Epiblog for the Feast of Little St Hugh

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Unexpectedly, we find ourselves contemplating going away again, for perhaps as long as a fortnight. And we may even be going back to Arran.  I don’t quite know how it came about, but for Debbie it was a great wrench when we had to leave the island and come back home again on August 7th. Family circumstances, particularly her mum’s 70th birthday celebrations, dictating that we couldn’t tarry any longer.

On the way back, she was already talking about fitting in one more camper trip before the summer was over, because once September comes, she will be blundering back into the morass of teaching, the nights will draw in, faster than we know it, and what Yeats called “A raving autumn” will “shear blossom from the summer's wreath”.  Downhill all the way to Christmas, with your feet off the pedals.  With such a depressing prospect in mind, I don’t blame her for her desire to push the envelope. I have often said, on other occasions, that if pushing the envelope was an Olympic event, Debbie would have a gold medal, but on this occasion, maybe it is justified.  One last ramble in the camper van, before the darkness closes over our heads again until next spring.

Of course, as I write this, as always, our actual time and day of departure is uncertain. And, probably, weather-dependent, as is the duration of this second trip.  What is certain is that, wherever we get to - if we go - really, we must be back by 1st September at the latest, because two days later, College starts up again and Debbie’s presence is requested at an inset day, whatever one of those might be.

Meanwhile, here, the best that can be said of last week was that it was changeable. And not just the weather.  I’ve been trying to get down the immense stack of things that awaited me on my return from Arran, going one step forward, two steps back, and finding that things I thought I had metaphorically nailed down have come loose again while my back was turned, and are now metaphorically flapping in the metaphorical wind.

The real weather, and the real wind, has been a bit odd as well. I haven’t needed to water any of the outside herbs, yet I have hardly noticed it raining. All I can conclude is that, like in Camelot, it’s been raining between 9pm and sunrise. 

Matilda has been showing fewer signs of wanting to spend the entire day outdoors, now the decking is often wet in a morning, but she still follows me through when I get up and I let her out for a mini-patrol, following which, after having sniffed the lobelia in the tub opposite the door and generally satisfying herself that all is well, she comes back in for some breakfast. 

Misty Muttkins is settling in well, and has quickly learned how to acquire the prime place on the settee next to the stove.  Granny has been on holiday herself since Thursday, which means that Zak and Freddie are here with us, and Muttkins is getting to know them better as well.  She’s a strange little being, though. A “borderline” collie, obviously made on a Friday afternoon. “Boss, we’ve run out of matching brown eyes!” “Oh, just bung in a blue one, nobody will notice.” One and seven eighths ears, and a set of back legs that look like they should belong to a slightly smaller dog, as if they’ve been grafted on, in a sort of canine version of the “cut and shunt” car trick. Still she’s calmed down a lot, and is, as I said before, despite her obviously crappy life until the point where she was rescued by two angels who took her to the Border Collie Trust, the sweetest-natured little dog you could ask for. 

Deb’s been taking her on some quite long walks since we got back, as well, and all reports are good, so far. Like Tiggy before her, she’s always ready to go that extra mile, even if, on some occasions, Debbie isn’t.

For my part, I’ve had, like I said, a week of questionable achievements. But then, if you consider that all human endeavour is ultimately futile, as I sometimes think in my darkest moments, who’s to say what is an “achievement” anyway. Sometimes, just getting through the night is an achievement, as on Wednesday when I ran out of Furosemide and the pharmacy couldn’t drop me any off, and my legs swelled up like two gourds of a baobab tree and I had the worst night’s “sleep” I have had for some years. When the Furosemide arrived on Thursday I seized it as eagerly as if it had been Manna from heaven, and swallowed two tablets, since when I have more or less returned to normal. It was quite scary how quickly the odoema re-asserted itself in my legs, though. I’ll have to watch that.

On Friday we were going to go to Pendle Hill. Because Granny is away, if we do get back to Arran next week, it will entail taking Misty, Zak, and Freddie. Although Freddie is excused mountain-climbing duties owing to his extreme old age, I suggested to Debbie that it might be a good idea to do a “dry run” and check out how Zak and Misty were together, on a mountain or hill tall enough to be interesting but gentle enough not to have any arêtes or cols that either dog could hurl themselves over in a fit of misdirected energy.  Hence my suggestion of Pendle. I was interested to see it at close quarters, as well, not only for the witch trial connection but also because it was where George Fox, one of the founders of the Quaker movement, apparently had a fundamental vision there of some sort, in 1652, that inspired him to go on to greater things.

