Letter From America: Cheers, Guido You Rascal!
...He for whom the day is named, Guido Fawxe, had two claims to fame. The most substantial of them is that he was a Yorkshireman. The minor assertion is that he almost blew up the English Houses of Parliament and James the First with them. As his confession shows, he was tortured severely, and in that circumstance it is possible that his confession is unreliable. If you even threaten to tear but one of my finger nails off with red-hot pincers I will immediately yield the full postal address of Osama bin Laden, including his postcode, landline and cell phone numbers, email address, and shoe size...
Ronnie Bray tells of England's most spectacular celebration of the year. Here is history and tradition served up in its most enjoyable and palatable form.
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Although it never struck me as a child, nor even when grown to man's estate, each year the English, me among them, engage in a ritual that can at best be described as barbaric. That it neither appears nor is considered to be so is due to its origins being obscured by the mists of old times and its actual foundation being largely unknown and of which revellers are indifferent but make sure that it is repeated year on year, and handed down from generation to generation in similar manner to that by which they received it.
Perhaps it speaks of something in me that I did not absent myself from the celebration even after I discovered the origin of its founding, but there are times when hedonism is a more powerful force than the simple prodding of conscience, and isn’t it what goes on in the mind that matters rather more than the facts of an historical occasion? Although that question would be more at home in a discussion of ethics and civics than in a frivolous essay such as this, it gives me cause for concern in increments directly proportionate to the time I spend considering it. If I think about it long enough, then perhaps I will become in favour of abandoning it and slotting something else into the time now allotted to it.
I cannot ever remember not knowing about it. Knowledge of it was implanted in me, not by way of maternal liquid, but by the most powerful method of transmission known to man, that is responsible for more than ninety percent of wrong information, the Schoolboy Telegraph. By that celebrated means I came to know much that I had to unlearn and replace with trustworthy information. But it seeded my brain with knowledge and, when it left, it was fun filling in the holes where it had been with facts that were mostly true.
There we were, ragged urchins in seatless trousers, the remnants flapping in the breeze as we scarpered as fast as our little war-starved legs would carry us, bearing off the chumps of the luckless ones who could not catch us before we rounded several corners and hidden our purloined prizes where not even Scotland Yard could find them.
It was not, you must understand, stealing. It was an act of war that was consecrated by tradition and antiquity, nor was there any adult, landholder, officer of the law, nor lawyer or judge who had not done exactly as we. Therefore, no recriminations were ever imposed on scavengers who hied at the speed of light, greedily and gleefully grasping the property of others by right of the ancient and touchless common and accepted law of chumping, whose ancient truths can be distilled down to:
"Possession is eleven tenths of the law and he or they severally or particularis who has, has! And he who has, that he has holds in fee simple terminalis et curtilage res in re deemed tort nil tortum dixit opus certiorari trix droit et magnificus woodus chumpus gottis keepis! Et bereftus weepus and no gettum baccus!"
This is the original language of Fawkestide, and it was thus explained to me as a child and no one has yet contradicted it.
No one was ever prosecuted for lifting a ‘chump,’ except one lad who shall be nameless, who relieved a gentleman of a full length leather sofa that he had not finished paying for, without his knowledge or permission, from his – the gentleman’s – living room to settle on top of his – the unpenitent thief’s – bonfire because, in his own words, "The Guy looked as if he needed to stretch out!"
After having served eighteen months in Borstal where he honed his skills, he now works for Her Majesty at Her Pleasure in one of her establishments that has the dimensions and fortification of a castle but none of the comforts of one. He had graduated from simple ‘chumps,’ the traditional; name of burnable things gathered by gangs of children to prepare their local bonfires, and went on from couches to Porsches.
He for whom the day is named, Guido Fawxe, had two claims to fame. The most substantial of them is that he was a Yorkshireman. The minor assertion is that he almost blew up the English Houses of Parliament and James the First with them. As his confession shows, he was tortured severely, and in that circumstance it is possible that his confession is unreliable. If you even threaten to tear but one of my finger nails off with red-hot pincers I will immediately yield the full postal address of Osama bin Laden, including his postcode, landline and cell phone numbers, email address, and shoe size.
It did not occur to us lads and lasses as our frozen trembling fingers struck match after match to throw in the damp firehole to initiate the conflagration that we were engaging in politics, and would have been mortified to learn that we were burning in effigy a Roman Catholic whose only crime was that he sought to do away with a Protestant king most of the aristocracy, and restore Catholicism to its traditional place in English life.
Of our local gang, at least half went to Saint Pat’s school and church. The rest of us were Protestants or nothing, although none of us knew that any more than we knew it was wrong to hate each other because we went into different places of worship on Sundays, and because we didn’t know it was wrong and hadn’t been perverted into thinking it was right to be bigoted, we didn’t do it.
