An unlucky break for Herne the Hunter

Just got back from Milton Keynes - picking up some more flour for this morning's first "Twelve Days of Shrove Tuesday" pancake breakfast.

And who should I bump into, at this eerie and folklorish hour, but Herne the Hunter? I say "bump into" - quite literally. Who knew that ancient English mythological creatures rode bikes? Although I suppose they're into Green things. And he was wobbling around a bit - must have been a good foot out from the kerb. So I don't feel I was wholly to blame - whatever he said as he turned me temporarily into a giant weasle.

Anyway, he says there's no need for us to get him to hospital - they heal naturally, do ancestral demigods. But he's sat in the Conservatory demanding pancakes.

You know, now I see Herne close up, he does look rather like the Piper at the Gates of Dawn. You don't suppose they may be different names for the same folkloric figure? After all, you never see them in a room together.

Killing Ghosts with iPhones

Why would ghosts be killed by mobile phones? That's the question we've all been asking. Apart from the important one of whether Luis Suarez is suffering from some kind of astigmatism.

It's not normally something that I worry about. And it's not often I bother to comment on what the Sun says. Normally, like all good Liverpool fans, I boycott the offensive rag, but on this occasion I read the website. And I think that's OK as it means I'm costing them server bandwidth and not buying anything from their advertisers, and I really don't care what Debbie from Dagenham thinks about what appears to be the murder of Colonel Gadaffi. I'm not saying Debbie doesn't have her own views, but I'm not totally sure that the copy next to her bare torso necessarily represents them in all their riches.

But I'm fascinated by this image of the world's electric network. Apart from the fact that the "scientist" who put this together, Felix from Montreal, has just cobbled together a load of stuff from the 'net himself, and remarks that you can't see electric cables from outer space. That doesn't matter. Because he's right - the world is criss-crossed with electricity - electrons surging in all directions, bringing the benefits of fossil-fuel burning to all people that can afford the bill.

But it does show that antipathy to humanity in the mass that some hold. Describes the human "sprawl" - as if  the world being filled with exciting, interesting, questioning, captivating people is some kind of mistake.Yes, I'm personally with those who think that it might be an idea, to lengthen the time human beings can populate this planet, to ensure there's not too many of us at one time. But I wasn't thinking of shrinking the number suddenly - rather gradually reducing, through non-violent means, the number being produced at any one time. People are great. We need lots of them. For as long as possible. And by the way, the population growth suggested by the Sun article is massively, eye-swivellingly, people-hatingly wrong compared to the UN's predictions.

But that's not what I'm really interested in. The minute I saw the idea of an "electric planet", I thought of a report I saw 11 years ago. And it told us that ghost sightings had died off in the 15 years since the widespread use of mobile phones. But then you see the maps of the earth with stuff going off and you think - is it really just the mobiles?

Let's pretend for a moment that ghosts can be perceived. I'm not saying they're objectively real. I'm saying they're perceivable. You can know that something is there. They could be an electrical field, they could be a hallucination (or an hallucination, according to Drayton). They could be the spirits of the dead, unable fully to shuffle off their mortal coil and go to join the choir invisible. Let's just assume you can perceive them. An Anglican vicar of my acquaintance claims he saw a Black Shuck once, but is perfectly prepared to accept it could just have been an Alsatian with a growth hormone imbalance - it just looked like a big ghost dog.

So if there's stuff to perceive - then 30 years ago, walking down a quiet country lane or standing around in a country house, you might have noticed it. It might have been a quiet electromagnetic anomaly, it could have been the effect of a pylon overhead - or it might even have been the subtle smile that told you that a young man or woman (according to choice) was interested in you. And with no iPhone, no Nokia, no Android, you might have noticed it. Today, it could have been rattling chains round your head while telling you about the darkness of the deepest pit of the Inferno, and if you were busy with Angry Birds or telling Twitter that there was some rubbish down the sides of the lane, FWIW, then frankly it would be wasting its time. My theory is that mobile phones didn't kill ghosts - the world was flooded with electromagnetic waves before then - it was our interactions with mobile phones that did. Before our current age of social networking, there was an era of yuppies with phones the size of bricks, shouting loudly into them that the signal wasn't up to much.

