This evening the Beaker Folk lit a tea light in honour of one of our favourite heroes.
After the Normans invaded England in 1066, there were many natives who resisted. Many lost their lives, and some their ears.
But in the fenny fenland of the Fens, there was one great warrior who resisted successfully. A powerful local lord, he kept the Fens Norman-free throughout the period, terrorising the French invaders from Peterborough to Ely, entering the folklore.
Some said he was 8 feet tall. Some said he roared when he spoke. Some, that he was covered from head to foot in fur and had a friend called Han.
Whatever the truth, he bequeathed the English a tradition of resistance to unfair occupation; a love of and desire to protect the underdog.
So here's to you, Hereward the Wookie.
Hereward's way of dealing with a mooning witch on a tower should be an inspiration to all who are tempted to yield to superstition.
ReplyDeleteThat's not how it happened, Pidge. You don't want to believe everything you read in the Liber Eliensis - it's not the Daily Mail, you know.
ReplyDeleteTruth be told, the Vikings were having a bit of a party, and Harald Hardragga was doing something unspeakable to the hogroast, while Hardicanute was face down in the pigsty.
We were down to our last eight barrels of mead, and dear old Sweyn said that Morcar had hidden a few crates of Carlsberg at the top of the tower. I volunteered to get them, but the stairs kept rising up to meet me, and I got caught short at the top. Having relieved myself of witch's brew, I began re-arranging my skirts when that party-pooper Hereward came running over with a flaming brand (and the good abbot was none too pleased at having a ring of flame round his tonsure). Anyway - by the time I woke up, there was a chap standing there with a Domesday Book, charting the surrounding hundred as "Weaste", and I was carted over to the duckpond and thrown in with my hands and feet bound. Never had such a good time again till Boris smuggled me into the Bullingon club dressed as George Osborne.