Pantomime as we know it, is nearly 200 years old, and yet is still alive and well in humble halls and top theatres across the United Kingdom. It’s a curious British art from that just refuses to die.

Image courtesy of LollyKnit

It’s pantomime season again.  “No it isn’t! Yes it is! No it isn’t! Yes it is!” And although we all know the stories backwards, hordes of theatregoers (as well as those who would never darken a proscenium arch at any other time of year) will watch in delight to see if Aladdin will get out of Ali Baba’s cave or if Snow White will be cured of her narcolepsy.

Job creation for B Grade celebs?

What is it about this curiously British theatre convention that refuses to die? Cynics would say that it is kept alive simply to prolong the careers of B Grade British celebs who in any sane world would have been able to slip mercifully into oblivion, but it’s deeper than that, much, much deeper.

Pantomime – which comes from the Greek for ‘an imitator of things’ – originally meant a performer (as it still does in America where Vaudeville became the dominant populist theatre form). But in Great Britain it refers to a theatrical convention that became popular in the 19th Century where women play the leading male, men play the comic Dame and bad jokes are de rigueur.

Slapstick humour

Affectionately known as ‘Panto’, it is a mixture of Fairy Story, spectacle, song, dance, topical humour, satire, slapstick and double entendre, with the audience playing an indispensable role, much like the chorus in ancient Greek theatre. There are stock roles, stock dialogue and stock comic routines, some of which the audience know better than the actors: ‘It’s behind you!’ and ‘Fee Fi Fo Fum’ have been screamed with glee by children for nearly 200 years.

Commedia del Arte

The most influential ancestor of pantomime was the populist Italian theatre of the 16th and 17th Century known as the Commedia del Arte. It is in the Commedia, that the stock pantomime characters came into their own. Still recognisable in the pantomime of today are Commedia’s star-crossed lovers (Harlequin and Columbine), the miserly old man (Pantelone), the braggard (Il Capitano) and the comic servants (the quick-witted Scaramuccia, and the dim-witted Pulcinella), to name but a few.

The Commedia travelled from Italy to France (Harlequin was reborn as Pierot) and then across the channel to England, where ‘Harlequinades’ became popular in Elizabethan theatres.

Music hall

By Victorian times, Music Hall had become the most popular of all theatre genres with its earthy humour, toe-tapping tunes and subversive digs at the upper classes. It was only a matter of time before cross-pollination between the traditional Harlequinades and the new style of musical theatre took place and pantomime, as we know it today, was born.

Fairy tales and Roman romps

By the turn of the 19th Century, the Harlequinades had adopted Fairy Stories as their plots and the now familiar pantomimes of Aladdin (1813), Dick Whittington (1814), Jack and the Beanstalk (1819) and  Cinderella (1820), took on much of the form they still have today.

But the roots of pantomime can be found even earlier than this, harking back to the Saturnalia festivities of Rome, when, on what has now become Christmas Day, the members of leading households would switch roles for a day and sometimes put on a play. The master became the servant, the servant the master, men women and women men.

Mystery plays and women’s rights

Ironically enough, there are even traces of it in the mediaeval Mystery plays – used to teach Bible stories to a largely illiterate population – where Mrs Noah was very much a ‘dame’. In Elizabethan and early Jacobean theatre, men of course always played women, but after the 17th Century Restoration, when women were first allowed onto the stage, the comic elderly woman was still played by a man. This could also be attributed to the fact that many ageing actresses refused to play older women – ah yes, vanity, thy name is indeed woman!

Slap those thighs!

But lust, thy name is man! The curious convention of having a young woman play the heroic male lead can be attributed to Victorian gentlemen producers trying to get around the pervading censorship of women’s legs. An actress dressed as a woman would not be able to show her ankles, but an actress dressed as a man could show the full length of the offending limbs and heartily slap her thighs to bring attention to them.

By the 1950s the tradition of women playing the leading man was dying out, with Norman Wisdom famously playing Aladdin at the London Palladium in 1957. However, it is thanks to leggy Cilla Black who played the role in 1971, that women started gaining ground again. Nowadays, the lead male role can he played by men or women.

Crowd pleasers

The convention of bringing in celebrities from other fields is not an invention of the media-conscious 21st Century – Victorian producers knew all about marketability without ever having heard the word. Sporting heroes or existing stars of the Music Hall were guaranteed to draw the crowds, and allowing them stage time to showcase their latest songs was considered a small price to pay. Hence, the convention of using contemporary songs was born. During performance, the Music Hall artistes often changed the style of pantomime plots and even the dialogue, by inserting some of their own well-rehearsed routines – as long as they drew the crowds, the producers didn’t mind.

Everyone’s a critic

But not everyone was happy. In 1882, pantomime aficionado W. Davenport Adams decried: “Now to what do we owe this unfortunate, nay painful feature of pantomime performances? I fear there can be but one answer to the question: we owe it to the Music Hall element among the performers. Why must there always be a woman dressed in tights? Why must the comic woman always be a man? Have we not plenty of youthful premiers and female comedians?”

Sadly Mr Adams missed the point. These are the very things that make pantomime. It is what the audience has come to expect and shrewd producers of every generation know that what the audience wants, the audience gets.

Adapt or die

But how can an art form that is shackled to the past still cut it with modern audiences? The answer lies in the melding of the old and the new, the comfortingly familiar and the surprisingly contemporary. Children go to pantomimes to enjoy the spectacle and the Fairy Tale; grown-ups go to see how clever the performers will be in bringing in the latest current affairs and gossip. It is never politically correct, it is never artistically pretentious; it is theatre for the people, by the people and at the expense of people.

