Cheese-rolling

[wolfinthewood]

Anyone with an interest in the barmier English folk-customs may be interested in samoth’s photos of this year’s cheese-rolling at Coopers Hill in Gloucestershire, in which runners pursue a large cheese down a very steep slope.

Since LiveJournal seems to have sorted out its posting problems, here is the rest of this post, copied over from my new mirror journal at GreatestJournal.

The BBC confidently proclaims that cheese-rolling goes back to Saxon times, but I doubt it very much. In England, every folk custom whose origin is forgotten is invariably described as ‘ancient’, and if it is at all weird, it is liable to be described as ‘pagan’ and to be called a ‘fertility rite’.

I’d put my money on its dating from the eighteenth century, or perhaps the early nineteenth. I also doubt very much that the cheese originally represented the sun, as some people suggest.

I bet the original cheese was donated by some local person of means who thought it would be fun to watch the yokels risk life and limb to chase it. And the original competitors were people who were poor enough to find the chance of taking a large cheese home to their hungry family well worth the prospect of bruises and grazes, and even the possibility of injuring themselves seriously.

When Plenty smiles – alas! she smiles for few –
And those who taste not, yet behold her store,
Are as the slaves that dig the golden ore –
The wealth around them makes them doubly poor.
     Or will you deem them amply paid in health,
Labour’s fair child, that languishes with wealth?
Go, then! and see them rising with the sun,
Through a long course of daily toil to run;
See them beneath the dog-star’s raging heat,
When the knees tremble and the temples beat;
Behold them, leaning on their scythes, look o’er
The labour past, and toils to come explore;
See them alternate suns and showers engage,
And hoard up aches and anguish for their age;
Through fens and marshy moors their steps pursue,
When their warm pores imbibe the evening dew;
Then own that labour may as fatal be
To these thy slaves, as thine excess to thee.
     Amid this tribe too oft a manly pride
Strives in strong toil the fainting heart to hide;
There may you see the youth of slender frame
Contend with weakness, weariness, and shame;
Yet, urged along, and proudly loth to yield,
He strives to join his fellows of the field:
Till long-contending nature droops at last,
Declining health rejects his poor repast,
His cheerless spouse the coming danger sees,
And mutual murmurs urge the slow disease.
     Yet grant them health, ’tis not for us to tell,
Though the head droops not, that the heart is well;
Or will you praise that homely, healthy fare,
Plenteous and plain, that happy peasants share?
Oh! trifle not with wants you cannot feel,
Nor mock the misery of a stinted meal –
Homely, not wholesome, plain, not plenteous, such
As you who praise would never deign to touch.
Ye gentle souls, who dream of rural ease,
Whom the smooth stream and smoother sonnet please;
Go! if the peaceful cot your praises share,
Go look within, and ask if peace be there;
If peace be his – that drooping weary sire,
Or theirs, that offspring round their feeble fire;
Or hers, that matron pale, whose trembling hand
Turns on the wretched hearth th’ expiring brand!

George Crabbe (1754–1832)

from The Village (1783)


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