Question 24
Which old Stromness custom, which came to an end in 1936, used to take place in the town on Christmas Eve?
Post your answer as a comment below.
Entries close on 31st December.
Answers will be published and the winner announced on 5th January 2015.
Answer: The Yule Tree, which was fought over between Northenders and Southenders in a tug-of-war.
Showing posts with label Orkney Traditions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Orkney Traditions. Show all posts
Wednesday, 24 December 2014
Saturday, 21 June 2014
Midsummer, St. Magnus, and a (knitted) mouse
Despite the low cloud, the slightly chilly air, and a lack of sun, it is in fact midsummer. Here in Orkney this means not only an excuse to celebrate what George Mackay Brown described as 'the over-brimming of the year's well of light'*, but also to enjoy this year's St Magnus International Festival.
Today in Stromness Town Hall at 5.30pm the first performance of this year's Johnsmas Foy will take place, when Sarah Jane Gibbon will direct 'The Raven Banner, Twelve Valkyries & a Ghost Army'. This will be a commemoration of the 1000th anniversary of the Battle of Clontarf, through song, poetry, story-telling and Old Norse writings performed by Sarah, along with poet Emma Grieve, composer Aimee Leonard and storyteller Tom Muir.
For those who would like to know more about how midsummer and Johnsmas were traditionally celebrated, then we would recommend Midsummer, Johnsmas and bonfires on the UHI Centre for Nordic Studies website and also the excellent articles on Orcadian Bonfire Traditions and A Year of Orcadian Tradition from the Orkneyjar site.
In a break from tradition this year's St Magnus Festival features two workshops by Norwegian knitting celebrities Arne & Carlos. These have proved so popular that both Kirkwall and Stromness workshops have sold out, but we know that at least some of our library Yap and Yarn group members have been lucky enough to get tickets - including our library assistant Becky. During the workshop Arne & Carlos will be leading participants through their pattern for Magnus Garden Mouse, from their latest book Knit-and-Crochet Garden, which is, of course, available from the library.
We hope Becky will bring her Magnus into the library for a visit when he is finished and we'll try to get a photo to show you. If anyone else has knitted Magnus do please send us a photo and we'll share them on the blog.
So it's going to be a busy weekend here in Stromness, but however, and where ever, you are going to be celebrating, we hope your solstice, St Magnus Festival, and Johnsmas are full of midsummer magic.
Today in Stromness Town Hall at 5.30pm the first performance of this year's Johnsmas Foy will take place, when Sarah Jane Gibbon will direct 'The Raven Banner, Twelve Valkyries & a Ghost Army'. This will be a commemoration of the 1000th anniversary of the Battle of Clontarf, through song, poetry, story-telling and Old Norse writings performed by Sarah, along with poet Emma Grieve, composer Aimee Leonard and storyteller Tom Muir.
For those who would like to know more about how midsummer and Johnsmas were traditionally celebrated, then we would recommend Midsummer, Johnsmas and bonfires on the UHI Centre for Nordic Studies website and also the excellent articles on Orcadian Bonfire Traditions and A Year of Orcadian Tradition from the Orkneyjar site.
In a break from tradition this year's St Magnus Festival features two workshops by Norwegian knitting celebrities Arne & Carlos. These have proved so popular that both Kirkwall and Stromness workshops have sold out, but we know that at least some of our library Yap and Yarn group members have been lucky enough to get tickets - including our library assistant Becky. During the workshop Arne & Carlos will be leading participants through their pattern for Magnus Garden Mouse, from their latest book Knit-and-Crochet Garden, which is, of course, available from the library.
We hope Becky will bring her Magnus into the library for a visit when he is finished and we'll try to get a photo to show you. If anyone else has knitted Magnus do please send us a photo and we'll share them on the blog.
 |
| Arne and Carlos |
 |
| Magnus Garden Mouse |
So it's going to be a busy weekend here in Stromness, but however, and where ever, you are going to be celebrating, we hope your solstice, St Magnus Festival, and Johnsmas are full of midsummer magic.
* from "Solstice of Light" in Under Brinkie's Brae, 1979, p.147
Saturday, 14 December 2013
Advent Book Quiz Day 14
Day fourteen of our festive quiz
Another Orkney non-fiction title and author for you today, with an extract about an old Yule tradition here in Stromness.
If you know the author and title submit your answer as a comment below. Comments will be published and the answers, and winner, announced on 3rd January. You have until 1st January to enter, so plenty of time to identify any extracts you've missed so far.
