean, a lot of them are sort of medieval at the latest, I think, and we don't really know what the ancient Celtic tribes, for example, did. The only history we've got is Roman. And the Celts were a pre literate culture, they were an oral culture. They didn't write anything down. So we do know a little bit about what the Romans said that they did. Did, but we're not sure. So it may be that some of these customs do have very ancient roots, that it's changed throughout the hundreds of years in between then and now. But some of them can be traced reasonably easily back to much more recent times, actually, you know, early medieval period and the 1500s and 1600s. So I think in Britain we love to say that things are ancient. That's a real hallmark of quality assurance for us. Other countries don't have that reliance upon the old. And that in itself is a really interesting sociological, sociological question.

[Host]

And this idea of things Being old ye oldy, I think, is probably a good way to sum it up. There is also a kind of a cozy, nostalgic aspect to that, on the basis that they do evoke this kind of lost old England or old Britain. But you say in your book that actually a lot of these customs that we're going to discuss in more depth in a minute, they're often not that cozy. They're sometimes transgressive. They're sometimes about shame or conformity or social pressure. Can you tell us a bit more about that before we get into them?

[Liz Williams]

Sure. They're sometimes quite wild. I mean, if you look at the history of things like wassailing, for example, I'm about to wassail our orchard. But wassailing sounds like a lovely old custom in which you go around and you wassail apple trees or fruit trees and you basically bless them and you put out toast for the spirits and you pour cider onto the tree. And all this sounds terribly wholesome, like a sort of 1950s lady book guide. But when you look back in the past, a lot of people do use it for transgressive behavior, for violent behavior, for intimidating people, for demanding money with menaces. We don't really like to think about that. It's like saying, oh, your local carol singers might sort of throw an egg through your window or bang on your door and demand some money. That sounds terrible. But actually, a lot of these customs do have an element of that, and perhaps that's a social function in that they let off steam for young people, young men particularly, I have to say, to actually transgress in a slightly more licensed way. It gives them the opportunity, in an age that didn't have WI fi, that didn't have television, in which many people couldn't read, to go out and actually let off some steam. So I think there is a slight element of catharsis with some of this.

[Host]

And on that point, then, I think that a good place to start with this might be Morris dancing. It's one of the traditions that I think probably most people in Britain today might be vaguely familiar with. But there are some aspects of it that are lesser known. One of them is something called molly dancing. I'd never heard of this. Can you tell us what it is?

[Liz Williams]

It's a form of Morris dancing in which men dress up in women's clothing. Now, I think you've got to be really important not to read too much into this. Either way, there's probably going to be people out there, I hope not listening to this podcast who are like, oh, that's terrible. But there are also going to be people who are going to use it for evidence of transgenderism in the past. That might be the case. You know, that absolutely might be the case. It might not be the case as well. You know, we really don't know what's going through the heads of people, Whether it's just transgressive. It's a little bit like the sort of, you know, early carry on films or music hall. There is that kind of role swapping aspect to it, which I think again, possibly gives the opportunity to do something a bit different for people not to accord with their very rigid roles, but to go out and to do something that not violates that, but stretches it, that goes beyond its boundaries.

[Host]

And does that reflect Morris dancing in general? What was the purpose of Morris dancing? I guess? Was it purely entertainment?

[Liz Williams]

It was entertainment. It's very difficult to know exactly where it comes from. And I mean, people who are into Morris, everybody's got their pet theory, which is absolutely fine because we don't know for certain. Some people say that it comes from Moorish dancing, that originally it comes from North African dances. And I have to say sometimes I can certainly see elements of that. But it's really hard to know exactly what the cultural movement of Morris dancing was. There's a theory that it came from France, that it was taken up in the court of Henry VIII as a form of entertainment for the court. But it became popular, it moved into the vernacular world, it moved into the villages, not the cities. And it very rapidly stopped being a very London based urban thing, if that's where it did start, and started becoming a countryside village, organic, grassroots form of self expression. But it changes all the time. Morris is really fluid.

[Host]

Actually, it does change all the time. And in recent years there's been some controversy over Morris dancers painting their faces black. What is the origin of that tradition and what do you think changing attitudes to it can reveal?

