Manhunt

I love to play with my post titles. They are often silly private jokes. I chose this one mainly because how often will I get to talk about a 'manhunt'? No, it doesn't refer to a police chase. Nor is it about that song from the movie Flashdance. Is that telling my age? Well, no matter.

Somewhere I have a photo of people running up and down Cheviot, but for now,
Wallington Hall will have to suffice as illustraion.

I believe this is related to a 'hash'. (No, it's not food either, but does involve drink). The first time Bill and I encountered a 'hash' was on our first visit to Sydney. Jane knew we were into running and so she looked for an event we could join in. The Sydney Hash House Harriers was celebrating St. Patrick's Day with a hash involving Baileys and Guinness, if I remember right.  It sounded really daft but we went along for the fun.

As they did it, a course was planned in advance and marked with symbols indicating which way to turn. The hash course has loads of false trails which you don't know are false until you find the symbol telling you to turn around. The faster runners of course found and deduced the false trails first, often catching the slower runners about to enter and able to warn them off taking that turn. The result is that slower runners should follow more or less the true course, letting faster runners do the work of travelling the extra distance of the false trail. It is a way of letting runners of all abilities run together, after a fashion. People shouted 'on-on' a lot and I think there was some guy running around tooting a bugle (an allusion to a Fox Hunt - the kind done on horseback - no doubt). Halfway through the run there was a bandstand with tots of alcohol on offer. Can't say I've ever run under the influence before then or since. It doesn't help much.

When we finished running there was a 'barbie' (cook out) and a meeting in a pub where new people were required to 'down-down' as in chug a half pint of beer. Other people seemed to get beer poured on their (new) trainers. It was all a bit mad. Bill says it's all very 'public school' (upper class), ex-pat stuff. Which according to the HHH history, is true.  Jane & Chris joined for a while, though they were more of the walking persuasion and Jane was 'Hon Sec' (honourable secretary) for a while. She sent us HHH t-shirts for Christmas that year. 

Wikipedia dates Hash runs back to 1938 in Malaysia, but they apparently based their runs on what Brits called a 'paper chase' that dates back to 1880s, which is in turn based on the Elizabethan game of 'Hunt the Hare' or 'Hunt the Fox'. The Paper Chase involves a lead runner dropping bits of paper for his chasers to find.  The 'hare' or the 'fox' are usually the faster runners in a group. 

What has all this to do with Wallington Hall? Well, it seems that George M. Trevelyan, whilst in his undergraduate days at Trinity College, Cambridge, was a co-founder of a race in the Lake District, sometimes called the Lake Hunt and sometimes referred to as the 'Trevelyan Manhunt', beginning in 1898. G.M.'s (disinherited) nephew was involved in this race for forty-two years and so far as I can tell, it is still run, but by two separate groups.  There is the Trevelyan Manhunt and there is possibly a manhunt run by Trinity College, Cambridge.

Though, given the 'health and safety' considerations raised by this author, it may have fallen by the wayside for Cambridge students. In any case it is clearly considered an historical and hallowed tradition by some, even important enough to mention in their obituary.

A Bit of Swash & Buckle

More from Trevelyan’s Social History of England, Chaucer’s England (1340-1400) – yes, folks, we have a long way to go yet…

Just imagine living back then:

"In most of the counties of England the King’s writ ran, though it was often evaded or defied. Murderers and thieves, when not in the service of some great lord, were often obliged to fly to the greenwood, or to take sanctuary and then forswear the realm. Some times they were actually arrested and brought into court. Even then they often slipped through the meshes of law by pleading their ‘clergy’ or by some other lawyer’s trick. But, at worst, a great many thieves and a few murderers were hanged by the King’s justice every year. The engine of law worked in the greater part of England, though cumbrously, corruptly, and at random.

But in the counties bordering on Scotland (that’s up here where we live) the King’s writ can scarcely be said to have run at all. War seldom ceased, and cattle-raiding never. On those roadless fells, society consisted of mounted clans of farmer-warriors, at feud among themselves and at war with the Scots. No man looked to the King’s officers to protect or avenge him. In the land of the Border ballads all men were warriors and most women were heroines." (Oh, yeah, that’s us…).