The Guys we made looked as if they were at least a century old whereas Mr Fawxe was little more than the fascinating age of twenty-nine, the age at which Mrs Beeton and Alexander the Great died. Had we known of his youth, we would have naturally shrunk from committing his effigy to the flames. We were not savages.
The truth is that we had no idea why the paper-stuffed fellow that sat awkwardly atop our pile of combustibles was there in the first place. Father Grogan didn’t rush up to us from his presbytery less than three hundred yards away and demand to know why we were burning a Catholic. Had he done so, none of us would have had an answer, and the same goes for the parents who attended. It was simply a non-issue, and had not been pointed out in school history lessons. On second thoughts, it could have been told there, but as I was absent for a great deal of the time due to my increasing interest in things cinematographic, I could have missed it, as I missed the grammar and arithmetic lessons.
There is something about a good bonfire that appeals to the primitive in each of us, due to our longing for the freedoms of the skin clad past, the power to frighten away evil spirits, and the need to frighten each other out of what wits we had by deftly placed bangers in close proximity to the nervous.
The fact that dandelion and burdock, brandy snaps, toffee apples, bonfire toffee, parkin pigs, chestnuts and roasted potatoes taste better in the glow of a flaming pile of stolen timbers, that was too hot to get too close to without combusting spontaneously, might have been a more cogent motivation than the hidden history of the person that sat above the burning pile until the heat did to him what being burnt at the stake was meant to do to malefactors, although, carting him around from door to door in an old pram begging ‘A penny for the Guy, Mister?’ thus adding to our modest pile of coinage used to purchase fireworks might also have given us a bit of a shove.
Bonfire Night, as the evening of Guy Fawkes’ Day is known, is the fifth day of November, and has been since the poor man was committed to the flames in 1605. Although it is doubtful if any Roman Catholics joined in the festivities in the years immediately following his execution, in time his crime was forgotten and his name remembered as the occasion for great social gatherings of people from all places on the religious spectrum.
Nor is the celebration limited to we aborigines or descendants of successive waves of Scandinavian conquerors. Community bonfires are also organised attended by people from all parts of the globe and from all faiths in the community, omitting none, to whoop it up for Guy Fawkes who is memorialised in the once popular song, "Guido Fawxe Night."
Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up King and Parliament.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
Time was when the second verse was very popular, but as religious sensitivity increased and civilisation crept across our ancient land, the event slipped its original moorings and drifted out into the midstream of historical memory the words were abandoned. No prizes for guessing why.
A penny loaf to feed the Pope
A farthing o' cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we'll say ol' Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah hoorah!
Whilst some few odd communities in uncivilised southern parts of England still burn a representative pope in effigy on their bonfires, the vast overwhelming majority have no inkling about the events that led to its institution.
In favour of the alleged conspirators, it must be said that both sentiments and laws against Roman Catholics practising their faith in England were unusually harsh. The sought after destruction of parliament, aristocracy, and monarch was meant to initiate an uprising of oppressed Catholics who were understandably aggrieved by the increasing severity of legal ordinances against the exercise of their faith. But, it had the converse effect, and after the failed attempt even more stringent laws were enacted.
Here in the United States of America, Guy Fawkes Night with its attendant goodies pass unnoticed. I admit that it has a tendency to get past me without registering on my radar. Nevertheless my fondness for it and for the memories of gathering around the bonfire in the triangular piece of hanging ground – for clothes, that is, not for unfortunates – skirted by Fitzwilliam, Trinity, and Portland Streets are not diminished by the passing of years, even though many memories have slipped through the holes into the abyss where odd cufflinks go. However, more than memories are forfeited.
No more Standard Fireworks’ Little Demon bangers, no more jumping crackers, no more wayward rockets parting the crowd as it’s milk bottle launcher falls over when the whooshing luminary sets off, no more Catherine wheels pinned to gateposts, no more Roman Candles, no more shilling Mortar bombs, no more toffee, cake, chestnuts, but worst of all, no more semi-cindered King Edward potatoes snatched from the embers of the bonfire before it is incinerated, smothered with bags of butter, and slurped rudely into my mouth, as I try desperately to blow air out at the same time to cool the incendiary.
Many long miles away my English family and friends gather round their chumps and set off their sparklers and scintillating waterfalls, and eat the delights of the November Festival of Guy Fawkes without knowing what it is all about other than having a really good time. I hum gently to myself on that day the ditty transmitted to me by oral tradition way back when I was a scruffy schoolboy:
Remember, remember the Fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
There is no reason why Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot.
I am sure that Guido had no idea what trains of events he would cause to be effected wherever the English gather at this time of year. And while it is true that he sought to do a great wrong, yet, in the light of the lasting benefits that have accrued to English life in general, and to mischievous children in particular, who would be so curmudgeonly at this distance of time to do less than raise a glass of milk to Mr Fawxe for the day named for him? Not I. Cheers, Guido, you rascal!
Copyright © 2007 – Ronnie Bray
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