In the 1860s it was rumoured that ex-prime minister Lord Palmerston died in the arms of a chambermaid after spending himself on a billiard table; in 2005 it was revealed that arch Labour activist and Home Secretary David Blunket spent many a night in the arms of an American publisher. Both are script material, and whether it is Snow White or Cinderella, it is bound to get in.

This is how pantomime has survived: it links us to our past and our present at the same time, and in years to come, will link us to future generations. And that’s all there is to say!

First published in Realm Magazine, December 2005.

As I write this, the Olympic Flame has just been lit opening the 29th Modern Olympic Games. The first Olympic flame was lit at the Amsterdam Olympics of 1928 and the Torch Relay was added to the ceremony in Berlin, 1936, at ‘Hitler’s Olympics’. It was not in the original vision of the founder of the modern Olympic movement, Pierre de Coubertin, in 1896, but he welcomed it as a powerful religious and artistic symbol that could be used to educate people in the ideals of the Olympic movement.

Image courtesy of Rick Sforza

These ideals, according to the Olympic Charter, are to

…contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practised without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.

Nothing wrong with that, you would agree, but as the pro-Tibet demonstrators would have us remember, there is a huge gap between that ideal and the practise of the host nation in its occupied territory.

Double standards

This is in stark contrast to the myth that the Olympics are the one place where politics and war do not hold sway, where small and great nations compete as equals. Advocates will point to the 2000 Sydney Olympics where North and South Korea competed under one flag and the disputed nation of East Timor as an independent state. But while China crushes protests with one hand and lights the Flame with another, we should remember that double standards are no stranger to the Games. Think of sports fans cheering on the great black American sprinter, Jesse Owens, while Jews and Communists were being driven from their homes in the streets outside the Olympiastadion. Think of the banning of South Africa for 32 years for its abhorrent racial policies while Sudan and Zimbabwe are still allowed to send teams. Think of the tit-for-tat boycotts of America and the Soviets in ’80 and ’84 and the abandonment of the Games during two world wars – would the ancients be turning in their graves? I think not.

Wars and rumours of wars

The ancient Greeks never let war get in the way of a good athletic contest in nearly a thousand years. By and large the Greeks kept to the Olympic Truce whereby all wars were put on hold for the duration of the games, but ever so often they let it slip. In 364 BC, the city of Elis lost control of the games to Pisa and launched an attack during the wrestling event in the Pentathlon. But the games went on, with spectators keeping one eye on the wrestling and the other on the streets outside where thousands of allied troops defended against the invading Eleans. A day later Elis regained control of the Games and declared them null and void. Let’s hope Paris won’t do the same to London in 2012!

For glory or for gain?

Nationalism, commercialism, politicking and dirty tricks were just as much a part of the ancient Olympics as they are today, with a continuous struggle to cleanse the Festival of Zeus of its baser trappings. There were idealists then as now, and officially the athletic contests were for glory, not for gain, with only an olive wreath and adulation for reward. But olive wreaths do not put food on the table as the Persian general Tigranes commented:

Good heavens, Mardonius, what kind of men are these that you have pitted us against? It is not for money they contend, but for glory of achievement!
(Herodutus, ‘Histories’)

Herodotus does not record Mardonius’ response, but no doubt it was along the lines of: ‘if you believe that General, you’ll believe anything!’ Just like today’s athletes aren’t forced to flog their medallions to keep the wolves from the door (well most of them, I haven’t checked eBay yet), the Ancient Greeks had no currency in olive wreaths.

Appearance fees

Olympic victors were set for life. They were given free meals at public expense, front-row seats at the theatre and public festivals, tax breaks and guaranteed appointments to the public service. They even received ‘appearance fees’ at lesser athletic events and prizes such as tripods, cauldrons, precious metal, oxen and women. (Homer, ‘The Iliad’, Bk 23). Now don’t get me started on the exclusion of women from the Games, I’m writing a whole play about it!

Breaching the amateur code

Some would say payment in kind does not breach the amateur code, but cash certainly does. The Ancients had no such quibbles. According to the Roman author Plutarch, in 600BC an Athenian Olympic victor could expect to receive 500 drachmai from the city coffers, a fortune in ancient times.

And if one’s hometown was not forthcoming with the loot, one could always defect. Fidel Castro was not the first leader to lose his athletes at the Olympics. Take the Olympic victor from Crotona, who was offered a better deal by the Syracusians to represent them at the next Games. The good citizens of Crotona were so incensed they tore down his statue and turned his house into a prison.

Bribes

In 1999 the modern Olympic Games was hit by the worst scandal in its history, after it was discovered that six members of the IOC had been accepting ‘improper gifts’ from cities bidding to host the Games. There’s nothing new there either. Although the ancient games were held at Olympia, a holy site dedicated to Zeus, the patron-god of the contest, there was an ongoing battle between various cities as to who would have the privilege of actually running the Games.

Just like today, control of the Olympics had very lucrative commercial spin-offs for the host city. In 668 BC we hear of a dispute between Elis and Pisa. The city fathers hired the tyrant Pheidon to ‘secure the Sanctuary’ in the name of Pisa. With the help of a well-trained army, Pheidon took over Olympia and personally presided over the Games. But by 664, Elis was once again in control.

