Burne's Staffordshire Folklore 2

Black Country Trades and Characteristics
Black Country Wakes
Epigrammatic Sayings
Physical Characteristics of Staffordshirians
Biddulph Moor Men
Forest Lore
Tyrley and Bagot Oaks
Deerleaps
Abbots Bromley Horn Dance
Tutbury Bull Running, Lichfield Bower, Bagot Goats,
Chartley Cattle, Sandon Hall Aloe, Freeford Night Burial
Bereaved Bees, Marriage, Wife Selling
Conclusion

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Black Country Trades and Characteristics

To return to the iron-workers and their characteristics. They can hardly be spoken of as
one trade, but rather as many trades depending on one staple product. The various
branches of it are very local. The great blast-furnaces and rolling-mills and foundries do
indeed attract strong vigorous men from all parts; but the trades which partake of the
nature of a handicraft (or rather, which did so partake before everything was machine-
made) are carried on each in its own town or village from father to son, generation after
generation. There are nailers and chainmakers at Dudley and Gornall; japanners at
Bilston; locksmiths at Willenhall; bit and spur-makers at Walsall (where there is a large
trade in saddlery also); and there is great rivalry between the villages, and rough jokes
on each other abound. The Gornall nailers are the universal butt. To say a man comes
from Gornall is as much as to say he is an oaf and a blockhead. “Gornall donkeys” they
are called, and it is a well-known and well-understood insult to bray when a Gornall man
passes by. “Who put the bulldog i’ the cradle and the babby i’ the kennel?” is the proper
greeting to a Bilston visitor (I think it refers rather to the miners than to the japan-workers).
The Willenhall locksmiths hold theirs to be the first of trades, as it requires so much more
skill and delicacy than others, such as nail or screw-making; but their neighbours declare
that the Willenhall publicans have to make recesses in their walls to accommodate the
locksmiths’ hump-backs. The Walsall men are supposed to be bandy-legged, owing
doubtless to the habit of holding the saddler’s wooden vice between the knees, with the
feet closely touching each other. “He waddles like a Walsall duck.” “As bandy-legged as
the Walsall man, that stopped the pig in the entry” - that is, by touching the doorposts with
his knees.

Black Country Wakes

These and similar taunts are, it may easily be imagined, in great request at the Wake, or
annual feast, of each parish. Parties are made up in the different villages to visit each
other’s wakes, as a kind of civility, like paying a call. The innkeepers are expected to treat
their customers to a dinner of roast beef on these occasions, and one of the reproaches
cast on the inhabitants of Wednesfield refers to this. It is said that the Wednesfield people
were so stingy that they killed only half a cow for their wake, and left the other half for next
year. The Darlaston wake, on the other hand, is a much observed one. There are said to
be only two Sundays in the year when the Darlaston people don’t put on the pot to boil
for dinner. One is the Wake Sunday, when they roast the meat, and the other is the
following one, when they have nothing left to boil. But in spite of this ready hospitality, the
people of Darlaston (where the staple trade is making nuts and bolts, screws and files)
enjoy nearly as great a reputation for stupidity as the Gornall nailers. They are called
Darlaston geese; they are said to be bull-yedded, that is, to have more strength than
brains. When they do think their thoughts are “mostly about nowt.” They are great bell-
ringers, but their neighbours say they know no more of the church than the belfry. “Who
whistled the weathercock off the church steeple?” “Who shut the meadow-gate to keep
the snow out?” are the polite enquiries proper to be addressed to them.
Wakes are customary throughout the county. In Needwood Forest special cakes are
baked for them, and in the Pottery towns they are found a practical hindrance to labour in
the summer months. Staffordshire people everywhere love festivities. The cheery
hospitable nature which distinguished them was noted in Elizabeth’s time by Drayton in
his Characteristics of Counties. Punning on the name, he says:

“And Staffordshire bids ‘Stay, and I will beet the fire,
And nothing will I ask but goodwill to my hire.’”

