Month: November 2023

This evening I launched my new book The Franciscans in Medieval Bury St Edmunds with a talk at Moyse’s Hall Museum in Bury St Edmunds. Published by Boydell & Brewer on behalf of the Suffolk Record Society, the book is volume 22 in the SRS’s Charters Series, edited by Dr Nicholas Karn. The book is an edition and translation of documents relating to the conflict between the Franciscan friars and the Benedictine monks of Bury St Edmunds between 1233 and 1263, and thereafter documents relating to the Franciscan friary at Babwell (just outside Bury) between 1265 and its dissolution in 1538. The site of Babwell Friary is now the Best Western Priory Hotel in the northern part of the town.

I first proposed a volume dealing with the Bury Franciscans to the Suffolk Record Society in 2019, and planned to undertake most of the work on the volume in 2020. The pandemic supervened, however, and it became impossible for me to access the archives in which most of the material for the book could be found. Accordingly, I was forced to postpone work on the book for a year or more, but I am very grateful to Dr Nicholas Karn for seeing the book through to completion and publication. I am hopeful that it will shine a light on Bury’s largely forgotten Franciscan friaries, and an often overlooked aspect of the town’s religious history.

My short article ‘Folklore in Penelope Lively’s The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy‘ has just been published in issue 101 of FLS News, the newsletter of the Folklore Society. The text of the article is below:

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The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy by Penelope Lively, published in 1971, is a classic of what would later become known as folk horror – and, indeed, what would later become known as young adult literature, long before either term had been coined. As Ronald Hutton has observed, The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy holds a special place in the modern history of the cultural motif of the Wild Hunt, because it was the first time the Wild Hunt appeared in twentieth-century British fiction. The novel was aimed at 11 to 14 year-olds, and tells the story of a 12 year-old girl named Lucy who is sent to spend the summer with her aunt Mabel in the remote West Somerset village of Hagworthy. Hagworthy is quite precisely located: two stops after Dunster on a fictional railway line that turns inland running southwest from the coast, and therefore somewhere in the Brendon Hills on the edge of Exmoor.

Lively revealed some of the folkloric inspiration for the book in two quotations that appear on the opening page: one is taken from the Peterborough recension of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, describing the first recorded appearance of the ‘Wild Hunt’ in England, at Peterborough in 1127; and the other is a quotation from Ruth Tongue’s Somerset Folklore (1965). The second quotation offers several clues to the folkloric inspirations for The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy, since it locates a tradition of the Wild Hunt (or more specifically, the Yeff Hounds) in the same region where Lively’s story situates the fictional village of Hagworthy. The quotation is taken from Appendix III(b) of Tongue’s book, on p. 228, and was attributed by Tongue to a member of the Stogumber W.I. who told her the story in 1960:

The Yeff Hounds, or Ghost Pack, were heard pattering through Stogumber after midnight this year, but no-one looked out to see them, even nowadays. They are known to run through the village and down towards Roebuck, then on up towards Wills Neck.

‘Roebuck’ is a reference to Roebuck Farm, Roebuck Gate Farm and Roebuck Crossing, which are all located about a mile southeast of Stogumber on the east side of the railway line which runs along the bottom of the combe parallel to Doniford Stream, and just inside the parish boundary of the neighbouring village of Crowcombe. ‘Wills Neck’ is the highest summit of the Quantock Hills, located due east of Roebuck Farm, past the village of Triscombe. The place-name ‘Roebuck’ is a reminder of the significance of deer in the Quantock and Brendon Hills and the tradition of hunting them there – and perhaps represents the source of the significance of deer and antlers in Lively’s book.

Ruth Tongue’s interest in supernatural hounds went back at least as far as 1956, when she published a brief notice on the subject, ‘Traces of Fairy Hounds in Somerset’, in Folklore 67:4 (December 1956), pp. 233–4. Penelope Lively’s story brings together the idea of the Wild Hunt (in the form of the Yeff Hounds, although they are never mentioned in the narrative itself) and a fictional horn-dance, loosely based on that of Abbots Bromley, which the villagers of Hagworthy decide to revive.