To Chaucer it was an unknown, distant, barbarous land – much further off than France – ‘far in the North, I cannot tellen where’. There the Percys (you’ve met them before and other border chiefs were building magnificent castles to resist the siege of the King of Scotland’s armies – Alnwick, Warkworth, Dunstanburgh, Chipchase, Belsay, and many more. The lesser gentry had their square ‘peel towers’, smaller copies of the castles of the great; there were no manor-houses, a product of relative peace. The peasants lived in wooden shanties that the raiders burnt as a matter of course, while the inhabitants and their cattle hid in the woods or sheltered in the peels.

This state of things outlasted the Tudors who gave such firm peace to the rest of England. Only after the union of the Crowns on the head of James Stuart had made an end of Border War (1603) did peaceful manor-houses begin to rise beside the castles and peel towers of the north.

One result of this long continuance of warlike habits, amid a sparse population, was that a greater familiarity between high and low prevailed in those wild regions and lasted into modern times. The moorland shepherd and the ‘hind’, as the northern farm hand was called, never became as subject to ‘squire and farmer’ as the pauper labourer of the south in days to come. There was always a breath of freedom blowing off the moors."

Because you’ve been good and read all this, I give you Burradon pele tower (no one seems to be able to decide how it's actually spelled).


Back when I was really fit, we did our long runs on Sunday mornings, starting in Killingworth,


where Bob lives. Several times we ran past this tower and it was pointed out to me. This time Bill


and I drove to it, thankfully; I couldn’t have told you where it was otherwise.


(Silly me, I couldn't resist having a post labelled 09/09/09 09:09)

New Lanark

After some debate about the weather we drove to New Lanark last Sunday, a place Bill said he has long wanted to visit. We had also debated about what we might find there but decided that a mere tourist trap wouldn't likely be named a World Heritage Site. We were right about that.


You remember our friend G.M. Trevelyan, of English Social History? He mentions this place several times, but in order to appreciate it, I think some context is required. At the end of the 18th century we have the growing industrial revolution. Apprenticeships have disappeared and along with them the personal relationship between a journeyman and his employer. The gulf between a factory owner and a factory worker is vast. This is also just after the French Revolution (about which I must read some time) and all "combinations (I take it to mean joining together) of workmen, whether for political or for purely economic purposes, were regarded as 'seditious'." The law was supposed to apply to both masters and men but in fact masters were allow to combine as freely as they wished. Soon after the Elizabethan statute giving magistrates power to enforce a minimum wage was repealed.


It also needs to be remembered that most people didn't have a vote at that time. One source states that less than 3% of the people in England and Wales had the vote in 1780. It gives numbers rather than percentages for Scotland and I did the math: fewer than 2/10th of 1% of the population could vote then. A moderate move was made in 1832 which gave the vote to men occupying property with an annual value of £10 or more; this still excluded 6 out of 7 men from voting. I still find this staggering.


Trevelyan writes about the contrasts between village, rural life and that in the towns and cities. He says that their food, lodging, clothing and wages were possibly less bad than they had been in the farms and country cottages and they had more independence in some ways. However, the beauty of the country, the village green and the games, the feasts and sports and rural customs were gone. In the farming community man and master lived side by side and unmarried hands boarded with the farmer and ate food cooked by the farmer's wife. The farm hands were also a few at each farm. This contrasted with "The mass of unregarded humanity in the factories and mines were as yet without any social services or amusements of a modern kind to compensate for the lost amenities and traditions of country life. They were wholly uncared for by Church or State; no Lady Bountiful visited them with blankets and advice; no one but the Nonconformist minister was their friend; they had no luxury but drink, no one to talk to but one another, hardly any subject but their grievances." I don't think I can even properly imagine what housing conditions will have been like.


Enter Robert Owen, a completely remarkable Welshman with reasonably humble beginnings but quite a lot of ambition and more than a fair amount of success. By 1799 he was able to buy (with partners) the cotton mill factory at New Lanark from David Dale and marry his daughter. The mill employed about 2 - 2 1/2 thousand men, women and children. About 500 of the latter were brought in from poorhouses in Edinburgh and Glasgow. The conditions were unsanitary, the hours long, the drunkenness and crime rates high; local country people wouldn't work the hours or tolerate the environment.


