Folklore

The county of Essex is especially rich in traditions, legends, dialect and stories that have been handed down through the ages.
A new book entitled ‘Folklore of Essex’ by Billericay author Sylvia Kent has gathered together these traditions and explores their meanings and origins. To find out more about Sylvia Kent please visit her website sylviakent.blogspot.com

To give you a taster of the fantastic world of Essex folklore read about:

Winter calendar customs – Essex style

Despite being on the boundary of the capital, with many Essex villages now within the Greater London Boroughs, local folk still enjoy practising the age-old customs passed down through generations. Some traditions are linked to religious festivals and ceremonies. Others, perhaps more irreverently, hark back to our ancient pagan past. But whether sacred or secular, Essex folk still seem to take comfort in traditional customs. Christmas is coming. Feasting and gift-buying are on the agenda. In the midst of festive preparations, our county’s churches celebrate Advent. This is such a special time in the Essex church calendar and begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day. Then we sing our traditional Advent hymns, several of which were composed by Brentwood composer Arthur Henry Brown (1830-1926). Nationally recognised ‘Stir up Sunday’ is still popular and celebrated in South- East Essex homes. Its name comes from its association with the beginning of the religious Collect "Stir Up, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the hearts of Thy faithful people." At the turn of the twentieth century, the young Eva Baxter remembered singing as she and Sunday School friends returned home from Great Warley Church:

Stir up, we beseech thee,
The pudding in the pot,
And when we get home
We’ll eat it all hot

Christmas is then quickly upon us, although now advertised since August. It is then celebrated as always with perhaps too much feasting and over-indulgence. This was the time when many of the staff at the county’s manor houses such as Ingatestone Hall, Warley Place, Felix Hall, Terling Place, Easton Lodge and other grand establishments would relax their daily routines and allow their servants an unaccustomed holiday away from duty. Boxing Day in Essex takes its name from the old tradition of giving a Christmas box or money-tip to employees and trades-people on the day after the big day. A Witham farmer is recorded as giving £1.14s in Christmas boxes. This included gifts to his maidservant, the postman, singers, bell-ringers and beadle. In Clacton, the Boxing Day Marathon was an annual tradition started in 1908, but now lapsed. Originally started by six Clacton Scouts, it was adopted by the Clacton Athletics Club. The boys decided to work off their gluttonous excesses by covering a route from their meeting place – St Charles Hall and following the Holland Road out to Sea Lane, returning along the cliffs to their HQ. Another old custom was cruel. Young boys would go "hunting the wren" on 27th December. In Essex we hear that the wrens, which were more prolific in earlier times, would be killed by being spiked on a gorse bush. The boys would parade around the village singing:

The robin and the redbreast
The robin and the wren
If ye go tak’ out of the nest,
You’ll never thrive again.

A relatively new Essex tradition that originated after Christmas in the early 1970s was the Mad Maldon Mud Race. A youthful dare made at the Queen’s Head pub at Hythe Quay challenged young men to serve a meal on the saltings of the Blackwater, in full evening dress. The challenge was accepted and great fun followed. The following year twenty people made the ‘mad dash’ across the riverbed, drank a pint of beer and returned. This is now a sponsored charity event in which competitors choose their own charity for half the money they raise. The remainder is donated to local charities chosen by the Maldon Lions and Rotary Clubs. In 2005, more than 7,000 spectators, many from around the world, packed the promenade at Maldon to watch the 180 competitors – dressed as waiters clowns, nurses and a robed vicar, brave the 400-yard course which was completed in three minutes. If weather is inclement, the event is put back to New Year’s Day. The passing of the old year and the birth of the new have great national significance, but one new tradition - since the Millennium - is for Essex folk to drive along the A12 to London and see in the New Year in Trafalgar Square. Molly and Morris dancers make their colourful and musical appearance, inviting revellers to join in their jigs. Mumming plays have been revived in Essex over recent years and Billericay’s Mayflower Morrismen traditionally put on a Christmas or Plough Monday performance, complete with St George and his entourage who make wonderful entertainment.

Although Essex is far distant from Scotland, many Scottish traditions are celebrated in the villages around Chelmsford, Brentwood and Colchester at New Year. This is a result of the influx of families from Scotland who made their way to the area during the great late-Victorian agricultural depression. More than 300 families settled into Essex farms between 1880 and 1930.

One Scottish tradition practised in Essex is first footing. As soon as the midnight bells finish chiming, the custom calls for a tall, dark-haired man to cross the threshold. He brings with him the symbolic gifts of a load of bread, lump of coal and silver coins to ensure that his hosts will have food, warmth and prosperity throughout the coming year. Entering in silence, he must wish everyone present a Happy New Year and kiss all the ladies. Most importantly, he must leave by the back door. This is a Colchester version of a first-footing rhyme:

I wish you a happy New Year
A pocketful of money; a cellar full of beer
A good fat pig to last all year
So please give a gift for this coming year

"Speed the plough" is an old farming tradition once practised widely in Essex on the Monday following Twelfth Night, or Epiphany, when farm labourers began the working year and winter ploughing started. A corn dolly, fashioned from the last stalks of the harvest was laid in the first furrow and ploughed in. This was done so that the corn goddess, who spirit was believed to reside in the corn dolly, would look kindly on the farmers and ensure a bountiful harvest. The village lads pulled a plough around their hamlet and collected tips or ‘largesse’ from the farmers who employed them. Those too mean to contribute, could very well find their front gardens ploughed up in retribution. In the Colchester area the plough was painted white and kept in the local church.

The Molly Gang from Good Easter village are now a familiar and popular group from the Rodings area. They revived the Plough Monday custom in their area in 1980 and each year tour a different route, visiting schools and local pubs. In Billericay, the custom has recently been revived by the Mayflower Morrismen who, on the Saturday nearest Plough Monday, dance at the ancient Red Lion Inn, accompanied by a plough supplied by the famous Barleylands Farm Museum.

St Hilary’s Day on January 14th was always regarded in the county as the coldest in the year and were famously linked with the Frost Fairs that took place a short way up the Thames. The diarist John Evelyn, who owned land at Brentwood described the scene in 1684: "The frost continuing more and more severe… sheds, sliding with skates, or bull-baiting, horse and coach races, puppet-show and interludes, cooks, tippling and other lewd places, so that it seemed to be a bacchanalian triumph or carnival on the water…"