Swavesey & District History Society – Report on May 2024 Meeting

May meeting.  48 people, including some first timers, attended to hear Eleanora Gardner, an Ely Tour Guide, speak on Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore.  She selected just a few topics from courtship, marriage, pregnancy, birth, death and burial, weather, curing the sick, calendar customs, ghosts and witchcraft.

Because of the difficulty of travelling around in the Fens the most convenient time for young people to meet was often after church.  Young ladies wore yarrow and young men wore wormwood to show members of the opposite, er, that they were interested in courtship and trying to find a possible partner.  In winter evenings young men would make two corn dollies and give one to the girl of his choice after church.  The following week if she wore it on her left breast, over her heart, it showed that her parents approved that they could court each other.  Picking the right person involved a girl putting a 2 leaf clover in her shoe after which the first boy she fancied would be the right one to marry.  

If there was a thunderstorm during the wedding ceremony the girl would not have any children.   If a sparrow was seen having a bath on the wedding day the husband would always be at the pub.  But having a chimney sweep at the wedding was a lucky omen.  Well into the 1700s the birth of a child would be attended by several women, known as “God’s sisters”, initially and this became corrupted to “Gossips”.   If a baby was expected on 1st May this was such bad luck that steps were taken to speed up the birth, e.g. by mixing horehound with gin and herbs.  To bear more children, drink an infusion of mandrake (the root of white bryony) which produces terrible diarrhoea but makes a girl more fertile.  Tansy, often found near rabbit warrens, also worked.  To induce a miscarriage, chew hemlock.  When death occurred in a house salt was rubbed on the dead person’s stomach to stop bloating.  The salt could then be kept for later treatment of chilblains.  If the family kept bees, they had to be told about the death else they would swarm.

Next meeting-

18 June.  “Oh, yes, it is!”  – The History of the English Pantomime.  Jim Stebbings.