A yearly tug-of-war, with the ultimate possession of a Yule tree as its object, took place in Stromness (O) each Christmas Eve until 1936. A tree of some kind - for trees are scarce in the islands - was taken from a garden without the owner's knowledge and carried to the middle of the town. Chains or ropes were attached to it and a trial of strength began. The old town of Stromness, like Kirkwall, consists of a narrow winding street, but there was a point of delimitation between Northenders and Southenders, and their ancient rivalry found expression in an attempt to drag the tree to a traditional goal well within the territory of the faction which proved most powerful. The contest was a robust, often a turbulent one. As the route was skirted by the sea, the tree invariably ended its journey in the water, followed now and then by an over-zealous player.
Saturday, 7 December 2013
Advent Book Quiz Day 7
Day seven of our festive quiz.
Some local festive non-fiction today. If you know the author and title then post them in the comments (answers will remain hidden until the closing date of 1st January). Don't forget to visit us tomorrow for another advent extract :-)
Though the time was changed in the year 1752, Orcadians held to the old style, which was twelve days later. Even within forty years back, one old residenter in Finstown stuck tenaciously to old Yule Day and old New Year's Day.
Preparations for these feast days were made by baking scones, brewing ale, and by taking in an extra quantity of peats on Yule Even, the peaty neuk being filled up to the rafters with a supply sufficient to last over New Year's Day. On Yule Day no work was done, the day being spent in visiting and treating. If open weather, one or two of the old men made a pilgrimage in the early morning to the top of the hill, to see if any trace of frost could be found, for a green Yule augured ill for the health of the community. A dance for the young people was held in the evening, all returning to their homes for supper, for that was the event of the day. The other meals of the day consisted of the usual cheese and bread accompanied with ale, but there was always "flesh" for supper.
Wednesday, 31 October 2012
Hallowe'en
The Stromness Library Reading Group meets tonight to discuss Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, a suitably dark text for our Hallowe'en meeting!
In the days before pumpkins and 'trick or treat' came to Stromness, children could look forward to some equally tasty, though slightly healthier treats, as George Mackay Brown recalls in Letters From Hamnavoe:
We can remember doing something similar as children, with pancakes spread with syrup or treacle, hanging from a string, which had to be eaten without the use of your hands. Yummy but messy!
The origins of such traditions are lost to time, but as GMB points out:
It would be good to hear your memories of Hallowe'en traditions from previous generations - please feel free to add them as a comment below this post.
The old wooden tub was taken out of the shed and set squarely on the flagstone floor. It was threequarters filled with water; maybe a kettleful of hot water was added to take the chill off. Then a poke bursting with apples was emptied into the tub, where they tossed and eddied and collided with each other - ruddy fragrant spheres .There were other seasonal treats too:
I have only a vague memory of what we did with the nuts - whether they were 'dooked' for too, or simply shared out - walnuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts thinly scattered among a huge profusion of monkey nuts.
There were one or two variations; as when an apple coated with syrup was suspended from a rafter and the object of the exercise was to take a bite out of it. It was not so easy either, and meantime, cheeks and foreheads got stickier and stickier...
We can remember doing something similar as children, with pancakes spread with syrup or treacle, hanging from a string, which had to be eaten without the use of your hands. Yummy but messy!
The origins of such traditions are lost to time, but as GMB points out:
There must certainly be some reason rooted in old magic for these rituals. Of course the apples and the nuts marked the consummation of the fruitful year. Ahead stretched the gauntness and snows of winter.
It would be good to hear your memories of Hallowe'en traditions from previous generations - please feel free to add them as a comment below this post.
 |
| image from http://thebestheartsarecrunchy.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/bobbing-for-apples.html |
Saturday, 7 April 2012
Easter in Stromness
The library will be closed on Monday (9th April) for the Easter Monday public holiday - so pop along today for your holiday-weekend reading.
With a glut of chocolate eggs filling the shops straight after the New Year, and hot-cross buns seemingly available all year round, it seems traditional festive celebrations around Easter have become just another opportunity for consumption rather than a focus for communal participation.
Looking for evidence of local Easter traditions we turn to George Mackay Brown, who writes in Letters from Hamnavoe of the practice of his childhood, when on 'the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday' the children of Stromness 'with baskets and tin cans, used to range about the countryside after "pace eggs"'. GMB tells us:
The children took their treasures home where 'the eggs were boiled, and coloured in various hues; and on the Saturday or Sunday there was a feast of "pace eggs" and spicy hot cross buns'.
GMB goes on to highlight the symbolism of the Easter 'pace eggs' as part of:
We wish you all a weekend of celebration, whether your eggs are hard boiled and decorated or made of yummy chocolate, may you enjoy their symbolic promise of new life and renewal.
