Odd this day

3 min readMay 1, 2023

In his New History of Gloucestershire of 1779, Samuel Rudder wrote about an annual gathering on Yarleton Hill in Gloucestershire to mark the first day of May. Rosy-cheeked children dancing round a pole? No. A massive fight.

Frontispiece of A new history of Gloucestershire, comprising the topography, antiquities, curiosities, produce, trade and manufactures of that county… [continues]

As Steve Roud puts it in The English Year:

Excerpt from The English Year, by Steve Roud: “Annually, on the first day of May, there is a custom of assembling in bodies on the top of this hill, from the several parishes, to fight for the possession of it, upon which it is sometimes called May-Hill”

Something similar happened at Wrekin Wakes in Shropshire, apparently, where

local colliers and countrymen fought for possession of the ground after the pleasure-seekers had enjoyed the sideshows and gingerbread stalls

A similar affray took place at another hilltop May fair every year at Wrekin Wakes, in Shropshire, according to folklorist Charlotte Burne in 1883. Here, the local colliers and countrymen fought for possession of the ground after the pleasure-seekers had enjoyed the sideshows and gingerbread stalls.

Well, we’ve all been to a school fete like that.

The English Year is a fascinating round-up of feast days and frankly weird traditions. An annual Massive Scrap seems to be pretty much universal.

In 1880, English nature writer Richard Jefferies wrote, in Round About a Great Estate, that:

Every hamlet used to have its representative fighting-man-often more than one- who visited the neighbouring villages on the feast days, when there was a good deal of liquor flowing, to vaunt of their prowess before the local champions. These quickly gathered, and after due interchange of speeches not unlike the heroes of Homer, who harangue each other ere they hurl the spear, engaged in conflict dire.

Of Wiltshire, he writes:

There was a regular feud for many years between the Okebourne men and the Clipstone ‘chaps;’ and never did the stalwart labourers of those two villages meet without falling to fisticuffs with right goodwill. Nor did they like each other at all the worse, and after the battle drank deeply from the same quart cups.

…and finishes that section with the words

the Okebourne and Clipstone men thwacked and banged each other’s broad chests in true antique style.

Yes, it really is a mystery why the phrase ‘why are men?’ became popular, is it not?

Odd this day, part deux

In other exciting news today, it’s the 45th anniversary of this surely unimprovable diary entry from Peter Hall in which a young Dinsdale Landen tries to impress an ageing Donald Wolfit, and doesn’t altogether succeed:

Dinsdale Landen told today a wonderful story of his days as assistant stage manager at Worthing. He was a walk-on when Wolfit was there as guest star, playing Othello, but was not told what to do until the dress rehearsal, at which the great man said it would be a very good idea for Othello to have a page who followed him everywhere. He handed Dinsdale a loin cloth, told him to black-up, and said he’d got the part. Dinsdale did not know the play and just went wherever Wolfit went, the complete dutiful page, always in attendance. But at one point he found himself in a scene in which he felt rather ill at ease; he had an instinct about it. Suddenly he heard the great man’s voice roaring, ‘Not in Desdemona’s bedroom, you cunt.’

(Excerpt from the Faber Book of Diaries, 1 May 1978)

Odd this day

Odd this day, part deux

Written by Coates

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