Elis was usually in control and provided all the judges. But this didn’t stop Elean athletes from competing. Although writers from the time tell us that the Eleans had a reputation for fairness and it would have been a shock to other Greeks if they had been caught cheating. Bribery, however, was not unheard of, and Pausanius records with horror that ‘one of the Eleans themselves had fallen so low’ (Pausanius 5.21.16ff). The dirty judge was one Damonicus, who received a pay-off from Sosander of Smyrna to make sure Sosander Junior won in the wrestling contest.

Bad winds and cowardice

The punishment for such a crime was not death, as the purists of today would like to believe, but a simple fine. In fact fines were imposed for all sorts of things. One athlete claimed that bad winds had kept his ship from arriving in time to join the pre-games training session, but it was later discovered that he had been travelling around Greece winning prize money in other competitions instead. He was liberated of his earnings. Another poor chap, when during a warm-up session saw the form of his rivals in the notoriously brutal wrestling contest (where only biting and the genital hold were outlawed, but breaking your opponent’s fingers was well within the rules) decided that discretion was the better part of valour and withdrew from the contest. He was fined for cowardice.

Tainted gold

So from the olive wreaths of the ancient games to the gold medals of the modern, we see that this showpiece of human idealism fails to live up to its own standards. And yet, I’m still a fan. It would be hypocritical of me not to be. In the same way that the Christian faith sets up an ideal of human co-operation and personal fulfilment that it frequently fails to deliver, the Olympic movement is still a noble idea: if you aim for the stars you can always fall on the tree tops.

This side of heaven

The difference between the Christian faith’s ‘failings’ and those of the Olympic movement are that the former’s imperfections will be made perfect in eternity. For the Olympics, this side of heaven is all that it’s got. And though it fails, it also succeeds, wonderously. Like many of you I will be glued to the television screen this August, marvelling at the diversity of human talent from around the world and the awesome achievements of people who strive to make the most of their physical talents. I will be moved by the strength of character of many of these athletes, in particular the paralympians, and will rise to my feet and applaud every gold, silver and bronze won with sweat and blood.

As a Christian I can learn what it means to make the most of the gifts God has given me. And though I lack in sporting prowess, I am reminded that my artistic, relational and spiritual gifts should not be neglected. And though millions today watching the Olympics may not acknowledge God as the creator and designer of the human form, it is still a testimony to His greatness.

Eternal flame

While the Olympic flame burns in Beijing, may it be a lasting symbol of the flame of God’s Spirit within us. The symbolism of fire was not lost on Pierre de Coubertin, Adolf Hitler or even the ancient Greeks – fire purifies, fire ignites, fire illuminates, fire nurtures and, if not handled with care, fire burns. The torch was not part of the original games, but is based on the idea that young athletes would race to win the privilege of lighting the altar fire at the Temple of Zeus.

Sport as religion

In ancient times sporting and cultural festivals would be staged in honour of the gods. In this newly secular world, these festivals are now held to the honour of Man as God. Yet they cannot get away from religious symbolism in the staging of their spectacles. Nor can we get away from sport as a religious metaphor, as the New Testament writers remind us:

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? (there were no silver and gold places in those days!) Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.
(1 Cor 9:24)

To the glory of God

Sports stadia and theatres were once the temples of the ancient world. Some would say they still are. But rather than bemoaning the secularisation of sport and culture let us make every effort to reintegrate them into a Christian world view. Many of the new and growing churches around the world aim to meet in sports stadia; it is aligning Christianity with one of the world’s most successful religions: sport. The Olympian Eric Liddle famously said: ‘when I run I feel God’s pleasure’; let us remember that when we watch the Olympics this summer, and whatever we do, whether sporting or otherwise, let us do it all to the Glory of God.

A version of this article first appeared in SA Sports Illustrated as ‘For Glory and for Gain’ for the Athens Games, and more recently in The Plain Truth as ‘Olympic Spirit’ on the eve of the Beijing celebration.

It was 16 August 1977 and my family and I were driving back from a holiday in Scotland. My dad stopped at a petrol station to fill up and my brother and I jumped out of the car to use the facilities. When I came out of the toilets, my mother was sitting in the front seat, sobbing uncontrollably and my dad was smiling apologetically at the attendant.

‘What’s wrong mum?’ I asked.

She was too overcome to speak and simply pointed a shaky finger at a newspaper billboard: THE KING IS DEAD.

‘But we have a queen, not a king,’ I said.

‘Not a real king,’ said my dad, bundling my brother and I back into the car. ‘Elvis Presley. The King of Rock ‘n Roll.’

The Day the Music Died

It has been thirty years since Elvis Aaron Presley, the man millions believe was the greatest rock ‘n roller of all time, died on that Memphis toilet.

As news spread, tens of thousands of people flocked to the gates of Graceland, Elvis’ home in Memphis. The public outpouring of grief had not been seen since the death of John F. Kennedy in 1963, and would not be again until the death of Princess Diana in 1997. And just like the devotees of those other icons of the 20th Century, the Elvis fans, at first, refused to believe he was dead. Eventually, Vernon Presley, Elvis’ father, opened those famous musical gates and allowed the now over 60,000 fans in to view their King’s body for themselves. When they returned, their message was clear: ‘the King is really dead.’

Conspiracy Theories

But just like JFK and Diana, many still refused to believe it, and soon conspiracy theories were concocted to explain the sudden absense of their hero.

Thirty years later and the passion has not waned; in fact it’s growing faster than many formal religions. Some call it a cult, with oft-reported ‘sightings’ of the ‘resurrected King’; but fans say it is simply a harmless devotion that enriches their lives. The ‘cult’ question has been raised because of the strangely religious language that fans use when speaking about their King, and, in many cases, the interchangeable use of the names, and roles, of Jesus and Elvis.