While many 20th-century writers of ‘folk horror’ were preoccupied with the idea of survivals (Eleanor Scott, John Buchan, David Pinner, Norah Lofts and John Bowen, to name a few), in common with the trends in folklore studies at the time, Penelope Lively’s Wild Hunt of Hagworthy adopts a different approach. The novel is notable in placing the emphasis on revival (reinvention, even) rather than survival. While the hapless vicar of Hagworthy, who is the moving spirit behind the revival of the local horn dance, believes the dance to be ‘no doubt a very ancient survival’, we are told that the church accounts mentioning the Horn Dancers reach back into the eighteenth century (but apparently no earlier), and stop in around 1803. In contrast to much ‘folk horror’ of the era, Lively does not attempt to set up a conflict between Christianity and a supposed ‘old religion’ underlying the ancient surviving ritual, but rather makes the vicar the unwitting initiator of the novel’s supernatural events – a kindred figure, perhaps, to the complacent antiquaries who inadvertently awaken eldritch horrors in the ghost stories of M. R. James. Lively’s nuanced (and even tongue-in-cheek) treatment of the question of folkloric survivals means that The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy stands the test of time; it seems more in tune with present-day preoccupations with the revival and reinvention of customs than with the ‘survivalist’ approaches to folklore that still largely held sway in 1971.

Nevertheless, in spite of the absence of any certainty that the Horn Dance of Hagworthy is really ancient, in the novel the revival of the dance triggers two supernatural events. The first is a kind of collective ‘possession’ which comes upon the young male dancers, causing them to compulsively pursue Kester Lang, the misfit of the village. The second is the arrival of the Yeff Hounds or Wild Hunt itself – heard by the protagonist, Lucy, several times during the night and then finally encountered on Exmoor by Kester and Lucy at the climax of the novel. Exactly what the connection is between the Horn Dance and the Wild Hunt is never explained – arguably, a strength of the novel. However, at one point the old blacksmith, Kester’s uncle, does explain to Lucy why people do not look out at the Wild Hunt when they hear it:

‘Because once you seen them you’re a part them, aren’t you, girl? You’re with them under the same sky and treading the same ground. And they’re a Hunt, aren’t they? They have to hunt something, or someone, don’t they?’

The idea that observation of something otherworldly somehow constitutes a form of participation in it is found elsewhere in English folklore; the Cambridgeshire folklorist Enid Porter, for example, noted the belief that if anyone watched for the fetches of those destined to die in the coming year on St Mark’s Eve, he or she would be fated to watch every year thereafter. It is wiser not to look, therefore, and a similar idea may have underpinned the people of Stogumber’s reluctance to look at the Yeff Hounds. However, the Stogumber narrative seems to have been doubly suggestive to Penelope Lively, stimulating the novelist to imagine both the nature of the apparent taboo against looking at the Wild Hunt, and to wonder why people ‘even nowadays’ might entertain such reluctance. The result is a novel in which Kester Lang’s decision to look at the Wild Hunt makes him both the quarry of both the supernatural hunt and the ritual hunt that the Hagworthy Horn Dance inevitably becomes.

This afternoon, at Evensong for the eve of St Edmund’s Day, I was collated and installed as an Honorary Lay Canon of St Edmundsbury Cathedral. This is a personal appointment of the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich and makes me a member of the cathedral’s College of Canons. It is a rather humbling honour to receive from the Cathedral of my home town, and it feels especially fitting that I have been assigned the stall named ‘Historiographers’. The appointment will last for three years, although it may be renewed for a total of six.

I am not by any means the first lay canon of St Edmundsbury Cathedral, and indeed the Cathedral’s best known lay canon was the late Ronald Blythe, who was installed in 2003. Indeed, Ronald Blythe bequeathed a Reader’s blue preaching scarf ornamented with the arms of the Diocese (a privilege of a canon) to the Cathedral, and I wore it today as I am also a Reader.

The Cathedrals Measure 1999 makes provision for the appointment of laypeople as canons of Church of England cathedrals, but lay canons have in fact existed since the Middle Ages. Originally, the term ‘lay canon’ was a synonym for ‘secular canon’; that is, non-resident secular priests who had the title of canon of a cathedral or collegiate church. However, the statutes of some orders of regular canons (such as the Gilbertines) also permitted laymen to be admitted to the order as canons; and of course women could become canonesses in various religious orders. Furthermore, by the 13th century it was not unknown for a layman to obtain appointment to a canonry in order to farm its income, while appointing a vicar or proctor to perform his canonical obligations. Elsewhere in Europe, noble lay canons (who were sometimes hereditary) sometimes underlined their status by wearing armour under their surplices in choir, and by carrying a hawk on one hand on certain important feasts.