Epigrammatic Sayings

The same temper of “goodwill” and friendliness is met with throughout the county; and so
is the same racy humour and readiness of speech. A stranger would suppose the people
were continually quoting proverbs, but as often as not their epigrammatic sayings are the
coinage of their own brain. “It’s plain, Martha, as you haven’t been used to have plenty,
for you don’t know how to use plenty,” said a farmer’s wife (true fellow-countrywoman of
Mrs. Poyser), rebuking her handmaiden for “cutting the loaf to waste.” “Giving’s afore
buying any day,” said a small page boy, expressing satisfaction at an unexpected
present. “Nay,” said an old farmer, whose sons one after another failed in business, and
appealed to him to set them up again, “if I was to be putting them on dry stockings every
time they come in with wet feet, they’d never be off the hearthstone.” “I mun work, or else I
mun keep tooth-holiday,” said a worn-out but plucky old labourer.
When people naturally talk in this way, it is difficult for the folklorist to distinguish standard
proverbs from improvised ones; here, however are two or three specimens. “Merry nights
make sorry days.” “He’ll neither be satisfied full nor fasting.” “To get a wooden suit” - to be
dead and buried. “To give a pea for a bean” - to give a present with an eye to future
profits.

Physical Characteristics of Staffordshirians

In physical characteristics the Staffordshire people are generally short and sturdy, with
large heads, square faces, and strong jaws, and full sonorous voices; utterly unlike in
appearance as in character to their Derbyshire neighbours, who are (normally) tall, raw-
bones, loose-jointed, grave and rather dull people; “strong in the arm and weak in the
head,” as the local proverb has it, wanting in the brightness and humourousness of our
folk.
Thus in spite of all I have said of differences, I am inclined to think the Staffordshire folk
come mainly from one stock, and that their variations of belief and custom have chiefly
been differentiated, like the long arms of the colliers and the round shoulders of the
locksmiths, by hereditary occupation and intermarriage in one locality from generation to
generation. Some peculiarities, on the other hand, may really denote an intermixture of
races, as I am much inclined to think is the case with the delicate features and pointed
chins of the potters, the dark complexions of the Needwood Forest men, and possibly the
long limbs and handsome faces of the Moorlanders.

Biddulph Moor Men

One very curious settlement we have, locally reputed to be a separate race, the “Biddle
Muir” men. Biddulph Moor is situated in the north-western extremity of the county,
bordering on Cheshire. The people live in houses scattered here and there over the
moor, and are said to have been much more peculiar a generation ago than they are
now. They wore their hair, which is said to have been generally either red or black, cut
short in front and hanging long at the back. Their houses consisted of two apartments,
one entered through the other. The outer room was the abode of the cattle and pigs, the
inner one that of the family. Tradition, according to the guide-books, says that they are
descended from a party of Saracens brought home in the time of the Crusades by the
lord of the adjoining manor of Knypersley. Their dialect is said to include many words
which are unknown in the surrounding district, and which some have thought they could
trace to an Arabic origin. (This is as it may be!)
The houses have now been replaced by ordinary good stone cottages, but there is still
something noticeable about the people. My friend and coadjutor, Miss Keary, and myself
visited the place in the summer of 1893, and were taken to see the school, where we
were struck with the almost family likeness among the children. They had acorn-shaped
heads, very gracefully set on their shoulders, oval faces, brown ruddy complexions, dark
eyes, and hair in shades of auburn, the colour of autumn leaves. The men, too, whom we
saw about, struck us as taller than the average Staffordshire men. We were informed that
the Saracen tradition was supposed to relate only to persons of the name of Bayley, of
whom there are many in the place, and we were taken to visit one of them distinguished
by the name of “Mr. Bayley the auctioneer,” though his principal occupation seemed to be
that of a small farmer. Yes, he said, in answer to our questions, he believed his ancestors
were undoubtedly Turks. They were brought over by the lord of Knypersley Castle, who
made them Bailiffs of Biddulph, hence their surname, and gave them a piece of ground,
still called Bayley’s Hill, where they lived in tents (a curious detail!). All the Bayleys in the
place were descended from these people, though they might not now consider
themselves related to each other. (I suppose the rest of the inhabitants were considered
to be descended from them in the female line.) We then went to see an old Mrs. Bayley,
born a Bayley, of much humbler degree. She lived in a little whitewashed cottage on the
side of Bayley’s Hill, but she denied all knowledge of the history of her family, and was
only intent on telling us that of her pigs. By way of excuse for what she seemed to think
the folly of our enquiries, we quoted the head of the name as our authority, but were met
with scorn. “Mr. Bayley th’ auctioneer said that, did he? I reckon he learnt it wi’
auctioneerin’!” and we came away baffled. It has always been my experience that local
and family traditions are not kept up among the poorest classes.