[Liz Williams]

So again, we don't know. Some people say that it is directly racist. And I think you've got to take that on board as a possibility for sure. Some people say that it's essentially linked to the fact that quite a few Morris dancers would probably have been engaged in illicit activities like poaching, so they can't be recognized. Or even Morris dancing itself. You know, the local lord doesn't like it. So what do you do? You black your face with soot so that you're not so easily recognized and you can make a quick getaway I'm not sure that really holds water in very small communities. I think everybody knows who everybody is. And there's also a possibility that it was harking back to some earlier form of dance from the continent in which either maybe it did come from North Africa, or perhaps it's just a thing. Sometimes things don't have very logical or very explicable origins. I think there's a general sort of agreement now that because it does get tied into racist arguments, it's better not to do it. Because actually, why gratuitously offend people? You know, there's no reason for it. It's not some sacred tradition. So a lot of Morris teams have taken to blueface or greenface now rather than blackface.

[Host]

I'm interested by what you just said there about it's not some sacred tradition. Has there always been a sense that these customs, these traditions, they evolve and they change over time?

[Liz Williams]

Yes, they do. They evolve a lot more than people think they do. But because we have limited lifespans, and because a lot of us, and I speak for myself here, are naturally sometimes quite set in ways, we think there's a good way of doing things, the right way to do things, and anything else is not the right way to do things, and you're doing it wrong. You know, the Internet is full of people who'll tell you whatever you do that you're doing it wrong. Because that's actually just human nature to feel that the way you've been brought up to do something is the right way to do it. But actually, it will have changed in your grandfather's time, it will have changed in your father's time, it will change in your time, and it will change in the times of your children. It is an evolving, fluid thing, like most customs.

[Host]

And while some of these traditions evolve, others have died out. And one of those is something called charivari, which is also known as rough music. Of course, the title of your book, this is really fascinating. Can you describe what it was to us and the role that it played in societies?

[Liz Williams]

Yes. I think you've got to, first of all, take on board that in British history, the police are a relatively recent phenomenon. You know, previously you might have had some form of social control, but in villages that have been pretty limited, and if people transgress, you have to take action into your own hands or you feel that you do. So there's a kind of element of vigilantism in the charivari, essentially, for those who don't know if you have a married Couple who have an adulterous affair and everybody disapproves. Sometimes that's just going to go under the radar. If the people are popular, perhaps they're well liked and nobody really wants to rock the boat. But sometimes people aren't popular. And unfortunately, and I do want to link this to bullying, by the way, people feel that those people have got to be punished. Now, you may not attack them directly and physically, although that does happen. But the Charivari is basically where you shame somebody. You make an effigy of them. Sometimes, for example, you'd make an effigy of the couple. They'd be tied back to back. They'd be made out of straw, like Guy Fawkes. Old clothes stuffed with straw. They'd be put on a donkey or a cart, and they'd be paraded through the town with everybody shouting and yelling. Now, if you're on the receiving end of that, that's really, really unpleasant. And you may have done not very much to justify it. You know, if you've just transgressed some social moral rule, bear in mind that this was a Christian country until relatively recently, although it still is. It is largely secular now, but prior to that, moral panics were definitely a thing that happened. And I think the Charivari is a minor expression of a moral panic on a local basis.

[Host]

And what kind of era are we talking about here?

[Liz Williams]

We're talking about probably the 1700s, prob. That I can't remember offhand onwards. Thomas Hardy goes into the Charivari in one of his novels very famously, and it does have tragic consequences because the woman involved, I think it's implied that she has a heart attack. I think she falls dead. And, you know, this is a very, very unpleasant. If you imagine, you know, sitting in your front room and suddenly the neighbors go past with an effigy of you shouting and screaming and singing rude songs and banging pots and pans. That's pretty horrible, actually. I think we've got to have a feeling for how intimidating some of these practices were. We don't do that now, but do we call people out on Facebook? Yes, we do. Whistle while you work from Disney.

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[Host]

I wonder if we could head over to Wales now to look at a tradition that's still alive and well in many places. That's the Mari Lloyd. It's a very strange sight to see, isn't it? The Mari Lloyd.

