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Ashburton Guardian, Volume 69, Issue 51, 9 December 1948, Page 5

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Old British Customs BOAR’S HEAD AT OXFORD LONDON. ‘ At Queen’s College in the university city of Oxford, on Christmas day, a boar’s head, decorated with pennants and holly, becrowned, and with an orange in its mouth, will he borne into the hall with great ceremony to carry on a centuries-old custom. In these days of ration restrictions, a papier macho head replaces the 901 d specimens under which two attendants staggered into the hall in bygone years when England was indeed “Merrie,” but the spirit of the ceremony remains unchanged. Preceded by the college choir and heralded by a fanfare of trumpets, the boar’s head is carried down the hall shoulder-high. As the choir sings the last notes of a traditional carol, the head, on a huge silver dish, is placed on the Provost’s table. The Provost presents the ornaments and embellishments, one by one, to the choir-boys and visitors, the solo singer of the year receiving the orange. The Provost then entertains selected guests to dinner. This year the boar’s head will remain on the talbe in a decorative capacity only—a poignant reminder of the past when it was the centre attraction of immense banquets. Boar’s heads hav.e featured in banquets for hundreds of years, especially in the north of England. There it is believed to be a survival of an old Norse custom, Avhen a boar was sacrificed at Yuletide feasts in honour of Freyer, Scandinavian God of peace and plenty. The Queen’s College ceremony has .its own particular origin. It is said that in the early days of the college a student was walking in the neighbouring forest of Shotover, engrossed in .a volume of Aristotle ,when a wild boar with mouth agape, rushed at him.' The youth, with great, presence of mind, rammed the book down the beast’s throat and choked it-

Tolling the Devil’s Knell

On Christmas Eve, in the small Yorkshire town of Dewsbury, the “Devil’s Knell” will be tolled on the tenor bell of the Parish Church. This is. a 700-year-old custom interrupted only by the war when bellringing was banned for security reasons. Teams of bell-ringers will start about IT o’clock to complete the tolling of the 1948th stroke —one for every year since the birth of Christ—on the hour of midnight.

Legend says that the custom began in the 13th century when a _ local baron, as penance for killing his servant, gave a bell to the church and ordered it to be rung each Christmas Eve to remind him of his crime. For many years the people of Dewsbury believed that the tolling of the bell would keep the devil away from the parish for the next twelve months. On New Year’s Eve the bell-ringers again meet. With the bells muffled, they ring out the old year, and then proclaim the new year with a joyous peal.

The Tomb of Mr Granville

A New Year’s Eve custom in the churchyard of the Surrey (England) village of Wotton, began in 1717, when a Mr Granville, one of the clerks of the Treasury, died on the last day of the year. In his will he ordered that five poor boys should be specially chosen from Wotton, or one of the neighbouring villages, and 40s paid to each of them, on every anniversary of his death. The boys have to earn this sum, however. Each one, with his hands on thp gravestone of Mr Granville, must repeat, without book, the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostle’s Creed, the Ten Commandments, and a chapter of the Bible, writing out two verses, of it “in a legible hand.” In addition to the 40s, an annual sum of £3O is spent on apprenticing the hoys to some handicraft, no one boy having more than £lO spent on his behalf.