Intimately connected with the question of fairs held near old earthworks, are the sports which were associated with such places. And, in fact, the fairs and the games are two phases of one subject, while both features, in turn, will illustrate the inability of the early founders of the Church to eliminate pagan customs.
Hence, though for the moment we may appear to wander from our theme, we shall soon see that the matter is not extraneous. When we learn, for instance, that Wiltshire villagers were wont to climb Cley Hill to play a game with balls and sticks within the British earthwork at the summit, and when we hear that this took place on Palm Sunday, we express only mild surprise[459]. When, however, we read of a similar procession of men and maidens, again occurring on Palm Sunday, to the prehistoric camp on the top of St Martin’s Hill (or Martinsell), a steep-sided promontory of the chalk range near Marlborough[460], the subject becomes interesting. In discussing the churchyard yew in a later chapter we shall have occasion to recall the Martinsell anniversary (p. 381 infra); in the meantime we cast around for other illustrations. A like ceremony was carried out on Palm Sunday by the villagers of Avebury, Wiltshire, who mounted the famous Silbury Hill, there to eat fig cakes and drink sugar and water. The water was procured from the spring below, known as the Swallow Head. Seeing that Palm Sunday bears elsewhere the nickname of “Fig Sunday,” and that figs were often eaten at this festival, ecclesiastical writers have supposed that the custom is connected with the Gospel story of the cursing of the barren fig tree. (Figs were not always the fruit eaten; in Wessex and the West of England “fig” also means a raisin.) To the folk-lorist, however, this item will be regarded as adventitious—as an accretion which is due to ideas impressed from without. Were the habit of making these pilgrimages to early earthworks confined to one or two localities, or to one particular festival, this superficial explanation might pass unchallenged. But when we encounter instance after instance, reported from many counties, and connected with various anniversaries, then, though the ceremony be often touched with curious little tinges of local colour, we are compelled to go beyond the accidents, and to seek a common underlying principle. This, indeed, does not seem discoverable by any purely historical process. We are driven back to unconscious folk-memory and immemorial tradition—which rarely endeavour to supply a fully efficient cause—to the dim period when, though the practice of raising earthworks was not obsolete, a considerable amount of superstition, and even of ceremonial observance, was already connected with those old monuments. The period referred to roughly covers the first five or six centuries of our era. Behind this transitional stage of superstition lies the prehistoric period, with its own rites and ceremonies, and its own anniversary observances.
Let us now notice one or two cases of hill customs not connected with Palm Sunday. I am informed by Mr W. J. Lucas that it was the custom, forty years ago, for youths and maidens to ascend Chilswell Hill, near Oxford, every Good Friday, to indulge in rude sports and noisy merry-making. So coarse was the play that it was not considered proper for respectable folk to take part in the proceedings. Now one cannot, in any reasonable way, seek the origin of these games in the solemn rites connected with the Christian anniversary. Rather must we look to some ancient spring festival, such as that connected with the Saxon goddess Eostre. It would appear as if the Church in the early period could not, and in the later times would not, altogether abolish the custom. A similar Good Friday procession was formerly made to St Martha’s Hill, near Guildford, the church of which was described on p. 131 supra. The loud music and the riotous dancing in which the crowd took part were so indecorous that few were found to lament the discontinuance of the custom[461]. There are some curious earth-rings situated to the South of the church, half-hidden by heather, and I have elsewhere suggested that these represent part of a maze[462], within which the sports were once held. If this be correct, there is an indication of a half-hearted attempt on the part of the Church to modify the games, and turn them to a penitential purpose. Some writers have thought that the morris-dancers made use of such circles for their performances. Here, too, we may have a link which binds these outdoor customs to the practice of dancing in church.
We now see that the apparent digression respecting fairs was not altogether irrelevant. There is a thread running through the whole story. First, we have the practice of making earthworks, which continued in the Early Iron Age, almost to the dawn of documentary history. Within the ramparts, assemblies, whether peaceful or warlike, would often be held, and would be accompanied with some amount of barbaric ritual. Next, we have the period when the true purpose of the camps was becoming forgotten. Myths arose, and though it was considered fitting to hold councils within the old fortifications, for a while all was done with fear and trembling. The earthworks were peopled with giants, fairies, and evil spirits. Time passed, and fairs came into vogue. The dread of giants and “little folk” diminished, and the buyers and sellers would often be conveniently accommodated in, or around, the earthworks. The Early Fathers could not stop the gatherings, or abolish the heathen practice of charms and witchcraft, or quell the tumult of the feast-makers. The difficulties could only be circumvented. When the Christians erected a church on the site once occupied by a pagan temple, they performed a dance to their God as the heathen had previously done to theirs[463]. Occasionally, the Christian teachers built a church near an earthwork. More frequently, they retained the pagan feast-day, but diverted the ceremonies to the honour of the patron saint. The moots were allowed to gather within the church. The healing well and the primitive dance were indulgently accepted. Attracting all functions unto herself, the Church finally allowed the fairs to be held within hallowed ground. It was only when the Mediaeval period was reached that a reconsideration of policy was seriously proposed.
