It is unlucky for a woman to be the first to enter a house on New Year’s Day, so it is traditional to pay boys to put sand on the steps, and in the hall.  Packs of boys rove around offering this service.

Plot hook: Shapeshifter?

Is it a single shape shifting lady this tradition is aimed at? Clearly she’s a faerie. Does she personally hate sand? Some vampires hate sand (they need to count the grains).

First Sunday after Christmas: Gigglet Fair

In January in Launceston there is a Gigglet Fair, a gigglet is a young woman, and its attended by men and women looking for spouses. Men are allowed to talk to girls they don’t know without anyone getting upset about it. There’s some folklore about women being sold and led off in halters. There’s also an old folk tale about a pair of con artists who travelled the fairs, selling the wife, She’d then steal all of her new husband’s portable wealth and rejoin her partner, to find a new fair to hustle.

January 4: Drinking to the apple trees on Twelfth Night Eve.

“IN the eastern part of Cornwall…it was the custom to take a milk-panful of cider, into which roasted apples had been broken, into the orchard  This was placed as near the centre of the orchard as possible, and each person, taking a…cup of the drink, goes to different apple-trees, and addresses them as follows : “Health to the good apple-tree ; Well to bear, pocketfuls, hatfuls, peckfuls, bushel-bagfuls.” Drinking part of the contents of the cup, the remainder, with the fragments of the roasted apples, is thrown at the tree, all the company shouting aloud.”  During the apple wassail, some places dip cakes in cider and then put them into the branches of the trees.

Plot hooks: Vis source

• This is a deeply detailed vis source. Apples are linked to fertility (Creo) and plants (Herbam).
• Some believe that if this ritual is not followed, the orchard will not yield apples in the coming year. This may enrage local faeries. The Knight of the Windfall Apple is a spirit of the maggot and the rot who is called forth when the powers of fertility at weakened. It causes food to decay, milk to curdle and fish to flee.

January 5: Twelfth Night Cake

“THE custom, apparently a very ancient one, of putting certain articles into a rich cake, is still preserved in many districts. Usually, sixpence, a wedding-ring, and a silver thimble are employed. These are mixed up with the dough, and baked in the cake. At night the cake is divided. The person who secures the sixpence will not want money for that year ; the one who has the ring will be the first married ; and the possessor cf the thimble
will die an old maid.”

Plot hooks

Each of these little trinkets allow a +3 bonus on a single roll that suits the blessing of the cake. Some cakes have greater trinkets, which last all year, but where they are found, and how you earn a slice, is known best by the Merinitans.

Plough Monday (first Monday after Epiphany): Geese dancing

“THE first Monday after Twelfth-day is Plough Monday, and it is the ploughman’s holiday.

At this season, in the Islands of Scilly, at St Ives, Penzance, and other places, the young people exercise a sort of gallantrj called “geese-dancing.” The maidens are dressed up for young men, and the young men for maidens ; and, thus disguised, they visit their neighbours in companies, where they dance, and make jokes upon what has happened during the year, and every one is humorously ” told their own,” without offence being taken. By this sort of sport, according to yearly custom and toleration, there is a spirit of wit and drollery kept up among the people. The music and dancing done, they are treated with liquor, and then they go to the next house, and carry on the same sport…The…term…is…derived from “dance deguiser”, hence guise-dancing, or geese-dancing, by corruption.

Plot hooks:

• The dancers may be faeries, able to move freely among humans in their masks. Failure ot provide them liquor is inhospitable and is punished with tricks.
• Being told off by a dancer allows a character to lower undesired Personality traits.

 

February: Shrove Tuesday

Boys march around in groups, carriying cords weighted with stones, and beating on doors. In St Ives they sing “Give me a pancake, now-now-now. / Or I’ll souse in your door with a row-tow-tow” In other places the young men wander around pretending to be imps, stealing stuff that’s not taken care of, and demanding pancakes.

Plot hooks:

• What happens if a boy making his cord uses a stone with a natural hole in it (an elfstone)?  Does this create a minor magical item that attract the fae? Such an item may be able to break down doors, locks and wards that are usually not vulnerable to something as simple as a stone and a string.