[Liz Williams]

It is. I went to a big procession of Maris in Chepstow some years ago before lockdown, and we all gathered outside a pub and everybody was sort of excited and saying, can you see them? Can you see them? Are they coming out? Are they coming out? And I imagine if you didn't know what was going on, a sudden procession of people dressed in long white robes with a horse's skull on the top would have been pretty far out, to put it mildly. And again, we're not sure how this arrived, whether it originated, although there are a lot of hobby horses and horses generally and sort of things like the Padstow oss, which is like a tabletop, it doesn't really look much like a horse at all. It's got a person in the middle of a big round tabletop with a skirt and a kind of a hat and a mask. And it's called a hobby horse, but it's very weird. It doesn't really look like a horse. The Marie Lewids actually do use horses skulls. And some of them, they're a little bit like some of the South American and Mexican Day of the Dead processions. They're creepy, but they're also jolly and they're also quite funny. So sometimes people put ping pong balls in the eyes of the horse, so they Look a bit mad. And it's really popular now. It's growing in popularity all over Wales. It's pretty innocent, you know, it usually ends up in a morris dance.

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[Host]

What was the point of the Mari lloyd? Was it like carol singing? So you go between houses and gather money?

[Liz Williams]

Yes, gather money, yeah. And I mean you've got to remember, I think with a lot of these customs that a lot of the impetus behind these sort of local processions comes from farm hands. In winter there's not a lot to do, there's not a lot of spare cash going around and there's not a lot of spare food going around. So bumping up your income a little bit by going around and collecting from more well to do households and giving them hopefully a jolly occasion, not actually demanding money. Although a little bit of that did go on actually. It's understandable that people want to break up the mid winter period with entertainment or jollification and if they can make a little bit of money or have a nice drink or some equivalent of mince pies, that would be great as well. So that's where it comes from.

[Host]

So we have the figure of the horse in the Mari Lloyd or at least the skeleton horse. Are there any other animals that recur in these traditions?

[Liz Williams]

There are, yes. Round about one of the Welsh border towns, I can't remember which one, there was a bull's head rather than a horse's head. And when Ronald Hutton, the historian at Bristol, who's so well respected in his research on paganism and these practices, when he went to Chepstow, he saw that there was a man with the bull's head and he said, oh, I'm really interested in this because this was an old thing back in the day. And the man said, yes, we've revived it. We read this really interesting book by a man called Hutton in which he talked about it and I think Ronald just went, that's very interesting and then sort of slunk away. But he has sort of single handedly been responsible for reviving the bull which I myself have seen at Chepstow. So there are bulls, there are horses, there are strange figures, there are green men and green men are very popular once we get to Beltane.

[Host]

Well, can you tell us about this figure of the Green Man? What do we know about its origins and what the green man symbolizes?

[Liz Williams]

So there are two types of green man. I mean there are lots of different types actually, but there are two broad categories. One of them are the heads found in churches. So if you go into medieval church, and you look up, you'll see what is known as a foliate head. And that is the face of a man, sometimes a woman. And it's got leaves coming out of its mouth and its eyes, and it's surrounded by greenery and foliage. They're medieval. We don't know know exactly why they are there or where they come from. There are lots and lots of different theories. So we've got the ones in churches, but we also got the ones that are seen in folklore processions. Hastings, for example, has a huge Jack in the Green festival. And there the jack is a man dressed in a costume of leaves with his face painted green and a mask. And he goes through the town in a procession, surrounded by his followers, who were all banging drums and singing and, you know, essentially making a big spectacle. And those figures are quite old. They go back to, I think, at least the 1600s. They're probably medieval, and they are very much a popular aspect of British folklore. You find them a lot all over the place, quite where or how that started. Some people like to claim that it is a pagan thing, that it goes back to a pagan custom of welcoming in the spring. It might do. You know, we just don't know. You know, for a lot of these things, we are sort of saying lost in the mists of time. But actually, it's very hard with organic, grassroots traditions, to pinpoint them to a single era.

[Host]

Something you mentioned quickly, that I didn't pick up on a minute ago was Beltane. So tell us about that.

[Liz Williams]

Okay. Beltane is popular now. It's essentially Mayday. It's the old name for mayday. It's an Irish word. And for a lot of the time, I'm not one of those. I am pagan myself, but I'm not one of those pagans who claim that there has been a sort of single, secret, unbroken tradition going right through from ancient Celtic times. What we do now is very much revivalist. So Beltane is a revivalist term, and pagans use it instead of May Day. But it's sort of escaped into the wild, and a lot of people use it now for their own particular May Day celebrations. May Day is a great time of year. The hawthorn's coming out, the leaves are coming out, everything's fresh and spring like. And so why not celebrate it? It's becoming increasingly regarded in paganism as a festival of fertility. Hundreds of years ago, May Day would have been a slightly numinous time when the dead returned to the earth, a bit like Halloween. So that has changed a lot. You know, that's another example of a set of beliefs and customs that have really morphed into something completely different.