The subject of fairs and markets has claimed so much attention that churchyard sports must be treated rather summarily. So early as A.D. 1225 a provincial synod in Scotland forbade wrestling matches and other sports in churchyards; and the Synod of Exeter, A.D. 1287, similarly prohibited combats, dances, and stage plays. But these isolated ordinances were repeatedly ignored. “Improper and prohibited sports,” such as wrestling, football, and handball, involved the transgressors in a penalty of twopence for each offence, at Salton, Yorkshire (A.D. 1472)[464]. The rule was infringed, for, nearly half a century later (A.D. 1519), the disobedient had to be threatened with excommunication[465]. So matters went on until the Reformation, and, indeed, down to a much more recent date. Writing in A.D. 1804, Malkin avers that, at feasts and revels, dancing and games at tennis and fives were “universal in [the churchyards of] Radnorshire, and very common in other parts of the Principality[466].” It should be noted, however, that these amusements were commonly permitted only on the North side of the burial-ground, where there were rarely any graves. (Cf. [Chap. VIII.]) At Stoke St Milborough, Shropshire ([p. 95] supra), the games were not discontinued until the year 1820[467].
Though this recital of events may cause a shock to devout persons, the severity of the criticism will be relaxed when the conditions are duly appreciated. Once grasp the fact that social convenience reigned almost supreme, and the master key is found. Permeating the whole of the old social customs, though doubtless, to some extent, existing entirely apart from them, there were influences essentially religious and symbolical. On actual examination, however, it is often impossible to make a severance between the practical and the ideal. Take, for example, the widespread custom of preserving natural or semi-natural curiosities, such as fossils and aerolites, in churches. Was this practice based merely on superstition, or on the satisfaction of public curiosity? We are all conversant with the legends which are attached to some of our commoner fossils, and to “thunderbolts” of various kinds[468]. When the Breton peasant, finding a “pierre de tonnerre,” or “pierre de foudre”—really a Neolithic celt or axe of stone—builds it into his chimney to ward off lightning (cf. [p. 80] supra), he is influenced partly by superstitious fear and partly by credulity. His very superstition is turned to useful account. Similarly, the meteoric stones, such as that which Ambrose Parey (Ambroise Paré) found suspended by an iron chain in the church of Sugolia, on the borders of Hungary, was probably believed to protect the building from the effect of thunderstorms[469]. Grimm tells us of a donner-stral (= “a flash of lightning”; thence, evidently, “a thunder-stone,” i.e. either an aerolite or a stone celt) which was hung up in Enisheim church, in Alsace-Lorraine. In this connection, it would be well to read the valuable paper written by Professor O. Montelius, entitled “The Sun-God’s Axe and Thor’s Hammer.” He shows that the superstitious respect paid to the stone celt appears in many countries in the most diverse guises[470]. When stone-axes were unearthed by the plough in Norway, they were regarded as gifts from the gods. It is interesting to turn to the Scriptural account of “the image which fell down from Jupiter[471],” and which was said to represent Diana. Some authorities have considered that the “image” was in reality an aerolite, but Professor W. M. Ramsay contends that it was a rude idol. This writer is of opinion that both the Authorized and the Revised Versions are wrong in giving the translation “Jupiter”; the original refers to an object falling “from a clear sky.” The tradition of images falling from the heavens was common. The image of Cybele, at Pessinus, about which a story of this kind was told, is believed to have been a “shapeless stone[472].” The reader may feel inclined to ask why, by a similar argument, the image of Diana was not likewise a shapeless stone, especially as ignorant folk everywhere are prone to assert that various objects, such as fossil belemnites and lumps of iron pyrites, have dropped out of the firmament. But is there any authenticated instance where an actual image, rather than a natural stone, has been identified as connected with this superstition?
The more noticeable fossil remains attracted attention at an early date. The Emperor Augustus decorated his villa at Capri with large fossil bones—“Giants’ bones.” The church was long considered the natural repository for other curious relics. The tusks of fossil animals were commonly placed in Continental churches during the Mediaeval period. Although there existed a collection of fossils in the museum of the Vatican, and although these had been described—inefficiently, it is true—by Michele Mercati, towards the end of the seventeenth century, yet such relics still found a home in the church. Mercati’s manuscript, with its mixture of truth and error, was not, indeed, published by Lancisi until the years A.D. 1717-19, but neither this, nor similar works, made much impression upon the unlettered crowd. Stories soon gathered around the treasured bones or fossils. At the church of Pennant Melangel, in Montgomeryshire, the rib of a mammoth became metamorphosed into a “Giant’s rib,” as well as into a bone of St Monacella[473]. In the Foljambe Chapel of Chesterfield parish church, the jaw-bone of a whale has become a rib of the Dun Cow of Warwick[474] (cf. [p. 485] infra). A bone is preserved in the church of St Mary’s Redcliffe, Bristol, which, report says, belonged to a cow that once supplied the whole city with milk. Other folk, ruthless destroyers of myths, declare, with more reason, that the bone is that of a whale, and was brought from Newfoundland by Cabot. There are many other bones which claim to belong to this celebrated Dun Cow. Instances of church curiosities of this kind could be greatly extended; space can be found only for one, which happens to be of great interest.
In the church chest of Canewdon, near Rochford, Essex, there is preserved an immense and somewhat unattractive relic which, in all probability, is a portion of a vertebra of a whale ([Fig. 50]). How the bone came to be deposited in the church, and where it was found, are mysteries. The most plausible surmise is that it was dredged up by fishermen off the coast. Strange to say, the relic, which is known to the villagers as “Canute’s knee-bone,” is the second which the church has possessed. The predecessor of the present bone long since