No, the difference between 30 years ago and now is that the people who might have noticed ghosts then - pallid, sensitive, needy types - are too busy worrying that they've been snubbed by a Facebook friend they met once in Stow-on-the-Wold Market, or wondering why their cutting remark about the woman who was just on the X-factor wasn't retweeted. They're not alert to the outside world anymore. The Wodewose tells me that every day he leads a troupe of 11 supernatural beings across the pelican crossing at Hockliffe, and nobody ever notices. I've asked him why he takes them all the way down to Hockliffe every morning - costing me diesel money and terrifying Jurgen, who drives the mini-bus - but he tells me something about a Roman legionary he was good mates with.

But my point is clear, if you follow it. We don't notice ghosts, whatever they are. We don't notice subtle inter-personal signals. We don't hear promptings from the Still Small Voice. We're too busy broadcasting our views and needs in all directions. Mobile phones didn't kill ghosts. We did.

Ritual of watching for Shooting Stars

Beaker People file out of the Moot House (or, as it may be, back from the White Horse) and stand in the darkest part of the Big Paddock.

All: Which way's Perseus?

Archdruid: Over there.

All: Over where?


Archdruid: Over there. Over that way.

All: We don't know where you're talking about. Can you point?


Archdruid: No.

All: Why not?

Archdruid: Because.... because it's unlucky. [The Archdruid may blush. Although, being it is pitch black, no-one will notice]

All: Unlucky? Don't you have a science degree and aren't you a faith community leader?


Archdruid: Yes.

All: And yet you're telling us that pointing at stars is unlucky?


Archdruid: Erm. Yes.

All:  Eileen, what are you on?

Archdruid: I can't help it. You can't point at stars, it's unlucky. I refer you to G. Worthington Smith's magnum opus, "Dunstable - its history and surroundings". It's a Bedfordshire tradition.

All: Eileen, You've really lost it this time. And we still don't know which way Perseus is.


Archdruid: Over there, next to Cassiopeia.

All: You just pointed.


Archdruid: No, I just kind of... nodded my head in the right direction.

All: Pointed.


Archdruid: Nodded.


All: Pointed.


Archdruid: Nodded.

Young Keith: Is it just me, or is it a bit cold?

Stacey Bushes: And the grass is getting dewy.

All: Yeah, forget the shooting stars. Let's get in and have a cup of Bovril.

Making things up for Easter

I think Hnaef may have missed the point on this one.

I'm sure that Mouse is right, and the link of Easter to the alleged goddess Eostre is a pile of foetid dingo's kidneys. Frankly, it's just as likely that it was named after Estragon from Waiting for Godot. This is the way that back-creation of religious explanations tends to work. Let me give you an example.  And remember this is just a bit of fun - no Celts were decapitated in the production of this blog post.

There is a real tradition that people roll oranges (or at least did when I was young) down Dunstable Downs on Good Friday. A steepish, concave slope called Pascombe Pit, to be precise, that haven for young courting Dunstablians.
People notice that Pasc- as a prefix is a bit like Pasch-. So there you go, there's the rock-solid religious connection (and it is combe-shaped, since you mention it). And the oranges are clearly the stone that was rolled away from the Tomb.

Except, that's clearly just a Christianisation of a pagan ritual. But of course, oranges are - as the name suggest - orange. So clearly they represent the sun. Pascombe Pit orange-rolling was therefore a place where you rolled oranges downhill to represent the sun er... getting stronger in the summer. And Dunstable Downs faces West, and that's the way the sun sets. And so the oranges are rightly going down in a westerly direction. It's all coming together.

Until you remember that the orange hasn't been in these isles that long and was probably unknown in prehistory. So any claims of a long tradition are in a bit of a state.