As we travelled, we came near a very great hill, called Pendle Hill, and I was moved of the Lord to go up to the top of it; which I did with difficulty, it was so very steep and high. When I was come to the top, I saw the sea bordering upon Lancashire.  From the top of this hill the Lord let me see in what places he had a great people to be gathered.  As I went down, I found a spring of water in the side of the hill, with which I refreshed myself, having eaten or drunk but little for several days before.

The spring from which Fox drank is still known as “George Fox’s Well.”

Anyway, Friday was such a shitnastic day that the Pendle excursion had to be cancelled, so Zak’s ability as a mountaineering doggie goes untested.  Let’s hope he doesn’t discover he’s afraid of heights half way up Cir Mhor! The main cause of the shitnasticity (if that’s even a word) of Friday was the arrival of the forms which will have to be completed in order to exhume the cremated remains of my mother, my dad, Granny Fenwick and Auntie Maud from beneath the memorial tree in Hull’s Northern Cemetery. If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll probably remember that a couple of weeks ago, it emerged that the “licence” to continue to maintain the memorial tree in question had expired, and that the choices were either a) to pay for another decade of interment, or b) to have them exhumed and do something else with them.

Given that neither my sister or myself, now lives in Hull and neither of us ever gets over to Hull any more much, and that also where the tree is situated is a very gloomy part of the Northern Cemetery and there are a lot of bigger, older trees that overshadow it, after much heart-searching we decided on the  alternative; to have the ashes exhumed and then we can scatter them in a place more appropriate to their lives and times. While we may not necessarily get to those places any more often, it’s more comforting somehow to think of their presence there, than in a dark corner of a cemetery that – to be honest – none of them cared for in life.

Currently, under the tree in question, as I said, are the ashes of Auntie Maud, Granny Fenwick, my mum and dad.  There’s no problem with the exhumation of the ashes of mum and dad, because the only two people involved are Mandy and me, and we both agree.  But on the application forms from the Ministry of Justice, it says that we have to have a declaration signed by everyone who is of the same, or closer, relationship to “the deceaseds” as/than my sister or me. In the case of Granny Fenwick and Auntie Maud, this is a list of 17 people, each of whom has to sign a declaration for Gran and one for Auntie Maud, in other words, 34 separate bits of paper.

So, by the time this particular gnat in the germolene is sorted out, clearly nothing is going to happen in a hurry. It may well be next spring before we can scatter my mum’s ashes among the hedgerows and woodland paths of Elloughton Dale, up behind the cottage where she lived, along with those of Granny Fenwick, to join mum’s sisters, Eileen and Rhoda, who are already there. It would be good to do it on a fine spring day when the white clouds are piled up over the silver gleam of the Humber, in the distance below, at a place where the tall trees are breaking into new leaf and arching overhead like the elaborate fan-vaulting of nature’s cathedral roof.

But for now, we have paperwork, drudgery, preparations, and changeable weather. A state of flux. My least-favourite state. And so we come to Sunday, which is, today, the feast of St. Hugh the Little, or Hugh of Lincoln (1246 – 1255). Sometimes, the lives of these distant saints carry resonances and, yes, even lessons, for us in our modern 21^st century lives, and this one’s a real doozie. St  Hugh was reportedly a victim of ritual killing by English Jews. King Henry III, no less, conducted the “investigation” of the crime which resulted in eighteen or nineteen Jews being hanged. Hugh had been scourged, crowned with thorns, and crucified, then deposited down a well.  Miracles supposedly accompanied the recovery of the saint’s body from its hiding-place, and the martyrdom was even included in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Little St Hugh’s feast is no longer kept by the Church, and the entire account of the young saint’s demise is now considered an example of the anti-Semitism which was rampant throughout the Middle Ages. In art, he is often shown bound in cords, and kneeling before the Virgin Mary. [He is known as “Little” St Hugh to distinguish him from St Hugh of Lincoln, who is an “adult” saint with the same name, just in case you wondered.]