Owen improved the sanitation facilities by providing bathhouses (mind a family, no matter how large, still lived in two rooms), he provided nursery facilities and sent children under 10 to school to be educated. He built the Institute for the Formation of Character, a community facility aimed at education and recreation. He took 1/60th of each person's wages and put this towards providing free medical care for workers and families. He reduced the working hours down to 10 hours a day and 6 days a week. He bought in wholesome quality food and sold it to workers at little profit; any income went back into benefitting the workforce. This represents the beginnings of the Cooperative movement, aimed not just at ending the exploitation of the consumer by the retailer, but also to teach the working classes self-government and business management.


Owen believed that a person's character was shaped by their environment and his aim was to raise the character of his workforce through improving their environment. One exhibit outlined a view of what components a community should have for its population. I was struck by how many of those ideals we all now take completely for granted. Also, I noted that one definition of wealth for that time was to live in a place that had more rooms than people.


New Lanark was internationally famous and was visited by many politicians, royalty and religious leaders. However, it remained a unique experiment in his time.

Woolwords

From Trevelyan’s English Social History
(We're still only in Chaucer’s England -- 1340-1400 -- loads more good stuff to come!!)

The growth of the cloth trade was destined to go on for generations to come, creating new classes in town and country, adding to the luxury of the manor-house and relieving the poverty of the cottage, altering the methods and increasing the rewards of agriculture, supplying our ships with their cargoes, spreading our commerce first over all Europe and then over all the world, dictating the policy of our statesmen and providing the programmes of our parties, causing alliances, treaties, and wars.

The cloth trade held its place as incomparably the most important English industry, till the far distant day when coal was wedded to iron. For centuries it occupied men’s daily thoughts in town and village, second only to agriculture; our literature and common speech acquired many phrases and metaphors borrowed from the manufacture of cloth –

‘thread of discourse’,

‘spin a yarn’,

'unravel a mystery’,

‘web of life’,

‘fine-drawn’,

‘homespun’,

‘tease’ –

while all unmarried women were put down as ‘spinsters’.

Poaching Poetry

More from English Social History

I gather the really big thing about Chaucer -- and even more about Shakespeare -- was that they wrote in English, not Latin, not French, but in a common language of the land, something there had not been before. I never was much into Chaucer, mainly cause I couldn't understand a word of the Canterbury Tales. Much like when we were assigned a Shakespeare play to study, I dutifully read it, then waited the next day for the teacher to tell me what I'd read. Still, I could appreciate this poem, particularly after understanding that it was not meant to rhyme, but to be alliterative. Trevelyan uses it to demonstrate that just because country folk were surrounded by the country every day, they could still appreciate the beauty.

In the monethe of Maye when mirthes bene fele,
And the sesone of somere when softe bene the wedres,
Als I went to the wodde my werdes to dreghe,
In-to the schawes my-selfe a schotte me to gete
At ane hert or ane hynde, happen as it myghte:
And as Dryghtyn the day droue from the heuen,
Als I habade one a banke be a bryme syde,
There the gryse was grene growen with floures -
The primrose, the pervynke, and the piliole the riche -
The dewe appon dayses donkede full faire,
Burgons and blossoms and braunches full swete,
And the mery mystes full myldely gane falle:
The cukkowe, the cowschote, kene were they bothen,
And the thrustills full throly threpen in the bankes,
And iche foule in that frythe faynere than other
That the derke was done and the daye lightenede:
Hertys and hyndes one hillys thay gouen,
The foxe and the filmarte thay flede to the erthe,
The hare hurkles by hawes, and harde thedir dryves,
And ferkes faste to hir fourme and fatills hir to sitt
And he statayde and stelkett and starede full brode,
Bot at the laste he loutted doun and laugt till his mete
And I hallede to the hokes and the herte smote,
And happened that I hitt hym be-hynde the lefte sholdire
Dede as a dorenayle was he fallen.