But then you remember that there used to be a gallows on top of Dunstable Downs. And there are Five Knolls (actually, there's seven barrows, but that's another story) and Elizabeth Pratt was arrested on the Five Knolls and charged with witchcraft and died in Bedford Jail (at the same time that John Bunyan was in there, although there's no evidence she influenced Pilgrim's Progress).  So there's a death link, and there's a witchcraft link.
So clearly in the old days they didn't used to roll oranges down Pascombe Pit. No, they rolled the heads down. After all, to Celts the head was the source of the soul, and heads would roll quite nicely. So the Celts would decapitate their victims at the top of the hill - probably criminals, because let's face it those Celts were basically nice, decent types. Probably be keen on a game of cricket if they were around these days. Probably better at cricket than England, at any rate. So they'd execute their criminals, unless there was a real criminal shortage. Then they'd roll the heads down the hill, as a sacrifice to the setting Sun. Goodness knows what they did with the rest of their victims, unless there was a kebab van up at the picnic site in ancient times.

And Vitamin C, like religion, is good for the soul.  Which is why in more modern times they used oranges. Although last time I heard, even using oranges was banned for Health 'n' Safety reasons, so goodness knows what Central Beds Council would make of using heads. Unless you could persuade them it was a genuinely neo-pagan ritual, in which case they might give you a grant.

And that's how you get from an innocent Eastertide tradition to a story of decapitation and sun-worship. I'm sure we all feel better for that.

And, if nothing else, I'm getting a worried feeling about why that orange I rolled down Pascombe Pit when I was a child felt so heavy.

---

Dunstable Downs image from Wikimedia Commons, original uploader Infors. Author Thomas Ormston.

News from Stony

Young Keith has come back from Stony, and as our friend Rich predicted he's come back with some wild stories.

For the sake of tradition he nipped in for lunch at the Cock. And in there, all the talk was of  Elliot Morley pleading guilty to the charge of dishonestly claiming expenses.

After then going on a beer-supping tour of the neighbourhood, which he hazily described as "The Navigation at Cosgrove. Nice pub. Nice canal. Fell in. Can we go back and get my bike?", he wound up drying off in the Bull Vaults. And it was just like they say.  The story had totally changed between the Cock and the Bull. Instead of Eilliot Morley, it was Laurent Gbagbo. And instead of the Labour Party, it was Ivory Coast. And mysteriously, getting down for expense fraud became "getting rooted out of office by the French Army"

Isn't it incredbile, the way the same story can mutate with each re-telling?

You don't mess with the Wodewose Posse

What on earth was that ooser doing in the woods? Surely they're meant to live in Dorset? Or did the Archdruid accidentally bring one back from Wessex with her?
Anyway, they're not as bright as they might be. They may be scary with horned heads, but they don't have the sense not to attack other mythical creatures. Especially when I do have this rather substantial club. And that's ignoring the noble way the rabbits jumped up and bit him in the ankles.

So, he's headed off towards Ridgmont, so good luck to him and them. But one thing worries me.
You think about it: "wose", "ooser"... in an English language notorious for adding and subtracting the letter "w"  when it precedes an "o". You don't suppose he's a cousin, do you?

Wodewose and the Piper at the Gates of Dawn

I tell you, the Piper at the Gates of Dawn can be such a pain.
Especially at this time of year, when the ground is soft and his hooves cut into the turf. Although at least he's not prancing around with those pipes knocking the blossom off the trees like he does in the spring.

Thankfully the Wodewose appears to be quite a match from him. This morning I was up early when I heard that familiar and annoying tootling coming from the Orchard. Great, I thought, that's all I need. Then I heard an almighty thump. It was the sound of the Wodewose bashing him over the pointy head with his club. The Wodewose had been up a bit late debating theology with some bats, and he was hoping for a bit of a lie-in.

I tell you, the sight of the debased form of a Graeco-Roman deity, skulking into the woods to find some ice for his bump. It warms your heart, it does.

