Whittlesey Straw Bear Festival
17 Jan 2010 1 Comment
in Old English Traditions Tags: 2010, farming, fenland, festivities, folk music, morris dancing, Old English Traditions, pig dyke molly, procession, rural, straw bear festival, whittlesea, whittlesey, winter, YouTube
In 2010 the Straw Bear Festival took place on the 15th, 16th and 17th of January.
According to The Straw Bear Organisation , from when no one quite knows, it was the custom on the Tuesday following Plough Monday (the 1st Monday after Twelfth Night) to dress one of the confraternity of the plough in straw and call him a ‘Straw Bear’. This custom was used to collect food for the impoverished indentured farming workers in the area, who had by January, begun to run low in their supplies of food and firewood.
A newspaper of 1882 reports that “… The Straw Bear was then taken around the town to entertain by his frantic and clumsy gestures the good folk who had on the previous day subscribed to the rustics, a spread of beer, tobacco and beef”.
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