Christian antiquities -- Great Britain; Folklore -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- Social life and customs; Manners and customs
Richard Penderel greatly assisted Charles in his time of trouble, and he
selected the oak in which safety was found. When Charles "came to his
own," the claims of Penderel were not overlooked. He was attached to the
Court. When he died, he was buried with honours at St. Giles-in-the-Fields.
It was customary, for a long period, to decorate his grave in the
churchyard with oak branches.
Formerly, in Derbyshire, it was the practice to place over the doors of
houses, branches of young oak, and it is still the custom for boys to wear
sprigs of the same tree in their hats and buttonholes. If the lads neglect
to wear the oak-leaf they are stung with nettles by their more loyal
companions. At Looe, and other districts of East Cornwall, it was enforced
by spitting at or "cobbing" the offender. In bygone times, the boys of
Newcastle-on-Tyne had an insulting rhyme, which they used to repeat to
such folk as they met who did not wear oak-leaves:
"Royal oak
The Whigs to provoke."
On this day, many wore plane tree leaves, and would make a retort to the
foregoing rhyme:
"Plane tree leaves;
The Church folk are thieves."
Mr. John Nicholson, in his "Folk Lore of East Yorkshire" (Hull, 1890), has
an interesting note on this subject. "During the days of spring," says Mr.
Nicholson, "boys busily 'bird-nest' (seek nests), and lay up a store of
eggs for the 29th of May, Royal Oak Day, or Mobbing Day. These eggs are
expended by being thrown at other boys, but all boys who carry a sprig of
Royal Oak, not dog oak, either in their cap or coat, are free from
molestation. Not only wild birds' eggs, but the eggs of hens and ducks are
used to 'mob' (pelt) with, and the older and more unsavoury the eggs are,
the better are they liked--by the thrower. The children sing:
'The twenty-ninth of May,
Royal Oak Day,
If you don't give us a holiday
We'll all run away.'"
At Castleton, Derbyshire, an old custom still lingers of making a huge
garland of flowers on this day, and afterwards suspending it on the top of
the principal pinnacle of the church. The late Mr. Alfred Burton saw this
garland constructed in 1885, and had a drawing made of it for his volume
entitled "Rush-bearing." "The framework," says Mr. Burton, "is of wood,
thatched with straw. Interior diameter, a little over two feet, outside
(when covered with flowers), over three feet six inches. In shape it
somewhat resembles a bell, completely covered over with wild
flowers--hyacinths, water-buttercups, buttercups, daisies, forget-me-nots,
wallflowers, rhododendrons, tulips, and ornamental grasses, in rows, each
composed of the same flower, which have been gathered in the neighbourhood
the evening before. The top, called the 'queen,' is formed of garden
flowers, and fits into a socket at the top of the garland. It weighs over
a hundredweight, requires two men to lift it, and has occupied four men
from noon till five o'clock in the afternoon to make it."
[Illustration: CASTLETON GARLAND.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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