Surviving Customs

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31362, 6 May 1967, Page 17

Surviving Customs

The People s

f Specially written for “The Press” by DERRICK ROONEY) yOLK-LORE or, perhaps more accurately, tradition—survives around us in many places, often quite unnoticed: in the home, in clothing, in etiquette, even in commerce.

The well-mannered man still walks on the road side of his woman companion as they go along the footpath, although our roads—or most of them—are no longer muddy carttracks. Too, we still often refer to omnibuses as coaches, and in popular slang we call our motor-cars waggons. Put a bit of storage space in a motor-car and two doors at the back and you have that curious piece of terminology, a station waggon. In the home, too, traditions linger. We no longer have the coal ranges and much other paraphenalla of our grandmothers’ day, and much of our food comes to us already prepared for cooking; but there are many implements used in the kitchen which have not changed substantially since our grandparents’, even our great-grandparents’, time —although it must be admitted here that there is not much you can do with the shape of such a utensil as a frying pan, or a soup plate. But the designs on some of the plates date back hundreds, in at least one case

thousands, of years. Key pattern china bears a motif used by the Greeks in the sixth century 8.C.; the willow pattern, introduced to Britain a couple of centuries ago, is as keenly sought after as ever and is still being manufactured; the blue onion pattern, currently undergoing a revival and masquerading under such titles as “Nordic” and “Blue Danube,” was introduced by Meissen in the 1700’s and was a firm favourite in colonial countries, particularly America. Now it is even being manufactured in Japan. By coincidence, or perhaps not by coincidence, the latter two patterns are invariably in blue and white—tradionally colours used in the kitchen. In commerce, too, tradition may still be found, although It is becoming rare. There is still the barber’s gaily striped pole, and its modern, but in this country equally übiquitous companion, the T.A.B. chequerboard, the cigarettes in the packet with the target on it, the various patent medicines in Victorian-style containers and, last but not least, that incomparable Scottish confection, Jasper’s Jethart Snails, still made, according to the label, “from the original recipe used by Jasper Miller over 100 years ago.” In Itself this is enough to qualify them as supermarket antiques; and the use of the word “Jethart” in the title gives them more than culinary interest for the folk-lorist, for the word comes from the ancient slogan, or war-cry, of the town of Jedburgh where they are manufactured. “Jethart’s (or Jeddart’s) here,” was the cry, and Sir Walter Scott gave an explanation of it in his “Border Antiquities”: “The inhabitants of Jedburgh were so distinguished for the use of arms, that the battle-axe or partisan which they commonly raised was called a Jeddart staff, after the name of the burgh. Their bravery turned the fate of the day at the skirmish of Reedswair (1596), one of the last fought upon the Borders, and their slogan or war-cry is mentioned in the old ballad which celebrates that event:

“Then rote the slogan with o shout, “To it Tynedale/ JeddarVs. here.** The word Jethart has entered the language in another context, one less happy for the town of Jedburgh. This is, of course, the phrase Jethart justice—to hang a man first, and then judge him. The historical explanation of this expression is that it arose in 1574, when the Regent Morton tried and condemned, “with cruel precipitation, a vast number of people who had offended against the laws, or against the supreme cause of his lordship’s faction.” There is another, more plebeian, possibly apocryphal, and certainly more appealing explanation of this phrase:. 20 criminals were being tried for a single offence, and the jury was equally divided on its verdict. One juror, who had slept soundly throughout the proceedings, suddenly awoke, was asked for his vote, and shouted: “Hang them all!”