[Host]

Something else that you look at in the book are fairs. Should I be imagining, you know, a nice fun fair with candy floss and coconut shies, or are we talking about something quite different here?

[Liz Williams]

Big markets, a really big market. Fairs serve all sorts of purposes. And probably, really, they probably are very ancient. I mean, some of these, Glastonbury's Town Fair goes back to, well, 1300s, possibly 1100s. It's an old fair, not completely unbroken. But some of these things do have very long routes, and they are a chance for merchants to show their wares. You've got stuff coming in from the continent, lovely fabrics and so on. You want to go and show them off. Where better to do so at a big fair in London? So these are very much commercial enterprises. They would have had food, they would have had entertainment. They had their own marshals. They were quite heavily regulated because obviously you can't have pickpocketing and petty crime and thievery. You've got to have some kind of rudimentary police force on the site. So those people would have gone around and laid down the law. But they are very much a commercial thing. The funfares come a bit later.

[Host]

And how do you see them connecting to folk traditions?

[Liz Williams]

To folk traditions. I think things like Morris dancing and so on probably would have been practiced at those events, because people want entertainment. If they're going to take the day off, they want to go to the fair, they want to spend their money, they want to have some food, they want to drink something, and they want to see something entertaining. So I think a lot of these things do sort of dovetail in perhaps an organic but a not unexpected way.

[Host]

If we're talking about seeing something entertaining, we have to talk about cheese rolling. So the most famous cheese rolling race still happens every year not far from where I am in Bristol, at Cooper's Hill, near Gloucester. If anybody hasn't seen this, they should pause this podcast, look it up and come back, because it's really terrifying. But where does this bizarre practice of cheese rolling come from? And can you describe it for anybody who isn't familiar?

[Liz Williams]

Absolutely, because why would you be familiar with this? I come from Gloucester. I was born and brought up in Gloucester, so it's very familiar to me. And it's just something that happened every year in the background. And it seemed. I won't say it seemed perfectly normal, but it seemed like just a Thing that people did. Cooper's Hill is exceptionally steep. You'd have problems driving a car down it. It's very, very steep indeed. You start at the top with a big roll of cheese, big wheel of cheese, and somebody sets it rolling and everybody runs. After is a nightmare for Health and safety, and they keep trying to stop it on Health and safety grounds because every year there are green stick fractures, people come to terrible grief, get knocked out, and at the bottom of it you get the wheel of cheese if you win. And this is a big thing among some local families, but we get people coming from Japan, from all different part, to participate in this completely bonkers British exercise. It is almost quintessential. It is one of the maddest things. Again, there are all sorts of claims that the wheedle of cheese represents the sun. This is an ancient Celtic tribal solar festival in which you pursue the sun down the hill. I don't think somehow this is actually the case. I suspect it was one of those things that at some point seemed like a good idea in the past. And a bunch of men at the end of the night and possibly women, went, yeah, let's do it, let's do it. That's going to be a great idea. And, you know, they say in some parts of the world that if you do something three times, it becomes a tradition. So I think it has grown. I don't even know how old it is actually. It's not that old, but it is completely mad. And my favourite quote in the whole book is the man who was interviewed, I think, by the Guardian, who said that he was very disappointed that the cheese rolling had been called off during lockdown, because I quote, how will I hurt myself now? Which is a really mad British thing to say. This is very, very British for anybody listening who is not from this country and who is an anthropologist, get over here.

[Host]

Now, I like what you were saying there earlier, this idea that, you know, sometimes there isn't a reason for these things, there isn't a logical origin. Yeah, they just have happened a couple of times and it's become tradition. Because I think there can be a tendency to find meaning in all of these things when sometimes they don't have it. Do you think that's fair?

[Liz Williams]

Oh, I think that's totally fair. I think a lot of these things are just done for a laugh and because people are bored and because they want something to do and because, as I've said, an age prior to television and passive entertainment, you know, people really did go out and make their Own fun.

[Host]

So we've discussed quite a few of the traditions in your book, but are there any that we haven't mentioned so far that you think we definitely need to look at?