Saint Elvis

Many of the written tributes on the walls of Graceland allude to this:

Coming back from Lubbock
I thought I saw Jesus on the plane
But it might have been Elvis
They look kinda the same.

For some people he has become an intercessory saint or guide:

pray for us Elvis, and thank you for being our guiding light

and for a few, God himself:

Elvis, Eternal Spirit, Blessed God.

But most Elvis fans distance themselves from the fanatics, admitting however, that Elvis has a very special place in their lives: ‘When I am sad I just play one of his records and listen to his beautiful voice and he makes me feel much better.’ Some Christian fans find the cult tendencies worrying: ‘I’ve had a very strong interest in Elvis’ spirituality … but there are those who literally worship Elvis, and what they are really seeking is the true king, Jesus Christ.’

The Elvis Gospel

Some Christians see the obsession with Elvis and its association with Christianity as a ministry opportunity. Madeleine Wilson, a retired teacher from Wolverhampton, says she felt a calling to reach out to Elvis fans on the anniversary of his 60th birthday in 1995.

She founded Elvis Gospel Ministries that is endorsed by the Christian members of the Presley family and by a number of ministers in England.

Madeleine points out that Elvis never allowed people to call him the King, and when they did so, he would always say: ‘No honey, there is one King and that is Jesus Christ.’

Elvis the Christian

After eight years of research, interviewing people who were close to Elvis, including ministers and Sunday School teachers who knew him, she believes that Elvis was a backslidden Christian who, like the biblical Samson, failed to fully live out the call of God on his life.

She says: ‘We have grasped the God-given opportunity of the continuing popularity of Elvis Presley, to make available to many thousands of people, the good news of Jesus Christ.

Elvis was a Christian and knew that he was called by God to be an evangelist. In the last year of his life he sang more Gospel songs, and was even known to read from the Bible on stage. He was, however, unable to escape from the spiritual trap in which he was caught. God in His mercy removed Elvis from the scene of time, but the work he began is not yet finished.

The New Age Elvis

For people who remember the gun-loving, drug-addicted, obese Elvis of the mid-seventies, this picture of him is a little hard to accept. As are his Christian credentials. In his book Elvis People: The Cult of the King former BBC religious affairs correspondent Ted Harrison points out Elvis’ meanderings into New Age religion, and some evidence that, at times, Elvis thought that he might be a special messenger from God, similar, if not equal to Jesus.

But Madeleine Wilson is not blind to Elvis’ faults. In her book Prayers of Elvis she says: ‘His relentless search for ‘the Truth’, led him into studying other philosophies and religions which only served to confuse him more… he was really struggling, both physically and spiritually … because of his not altogether godly lifestyle.’

But in the last months of his life he expressed a desire to leave everything and become a full-time gospel singer. A few hours before he died, he prayed with his stepbrother Rick Stanley: ‘Dear Lord please show me a way, I am tired and confused and I need your help.’ Then he is reported as saying: ‘Rick, we should all begin to live for Christ.’

In her book, and on the Elvis Gospel website, Madeleine and her colleagues clearly outline the true gospel and encourage fans to commit to Christ. She believes that the ‘charisma’ surrounding Elvis that everyone speaks of is the Holy Spirit, and Elvis failed, in part, by not using this gifting to point people to Christ.

Memphis to Marakesh

This may be one explanation of the incredible impact Elvis Presley has had on people of all ages, cultures and faiths. Or it may not be. Yet there is one, unmistakeable truth: people love Elvis.

I have heard of Elvis look-alike contests being held from Memphis to Marakesh, and there’s even a Heartbreak Hotel outside Jerusalam. People from Christian, Muslim, Jewish and secular backgrounds all find a home in this ‘faith’. How could a man who never travelled outside of his own country except to do national service in Germany hold such universal appeal?

I would suggest it’s because his music speaks of the yearning common to us all: to be loved and to give love in return. His life speaks of our dreams of becoming somebody when we think we’re a nobody. His struggles with drug, alcohol and substance abuse reflect our frailties and fears. And yet he was god-like in a rhinestone and satin way, but this god, unlike the gods of traditional religions, demands nothing of us except our love.

For some, that’s worth worshipping. For me, I prefer a God who isn’t dead, and the only place Elvis has in my life is on my CD rack. Long live the King.

First Published in Plain Truth, August 2007 as ‘The King is Dead’.

It’s rumoured that Bill Clinton is one of their descendents, but the gypsies of Yetholm on the Scottish and Northumberland border have more than an American president to their name. We look back on the lineage of one of Britain’s less known royal families.

You may be an American searching for your roots, or just a local, enjoying the country air, but if, like many ramblers walking the Cheviots you stop off to have a pint at Town Yetholm’s only watering hole, you will notice a photo gallery of some of the Border town’s more colourful historic residents. These are the Gypsies of Yetholm.

Picture courtesy of Yetholm Historical Society

The Clinton Connection

The Travellers, or Gypsies as they used to be called, have a long association with this region and once had a ‘royal family’ enthroned at Kirk Yetholm, just over the border from Wooler. There is some evidence to suggest that the former American President Bill Clinton is a descendent of the royal family of Yetholm.

Clinton was born William Blyth IV and only adopted his stepfather’s name ‘Clinton’ when he was at college. Genealogists have traced the president’s lineage back to an uncle of Queen Esther Faa Blyth, one Andrew Blyth, who moved to America in 1801– whether forced or not is unclear. But whatever the case, he chose to remain, unlike his fellow gypsy Jemmy Allan (b1802), famous as a Piper to the Duke of Northumberland, who was transported to America numerous times but always returned within a few months.