Now you know what it's like to sit on the Metro surrounded by young Geordies nattering away, except there are no swear words in this poem. There is a popular road race around here where the former organiser used to write the entry form in Geordie. I could just about figure it out by reading it out loud, or at least read it with my lip moving. If I run across a copy -- and I'm sure I've kept a few -- I'll share them. And now, the translation of the above, which I think does a superlative job of appreciating nature. I really does sound olde England-y:

In May, when there are many things to enjoy, and in the summer season when airs are soft, I went to the wood to take my luck, and in among the shaws to get a shot at hart or hind, as it should happen. And, as the Lord drove the day thorugh the heavens, I stayed on a bank beside a brook where the grass was green and starred with flowers - primroses, periwinkles, and the rich pennyroyal. The dew dappled the daisies most beautifully, and also the buds, blossoms, and branches, while around me the soft mists began to fall. Both the cuckoo and pigeon were singing loudly, and the throstles in the banksides eagerly poured out their songs, and every bird in the wood seemed more delighted than his neighbour that darkness was done and the daylight returned. Harts and hinds betake themselves to the hills; the fox and polecat seek their earths; the hare squats by the hedges, hurries and hastens theither in her forme and prepares to lurk there. The hart paused, went on cautiously, sharing here and there, but at last he bent down and began on his feed. Then I hauled to the hook [ie the trigger of the cross-bow] and smote the hart. It so happened that I hit him behind the left soulder...he had fallen down, dead as a door nail.


So, 'Dead as a Door Nail' has been with us since the mid-1300's.... whatever that means.

By Hook and By Crook

From Trevelyan's Social History of England:

On some manors the heaths and woods had shrunk to small proportions before the encroachments of the ‘assart’ farms [Private farmland formed by the clearance of part of a wood, common, or forest] enclosed for agriculture. In others, particularly in west and north, the waste [uncultivated land] was essential to the life of many families. Lonely squatters, with or without leave, built their huts and fed their beasts on some outlying bit of land. And every lawful villager required timber from the trees on the waste, to build his cottage, to warm his hearth and cook his food, to make his carts, ploughs, farm tools, and household furniture. The rights of the customary tenants different from manor to manor, but often they had the privilege of cutting wood for building and carpentry, and of taking sticks for fuel by ‘hook and crook’, that is by pulling branches from standing trees.

Useful knowledge to have when one's mangetout plants need some branches for support and one happens to have a walking cane in the cupboard under the stairs and a copper beach tree in the front garden...

English Social History

At this writing I am not quite half way through a fascinating book: English Social History, A Survey of Six Centuries, Chaucer to Queen Victoria, by G.M. Trevelyan, published 1942.

"Oh, fascinating", I hear you thinking. But it really is. The author is quick to explain that social history is somewhere between economic history and political history; social history describes what life was like for everyday people. It is like reading some historical novel without the bodice ripping; it's a rags to riches (or the reverse) without the individual romance. To make up for not supplying the juicier bits, this book does far better: I'm finding the missing links in my understanding of English history. Yes, I'll still love Forever Amber and the movies Braveheart and Robin Hood, but I love even more having a better understanding of how things fit together and why.

Also, I'm finding words used in a different context, finding words that are more common around this part of the world used in their original sense, learning more about some of the architectural wonders in my very backyard, so to speak. And, guess what I'm going to be telling you about over the next few weeks...or months? Sorry about that (I'm not really).

The book begins with Chaucer's England: 1340 - 1400. The Black Plague first reached England in 1348-9. There was a feudal system in place, with only upper and lower classes: lords and peasants. Peasants were tied to the land and had no salary, as such, but they also had certain rights as well. However, because there was limited land and so many people, they had no bargaining power. They lived at a level that literally made a hot meal a luxury.

The Plague removed as much as one-third of England's population and turned the tables on the lords. Now there was not enough labour and too much land to manage without it, at least in the old way. The labourers were no longer tied to the land and began to travel; they also expected to be paid for their work.

This resulted in the more forward looking of the peasants to become yeomen farmers, who managed large tracts of land on behalf of the lords, bargaining with the peasant labourers, enclosing farm lands and building up their own wealth. In short, establishing a middling class.

My new word for you is 'demesne' - pronounced duhMAIN (It's French, but from the Latin dominium. It caught my eye because I've visited the small museum at Woodhorn Colliery in Northumberland and one of the place names up there is Woodhorn Demesne. I never could remember how to say the name, but I'll remember it now. In Trevelyan's book, it explains that the lord kept the best of his agricultural land for himself, rather than for his serfs. However, as part of their contract, his serfs were required to spend certain days working his demesne, which they did so grudgingly.

And now, because you've been good and read all


the way to this point, I'll share with you some pretty pictures, taken on the day I


went hunting for pink snow. These are of Tynemouth Golf Course


and one of the houses nearby.