[Liz Williams]

I think one of the biggest ones, because it's so uniquely British, is Bonfire Night. I spent a lot of time in Brighton in the 90s and Brighton is very close to Lewes, which is a little town on the Sussex coast. And Bonfire Night is absolutely huge in Lewes. They have huge processions. Now, for anybody who isn't aware, Bonfire Night commemorates the failure of a plotter, essentially a terrorist named Guy Fawkes, to blow up the British Parliament and he was executed. When this plot was discovered, somebody in the plot blew the whistle to the authorities and they went down to the cellars of the Houses of Parliament, found a lot of gunpowder and obviously evacuated it. It's pretty much the same as any terrorist plot now. But to celebrate the failure of the plot, not to commemorate the fact that he tried, which I see quite a lot online, people started rolling barrels of gunpowder through the streets and tar barrels and holding bonfires. On November 5, when fireworks came country and started becoming popular, it became firework night. So it's a sort of pre winter celebration. But in some parts of the country, Lewis had quite a large Catholic population. Several of the plotters came from Lewes, so they want to sort of commemorate it rather than celebrate it. But there are bonfire societies, there's probably about 10 of them and they each have a fireworks celebration in different parts of the town. So it's very noisy and it's very, very popular. And they still roll tar barrels set on fire through the streets of Lewes. Again, this is a health and safety nightmare. But they know what they're doing.

[Host]

So a lot of these practices, they're strange, they're bizarre, they're entertaining. But why do you think that they're interesting historically? What do you think they can tell historians today?

[Liz Williams]

I think they are a window into the past. All of these practices are, but they are also a window into how we see our own culture. And about a year ago I did an interview with the guy who does the Weird Walks series of books. It's very, very interesting man. And several young, really quite young people, you know, 20 somethings, came up to us afterwards and said that was really fascinating. We're really getting into the folklore and the heritage and the cultural traditions. We like going to stone circles, we like going and watching Morris dancing. And although some of these things occasionally there is a slight trend for them to get Linked to the far right, that sort of white nationalist, it's our culture and we're taking it back kind of thing. Younger people, I find, are much more inclusive. They want to celebrate it, but not at the exclusion of anybody else, you know, so they're very happy to go to, for example, Notting Hill Carnival or indeed Glastonbury Festival or anything else that's promoted Diwali, anything else that's promoted in this country. But they want their own traditions as well, so they don't see it as exclusive.

[Host]

Those modern revivals are really interesting. Why do you think so many of these traditions have endured so long?

[Liz Williams]

I think it's partly because people do want something to do, but they also want to feel part of something. And although the meaning of some of these things might have been lost in the midst of time, I think there is a meaningfulness about them because they do make you feel part of your culture in a good way. Part of your own heritage and part of the land. You know, wassailing, for example, is all about being part of the land and about celebrating the land and the trees and. And the fruit and the harvest around you. A lot of these things are harvest oriented, and I think people like that because we become very attenuated from the natural world in this culture. We're always in front of a screen and it's almost sometimes as though your consciousness gets sucked into the online world. And having something that takes you away from that and makes you get out into your community. A lot of these things are very community oriented, obviously, or out into the natural world is something that really appeals to people because they don't get to do so much. Often it.

[Host]

And my final question to you, Liz. Are there any traditions you came across that have been lost that you would like to see revived?

[Liz Williams]

Some of the alleged pagan ones, I think are being revived, and that's really good. I mean, we're coming up to what's known in paganism IMOLC now, which is I M B O L C, which is an Irish word, and that is Candlemass. So 1st of February at the White Spring in Glastonbury, we do have a celebration to sort of hand over the winter to the spring and to celebrate the return of the goddess breed or St Bridget to the land. She is a spirit of healing and she's associated with snowdrops and all sorts of things. And it's a year marker. So I think these sorts of things are becoming more popular and I think that's a good thing. We need to be tied into the seasons because they're changing. I would encourage people, if they are interested and if they are in this country or visiting this country, to go to some of these more modern celebr Boss Morris in Stroud, all female, very funky Morris troupe, for example, Montal down in Penzance, which is a more modern festival. Burning the clocks in Brighton at the winter solstice. All of these things are organic community enterprises and they really need a bit of support. So yeah, go out and see what's going on in your locality.

[Host]

That was Liz Williams speaking to me. Ellie Cawthorn Liz's book on this Survivor is Rough Music, Folk Customs, Transgression and Alternative Britain. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Daniel Kramer.

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