What will you be doing to celebrate Easter this
year? Chances are you won’t be grating
up a year-old hot cross bun to create your own medicine, or indulging in a spot
of ‘heaving’ in Kidderminster. But 150
years ago you may have been doing just that.
John Noake’s 1856 work, Notes and
Queries on Worcestershire, describes a variety of curious customs observed
in the county, including those reserved for Easter Week.
Good Friday, according to Noake, was ‘the occasion of
great superstition’. It was widely believed
that things planted on that day would grow more abundantly than if they had
been sown at any other time. However,
bad luck could also befall you if you had washing out, or failed to empty your
washtub before Good Friday.
Baking hot cross buns at Easter is a custom which
continues to this day. However, in
Noake’s time, they were thought ‘never to grow mouldy, and if kept for twelve
months and then grated into some liquor, will prove a great soother of stomach
ache’. Noake reported that ‘the superstitious
frequently preserved Good Friday buns from year to year, from the belief in
their efficacy in the cure of diseases.’
Another Easter custom in Worcestershire was ‘Heaving’
or ‘Lifting’. In the 1850s Noake
commented that this practice had not long been discontinued in the Birdport
area of the city. ‘Heaving’ occurred on
Easter Monday, and was a reference to the resurrection of Christ. On that day, ‘the women would surround any
man who happened to be passing by, and by their joint efforts lift him up in
the air, and on the next day the men did the same to the women’. Men could only escape by paying for
drinks. In Kidderminster, the women
‘would deck themselves gaily for the occasion’, ‘dress a chair with ribbons,
and place a rope across the street to prevent the escape of any unfortunate man
who chanced to pass that way’. The man
was lifted up in the chair, turned three times around then kissed by each of
the women. He also had to contribute to
the evening’s festivities of ‘tea and dancing’.
At Hartlebury it was considered good luck if a male servant ‘heaved’ a
female servant, because it meant she would not break any crockery during the
following year.
So here's wishing you a very lucky Easter from Worcester Cathedral Library!
So here's wishing you a very lucky Easter from Worcester Cathedral Library!
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