Black Shuck

We've heard rumours once again that Old Black Shuck has been seen wandering the place. Bedforshire has always been a bit of a safe haven for him.
Now, some think he's a devil dog.  Some say that if you shout at him you'll die.  Others say that it's a spirit of the Old Religion, displaced by the Celtic Christians with their bodhrans and dodgy poetry.
Whatever.  There's a bowl of chopped liver up on the draining board.  If he starts hanging around outside, and he doesn't get run over by Mr Toad, can someone stick it out for him?  I don't like to encourage them, but they're nasty when they're hungry, are Shucks

The Duck-man of Furzton

Many mysterious, man-like creatures have frightened the unsophisticated and unscientific peoples of the world. The Yeti of the Himalayas for example, or the Bigfoot of the United States. Few have been as mysterious, as elusive, and yet lived as close to Civilisation, as the Duck-man of Furzton.

The first anyone knew of him was when the Canada Geese started disappearing.

The thing with Canada Geese is, nobody really cares that much about them. So when the number of geese started to go down no-one worried about it.

"There don't seem to be so many geese around the lake these days", people would say to each other as they walked round Furzton Lake. Some people thought maybe the geese were migratory, and they had all flown off somewhere. Canada sprang to mind. Other people thought the lake could be getting polluted. But nobody really cared. Nobody cares about Canada geese.

Then strange rumours started to spread among the anglers. You must have seen the anglers? Every summer evening they're out by the side of Furzton Lake in their hundreds. Practically shoulder-to-shoulder. Each has his little tent to crawl into when he becomes cold or tired. There is actually only one fish in Furzton Lake, and the fishermen are catching the same one over and over again. Some of them have noticed it's always the same fish, but since most of them are only there to get away from their wives, or because their wives want to get away from them, they don't mind too much. Some said it was the shadows on the lake, and some said it was the mental strain caused by trying to outwit fish, but the anglers claimed they had seen something in the trees.

The Brook runs through the middle of Furzton. To the south of the Brook lies the original estate. The people in the other half of the estate sometimes call it Old Furzton because it was built as long ago as the 1980s. To the north lies the new half of the estate, imaginatively called North Furzton. The Brook itself runs west to east through the park, down into the lake. Just where it meets the lake there is a small spinney. And that is where the anglers saw something. The branches moved as something slunk through. A shadow was cast across the water of the lake. And there was a strange snuffling noise.

They couldn't really say what it was. A furtive couple enjoying some extra-marital activities, some thought. A sleepwalker with a heavy cold, said others. A very, very big badger was another suggestion. But nobody really worried about it too much.

Until the swans started to go missing.

After all, geese did not really matter. What difference was a goose here or there? But when there were no more geese, the swans started to go. Some people fed the birds on Furzton Lake every day; old ladies and young mothers with their children. They didn't mind the geese going. The geese were aggressive. If you didn't give them all your bread straight away they would mug you for it. But it is different when you are down to your last swan. The one remaining swan became very, very fat as it wolfed down the bread of a hundred different schoolchildren. The mallards and moorhens had never had it so good.

The children started to talk about a strange character. The Duck-man, they called him. They said he lived in Cold Harbour Spinney. Nobody believed them. They said he caught the fish in Furzton Lake with his bare hands. Nobody believed them. They said he ate ducks. People started to listen. The Neighbourhood Watch started taking an interest.

One of the local Neighbourhood Watch committees was very keen. Other Neighbourhood Watches spent their time having coffee mornings, with a bit of peering through the curtains in the evenings. But due to a recent outbreak of car thefts, this Neighbourhood Watch had transformed itself into a Neighbourhood Lynch Mob. Woe betide anyone caught entering a car in Old Furzton, with or without the key, if they could not provide documentary evidence that they owned it. Nobody had actually been hanged from a lamp-post, but a few youths had ended up in the lake for such crimes as hanging around on street corners, or playing football without a permit during the hours of daylight.

The Secretary of the Neighbourhood Watch and his deputy were making their regular patrol at midnight one night. They marched briskly through the park and down to Furzton Lake, resplendent in their Neighbourhood Watch hats, Neighbourhood Watch arm-bands and Neighbourhood Watch steel toe-capped boots. They had once had Neighbourhood Watch baseball bats, but the Police had confiscated them after the unfortunate business with the vicar.