The nine year old boy disappeared on 31 July1255, and his body was discovered in a well on 29 August of that year. A local baron, John de Lexington [nowadays Laxton, in Nottinghamshire] appears to have suggested that Jews were responsible. Hugh's friends apparently claimed that a local Jew called Copin or possibly Jopin, had imprisoned Hugh, during which time he tortured and eventually crucified him. It was claimed that the body had been thrown into the well after attempts to bury it failed, when the earth had miraculously expelled it and it was found lying on the surface, the next day. Copin was arrested and, under torture, admitted to killing the child, and for good measure, implicating the Jewish community as a whole. He was executed, despite a promise from the King that if he confessed, his life would be saved, and the story quickly snowballed into a terrifying blizzard of events.

Some six months earlier, the King had sold his rights to tax the Jews living in England to his brother, Richard, Earl of Cornwall. Having lost this source of income, he decided that he was, however, still eligible to get his royal hands on their money if they were convicted of crimes. As a result, some ninety Jews were arrested and held in the Tower of London, while they were charged with involvement in the ritual murder of Little St Hugh. Such accusations had become increasingly common following the circulation of the life and hagiography of William of Norwich, a child-saint said to have been crucified by Jews in 1144. This narrative clearly influenced the myth that also developed around Hugh.

Eighteen of the Jews were hanged for refusing to participate in the proceedings and accept the verdict of a Christian jury and King Henry was able to take over their property. The remainder were pardoned and set free, most likely because Richard, who saw a potential threat to his own source of income, intervened on their behalf with his brother.

A major source for all of this is the chronicler Matthew Paris, who described the supposed murder, implicating all the Jews in England:

This year [1255] about the feast of the apostles Peter and Paul, the Jews of Lincoln stole a boy called Hugh, who was about eight years old. After shutting him up in a secret chamber, where they fed him on milk and other childish food, they sent to almost all the cities of England in which there were Jews, and summoned some of their sect from each city to be present at a sacrifice to take place at Lincoln, in contumely and insult of Jesus Christ. For, as they said, they had a boy concealed for the purpose of being crucified; so a great number of them assembled at Lincoln, and then they appointed a Jew of Lincoln judge, to take the place of Pilate, by whose sentence, and with the concurrence of all, the boy was subjected to various tortures.

They scourged him till the blood flowed, they crowned him with thorns, mocked him, and spat upon him; each of them also pierced him with a knife, and they made him drink gall, and scoffed at him with blasphemous insults, and kept gnashing their teeth and calling him Jesus, the false prophet. And after tormenting him in divers ways they crucified him, and pierced him to the heart with a spear. When the boy was dead, they took the body down from the cross, and for some reason disembowelled it, it is said for the purpose of their magic arts.

Shortly after news was spread of his death, miracles were attributed to Hugh and he was fast-tracked into sainthood, becoming one of the youngest individual candidates for this status, with 27 July unofficially made his feast day. Over time, however, the question of the rush to sainthood was raised, and his name was excluded from Butler’s Lives of the Saints. Today, Hugh’s sainthood is abolished, though the Vatican has not officially revoked the status of sainthood for him, since he was never officially canonized to start with and he was never included in the Catholic martyrology, so maybe “abolished” is rather a strong word – can you abolish something that never really existed in the first place?

An unexpected by-product of his demise was that the Cathedral in Lincoln benefited financially from the episode, since Hugh was seen as a Christian martyr, and sites associated with his life became objects of pilgrimage. Pilgrims flocking into town was always good for trade in the Middle ages, as they needed food, lodging, and spent disposable income on trinkets and relics.  The legend surrounding Little St Hugh that emerged became part of popular culture, and his story became the subject of poetry and folk-songs. In effect, he became a “folk-saint”, and – as I said above - Geoffrey Chaucer references the legend in "The Prioress's Tale".

Pilgrims devoted to Little St Hugh of Lincoln continued to flock to Lincoln as late as the early 20th century, when a well was constructed in the former Jewish neighbourhood of Jews' Court and advertised as the well in which Hugh's body was found. I have to say this is probably wishful thinking, based on a desire to maximise clerical income. I once heard of a bloke in London who had a bus stop just outside his front garden gate, and dug a hole in the garden, as near to the road as possible, which he filled with water, topped off with a rockery, and erected a sign above, saying “Ye Olde Wishing Well” – he reckoned it was good for £15-£20 a week, just in loose change thrown in by people waiting for buses. I suspect a similar principle may have been employed by the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln. 