Nearest Sunday to April 28th

“The parish feast takes place on the nearest Sunday to the 28th 1 of April. It happened in very early times, when winters extended further into the spring than they now do, that one of the old inhabitants resolved to be jovial, notwithstanding the inclemency of the season ; so he invited all his neighbours, and to warm his house he placed on the burning faggots the stump of a tree. It began to blaze, and, inspired by the warmth and light, they began to sing and drink ; when, lo ! with a whiz and a whir, out flew a bird from the hollow in the stump, crying, Cuckoo ! cuckoo ! The bird was caught and kept by the farmer, and he and his friends resolved to renew the festal meeting every year at this date, and to call it their ” cuckoo feast.”

This feast is sometimes called “crowder” feast, because the fiddler formed a procession at the church door, and led the people
through the village to some tune on his ” crowd.””

Plot hooks: vis source

• If we assume for story’s sake they have a cuckoo wake at every annual feast, how do they know where they are sleeping? We have seen cuckoos of virtue are gelatinous in the winter, and valuable. Could these men have a secret to finding them?

May-day

Hunt clearly loved this, so I’ll quote him in full, for tone. Note the Imaginem vis sources.

“THE first of May is inaugurated with much uproar. As soon as the clock has told of midnight, a loud blast on tin trumpets proclaims the advent of May. This is long continued. At daybreak, with their “tintarrems,” they proceed to the country, and strip the sycamore-trees (called May-trees) of all their young branches, to make whistles. With these shrill musical instruments they return home. Young men and women devote May-day to junketing and pic-nics. 

It was a custom at Penzance, and probably at many other Cornish towns, when the author was a boy, for a number of young people to sit up until twelve o’clock, and then to march round the town with violins and fifes, and summon their friends to the Maying. 

When all were gathered, they went into the country, afTu^ were welcomed at the farmhouses at which they called, with some refreshment in the shape of rum and milk, junket, or something of that sort. They then gathered the ” May,” which included the young
branches of any tree in blossom or fresh leaf. The branches of the sycamore were especially cut for the purpose of making the ” Maymusic.” 

This was done by cutting a circle through the bark to the wood a few inches from the end of the branch. The bark was wetted and carefully beaten until it was loosened and could be slid off from the wood. The wood was cut angularly at the end, so as to form a mouth-piece, and a slit was made in both the bark and the wood, so that when the bark was replaced a whistle was formed. Prepared with a sufficient number of May whistles, all the party returned to the town, the band playing, whistles blowing, and the young people singing some appropriate song.”

8 May: The Furry in Helstone

Hunt quotes” The Every Day Book” here:

On the 8th of May, at Helstone, in Cornwall, is held what is called the Furry. The word is supposed by Mr Polwhele to have been derived from the old Cornish word fer, a fair or jubilee. The morning is ushered in by the music of drums and kettles, and other accompaniments of a song, a great part of which is inserted in Mr Polwhele’s history, where this circumstance is noticed. So strict is the observance of this day as a general
holiday, that should any person be found at work, he is instantly seized, set astride on a pole, and hurried on men’s shoulders to the river, where he is sentenced to leap over a wide place, which he, of course, fails in attempting, and leaps into the water. A small contribution towards the good cheer of the day easily compounds for the leap. About nine o’clock the revellers appear before the grammar-school, and demand a holiday for the schoolboys, after which they collect a contribution from houses.

They then fade in to the country…and in the middle of the day return with flowers and oak branches in their hats and caps. From this time they dance hand in hand through the streets, to the sound of the fiddle, playing a particular tune, running into every house they pass without opposition. In the afternoon a select party of the ladies and gentlemen make a progress through the street, and very late in the evening repair to the ball-room. A stranger visiting the town on the eighth of May would really think the people mad, so apparently wild and thoughtless is the merriment of the day. There is no doubt of ‘the Furry’ originating from the ‘Floralia,’ anciently observed by the Romans on the fourth of the calends of May.”

Plot hooks:

• This sounds like a day off for apprentices
• The grogs get to tax the magi, or watch as they use magic to cheat the river.
• Hunt claims this as a Floralia, which is doesn’t seem similar to. Flora was a minor goddess in period, who comes into greater prominence, in real history, when the artists of the Renaissance decide she’s a perfect subject for displaying their newly developed colours.  Hunt may be incorrect in the real world, but in Mythic Europe a mystery cult dedicated to spring might exist, or a faerie dedicated to beauty and art might be act as the muse for a group of Jerbitons.