With a glut of chocolate eggs filling the shops straight after the New Year, and hot-cross buns seemingly available all year round, it seems traditional festive celebrations around Easter have become just another opportunity for consumption rather than a focus for communal participation.
Looking for evidence of local Easter traditions we turn to George Mackay Brown, who writes in Letters from Hamnavoe of the practice of his childhood, when on 'the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday' the children of Stromness 'with baskets and tin cans, used to range about the countryside after "pace eggs"'. GMB tells us:
'It was impossible to cover the whole parish of Stromness - Innertoon, Ootertoon, Quholm, Cairston, Kirbister, the Loons. You had to keep to one district; and then only visit farms where there were knidly women and tame dogs. You might come home with anything from six to a dozen eggs in your an, and all unbroken, if there was no fighting or bullying or horseplay on the road'
The children took their treasures home where 'the eggs were boiled, and coloured in various hues; and on the Saturday or Sunday there was a feast of "pace eggs" and spicy hot cross buns'.
GMB goes on to highlight the symbolism of the Easter 'pace eggs' as part of:
' a very ancient ceremony of gifts, with traditions going back further that Christianity, and seemingly universal in the ancient world. The egg is never so plentiful as at this time of year; and to the first tribes of the world it symbolised the life of springtime when the apparently inert egg brike open to reveal a new bird.'This symbolism is for GMB alive and well in the traditions of his Stromness childhood where the universal becomes local and personal:
' So when the peedie boys and lasses of Stromness ranged through the parish for "pace eggs", what the kindly farm wives gave them was an Easter gift; a pledge that winter was at last over, and that soon the earth would be full of the plentitude of summer - young beasts, and birds, and growing oats - and the tide of ripeness would not stop till harvest. And after that there would be food enough in barn and cupboard to last through the darkness of another winter. Life was an endless celebration of death-and-renewal, darkness-and-light, barrenness-and-fruition...'
We wish you all a weekend of celebration, whether your eggs are hard boiled and decorated or made of yummy chocolate, may you enjoy their symbolic promise of new life and renewal.
Saturday, 5 November 2011
Remember, remember ...
Let's hope this morning's fine weather holds for tonight, when many folk across the country will be lighting bonfires, watching firework displays and enjoying such bonfire night favourites as baked tatties, treacle toffee and toasted marshmallows.
While in the days leading up to 5th November children in other parts of the country go looking for a 'penny for the Guy' a related tradition, unique to Stromness, sees the town's children out at folks' doors asking for ' a penny for me pop'. An interesting exploration of this tradition can be found in Michael A. Lange's article Peeling the Pop but for a first hand account we turned to Stromness lad George Mackay Brown, in Letters from Hamnavoe :
' "'A penny to burn me pop" - Bless our hearts, we didn't for one moment know what the slogan meant. All we knew was that we had to pinch a turnip out of a farmer's field and take it home, about the 3rd of November. Then our fathers or our elder brother would sculpt the turnips with the kitchen carving knife. Buttons for eyes, broken matches for teeth, splashes of vermilion on cheeks and nose and a stick to carry it round with.'
By 1978, in Under Brinkie's Brae, GMB ' is glad to say that nowadays children have, mostly, stopped saying the old ritual fiery words at the door. Instead they say, in their dewy voices, " A penny for me pop". ' For those of you still wondering at the significance of the 'fiery words' all will be made clear when we tell you that, said with an Orcadian accent ,'pop' becomes 'pope'. GMB wonders 'in what bigoted religious brain, sometime in the mid-nineteenth century, the phrase first took root', but it is clear that by the twentieth century the anti-catholic sentiment behind the tradition had been largely forgotten.
We wonder if any Stromness children will call by the library with their pops today? It has certainly happened in previous years, although the tradition is dwindling, as families move away and those new to the town do not know of the old ways. We have a stash of small change ready, just in case, though we're not sure what the going rate is these days? When GMB was a boy in the 1920s he 'got a ha'penny ( an old half-penny)' and when he was being disturbed from his writing in 1978 by 'the sweet little turnip-bearing tyrants' two pence seemed 'an appropriate equivalent'.
In case you were wondering just what a pop looks like below is a picture of some Stromness bairns and their pops from 1991. As you can see the pop can come in any shape or form imaginable and I suspect the parents, or older siblings, who carve them have as much fun as the children!
