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Fascinating rituals of undeveloped civilisations

THESE people are crazy!

And the really scary part is that I used to be one of them.

I have been invited to take part in a few of the local celebrations in Devon, which is a large chunk of Britain’s West Country, rural heart of England, home of poets, sailors, kings and — now — mad people.

Have they always been like this? Or did I need to get away and spend 17 years in the relative sanity of the Antipodes to realise that they’re… well… different.

 

In the space of one week we have been urged to take part in the Blackawton worm‑charming festival; the stinging nettle-eating competition of Marshwood, the turning of the Shebbear Stone (to keep the devil out); the hunting of the Earl of Rone (who, once caught, is drowned); and the barrel rolling of Ottery St Mary.

But what is so odd about rolling a barrel? you may ask.

Nothing, actually. But it doesn’t start like that. It starts with barrels the size of a bear that are packed with tar and loaded onto men’s backs, where they are set alight.

The men (and, in this enlightened age, the women, too) then run through the town while their burning burden quickly turns into an inferno. Only when their hair and clothes are in flames do they drop the barrel, and that’s when it rolls.

Ottery St Mary is built on a hill, so the barrel plunges downhill through the streets like some missile from a roman war, scattering the thousands of people who have gathered to watch.

Oh what fun!

This was my favourite, but if you take your fun more sedately you can sit on the soil in Blackawton trying to coax worms into the daylight – you can sing to them, tap in morse code on the ground, threaten or cajole, but you can’t dig and you can’t pee. This is considered unsportsmanlike, but they don’t say whether that’s to the worms or the spectators.

The bucket with the most worms at the end of the day is judged the winner. Whether that’s the winner of a worm-gathering medal, or some kind of trophy for insanity is not stated in the rules.

I won’t bore you with the other games. I believe you can find them on the internet.

My point is – be grateful (if your ancestors were British, or even European) that you escaped!

What kind of people gather together to move a rock the size of a bus (this is the Shebbear Stone… not to get it out of the way, or to make a room for a shed, but to stop the devil getting into the church in front of which it stands?

I’d be back on the plane now, if I could, but it doesn’t leave for another two weeks, and I can’t change the ticket.

I know we have some quaint ideas in Australia, like cow-dung throwing contests, but we’re not crazy.

And I know we need our traditions because they identify our culture.

Culture?

Take hunting the Earl of Rone… tying a bloke up, mounting him back to front on a donkey, knocking him off and treading on him, putting him back, then dragging him off repeatedly until finally throwing him in the sea and drowning him… this is culture?

Oh yes, I know it’s only symbolic… but it’s still scary. Sacrificing virgins was symbolic, but they were still dead afterwards!

Apart from these idiosyncracies, however, I can report that the locals are very hospitable.

We’ve been plied with drink and fed till we’re fat.

It’s always possible, of course, that they’re planning to eat us…