In 1955, the Anglican Church placed at the site of Little St Hugh's former shrine in Lincoln Cathedral a plaque bearing these words:

Trumped-up stories of "ritual murders" of Christian boys by Jewish communities were common throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and even much later. These fictions cost many innocent Jews their lives. Lincoln had its own legend and the alleged victim was buried in the Cathedral in the year 1255. Such stories do not redound to the credit of Christendom, and so we pray: Lord, forgive what we have been, amend what we are, and direct what we shall be.

The folk song The Ballad of Little Sir Hugh is based on the alleged murder. While playing football, Hugh loses the ball by kicking it through the window of a Jew's "castle". The "Jew's daughter" then entices Sir Hugh into her castle with an apple. She then stabs him through the heart and then dumps him in the well, but Hugh's voice calls out to his mother from the well, asking to be buried with a Bible.

She's led him in through ae dark door,

And sae has she thro' nine;

She's laid him on a dressing-table,

And stickit him like a swine.

And first came out the thick, thick blood,

And syne came out the thin;

And syne came out the bonny heart's blood;

There was nae mair within.

She's row'd him in a cake o'lead,

Bade him lie still and sleep;

She's thrown him in Our Lady's draw-well

Was fifty fathom deep.

The song survived into the early 20^th century and was collected as part of the early folk revival. It was recorded in a souped-up electronic version by Steeleye Span in 1975.  According to the notes by Cecil Sharp on a variant of the ballad, the events narrated in this ballad were supposed to have been taken from a contemporary writer in the Annals of Waverley, under the year 1255. In the ballad, to conceal the act from the Christians, the body was thrown into a running stream, but the water immediately rejected it and it ended up on dry land. It was then buried, but was found above ground the next day. As a last resort, the body was thrown into a well, whereupon the whole place was filled with so brilliant a light and so sweet an odour that it was clear to everybody that there must be something holy in the well. The body was seen floating on the water and was recovered.

Child, another ballad-collector, sums up the whole matter by saying, "These pretended child-murders, with their horrible consequences, are only a part of a persecution which, with all its moderation, may be rubricated as the most disgraceful chapter in the history of the human race."

So why do I say that the story of Little St Hugh has resonances for us today? Well, within living memory, of course, in the twentieth century, the Jews have been scapegoated and persecuted to a much greater extent than even Henry III managed. Though what Henry III would have achieved if he had been able to access the technology and political fanaticism available to Adolf Hitler, God alone knows.

But I think the lesson of Little St Hugh is a wider one, about scapegoating any section of society.  When I was researching him, I was instantly struck by both the parallels and differences with the murder of Lee Rigby. Obviously in the case of Lee Rigby, there was no doubting who did it, and why, so there was no need for a trumped-up investigation and careless accusations extracted under torture.

But as to the rest of it, what was eerily familiar to me was the automatic reaction and backlash that all Muslims were somehow to blame, in the minds of the likes of the EDL, for instance.  The same blanket reaction is manifest whenever there is a case of Asian men “grooming” young English girls.  It shouldn’t need to be said, but I think it needs saying. Not all Muslims are child abusers, and not all child abusers are Muslims. This doesn’t mean that I am apologising for it when it does happen, or saying they should be let off lightly, or pandered to in any way. People who break the law who are tried and convicted by due process and a fair trial, should be punished justly according to the law, whether it be the law on child abuse or the law on letting off bombs.  Without fear or favour, and with no special regard to their religion.

I’ve knocked about a bit, and seen a few things, and I can tell you this for free. In fact, I wrote it, in a book called Zen and the Art of Nurdling.

People might try and tell you, Lowis, that such and such a group of people are all bad or all good.  That you must be either “with them” or against them.  If someone tries to make you make such a choice, Lowis, you should scrutinise their reasons for asking very closely.  People, races, religions even, are almost always never wholly bad or good.  There are good people around wherever you go, and bad people.  In fact, most people aren’t wholly bad or good, most people are a mixture, and have good days and bad days.  Just as, when batting, you should play each ball on its merits and treat it with respect, so in life, Lowis.  Make up your own mind, speak as you find, and never be afraid to speak the truth.  If that means supporting the Samaritans in the cricket test, so be it.  One thing we are good at in England, and which I hope will still exist in your lifetime, Lowis, is sticking up for the underdog and giving them the benefit of the doubt.  And that is something about England of which you can be justifiably proud.