Forest Lore

Let us now leave these vague stories and speculations, and come to the firmer ground of
fact. Staffordshire, until the development of manufactures in modern times, was a very
thinly-peopled county, and a great part of it was forest-land (note- Common local
surnames derived from forest surroundings and occupations are Wood, Plant, Beech,
Ash, Hollis, Oakley, Parker, Archer, Bowyer, Fletcher). It is interesting to find how much
folklore about trees and plants is still to be met with there. Needwood Forest, on the
eastern border of the county, was only disafforested and enclosed with the present
century; and the inhabitants even now have not learnt to keep their gates shut. I believe
that careful investigation would show that it represents the area of an early tribal
settlement; but for the present it must suffice to say that tree and plant superstitions
specially prevail here. It is considered to be very unlucky to burn any green thing. I don’t
think this is general throughout the county; but two hundred years ago a more definite
form of the belief prevailed. In 1636 Charles I., “taking notice of an opinion entertained in
Staffordshire that the burning of fern doth bring down rain,” caused his chamberlain to
write to the sheriff and desire that it might be forbidden during the King’s journey through
the county. Burning elder is specially dreaded in Needwood. “If you do, you will bring the
Old Lad on the top of the chimney,” a Cheadle woman told me. An old man at Burton-on-
Trent who had burnt some was always believed to have “seen something” in
consequence. Some people at Newborough (one of the forest villages) put some on the
fire, and a boy who was present cried with fright because “the Devil would be down the
chimney in a minute.” I have been used to hear on the other side of the county that the
holly and ivy used to decorate the house at Christmas must not be thrown away, but
carefully burnt at Candlemas. In Needwood I have not discovered how it is disposed of;
but it must never be burnt, and some of it must be kept till next year to save the house
from lightning. Mistletoe is everywhere kept all the year (for this purpose, as I believe),
and in the Black Country it was formerly used to decorate churches. Mr. Lawley quotes
entries of payments for mistletoe for this purpose from churchwardens’ accounts at
Bilstone in 1672 and Darlaston in 1801. About three years ago an oak-tree in the old
deerpark at Hanbury (in Needwood) was struck by lightning, and people came from all
round to get pieces of the injured wood, to keep as charms to preserve their houses from
a similar misfortune. At Eccleshall, on the other side of the county, a piece of hawthorn
gathered on Ascension Day is the proper thing for this purpose, as I have heard more
than once. A yeoman farmer’s wife there tells me that it must be brought to you, not
gathered on your own ground. She has a piece brought to her every year, and hangs it
with her own hands among the rafters in the “cock-loft,” which is now nearly full of these
charms. She is an excellent authority for old customs, belonging as she does to a family
so old that it is celebrated in a local rhyme or prophecy:

“While ivy is smooth and holly is rough,
You’ll never want a Blest of the Hough.”

I do not know what the Needwood people say to hawthorn, but they think it most unlucky t
to bring blackthorn into the house. A family with whom one of the minor rangerships of
the forest has been hereditary for many generations were much annoyed not long since
when a young lady new to the district brought a piece into their house. A friend of mine at
Hanbury one day gathered a particularly fine piece, which she gave to the garden-boy to
take up to the house for her daughter; but the latter never received it.