June: Midsummer Night

“IF on midsummer-eve a young woman takes off the shift which she has been wearing, and, having washed it, turns its wrong side out, and hangs it in silence over the back of a chair, near the fire, she will see, about midnight, her future husband, who deliberately
turns the garment..

If a young lady will, on midsummer-eve, walk backwards into the garden and gather a rose, she has the means of knowing who is to be her husband. The rose must be  cautiously sewn up in a paper bag, and put aside in a dark drawer, there to remain until Christmas-day. On the morning of the Nativity the bag must be carefully opened in silence, and the rose placed by the lady in her bosom. Thus she must wear it to church. Some young man will either ask for the rose, or take it from her without asking. That young man is destined to become eventually the lady’s husband….

“Hemp-seed I sow, Hemp-seed I hoe,” (the action of sowing the seed and of hoeing it in, must be deliberately gone through) ; “And he Who will my true love be, Come after me and mow.” A phantom of the true lover will now appear, and of course the maid or maidens retire in wild affright.

If a young unmarried woman stands at midnight on Midsummer-eve in the porch of the parish church, she will see, passing by in procession, every one who will die in the parish during the year. This is so serious an affair that it is not, i believe, often tried. I have, however, heard of young women who have made the experiment. But every one of the stories relate that, coming last in the procession, they have seen shadows of themselves ; that from that day forward they have pined, and ere midsummer has again come round, that they have been laid to rest in the village graveyard.”

Plot hooks

The magi can intervene in either of these processes,

• Grogs can, on discovering the intention of the maidens, give them a scare.
• Can magi prevent a girl who has stood the porch from dying?
• What power grants the visions? At Midsummer, you are standing at the threshold of the year, and women contemplating marriage are standing at the edge of a life-stage. Potent faerie forces may be at work.

Midsummer Eve and Day: Fire Festivals

Richard Edmonds, one of Hunt’s sources says this tradition is a Roman survival.  The account is from far later, hence the tar barrels.  It describes the gaining of a sort of personal magic resistance, and the laying of  wards around fields. I’m inclined to wonder that House Flambeau isn’t in the thick of all this, everywhere it happens. I know there are similar festivals in various parts of Europe, but this seems like the centre for Fire Tourism.

“It is the immemorial usage in Penzance and the neighbouring towns and villages to kindle bonfires and torches on Midsummer-eve ; and on Midsummer-day to hold a fair on Penzance quay, where the country folks assemble from the adjoining parishes in great numbers to make excursions on the water. St Peter’s-eve is distinguished by a similar display of bonfires and torches,

”On these eves a line of tar-barrels, relieved occasionally by large bonfires, is seen in the centre of each of the principal streets in Penzance. On either side of this line young men and women pass up and down swinging round their heads heavy torches made of large pieces of folded canvas steeped in tar, and nailed to the ends of sticks between three and four feet long ; the flames of some of these almost equal those of the tar-barrels.
Rows of lighted candles also, when the air is calm, are fixed outside the windows or along the sides of the streets….On these nights Mount’s Bay has a most animating appearance, although not equal to what was annually witnessed at the beginning of the present century, when the whole coast, from the Land’s End to the Lizard, wherever a town or village existed, was lighted up with these stationary or moving fires.

In the early part of the evening, children may be seen wearing wreaths of flowers, a custom in all probability originating from the ancient use of these ornaments when they danced around the fires. At the close of the fireworks in Penzance, a great number of persons of both sexes, chiefly from the neighbourhood of the quay, used always, until within the last few years, to join hand in hand, forming a long string, and run through the streets, playing ‘ thread the needle,’ heedless of the fireworks showered upon them, and oftentimes leaping over the yet glowing embers. I have on these occasions seen boys following one another, jumping through flames higher than themselves.

But whilst this is now done innocently in every sense of the word, we all know that the passing of children through fire was a very common act of idolatry ; and the heathen believed that all persons, and all living things, submitted to this ordeal, would be preserved from evil throughout the ensuing year. A similar blessing was supposed to be imparted to their fields by running around them with flaming torches.”