While in the days leading up to 5th November children in other parts of the country go looking for a 'penny for the Guy' a related tradition, unique to Stromness, sees the town's children out at folks' doors asking for ' a penny for me pop'. An interesting exploration of this tradition can be found in Michael A. Lange's article Peeling the Pop but for a first hand account we turned to Stromness lad George Mackay Brown, in Letters from Hamnavoe :
' "'A penny to burn me pop" - Bless our hearts, we didn't for one moment know what the slogan meant. All we knew was that we had to pinch a turnip out of a farmer's field and take it home, about the 3rd of November. Then our fathers or our elder brother would sculpt the turnips with the kitchen carving knife. Buttons for eyes, broken matches for teeth, splashes of vermilion on cheeks and nose and a stick to carry it round with.'
By 1978, in Under Brinkie's Brae, GMB ' is glad to say that nowadays children have, mostly, stopped saying the old ritual fiery words at the door. Instead they say, in their dewy voices, " A penny for me pop". ' For those of you still wondering at the significance of the 'fiery words' all will be made clear when we tell you that, said with an Orcadian accent ,'pop' becomes 'pope'. GMB wonders 'in what bigoted religious brain, sometime in the mid-nineteenth century, the phrase first took root', but it is clear that by the twentieth century the anti-catholic sentiment behind the tradition had been largely forgotten.
We wonder if any Stromness children will call by the library with their pops today? It has certainly happened in previous years, although the tradition is dwindling, as families move away and those new to the town do not know of the old ways. We have a stash of small change ready, just in case, though we're not sure what the going rate is these days? When GMB was a boy in the 1920s he 'got a ha'penny ( an old half-penny)' and when he was being disturbed from his writing in 1978 by 'the sweet little turnip-bearing tyrants' two pence seemed 'an appropriate equivalent'.
In case you were wondering just what a pop looks like below is a picture of some Stromness bairns and their pops from 1991. As you can see the pop can come in any shape or form imaginable and I suspect the parents, or older siblings, who carve them have as much fun as the children!
 |
| Photograph copyright Keith Allardyce, taken from the wonderful book on Stromness 'Sea Haven' by Bryce Wilson and with a foreword by George Mackay Brown. |
Monday, 31 October 2011
Hallowe'en
With carved pumpkins and "trick or treat" ing replacing the more traditional neepie lanterns and guizing, it is interesting to look back at some of the older beliefs and traditions surrounding the ancient festival of Hallowe'en.
Both Ernest Marwick (in The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland) and John Firth (in Reminiscences of an Orkney Parish), tell how Hallowe'en was the time when it was believe one could "pierce the shades of dim futurity", with most efforts in this direction apparently made by young women wishing to catch a glimpse of the identity of their future husband.
According to both Marwick and Firth, one particularly popular practice was the process Robert Burns called "winnan three wechts o' naething". The young woman would go out to the dark barn, leaving both doors open, and go through the motions of winnowing, with nothing in the sieve but scissors and a knife. What she expected to see was an apparition of her future partner passing the open door.
Another equally unnerving practice described by both authors was the practice of throwing a ball of worsted yarn into the kiln used for drying grain while keeping hold of the end of the yarn. The woman would then unwind the ball whilst repeating "Wha hauds i' me clew's* end?", waiting and listening for the voice of her future husband to reply.
Both titles mentioned above are available to borrow from the library's collection of Orkney books, and make fascinating reading.
If any of our readers are brave enough to try either of these two experiments we would be very interested to hear the results - confidentiality assured of course regarding the identity of your phantom partner!
(* Clew = ball)
Both Ernest Marwick (in The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland) and John Firth (in Reminiscences of an Orkney Parish), tell how Hallowe'en was the time when it was believe one could "pierce the shades of dim futurity", with most efforts in this direction apparently made by young women wishing to catch a glimpse of the identity of their future husband.
According to both Marwick and Firth, one particularly popular practice was the process Robert Burns called "winnan three wechts o' naething". The young woman would go out to the dark barn, leaving both doors open, and go through the motions of winnowing, with nothing in the sieve but scissors and a knife. What she expected to see was an apparition of her future partner passing the open door.
Another equally unnerving practice described by both authors was the practice of throwing a ball of worsted yarn into the kiln used for drying grain while keeping hold of the end of the yarn. The woman would then unwind the ball whilst repeating "Wha hauds i' me clew's* end?", waiting and listening for the voice of her future husband to reply.
Both titles mentioned above are available to borrow from the library's collection of Orkney books, and make fascinating reading.
If any of our readers are brave enough to try either of these two experiments we would be very interested to hear the results - confidentiality assured of course regarding the identity of your phantom partner!
(* Clew = ball)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)