Bonfire night. In Britain, it is celebrated on November 5th every year to commemorate the death of Guy Fawkes. He was the conspirator charged with lighting the fuse on the thirty-six barrels of gunpowder secreted in a cellar beneath the Houses of Parliament in 1605.
It was a time of religious intolerance, when politics, power and religion were intimately linked. King Henry VIII had broken with Rome with the Act of Supremacy in 1534 and for seventy years and through the reigns of the last Tudor monarchs, the pendulum had swung between religious factions. When James VI of Scotland, son of the beheaded Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, came to the English throne after the death of Elizabeth, the Catholic community hoped for a return of their faith and position. King James made it clear that this would not be the case and a plot was devised to assassinate the king by blowing up the Houses of Parliament during the State Opening when the monarch would be present.
The plot was unmasked and Guy Fawkes found, arrested and tortured. He was not the ringleader…just the man handling the explosives, but he was sentenced to death for treason. To escape being hung, drawn and quartered, he leapt to his death from the scaffold and broke his neck.
And we celebrate this. Until 1959 it was required by law that we celebrate, though the decree was for attendance at church and a giving of thanks. Today we seldom look beyond the effigy of the ‘guy’ that is burned on bonfires, or the fireworks that are set off to mimic the unexploded barrels.
During my childhood, bonfires were communal affairs. Families or neighbours would come together around a small bonfire, sharing the fireworks and the food prepared by each household. For weeks beforehand the children would have been ‘chumping’… finding wood for the fires… and making the ‘guy’. The effigy would be paraded or taken house to house and pennies would be given that went towards the cost of fireworks. When you think about it, the whole thing is rather gruesome, but the history and its implications were but vaguely known, and deemed of little importance. To us, as children, it was just fun…
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Reblogged this on anita dawes and jaye marie.
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Reblogged this on All About Writing and more.
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Thanks, Henrietta.
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You are welcome!
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Reblogged this on Die Erste Eslarner Zeitung – Aus und über Eslarn, sowie die bayerisch-tschechische Region!.
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Thanks for sharing, Michael.
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“Remember, remember
the Fifth of November.
Gunpowder, treason and plot.”
That’s what we learned from our English teacher after she told us about Guy Fawkes. 😉 It’s some Fourty five years ago, but I still have it very clear in my mind. 😉
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Yes, we all knew that rhyme too 🙂
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I used to enjoy Bonfire night when I was a child. These days I loath it for two reasons. 1. It scares the hell out of people’s pets. 2. Round here people keep the neighbourhood awake for at least a week either side of November 5th. Bah humbug 😦
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It was different decades ago when it really was a time for mucking in together and having fun. All the mothers making pie and peas, toffee apples and parkin… all the fathers competing with the fireworks… and all the kids communally looked out for. And it only happened on the 5th…
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Exactly…
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I’ve always found it sort of funny that there’s a national holiday for the supposed traitor. It would be like America having a Benedict Arnold day. With fireworks and fake hangings and all the GOOD stuff.
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I suppose it was originally to celebrate and give thanks for the safety of the king… butit has always seemed a strange one to me too.
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It was the first alchemical tool … turning a bunch of wet smooshed-up grains into bread. 🙂
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Yep… and drawing people close….
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