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November the 5 th in Stromness
What a time of it us Bloody Puddings have during mid-winter. From Halloween to the 5 th of November we have neeps sitting in our living rooms, the root-vegetable effigies grimacing at us as they soften. Ripening thus, they become more sinister: the faces more evil as their time comes..
At Halloween all over Orkney children are helped by their parents to carve neepy lanterns from the frost-bitten purple earth-orbs, but only in Stromness do we keep them whole, carving into the flesh rather than scooping it out. The heads are then thrust with a stick for a handle - impaled if you like.
We then would go around the houses in our immediate area with our neepy lanterns getting pennies. Also we make devilment and would have a ditty to sing or chant in those monotonous voices only children use ('Good morning Mrs. Ritchie' all on the one level, each syllable lasting the same length of time).
Then on the night of the 5 th we would process to the bonfire where we fling our lanterns into the flames to burn up alongside Mr.Fawkes.
How wholesome and sweet - nutritious too really, encouraging us to eat raw neep and lots of clapshot.
Except we call our lanterns pops and when we chap the doors of the houses we chant penny to burn me pop and historically we burnt them as effigies of the Pope. Lost the origins of this tradition are, or maybe deliberatley obscured: for who wants to admit to such anti-Catholic sentiment these days outside of the fringe members of certain football supporters' organisations?
As a child I knew nothing of this history of anti-papist feeling which gave me such fun during the long dark nights of winter. George Mackay Brown, writing in his coloum Under Brinkie's Brae in 1978 descibed us as sweet little turnip bearing tyrants. It's been suggested to me that there may have been a particularly vehement minister, staunch in his protestantism who encouraged this tradition, or that it was an import: Stromness formerly being a great port. Sigurd at orkneyjar.com pointed out to me the bonfire festivals in Lewes in Sussex where effigies of both Guy Fawkes and the Pope are burnt.
In A Brief Description of Orkney, Zetland, Pightland Firth and Caithness (Brand, 1701) Catholic practises in Orkney are describes as the sour dregs of pagan and Popish superstition and idolatry.
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