Tyrley and Bagot Oaks

Then there are in various places curious reminiscences of forest-rights. Dr. Plot, writing in
1686, mentions a certain oak-tree near Tirley Castle on the Shropshire border, under
whose boughs offences against manorial and ecclesiastical law might be committed
without rendering the offender liable to punishment. (note - NHS ch viii, s 23). And at the
present day there is among the grand old oaks of Bagot’s Park, in Needwood Forest, a
peculiarly wide-spreading one, known as the Beggar’s Oak, beneath whose branches,
so the popular belief has it, any wayfarer has the right to a night’s lodging. This tradition
must date from a period earlier than the enclosure of the park from the forest, and must
point, like the preceding one, to some prehistoric common right, disregarding at the time
of the enclosure, but still existing in the popular imagination. (note - I can obtain no
definite information as to the date of the grant of Bagot’s Park, but tradition says it was
given to the Bagot’s by King John, who also gave the ancestors of the ancient breed of
goats preserved there, on the preservation of which the existence of the Bagot family and
their estates is imagined to depend.)

Deerleaps

Another instance of ancient rights - Wrottesley Park, granted to the Wrottesley by Edward
III in 1347 - is bounded by a belt of uncultivated land, a sort of “green lane,” called the
Deerleap, a name which is also found (under a slightly different form) in a pre-Conquest
list of boundaries preserved at Wrottesley. The same name, the Deerleap, is also given to
a field adjoining an old park at Norbury, existing in the fourteenth century, but now long
destroyed. For an explanation of this name we must go to the neighbouring county of
Salop, where the owners of an old park, existing in 1292, but now cut up into fields,
claimed ‘the right of the buck’s leap’, namely, the right to cut timber to repair the park
fence for the space of ‘a buck’s leap’ - five yards - on their neighbour’s land outside the
park. This right, which I need not say is unknown to the statute-book, was actually
exercised in 1892.

Abbots Bromley Horn Dance

Again, we may trace ‘the forest influence on annual sports and festivals’ in the Horn-
dance at Abbot’s Bromley. At the parish wake every year, on the Monday after the 4th of
September, six men carrying stags’ horns on their Shoulders perform a country dance.
Another dancer, the Hobby Horse, wears a wooden horse’s head and caparison, a boy
carries a crossbow and arrow with which he makes a snapping noise in time to the
music. A woman carrying a curious old wooden ladle for money and a clown make up the
party. The articles used in the dance are kept in the church-tower in the custody of the
vicar of the parish. (note - Photographs by Mr. Alfred Parker, of Uttoxeter, of the party
who dance and of the above-mentioned objects are reproduced by kind permission in
the accompanying plates.) Dr. Plot, in 1686, mentions, this custom, which seems then to
have been in temporary abeyance, doubtless owing to the Civil Wars. The dance,
according to his account, took place in the Christmas holidays, and the stags’ horns were
painted with the arms of the landowner. (note - Paget, Bagot, and Wells). Some traces of
the paint still remain. “To the Hobby Horse Dance,” he says, “there also belonged a pot,
which was kept by Turnes, by 4 or 5 of the chief of the Town, whom they call’d Reeves,
who provided cakes and ale to put in this pot,” after the manner apparently of “sops in
wine.” It was then, I suppose, shared as “loving-cup” among the spectators. Every well-
disposed householder contributed “pence apiece” for himself and his family; and with the
levy thus made, together with the contributions of “forraigners that come to see it,” was
defrayed, first, the cost of the cakes and ale, then the expense of the repairs of the church
and the support of the poor. Tradition says that when the money collected was used for
these public purposes, the dance was performed in the churchyard on Sunday after
service. Now, of course, the dancers have the proceeds for themselves.
Dr. Plot distinctly say that the horns are “Raindeer” horns; and recent visitors have
corroborated this. If this be really the case, there seem no limits to our conjectures upon
the age and origin of the custom; and at any rate Abbot’s Bromley is as likely a place as
any in the county to preserve traditions of immemorial antiquity. It is situated not in, but on
the borders of, Needwood Forest, and is one of the estates with which Wulfric Spot,
Ealdorman of Mercia, endowed his foundation of Burton Abbey in 1002. Before that date
it must have formed part of the possessions of the Ealdormanship, as its neighbour,
King’s Bromley, continued to do down to the time of Edward the Confessor, after which it
passed to the Crown. (note - Leofric, earl of Mercia, died here. It appears in Domesday
Book as having belonged to Harold T.R.E., his sole possession in Staffordshire,
doubtless through the marriage with Eadgifu, Eadwine and Morkere’s sister. It then
passed to the Crown; hence its distinctive name of King’s Bromley). The place has thus
had a continuous existence, with singularly few vicissitudes, of some nine centuries at
least. A good deal has, already been said here about this dance, I believe: (note -
Folklore, vol iv, p172) but what I want to suggest to you to-day is that it is a dramatic form
of the morris-dance, performed in the woodland characters of stags and huntsmen.
Observe that the deer are evidently the ‘deer of the lords’ of the manor, marked with their
coats of arms, while the dance is the ‘common act of the villagers’ as a body. The care of
the property of the dance was entrusted to their official representatives, ecclesiastical and
civil; the expense of the common cup was defrayed by common contributions at a fixed
and equal rate; the money realised was devoted to a common public object. I believe the
primary intention of the dance to have been the assertion of some ancient common right
or privilege of the village in regard to the chase. Written records might be lost or
destroyed: such an “object lesson” as this was a constant proclamation of their ancient
rights to the whole village and to the “forraigners” who came to see it. It is just the same
principle as caused little boys to be “dumped,” ducked, and beaten at the parish
boundaries in the annual perambulations, long before, and long after, parish maps had
come into existence.