Pausing only to tell the anglers to take their rubbish home with them, they walked round to the little wooden footbridge, which crosses where the lake is narrowest. They would have checked out the sports pavilion, but they turned off towards the edge of the lake, having seen something moving in the trees down there. The Moon threw its light over the scene. On the edge of the lake sat a mallard. Towards the mallard, creeping through the undergrowth, came what appeared to be a man. He was moving cat-like, creeping through the bushes without the slightest noise. The Neighbourhood Watch Deputy Secretary rested his hand on his Neighbourhood Watch flick-knife, which the Police had failed to find when they searched his house .

Unlike the Duck-man, the Neighbourhood Watch had never learnt to keep in the right direction with respect to the wind when stalking. The Duck-man stopped for a moment, sniffing the air. Then he turned round and looked straight at them. The moon shone with a strange yellow light in his eyes. He fled through the bushes. The Secretary chased for fifty yards or so, but the branches knocked his hat off. In any case the Duck-man was moving too fast. The mallard flew off across the lake, thanking whatever wet and feathery gods ducks thank in such circumstances.

The next morning the Deputy Secretary phoned the Police, to tell them about the Duck-man. The duty officer laughed. The Secretary went round to the Police Station in person, to tell them what they had seen the previous evening. The duty officer fell about laughing. The Neighbourhood Watch decided it had to act alone. Some questioned what right they had to stop someone catching ducks, which after all were wild animals. Some of the others said that it was probably out of the duck-hunting season. Others asked whether the duck-hunting season, if it existed, applied only to shooting, and not to sneaking up behind ducks and catching them with your bare hands. Others said, in any case, he'd been catching swans as well. and they belonged to the Queen, so it had to be theft.

Eventually they decided it was their moral obligation to catch the Duck-man. A few of the more radical Neighbourhood Watchers just wanted to beat him up and throw him in the lake, but it was generally agreed that they would catch him red-handed, and record him in the act with photographic evidence. So began the first Neighbourhood Watch stake-out in Milton Keynes history.

The best policy, they decided, was to blend in with the background down by the lake. Some people suggested hiding in holes in the ground, or up trees. After a moment's thought the Secretary came up with the best way to go undetected by Furzton Lake.

That night there were a lot more anglers than normal sitting round Furzton Lake. The Neighbourhood Watch blended in perfectly, in their blue or orange Pak-a-macs. But in their little tents they had secreted the tools they needed for their job: cameras, searchlights and nets. Most importantly they each had a pointy stick.

The pointy stick as a weapon has an important history among the peoples of the South Midlands. It has two functions - you can hit people over the head with it while you are catching them, and then you can poke them with it when you have caught them. And since you can pretend it is a cricket stump, the police are very unlikely to confiscate a pointy stick if they catch you in the park with one.

Again it was a clear night. The moon, one day fuller than the previous night, shed its silvery light on the scene again. There was silence around Furzton lake, broken occasionally by a car roaring down Watling Street or a midnight cyclist riding into a bollard. And so they sat all night. Nothing happened. There was no sign of the Duck-man.

The next night they all sat there again. No sign.

The next night there was a small crime wave as the burglars realised that the entire Neighbourhood Watch was out sitting round the lake.

Then it occurred to someone that what they really needed was a decoy. And the decoy was conveniently close to hand. The one remaining swan had been rescued from the lake for its own good, and now lived in someone's back garden. After a week or so of being the only swan in Furzton, it was now so fat it could not fly. Every well-wisher for miles around had been coming round to feed it bread crumbs, lumps of cake - even the leftovers from a barbecue. The Secretary of the Neighbourhood Watch commandeered the swan.

That evening, the scene around Furzton Lake was much the same as the last three nights. The fishermen sat around, complaining about the Neighbourhood Watch people. The Neighbourhood Watch people sat around, armed with their pointy sticks and air pistols. The local press sat around, armed with a huge battery of cameras. But this time, about four feet from the shore of the lake tied to a post, bobbed the fattest swan in Milton Keynes.

