THE STRANGE STORY OF
THE DUNMOW FLITCH
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: EARLIEST OFFICIAL RECORDS OF THE FLITCH.]
EARLIEST OFFICIAL RECORDS OF THE FLITCH.--Entries in the Chartulary
of Dunmow Priory, in the British Museum, recording the presentation
of the Baron in 1445 and 1510, now reproduced for the first time.
The top entry is the earliest surviving record of the custom. The
recipient in the first case is Richard Wright; in the second, Thomas
le Fuller.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: TWO BACON RECEIPTS.]
TWO BACON RECEIPTS.--The Parsleys and Reynoldses received their Bacon
in 1701, the Shakeshafts in 1751. This 1751 presentation was the
last legitimate ceremony.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Strange Story of
the Dunmow Flitch
By
J. W. ROBERTSON-SCOTT
("HOME COUNTIES")
WITH 34 ILLUSTRATIONS
Nil nisi jurantibus ("Nothing unless you are able to swear")
--_Motto of a former Dunmow Lord of the Manor_
Two Shillings
DUNMOW: D. CARTER
TO
H. W.
W. H.
CONTENTS
Twas thought a sumptuous treat
On Birthdays, Festivals, or Days of State,
A salt dry Flitch of Bacon to prepare.
--Congreve.
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I
A Narrative of Nine Hundred Years
CHAPTER II
The Priory and the Rhymester
CHAPTER III
A Yeoman, a Husbandman and Thomas le Fuller
CHAPTER IV
The Vanished Cloisters
CHAPTER V
A Tale of Tyranny and War
CHAPTER VI
The Jury of Spinsters
CHAPTER VII
--And Bachelors
CHAPTER VIII
The Bacon Refused
CHAPTER IX
Enter The Novelist
CHAPTER X
The Winners of the Bacon
CHAPTER XI
The Scene at the Modern Ceremony
CHAPTER XII
Another Flitch Custom
CHAPTER XIII
The Bacon Over Sea
APPENDIX
The Last Prior and the "Fair Matilda"
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: LAST LEGITIMATE PRESENTATION OF THE BACON.]
LAST LEGITIMATE PRESENTATION OF THE BACON.--This record of the
Shakeshaft ceremony is from an old print, "The Manner of Claiming the
Bacon," etc., published by Bowles and appearing in _Hone's Everyday
Book_. Note the realistic "sharp-pointed stones"; also that the
headgear of the Shakeshafts agrees with that represented in
Ogbourne's picture.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: PROCESSION AT THE LAST LEGITIMATE PRESENTATION OF THE
BACON.]
PROCESSION AT THE LAST LEGITIMATE PRESENTATION OF THE BACON.--This
Hogarthian record of the Shakeshafts carried in procession with their
Bacon is from a painting by David Ogbourne, a local artist who
witnessed the ceremony. Local personages are represented in the
crowd. The ladies in front of the laden basket are said to be
members of the Strutt family. The man mopping his head is Pownall,
"the fat butcher of Stebbing."
---------------------------------------------------------------------
INTRODUCTION
Although, as in duty bound, a member of his county Archæological
Society, no claim to what may be dignified by antiquarian research is
made by the Author of this modest publication.
If he is entitled to any credit at all, it can be merely in respect
of the fact that (in addition to making the best use of the
historical stores and constant kindness of Mr. Hastings Worrin), he
has regarded it as a kind of minor act of local patriotism to try to
gather together and set forth, in as simple and attractive a fashion
as possible, such data as, with a little trouble, may be collected
concerning a Custom all the surviving records of which are of
interest and importance to those who live in Great or Little Dunmow
or their vicinity.
The subject has, however, a wider appeal. It is so familiar that
throughout the land there can be few persons who have never heard of
the Dunmow Flitch. It is so old as to be enshrined, for as long as
English Literature shall endure, in Chaucer and Langland.
It is proper to mention, perhaps, that most of the subjects
illustrated have not before been photographed for publication.
For corrections or for any light on difficulties still confronting
the historian of the Flitch, the Author will be greatly obliged.
In order to save labour to other students of the subject, he may
perhaps mention that he has searched the following MSS. at the
British Museum: "Registrum Cartarum Prioratus de Dunmawe," "Exscripta
è Chronico de Dunmow," "Collectanea ex Chronico de Dunmowe,"
"Excerpta ex Chronico de Parva Dunmowe," "Memorandum de Pernis, a
Prioratu de Dunmowe," the household accounts of the last Prior of
Dunmow, and "Transcripta ex Libro Rubeo in Scarrario," and has
glanced through certain Court Rolls. One list of presentations of
the Bacon (which appears in Leland) is described in the catalogue at
the British Museum as "perhaps a fragment of some larger work on the
subject." Does it still exist?
GREAT CANFIELD, DUNMOW. _Christmas_, 1909.
CHAPTER I
A Narrative of Nine Hundred Years
Everybody knows that delightful Shakespearean scene in which Sir John
Falstaff robs the travellers at Gadshill. But some readers of the
play must have been puzzled a little by the sorry Knight's
ejaculation--
"On, bacons, on!"
From the Conquest, however, it had been common to call the multitude
hogs. To this practice, it has been declared, we owe the phrase "to
save one's bacon." Is not bacon the back and sides of the hog--the
part, therefore, on which a blow would generally fall? And is not
"to save one's bacon," obviously, to escape a blow?
But it is possible that "to save one's bacon" may have had, in part
at any rate, another origin. In "The Wife of Bath's Prologue" in the
_Canterbury Tales_, which were given to the world as long ago as the
fourteenth century, Chaucer's free-spoken dame says--
The bacon wae not fet for hem, I trow,
That som men have in Essex at Donmow.
May not this conceivably be the Bacon of the popular saying?
The curious Dunmow Custom, by which a Flitch of Bacon has been given
to married folk who have sworn that, for a year and a day, they have
neither had differences nor wished themselves unwed, is certainly
very old.
It may, indeed, have come over with the Conqueror. More than one
book of antiquities avers that "at the abbey of Saint Melaine near
Rennes"--the old capital of Brittany--there had been hanging, for
more than six centuries, a side of Bacon "still quite fresh," which
had been set apart for the first pair who "for a year and a day had
lived without dispute and grumbling" and without repenting of their
marriage.
To the Dunmow Custom we have a reference not only in old Chaucer, but
in that great song of England, The Vision of William concerning Piers
the Plowman, written under the shadow of the Black Death. Says the
good Langland--
Many a couple since the Pestilence
Have plighted them together;
The fruit that they bring forth
Is foul words
In jealousy without happiness,
And quarrelling in bed;
They have no children but strife,
And slapping between them,
And though they go to Dunmow
(Unless the Devil help!)
To follow after the Flitch
They never after obtain it;
And unless they both are perjured,
They lose the bacon.[*]
[*] The last four lines appear as follows in the "C-text" of
Professor Skeat's monumental two volume edition of the poem--
Thauh thei don hem to Donemowe . bote the deuel hem helpe
To folwen for the flicche . feccheth thei hit neuere;
Bote thei bothe be for-swore . that bacon thei tyne.
Then in _Reliquiae Antiquae_, which dates back to the fifteenth
century, another poet, discoursing in relation to the Seventh
Commandment, laments that he can
fynd no man that will enquere
The parfyte wais unto Dunmow;
For they repent them within a year,
And many within a week and souner men trow.
Yet another century later one Howell says choicely--
Do not fetch your wife from Dunmow
For so you may bring home two sides of a sow!
In fact, up and down our literature there are plenty of references to
the Dunmow Flitch.