Persecution

The first written record of gypsies in Kirk Yetholm dates back to 1695. It seems that many of them fled there to escape persecution, and, in some cases, to hide from the constabulary on both sides of the Border, It is believed that in that year a gypsy saved the life of a local laird who, as a thank you, built some houses in the village. They were to be leased to the gypsies in perpetuity. The main families were the Youngs, the Taits, the Gordons, the Fleckies, the Douglas’, the Blyths and the Faas (or Faws).

For the next 200 years or so, they wintered in Yetholm and every summer packed up their wagons to sell wares in the surrounding towns. They criss-crossed Northumberland and Cumbria, regularly stopping in at Wooler, Boulmer, Berwick, Appleby and Carlisle. At Boulmer they were renowned for their trade in smuggled whisky and gin from Holland, which one estimate in 1885 valued at £20,000 per annum!

The Royal Line

The first recorded ‘King’ in Yetholm, was one Patrick Faa in the 1730s and ‘40s. His queen was a formidable six-foot-tall woman called Jean Gordon, whom, it was believed, was the inspiration for the character of Meg Merrilees in Sir Walter Scott’s novel Guy Mannering. But royal blood was no protection for this family: Patrick was deported to the Americas for theft, three of his sons were hanged for sheep stealing and Jean was drowned by an angry mob in Carlisle for voicing her sympathy for Bonnie Prince Charlie.

The Faas were unashamed supporters of the Scottish Royal House, as it was thanks to the Stewarts that they owed their own royal status. It was widely believed that James V had granted their ancestor, John or George Faa, the right to call himself the King of the Gypsies in 1539. Historical records show that there was indeed a writ of the Privy Council recognising the right of a John Faw, the ‘Lord of Litill Egypt’ to rule and enforce laws over his ‘people’. It seems that James was hoping to encourage a degree of self-regulation to a group who were increasingly troublesome. He apparently revoked it a year later, but the gypsy royals conveniently ignored this.

The Egyptian Connection

‘Litill Egypt’ referred to the fact that it was believed that the gypsies, who first came to the British Isles in the 1500s, hailed from an island off the coast of Egypt – hence the nickname ‘gypties’ or ‘gypsies’. More recent research, particularly into linguistic links, has revealed that while some gypsies may have sojourned in Egypt, their most likely ethnic origin is North West India. In the 1540s and 50s there were a number of ‘documents’ floating around gypsy circles claiming royal approval – each of them referring to a king, earl, knight or rajah of ‘Litill Egypt’.

In Durham in 1549, Amy and George Fawe laid a charge against a John Rowland, for counterfeiting the king’s Great Seal and falsely claiming to be ‘King of the Gypsies’. The Faas claimed this right exclusively as their own. The royal lineage continued through the Faa family and later, by marriage, the Blyths, until 1898, when the last king, Charles Faa Blyth, was crowned. The most famous of the royals was Esther Faa Blyth, or Ettie, as she was known to family and friends. Ettie claimed the crown in 1861 by literally fighting off rival claims from her sisters after the death of her father Charles.

Queen Esther’s Coronation

Picture courtesy of Yetholm Historical SocietyKirk Yetholm’s village green was the site of this catfight and also the victorious queen’s coronation. This eyewitness account appeared in the Kelso Chronicle in 1861:

The Queen, mounted on her palfrey, proceeded to the Cross, where the ceremony of coronation was to be performed – the crown-bearer and the crowner following behind … he now placed the crown – a tinsel one, alas! – upon the head of Esther … and proclaimed her Queen Esther Faa Blyth, challenge who dare.

And no one dared – not even on her royal demise in 1883, and it seemed for a while that she would be the last gypsy monarch. Queen Esther became something of a celebrity with Victorian gentry who travelled from all over the country to visit her in her ‘palace’ – which is now a B&B called the Gypsy Palace. Despite receiving gifts from many of her admirers, Esther died in poverty, and with her the lively tourist trade that made Kirk Yetholm a ‘must-stop’ on the route to Scotland.

The Last of the Line

In an attempt to revive the flagging economy, a relative of Esther’s was crowned Charles II in 1898 in a farcical ‘coronation’ that brought a great crowd but was considered demeaning by the locals. On Charles’ death a few years later, none of his descendents were prepared to take up the crown. By the turn of the 20^th century, the gypsies of Yetholm had either moved away or become assimilated into the local population, and no longer saw themselves as a separate race.

Now all that is left are a few photos on a pub wall, a small cottage called the Gypsy Palace and some fabulous stories.

Picture courtesy of Yetholm Historical Society

For more on Yetholm and its colourful heritage, including original photos of the Gypsy Royals, visit

• www.yetholm.bordernet.co.uk
• www.scottishgypsies.co.uk

This article first appeared in the Northumbrian in August 2003 as ‘King’s, Queens and Presidents’

North East England, like the rest of Europe in the 17th Century, has a shameful history that it would like to hide. But with Halloween just a short broomstick ride away I’ve started hunting for the old witches of Northumbria and found a cauldron-full of dirty secrets.

If you’re out Riding Mill way and decide to take a walk over the old bridge, make sure you’re not alone. And if it’s a clear night with a full moon think twice about going out at all lest you stumble across a coven of witches dancing naked to Diana’s light. But if you insist, don’t blame us if you fall under their evil spell, and do things you would not normally do.