Of course, we live in a society these days where, thanks to the Junta’s divide and rule policies, scapegoating is almost a way of life. “Shop thy neighbour” has replaced “Love thy neighbour.”  Lorries patrolling the streets scapegoating illegal immigrants; people being stopped and asked for their papers; the press scapegoating the ill, the unemployed and the disadvantaged as “benefit scroungers” – I could go on. I frequently do.

But for the moment, speaking as a mere parcel, who goes where the music takes him, I may, it seems, find myself being packed up and taken unexpectedly back to Scotland for the next ten days or so.  While this is undoubtedly welcome from some points of view, it’s also remarkably inconvenient, in respect of the huge stack of work I’m still chewing my way through from last time, see above. I don’t begrudge Debbie a few more days freewheeling holiday, but I do sort of find myself wishing the work fairy really existed.  Either way, it’s all up in the air at the moment as I type – apart from anything else, the weather outside has turned nasty again, bringing Matilda skittering in from the garden, shaking raindrops off her fur as she goes.  But if there’s no Epiblog next week, it’s because once again I am on Arran, and Orange’s Dead Dongle has given up the electronic ghost and/or refused to work in the presence of mountains over 2000ft.

When I get back (sometimes, when we set off in the camper, it almost feels like “if” I get back) I am going to have my work cut out. I may have to give up eating and sleeping, at least temporarily.  I also have to sort out the exhumation forms, and – just at the point where I could least do with it, but then Big G has a sense of humour and the secret of all comedy is timing – I’ve been stung by something I read online, a quotation from Jim Willis, the American author, animal advocate, and founder of the Tiergarten Sanctuary Trust.

I looked at all the caged animals in the shelter...the cast-offs of human society. I saw in their eyes love and hope, fear and dread, sadness and betrayal. And I was angry. "God," I said, "this is terrible! Why don't you do something?" God was silent for a moment and then He spoke softly. "I have done something," He replied. "I created You."

I don’t know why I happened on that particular quotation. I wasn’t specifically looking for it, or for anything like it. But it was a bit of a wake-up call. It’s true, I have been very angry about the abuse of animals in past months, and I have blamed Big G for not responding to my prayers, on this and other subjects.  But what have I actually done, myself, about it, other than ottering on about it here for week after week.

Maybe it’s time for me to re-dedicate myself to the things that really matter.  I remembered that one of my dreams (I have many) was always to open an animal sanctuary. Of course, I can’t just drop everything and open an animal sanctuary right now, right this minute (though some days, when Zak, Freddie, Misty and Matilda are all milling round yowling for food, I think I’ve already got one!) and I have pre-existing obligations to people who I don’t want to let down.

But, come next year, I will have been doing this book publishing thing for twenty-five years.  A quarter of a century. And all this talk of scattering ashes and memorial trees makes me sort of wonder what memorial I would like to leave behind.  When Arthur Mee died, in 1943, his friend and co-author John Hammerton urged people to send charity donations in Mee’s memory to any children’s charity of their choice, with a note saying “For Arthur Mee”. Maybe I’d like people to do the same for me, but with animal charities. The smaller the charity the better – the big ones are bloated, self-perpetuating, and largely useless.  Once more, I turn to T S Eliot:

The awful daring of a moment's surrender

Which an age of prudence can never retract

By this, and this only, we have existed

Which is not to be found in our obituaries

Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider

Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor

In our empty rooms

In short, I’d like to do something with the remainder of my life, something useful. Don’t ask me what. I don’t know, yet. But if I do end up sitting at the side of Kilbrannan Sound again for the  best part of the next two weeks, I promise at least to think about it.

I’d previously said that, when the time comes for me to be the subject of an exhumation form, I’d like to be scattered off the top of Skiddaw, although Debbie will probably just put me out in a bin-bag on dustbin day.  I’d sort of wondering though, now, about a woodland walk, in spring, somewhere where the greenwood rings with birdsong, and the path is fringed with the fresh green growth of chervil and cow-parsley, and the bluebells and daffodils nodding in those few precious days each year when the sun warms us again after the purgatory of winter, and reminds us again of the prospect of eternal renewal, and “the holiness of the heart’s affections”.