Around about midnight the Secretary said he would make a patrol of the lake. He set off anticlockwise from the bridge. From their positions on the Bowl side of the bridge, the other Neighbourhood Watchpeople saw him walking round past the outflow, and along the path parallel to Chaffron Way. As he walked towards North Furzton he went out of sight. He should have been back after half an hour, even allowing for a moderate amount of telling people off for returning from the pubs late, but after an hour there was no sign of him.

After two hours the Neighbourhood Watch Treasurer went out to look for the Secretary. It took him twenty minutes to get round the lake, and he saw no sign of the Secretary.

A little later there was a rustling in the bushes over by the swan. Seventeen bogus fishermen held their breath. A dark figure appeared beside the lake. About to make a spring for the swan, the Duck-man stopped as he noticed the stake to which the swan was tied. He looked around, and seemed to be sniffing the air.

The Neighbourhood Watch lost its discipline. People switched on searchlights and blazed away with cameras. Four or five of them ran across the bridge, waving pointy sticks and shouting blood-curdling oaths. The Duck-man, for the second time that week, turned and ran. But in the moment that he had been held in the glare of the searchlights and the camera flashes, they had seen something awful. He had been wearing a Neighbourhood Watch Secretary's hat.

They eventually found the Secretary. He was hanging by his ankles from the bridge over to Emerson Valley, with only his Neighbourhood Watch "Macho Man" studded belt, tied round his ankles and the railings, stopping him from landing in the middle of the V3. When they hauled him up and asked him what had happened, he could only gibber "The feathers! The feathers!"

The Duck-man was never seen in Furzton again. Life had clearly become too hot for him. The swan population gradually recovered, as swans flew in from other lakes, and before long Canada Geese were mugging schoolchildren and housewives the same as ever. The Neighbourhood Watch Secretary had to retire due to a fragile mental state, but otherwise the operation was declared a reasonable success. When the photographs were developed, the Duck-man bore a striking resemblance to the ex-leader of a former religious cult, which had believed that Fishermead was the New Jerusalem and that Armageddon would be fought in Milton Keynes. The cult had, of course, folded when they discovered that traditionally Armageddon was meant to be fought on a mountain.

And that was that. Only two loose ends remained from the whole episode. One was the tradition in Old Furzton of leaving the leftovers from the turkey outside on Christmas Night "to keep the Duck-man happy". The other was, the people in Woburn Sands and Bow Brickhill started noticing, there weren't as many rabbits around as there used to be.....

Politically Correct Mumming

In keeping with the Thomas Hardy school of spirituality, we thoroughly enjoyed the Mummers' play last night.  Still, in these days of treading on the eggshells of sensitivity, we thought it was best we made a few changed to the tradition.
"Father Christmas" is emblematic of the patriarchal society crushing dissent and differance, especially when waving that very phallic club around.  We replaced him with "Mother Yule", a much gentler and kinder figure who would bring consensus rather than confrontation.  However, in the interests of discipline I still felt it was necessary to equip the character with a pointy stick, to ensure that I - I mean she - was taken seriously.

"St George" is no longer regarded as a bona fide saint, and has been to an extent appropriated by such undesirable elements as the BNP.  In the interests of harmony, therefore, I thought it was better to replace him with "Mother Gaia", a much gentler character with the interests of all at heart.  Except when she's burning the planet up to kill us all and replace us with aardvarks.

"The Doctor" is an interesting character, but in these days of doubt about science I thought it would be better to replace him with the "Homeopathist".  Equally effectual in healing, but in a much gentler, less invasive way.

Finally - "The Turk".  Well, obviously he can't be killed at the end.  In order to make him more sympathetic, we recast him as "the Kurd".  In the interests of diversity, we felt it better that he and Gaia come to a peaceful resolution, although as you will see things didn't quite work out...   At the end, the cast joined in the singing of "Merry Christmas, War is Over".  This was somewhat drowned out by the cries of "boring" from the audience.  However I still feel the evening was a success.