Witches Brew

“Don’t worry,” you say, “I’ll just pop along to the Wellington for a pint instead.” Well, if you must, take a peek in a window first, in case the witches have flown ahead of you to their old haunt. If this was the 1670s, you might have seen them swinging from a rope tied to the rafters or changing shape into a greyhound or a hare. In fact one of them might have told you about it, and she, history tells us, was stripped naked and tied to a table while hot wax was dripped onto her tortured body. When the wax hardened, her sisters gathered it together, melted it, then poured it into her mouth so she would never talk again.

This group were finally exposed by the notorious witch hunter Anne Armstrong in 1673 during the Northumberland witch trials. They were hanged – like most of their sisters. Unlike the rest of Europe, and particularly Scotland, the English rarely burnt (or worse) boiled their witches, but rather sent them to the gallows. Many though were let off ‘lightly’ with a gaol sentence if they fully repented of their sins.

Burnings in Berwick

It’s a pity that Berwick upon Tweed hadn’t heard about that though. In 1650, 14 suspected witches were burnt to death in a small village on the outskirts of the town. This practically wiped out the entire population as there were only 14 houses in the whole village.

1650 was a good year for witchhunting it seems. The town fathers of Newcastle, worried about rumours of the growth of witchcraft in the city, sent to Scotland for the most famous witch hunter of the day (his name does not appear in the records held at St Nicholas church) and asked him to ply his trade south of the border. The town ringer was sent through the town crying: “All people that would bring in any complaint against any woman for a witch, they should be sent for and tried by the person appointed.” Thirty women (and a man) were brought to the town hall.

Drawing Blood

A sympathetic witness tells us what happened: “Each of them was exposed from the waist to the heels in the presence of the ignorant and excited populace, and the witchfinder, who professed to know a witch by her looks, to make assurance doubly sure, tested each of the poor creatures by running a pin into her naked person. If no blood flowed she was set aside as a child of the devil, a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction. If blood flowed she was pronounced innocent.”

One fortunate soul, after being judged to be in the devil’s camp, asked to be tested again, claiming that fear had driven the blood from her veins. She bled the second time around, but 27 others didn’t. Fifteen of them, including one ‘wizard’ were hanged on the Town Moor near Gallowgate, the present site of St James’ Park football stadium.

Profiting from misery

After that, spurred on by his successes in Newcastle, the infamous witch finder moved into the countryside of Northumberland, charging from 20 shillings to £3 a witch. As his charges started to creep up, the local gentry began to suspect that he was making false accusations for profit and drove him back to Scotland. Soon afterwards, he himself was named as a witch and confessed to sending 220 innocent women to the gallows to line his pockets with silver.

Shocking, yes, but not surprising. In the 17th Century, labelling people a witch was as common as accusing politicians of lying. It was mainly women who were named (although in Iceland, 90% of the executed witches were men), and it was mainly women who did the naming. The Durham ecclesiastical courts record charges such as ‘swearing, slandering, backbiting and adultery’ alongside and often interchangeable with ‘witchcraft’. Take the case of Isobel Harrison who accused Alison Vasey of ‘playing the whore in a lane’. Vasey countersued, calling Harrison an ‘arrant whore, theefe and witch.’ Both women were tried for witchcraft. Both were found innocent but given punitive punishment for wasting the court’s time.

In fact, accusing your accuser of witchcraft was a tried and tested defence. Take Alice Armstrong of Haltwhistle, for instance. She was accused of witchcraft by the rector of the local church, Thomas Astell, in the 1620s. She then accused Reverend Astell of the same crime. Confused, the court let them both off. Speaking of men of the cloth batting for the other team, three people were tried for witchcraft in Durham in 1620 – they all claimed to have learnt their trade from Thomas Lyons, former curate of the parish of Earsdon near Tynemouth.

Sexcraft

Sex of course, is never far away from our sordid tale. At Stanhope in 1580, three women from the Emerson family were tried for ‘fornication and witchcraft’; in 1599 in Berwick, a man was accused of being a mere fornicator, while his poor partner was upgraded to a ‘suspected charmer, inchantrix and witche’. She was burnt to death over the border in Scotland, he spent an unpleasant time in gaol. Just like in Arthur Miller’s classic play The Crucible many of the witchcraft accusations were brought by jealous wives who feared that their husbands had been ‘bewitched’ by other women.

More often than not though, it was the traditional healers who were accused of witchcraft. In 1682, Margaret Stothard from Edlington was brought before the court. Three witnesses appeared and accused her of appearing at the foot of a man’s bed surrounded by light, curing a child of illness by passing the infirm spirit onto a nearby animal, and turning someone’s sour milk pure. Mrs Stothard, it is reported, died in her bed of ‘natural causes.’ Lucky Mrs Stothard.

Unfair game

From the time of Henry VIII, up until the death penalty for witchcraft was revoked in 1736, about a thousand people were executed in England and more than double that in Scotland. Ireland, strangely, never really got into the sport and could only notch up four kills in two hundred years. In Northumbria, we contributed about a hundred to the national statistic.

So next time you’re in Riding Mill having a drink at the Wellington, be careful what secrets you tell – you never know who could be listening.

Originally appeared in Living North, October 2002

References:

• Rushton, Peter ‘Women, Witchcraft and Slander in Early Modern England: cases from the church courts of Durham, 1560 – 1675′ Northern History vol 18, 1982.
• Watson, Godfrey Bothwell and the Witches Hale, 1975
• Sterck, Sidney ‘The Sport of Witchunting’ Sunday Saun, 1/3/1964

On 23 February 1807 the British Parliament voted to abolish the Transatlantic slave trade after 245 years of profiting from human misery. Fiona Veitch Smith asks why it takes Christians so long to act in favour of just causes.

