The BBC News website has a genuinely antiquarian feel about it today with the story of the tradition which ended in 1832 of seven maids ritually washing an effigy, popularly known as ‘Molly Grimes’, in the parish church at Glentham in north Lincolnshire on Good Friday.
The article can be read at The curious case of Molly Grimes and Good Friday statue washing and it is well worth looking at the link in it to more of the source material for the story which is at The Northern Antiquarian website
I hope they can find a way to revive the custom in the church.
I have, I think, read of the Glentham story in books about Lincolnshire. I imagine it originated with the custom of laying out an effigy of the dead Christ at the end of the Good Friday Liturgy which then remained in the church until the Easter Vigil or Easter Day. In an area that was conservative in matters of religion such a custom may have survived, and either consciously been adapted or have evolved through time into the washing of an effigy of a former lady of the manor. That such folk-memories did evolve and survive is attested elsewhere, such as the fresh flowers placed in the hands of a medieval female effigy in the church at Tong in Shropshire. The effigy has apparently substituted for the statue of Our Lady since the reformers got to work in the sixteenth century.. Another example which is, I think, based on a true story ( but if it isn’t it is still worth sharing ) from the neighbouring county of Nottinghamshire is in Robertson Davies’ wonderful novel The Rebel Angels - and now you will have to go and read it to find the story!
My Easter gift to you all….
