Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Monday, 26 December 2022

Christmas Mummers and Wren Day


The BBC News website has a piece about Boxing Day traditions such as Wren Day - not for bird lovers I think - and Mummers, especially in the western parts of these islands.  It is good to see traditional customs being enacted and recorded, however odd they may appear. The Mummers play with its theme of death and rebirth features in Ngaio Marsh’s detective story “Off with his Head”.

The BBC article can be seen at The Boxing Day hunt, but not as you know it

Writing of traditional Boxing Day customs my inbox was polluted the other day by a petition to stop the Ledbury Hunt meeting in Ledbury town centre, as is their established wont, on Boxing Day from an anti-hunt fanatic. I did NOT sign it ….


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