In 1562, the Elizabethan privateer John Hawkins, shipped the first British cargo of men, women and children from Africa to the Americas. My mother’s name was Hawkins and there is a chance that John might have been my great ancestor. He was later knighted and served as a rear admiral during the defeat of the Spanish Armada. For some he was a hero, for others a tyrant. Hawkins was not considered a devout man, but, like most Europeans of his time, claimed to be a Christian.

Many more ‘obvious’ Christians were involved in slavery, including the great evangelist George Whitefield who owned over 50 people. Theologian and revivalist Jonathan Edwards was also a slaveholder but his son, Jonathan Jnr, spoke out against the trade in the 1780s.

John Newton, the famous writer of ‘Amazing Grace’ who was converted on board his slave ship in 1750, only voiced his opposition to the trade in 1788 [1]. The Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) owned slaves in the Caribbean and branded the word ‘SOCIETY’ on their chests [2].

Muted Opposition

For around two centuries, Christian opposition to slavery was muted with only a handful of people such as the American Quaker Anthony Benezet and the English Anglican Granville Sharp, speaking out against its intrinsically evil nature. Many Christians decried the brutality of the trade, but they would have been content to see it ‘humanised’ not abolished. Still others only objected when slave owners prevented the evangelisation of Africans in their keep [3].

Even the influential group of Evangelical Anglicans who gathered around Barham Court in Teston during the 1770s initially only called for benevolent reform. This philanthropic group was made up of aristocratic men and women, such as the poet Hannah More, the charitable recluse Elizabeth Bouverie, Lady Margaret Middleton and her husband Charles (a comptroller of the Royal Navy) and the Bishop of Chester, Beilby Porteus.

They hoped to use their social standing to influence the moral tone of the nation and the cleaning up of the slave trade became a cause celebre. Bishop Porteus called for laws to ‘restrain abusive slaveholders and for initiatives that would provide the enslaved protection, security, encouragement, improvement and conversion.’ [4]

In answer to some slaveholders’ concern that allowing Christian instruction would lead to an undermining of authority and curbing of profits, Lady Middleton replied that preaching the gospel ‘would be the most profitable means of making slaves diligent and faithful; for it would awaken conscience within them, to be a strict overseer, and a severe monitor, whom they could not evade.’ [5]

The Quakers

The Quakers have rightly been credited as providing the impetus for the abolition of the slave trade. They, plus the Evangelical Anglicans from the famous Clapham Sect, founded the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787. But the British Quakers had been aware of the horrors of slavery in the Americas for decades before this.

The irrepressible Pennsylvanian Quaker, Anthony Benezet, had written to his London brethren as early as 1766, asking them to lobby for the abolition of the trade. He also wrote to John Wesley, the Countess of Huntingdon and the Archbishop of Canterbury. [6]

But it was only in 1782 that a small committee of London Quakers was convened in response to Benezet’s repeated appeals. Admittedly, Britain’s war with the American colonists prohibited more vigorous action. But with the war over and the mood in Britain decidedly anti the colonial upper classes, the time was ripe for a more concerted effort.

The abolitionists

In 1787 the Quaker committee joined forces with likes of Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson and formed the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. They lobbied public opinion around the country and collected 100 petitions containing 60,000 signatures, mainly from Christians. But despite this promising start it was another 20 years before they convinced parliament to abolish the trade. The French Revolution and the subsequent war diverted the nation’s attention, so another generation of African children had to suffer.

The war was not the only excuse. The financial motivation behind the slave trade was no secret. The British Empire flourished on it. Politically influential people, including many Christians, had made their fortunes on it, and they were not going to give it up that easily. But as the petitions of 1787 – 88 showed, the groundswell of public opinion was turning against it. This was due, in part, to some eloquent and moving pamphleteering by free black Christians such as Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano [7]. The essays of ex-slaveholder and church minister James Ramsay also caused a stir so that literate and freethinking Christians no longer had the excuse that they ‘did not know’.

Delayed action

Yet why did it take so long to happen? Let’s not forget that in 1807 only the trade in slaves was abolished, not slavery itself. That took until 1832, and even then, slaveholders were granted a 10-year phasing out period and £20 million in compensation out of the taxpayer’s pocket. And of course, only the British trade was abolished. France and Denmark abolished slavery in 1848, Holland in 1863 and the United States in 1865. The Spanish turned a blind eye to ‘illegal imports’ until 1867. Cuba’s slaves were finally freed in 1886 and Brazil, the last colonial slaveholder, in 1888 – a hundred and one years after the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed.[8]

Of course, that was not the end of slavery. The European trade in slaves to the Americas would not have been possible without the co-operation of African traders and rulers. And slavery, in its indigenous form, continued on that continent and in Asia well into the colonial period. And it still does today. But more of that later.

For now, the question still remains: why did Europeans who considered themselves ‘good Christians’ fail to speak out against the transatlantic slave trade for so long? I would like to suggest six reasons:

1. Ignorance

As the New World was opened up, many people believed the stories of explorers that indigenous Africans, Asians and Americans were not really ‘human’. But that excuse wore thin. Educated black people were becoming more common and their ‘humanity’ was no longer questioned by the majority of Europeans in the enlightened 18th century.