Mummers

We are the Beaker Mummers
We'll play you an old tale
Which you will think quite funny
if you've drunk a lot of ale.

Mother Yule: 

I stand here with a "Ho ho ho"
My rhyme is short and quick
Be sure to give us lots of dough
Or I'll poke you with this stick.


Enter Piotr


Piotr: 
My name is Piotr 
I'm the newest Mummer
I come from Poland
and I'm a plumber.
If I can find St George tonight
I'll happily give him a fight.

Mother Yule:
St George can't be here tonight
A dragon gave him quite a bite
At first we thought 'twas septicaemia 
but now it's probably anaemia
To give him a nice healing draught
We really need a homeopath.

Homeopath
I live for homeopathy
I can cure your son and daughter
Although I say it's a remedy
It's really only water.

It's good for itch, 
malaise and stitch,
and people with bad back
But for heart disease and swine flu
You're better off with a real quack.

Piotr: 
Oh, my back.

Homeopath: 
What's amiss with thy back, Piotr?
Slipped disk?  You need a doctor.

Enter Gaia
Here am I, Mother Gaia, 
But I'm feeling pretty strange
My temperature is getting higher
And they're telling me it's the Change.  


(Well, I am 4 billion years old)

Gordon Brown:
Here I am, a noble Scot
Come to save the world with my ditty.
If you've got money I'll take the lot
and give it to those in the City.


I am a noble champion bold;
I'd never tolerate crime
I took ten billion pounds in gold.  
And sold it at the wrong time.

Gordon Brown throws a bucket of water over Gaia to cool her down.  Gaia hits him where it hurts.  In the polling booth.


Enter the Kurd

Kurd:
Here I am, a Turkish Kurd
Afraid to stay at home
With children four I've swum the Channel
And to Bedfordshire I've roamed.
Surely there is room for me at the inn?

Border Control Officer:
In days of old Kurds came to stay
and we just watched and stood
but there's an election due in May
so you're going to Yarl's Wood.  (He hasn't even got an Identity card...)

The Border Control Officer drags the Turk and his children off.

Mother Yule:
Now the Kurd is locked up for the country's weal
And all of his kith and kin.
For twenty months he will fight his appeal
But we'll leave him to it and sing.

Mummers:
Happy Xmas - war is over 
Not really, we're just deluded - la la la la.

The verse is repeated until all the Mummers have gone and the door is closed.

With thanks to the Christmas Time website, whose play was used for the outline.

Pagan Origins of "Christian" Festivals

I have to doff the Archdruidical pointy hat towards Clayboy for his kind detailing of the way in which Easter was originally a Christianisation of the North American Maple Syrup Harvest.
It is a little known fact that almost all Christian festivals are importations or transmutations of earlier pre-Christian fertility festivals and nature celebrations.  As a group dedicated to finding the deeper truths of earlier times, we are able to shed a great deal of light on the current "Christian" festivals and whence they came.

January 1 - "The Feast of the Holy Name" was originally a feast dedicated to the Norse god of headaches, Bleindin.  Believers would stay in their houses, with the blinds down and the lights off.  A day of fasting and silence - the fast only broken by special ceremonial food such as raw egg yolks with Worcestershire sauce, and fry-ups.

February 2 - Celebrated as "Candlemass" by Roman Catholics, but known to Celts and Beaker Folk as Imbolc.  Imbolc marks the point in the year when you realise how much of the credit card bill you still have to pay off after Christmas.  The Beaker Folk would mark this season by giving up drink, take-aways and pay TV channels, living on nothing but porridge and water until scurvy set in.  They would borrow as much as they could from neighbours to avoid putting any more on plastic.  This aspect of widespread borrowing is the reason that the time up to Easter became known as "Lent".