As a cathedral foundation, St Edmundsbury Cathedral dates only to 1914, although the Church of St James that became the Cathedral was founded by Abbot Anselm in the 1120s in symbolic fulfilment of a vow to go on pilgrimage to Compostella. However, St James’ Church succeeded a previous church on the site (on the north side of the Abbey Church’s west front) dedicated to St Denis, which may have been served by a college of secular canons and was probably founded in the 1080s by Abbot Baldwin. The canons of St Edmundsbury Cathedral thus continue an ancient tradition of canons in Bury St Edmunds which can be traced back to the original community of secular priests and laypeople (‘canons’ might be an anachronism) who cared for the shrine and body of St Edmund before Benedictine monks replaced them in 1020. Furthermore, this was not the last secular college in Bury; in 1480 Jankyn Smyth founded the College of the Sweet Name of Jesus, which housed and supported the chantry priests and chaplains of both St Mary’s church and St James’s (although these were not canons). This college endured until its dissolution by Edward VI in 1547.

The Council of Trent did not outlaw lay canons, but it denied them the right to speak in chapter. Lay canons survived the Reformation in England, since a canonry did not carry with it a cure of souls, and it was not until 1661 that the law required all residentiary canons to be in priest’s orders. But even then, lay canons continued to be appointed as honorary members of cathedral chapters, and laymen could be presented to prebends. Dr Johnson’s dictionary defined lay canons as men ‘who have been, as a mark of honour, admitted into some chapters’. There are sporadic references to lay canons of various English cathedral chapters throughout the nineteenth century; Carlisle, for example, had four lay canons throughout this period. Installations of lay canons continued into the 20th century; in 1936, for example, Portsmouth Cathedral put in special stalls for its lay canons. However, the Cathedrals Measure 1999 revitalised the idea of lay canons, establishing them as part of the diocese’s College of Canons (which replaced the Greater Chapter). The College of Canons is distinct from the Cathedral Chapter that actually governs a cathedral, and is not part of its foundation, but it is the College of Canons which formally elects a new bishop for the diocese.

The installation of canons is a surprisingly complicated affair that begins behind closed doors, with the Diocesan Registrar administering the required oaths to the clergy and laypeople about to be installed as canons. For a lay canon, these are the Oath of Allegiance to the King, an oath of canonical obedience to the Bishop, and an oath to maintain the statutes and customs of the cathedral church. The new canon subscribes these oaths (by signing them) and is then presented with a deed of collation, to which the Bishop’s seal has been affixed.

In the service itself the new canons are introduced by the Bishop and Dean, and later in the service comes the collation, when the Dean formally presents the new canons to the Bishop; the Bishop then asks the Registrar to confirm that the canons have made the required oaths, and the Bishop then confirms the canons’ appointment and blesses them. Then the Bishop directs the Dean to install the canons, and the Dean leads them to the nave altar. Here, with their right hands on the Gospels, the canons swear (again) to observe the cathedral’s statutes and customs. Once this is done, the installation itself takes place when the Dean leads the new canons by hand into the quire to their assigned stalls. The canons remain standing until the Dean has read the formula of installation for each canon. The canon then sits in their stall and the installation is formally complete. One reason why the rite of installation is quite so convoluted is that canonries were once treated as items of property, and thus installation carries with it traces of the procedure of livery of seisin, whereby ownership of a freehold was passed on by a series of ritual actions.

This afternoon I spoke at Conway Hall in London, at the London Fortean Society’s ‘Haunted Landscape’ conference, about the origins of Britain’s fairies, sharing some of the insights from my recent book Twilight of the Godlings. There was a very interesting discussion afterwards, and it was great to meet so many folklorists and folklore afficionados, as well as to sign some copies of my books.

My review of Carlos Eire’s astonishing new book They Flew: A History of the Impossible has just been published by First Things, and you can read it online here.