2. Lack of biblical clarity

Christians wanting to defend slavery cited the fact that the Bible didn’t actually condemn it. This argument was countered by the likes of Olauday Equiano who pointed out that biblical slavery was really just indentured servitude and that God’s Year of Jubilee was designed to free all who were enslaved every seven years.

Other abolitionists argued that the emancipation of slaves was on Jesus’ agenda and an outworking of his Gospel of the Kingdom. [9]

3. Lack of empathy with ‘others’

It was simply a matter of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Most of the early abolitionists only started speaking out against the trade when they saw the horrors of it first hand. Slavery was never officially condoned within the borders of the British Isles, but somehow, what happened half a world away, didn’t matter as much.

4. Economic issues

There was a general understanding that the wealth of the Empire was dependent on forced labour. However unpalatable the institution of slavery was to most people, few were prepared to make the financial sacrifices necessary to end it. Even the abolitionists understood this, and needed to show that the whole economy would not collapse if the trade was banned.

But some did, such as the Methodist Samuel Bradburn: ‘(I) have always abhorred slavery in every shape (and have been) in some degree accessory to the Bondage, Torture and Death of myriads of human beings by assisting to consume the produce of their labour, their tears and their blood!’

He went on to ask God’s pardon and hoped that by boycotting sugar he could ‘make some restitution for my former want of attention to my duty in this respect.’ [10]

5. Fear of persecution

The Society of Friends were at the forefront of abolitionism. But it took them a long time to do so. Many Quakers were involved in the slave trade and were only forbidden to do so in the 1770s. Another concern was the fear of persecution. Religious toleration was relatively new in Great Britain, and many Quakers feared that by speaking out against contentious issues such as slavery, their own privileges might be curtailed. [11]

6. Fear of association

Some Anglican Christians feared that by speaking out against slavery they would be labelled a ‘methodist’ or ‘evangelical’ which in the 18th Century was less than respectable. William Wilberforce’s mother had that very fear for her son. [12]

I believe that the same issues prevent Christians from speaking out today. There are more slaves now than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the transatlantic slave trade. National Geographic estimates that there are 27 million men, women and children enslaved in the world today. They are either physically confined or restrained and forced to work, or controlled through violence.[13] This time we cannot claim ignorance. Day after day, newspapers, broadcasts and webcasts detail the horrors of exploitative labour practices, child labour and sex and drug trafficking.

What can I do?

We know what’s going on, so why don’t we do something about it? ‘What can I do?’ I hear you ask. Well you may not be able to stop child labour on your own, but if you and a million others stop buying goods made by children, you might make a difference. As journalist John Pilger reminds us: ‘Make sure your money helps rather than harms the world’s poor.’ [14] You may not agree with everything John Pilger says, but that shouldn’t stop you supporting a just cause. Remember the respectable Anglicans who didn’t want to be labelled ‘methodists’?

As a student in South Africa in the late 1980s I was involved in a number of anti-apartheid protests. A slogan of one of the anti-apartheid groups was ‘one settler, one bullet’. As a white ’settler’ I found this very disturbing and I certainly didn’t want to endorse such views by my participation in protest rallies. Nor did I believe in the absolute communism of other protesters. There were yet others who saw the Christian church as a vehicle for white oppression. But although I did not agree with the goals, views or methods of some of the protesters, I did agree that the ending of apartheid was a ‘just cause’.

Strange bed fellows

Some readers might have participated in the Make Poverty History Campaign. I didn’t make it up to Edinburgh in July 2005 but I saw newsclips and videos. Marching side by side were evangelical Christians, atheists, anarchists, gay-rights activists, anti-war protesters, animal-rights campaigners, Islamic fundamentalists and Western pop stars. Strange bedfellows indeed.

Politics and religion are a volatile mix that have led to some explosive encounters in my life. In a recent edition of the Plain Truth I wrote an article on the possibility of Muslims and Christians being friends. As a result one reader assumed I read the Guardian and voted for Blair. It was also suggested that someone with my ‘liberal’ opinions was likely to be in favour of gay adoption rights. On the other hand I was recently labelled a right-wing, fundamentalist, narrow-minded non-intellectual Christian by someone of a more ‘liberal’ persuasion. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between.

God’s eyes

I pray that we will stop seeing the world through political glasses and start seeing it through God’s. Forget about what the Labour Party or the Conservative Party or the Republican Party or the environmentalists or the capitalists or the communists say about certain issues, the only question for us is: what does God say? This, of course, is not always an easy answer. But there are some things that are clear cut: God hates human suffering. What are we doing to stop it?

Two hundred years ago Christians led a campaign to end their country’s involvement in slavery. They might have taken a while to get started, but at least they finally did. In two hundred years time, if the Lord still tarries, I wonder how the Christians of today will be judged.

Footnotes

1. John Newton, Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade, 1788

2. John Coffey, ‘The Abolition of the slave trade: Christian conscience and political Action’, Cambridge Papers, Volume 15, Number 2, June 2006

3. See Chapter 1 in Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital, Chapel Hill, 2006.

4. Ibid p352

5. Ibid p350

6. Ibid p401

7. Caretta, V. Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-speaking World of the 18th Century University of Kentucky Press, 1996

8. John Coffey ibid .

9. ibid

10. Samuel Bradburn An Address, p6 as quote in Coffey ibid

11. See Christopher Leslie Brown, Chapter 7, ibid

12. Encarta Encyclopedia, 2003 ‘William Wilberforce’

13. Andrew Cockburn ’21st Century Slaves’ National Geographic, 2003

14. John Pilger The New Rulers of the World

An edited version of this article appeared in Plain Truth as ‘What Took You So Long’?, February 2007