 

End of Harvest: Crying the Neck

“After the wheat is all cut on most farms in Cornwall and Devon, the harvest people have a custom of “crying the neck.” I believe that this practice is seldom omitted on any large farm in these counties. It is done in this way. An old man, or some one else well acquainted with the ceremonies used on the occasion (when the labourers are reaping the last field of wheat), goes round to the shocks and sheaves, and picks out a little bundle of all the best ears he can find ; this bundle he ties up very neat and trim, and plaits and arranges the straws veiy tastefully. This is called ” the neck ” of wheat, or wheaten-ears. After the field is cut out, and the pitcher once more circulated, the reapers, binders, and the women stand round in a circle. The person with ” the neck ” stands in the centre, grasping it with both his hands. He first stoops and holds it near the ground, and all the men forming the ring take off their hats, stooping and holding them with both hands towards the ground. They then all begin at once, in a very prolonged and harmonious tone, to cry, ” The neck ! “at the same time slowly raising themselves upright, and elevating their arms and hats above their heads ; the person with the neck also raising it on high. This is done three times. They then change their cry to ” We yen ! we yen ! ” which they sound in the same pro- longed and slow manner as before, with singular harmony and effect, three times. This last cry is accompanied by the same movements of the body and arms as in crying ” the neck.” 

Well, after this they all burst out into a kind of loud, joyous laugh, flinging up their hats and caps into the air, capering about, and perhaps kissing the girls. One of them then gets ” the neck,” and runs as hard as he can down to the farmhouse, where the dairy-maid, or one of the young female domestics, stands at the door prepared with a pail of water. If he who holds ” the neck” can manage to get into the house in any way unseen, or openly by any other way than the door at which the girl stands with the pail of water, then he may lawfully kiss her ; but, if otherwise he is regularly soused with the contents of the bucket….The object of crying ” the neck ” is to give notice to the surrounding country of the end of the harvest, and the meaning of ” we yen” is ” we have ended.’” It may probably mean ” we end,” which the uncouth and provincial pronunciation has corrupted into ” we yen.” . The ” neck ” is generally hung up in the farmhouse, where it often re- mains for three or four years.”

Plot hooks:

• A similar ritual may be necessary to collect a vis source.
• The neck dollies may contain vis, or act as the homes of beneficent spirits, like scarecrows.
• Could a grog running the neck past a girl bring a faerie through the Aegis?

31 October: Allan-apples at St Ives

“The ancient custom of providing children with a large apple on Allhallows-eve is still observed, to a great extent, at St Ives. “Allan-day,” as it is called, is the day of days to hundreds of children, who would deem it a great misfortune were they to go to bed on ”
Allan-night ” without the time-honoured Allan apple to hide beneath their pillows. A quantity of large apples are thus disposed of, the sale of which is dignified by the term Allan Market.”

Plot hooks:

• If you disappoint that many children, something like the Krampus will come after you. Sensible magi should take note, or trick their rival into destroying the apples.

25 December: Christmas

Guise dancing, as described above, is common in the Twelve Days of Christmas in St Ives, and perhaps elsewhere. The guise dances in St Ives include vast pantomime plays, with more participants than viewers. It’s also a time for telling hard truths to friends, and for breaking courtships.

Plot hooks

• Apprentices get three days off after Christmas, not including the Sunday. This means they have a lot of time in which to find trouble.
• Faeries taking the roles of the characters from the Christmas plays are often reported. They are dressed a little like morris dancers, with baggy, bright clothes and ribbons. Their leader is Saint George, who fights a Turkish Knight and is healed by a Doctor. Father Christmas is a grotesque, tall man who keeps the audience in order with a huge club. When the Turkish Knight dies, his body is dragged away by a hobbyhorse.
• In the standard script of the play, during the fight between the Turkish Knight and Saint George, the Doctor produces a bottle of medicine. He says: “I have a little bottle, which goes by the name of Elicumpane ; If the man is alive, let him rise and fight again.” That’s elecampane, a herb also known as elfwort. It first appeared when it grew from the tears of Helen of Troy, and it is known for healing horses. This magical elicumpane,m if taken from a fae doctor, might have a wide variety of beneficial effects: in the play it heals all wounds.
• The hobbyhorse, which gets sacrificed to the sea after the play is over, carries off the (supposed) corpse of the Turkish Knight. Is this a ritualised payment to a kelpie?

Sham mayors