Palm Sunday - The people of the ancient Bletchley Culture would on this day walk in procession around the Leys, the ancient park just north of Bletchley Park, waving the ears of their enemies in the air.  All year, they would cut the ears off their defeated rivals in battle, drying them in the clay kilns of Newton Longville.  But on this day, timed to be the Gibbous Moon after the Spring Equinox, they would display the year's victories in this way.  Afterwards they would nail the ears to the trees down Buckingham Road. The rest of the year was spent making the same appalling "what's this ear?" pun.
Coincidentally, the Compo People of Yorkshire also celebrated this day.  A member of the young ladies of the village would be chosen, by drawing of lots, to be "Anna" for a day.  The purpose of the young men of the village was to find out which girl had been so honoured.  The ritual part of the day mostly consisted of people walking round the villages shouting "Who's Anna?  Who's Anna"?  The rest is history.

Easter - The Badass People of Nottingham knew this as the Long Good Friday.  They would spend the weekend in an orgy of drinking, wandering around in worn out clothing and threatening passers-by.  This is one of the few traditions to have been handed down, in its original form, for over 6,000 years.

May Day - was originally named after the goddess of screaming and running around with your hands in the air.    Her consort, "Jonesy" was conventionally portrayed as an old man with a fixed bayonet.  Worshippers would hang from bridges over rivers, while taking part in the ritual chant "Don't panic!  Don't panic!"  The shortest man in the community would be chosen to be the "Miz-Dam-Annering" - a position of great responsibility but very little real power.  However he was regarded as a sage - the upper classes of the clan would come to the "Miz-Dam-Annering" and ask him whether he thought things were wise.

Lammas - 1 August - Oddly enough, named after the French word for the West Ham Utd team, "L'Hammers" (the "h" is silent in French).  The Gaulish tribes suffered under the pillaging of the city of Marseilles by Brithonic invaders during the 55BC World Cup.  In particular, the tribe of the West Hams, a fearsome group under the leadership of the warrior Earwigoh, sacked Lyons.  The Hams pillaged a great deal of purple cloth which, worn over their traditional druidic woad body art, was the origins of West Ham FC's modern home strip.

Harvest Home - this older name for Harvest Festival in turn derives its name from a pub in Houghton Regis. The people of Houghton Regis (an offshoot of those great enemies of the West Hams, the Gunnaz), would gather at the Harvest Home to exchange things that had - in their quaint world-view - fallen off the back of their goddess, Ae-lorri.    Presumably we are to imagine Ae-lorri as a pre-Celtic version of Father Christmas, flying across South Bedfordshire with blessings falling off her back into the paths of her worshippers.

Halloween - Before being overtaken by the great evil gods Commerz and Ripov, the Beaker Folk celebrated this as a time of joy and generosity.  They would build a giant Wicka Man, fill it with marshmallows, and set it on fire.  A folk memory of this happy and innocent ceremony survives, albeit in a degraded form, in the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in the film Ghostbusters.  The evil Celts took the marshmallow out and replaced in with criminals, presumably lamenting that "I bet they're warmer in there than my poor old Nan is in her flat", and saying that criminals knew they'd get off with being roasted alive if they were caught, so where was the deterrent in that?

Advent - a corruption of the East Saxon deity Avon, the goddess of cosmetics.  In Advent the women of the East Saxons would cover themselves with face paints in honour of Avon and wander around Chelmsford looking for men with whom to indulge in mating rituals.  They did the same the rest of the year as well.

Christmas  - We now know that the Germanic celebration of Yule, and the Roman Saturnalia, were invented in an attempt to take over from the celebration of Christmas.  The pagans of the 3rd Century were jealous that the Christians were having a good time while they were still worshipping a bunch of gods who sat on mountains dressed in togas.  So they thought that if they renamed the celebration and kept it on the same day, everybody would think they had thought of it first.  Ironically, the Christians had chosen the day because it coincided with the ancient Birmingham* festival of "Winterval", in which people would have a good time, eat drink and be merry and hang coloured lights on their houses, with no idea why.

* Yes, we know.  Birmingham's had an unfairly bad press on this one.  But let's face it - it's still Birmingham.