Tutbury Bull Running, Lichfield Bower, Bagot Goats,
Chartley Cattle, Sandon Hall Aloe, Freeford Night Burial

There is much more that I could add, did the limits of this paper permit. I have said
nothing of our local municipal customs; of the Tutbury Bull-running, now disused, nor the
Whit-Monday Bower at Lichfield, still continued. Nor have I entered on the traditions of
our old families. I can but barely mention the breed of goats in Bagot’s Park, on whose
existence the existence of the Bagot peerage depends; the black calf occasionally
occurring among the wild white cattle in Chartley Park, whose birth portends a death in
the Ferrers family; the aloe in the gardens at Sandon Hall which flowers before the death
of the Lord Harrowby of the time; the custom, once common among our old families, but
now kept up only by the Dyotts of Freeford, of burying their dead at midnight by torchlight,
and, what is more singular, without the presence of any relative.

Bereaved Bees, Marriage, Wife Selling

Much more might be said too of the beliefs of the poorer classes. As to death, for
example: a farmer’s wife of my acquaintance at Eccleshall lost her husband in the
summer of 1892, and in her grief and distress forgot to tell the bees. Some time after all
the hives but one were found to be deserted, and she hit on a plan for preserving this
last. She ‘gave it to her little boy,’ and explained to the bees that they had a new master
and must stay and work for him. At the other end of the county a pit-sinker’s widow was
about to marry again. Her daughter in grief and indignation ‘went to the churchyard and
told her father.’ Then as to marriage: quite of late years the idea that a wife might be held
like any other property on a lease for a term of years came to light in the police-court at
Stone; and in the Black Country there are plenty of authentic cases (not, I am glad to say,
very modern ones) of wives being haltered and led through a turnpike gate, toll being
paid for them like cattle, and sold in open market.

Conclusion

And I regret especially that I have been able to say so little about early local history; for I
hold the belief that this study is particularly necessary to folklorists. Theories grounded on
folklore alone seem to me very one-legged affairs, sure to topple over unless they can be
supported by the results of kindred studies; and I should be sorry if any of the theories I
have advanced were to be taken as proven results, not as suggestions thrown out for
further examination. All students of newly-discovered branches of human knowledge
must, I suppose, knock their heads against the ends of many blind alleys before they find
the clear road to the desired goal; but even mistakes and unsuccessful attempts are not
without their uses if they put others on the right scent; and so long as we are content to go
slowly and are careful not to be “cocksure,” but to keep before our minds the possibility
that even we ‘may’ make mistakes, I have no fear but that we shall discover our North-
west Passage at last.

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