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The Mawkin on Herrick's Hock-cart

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

Jacqueline Simpson
Jacqueline Simpson
Affiliation:
The Folklore Society, 9, Christchurch Road, Worthing, UK.
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Extract

In a poem written at Dean Prior in Devonshire sometime between 1630 and 1648, and addressed to the Earl of Westmoreland, Robert Herrick invites the Earl to watch a procession of harvesters bringing in the last load:

Come forth, my Lord, and see the Cart

Drest up with all the Country Art.

See, here a Maukin, there a sheet,

As spotless pure as it is sweet:

The Horses, Mares, and frisking Fillies

(Clad, all, in Linnen, white as Lillies.)

The Harvest Swaines, and Wenches, bound

For joy, to see the Hock-cart crown'd.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , April 1995 , pp. 1 - 9
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

Notes

1. Herrick, Robert, Poems, ed. Martin, L. C. (Oxford, 1965), pp. 101–2.Google Scholar

2. Clarke, E. D., Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia and Africa (London, 1813), Part II section 1, p. 229. The Greek words mean ‘Mother Earth’ (meter ge).Google Scholar

3. SirFrazer, James, The Golden Bough Part V: Spirits of the Corn and Wild vol. I (London, 1912), pp. 146–7.Google Scholar

4. Muir, Kenneth (ed.), Macbeth (London, 1951), note to I: i: 8.Google Scholar

5. Robinson, F. N. (ed.), The Poetical Works of Chaucer (Cambridge, Mass., 1933)Google Scholar, Fragment VII 1. 3384 (The Nun's Priest's Tale, line 563).

6. SirHaggard, Henry Rider, A Farmer's Year (London, 1898)Google Scholar; Williamson, H. W., The Story of a Norfolk Farm (London, 1941)Google Scholar. Both cited by Haining, Peter, The Scarecrow (London, 1988), pp. 36–7, 42.Google Scholar

7. Hentzner, Paul, A Journey into England in the Year 1548 (Strawberry Hill, 1757), p. 79.Google Scholar Cited in Hone, William, The Every-Day Book and Table-Book (London, 1837), II, p. 1161.Google Scholar

8. Hutchinson, William, A View of Northumberland (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1778), vol. II, p. 179.Google Scholar

9. Henderson, William, Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders (London, 1866), p. 66.Google Scholar

10. Henderson, p. 67.

11. Brand, John, Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, ed. Ellis, Henry (London, 1813), vol. II, p. 21–2.Google Scholar

12. Hone, , Every-Day Book, II, p. 1166.Google Scholar

13. The Times, 4 October 1934, p. 8.

14. Information from Mrs Macdonald, wife of the Rector of St Mary Magdalen Church, Whalton, 1980. At that time the dolly was being made annually by Mrs Joyce Scott, who had taken on the task about five years previously on the death of Miss Bella Harvey, who had made it for many years. The folklore photographer Doc Rowe tells me that the custom has been kept going through the 1980s.

15. Maclagan, R. C., ‘Notes on Objects Collected in Argyleshire’, Folk-Lore 4 (1893), p. 149.Google Scholar Other Scottish accounts of ‘Maiden’ and Cailleach figures will be found in Banks, M. M., British Calendar Customs: Scotland (London, 1937), vol. I, pp. 68–78.Google Scholar

16. Frazer, , Golden Bough V: I, pp. 133–45.Google Scholar

17. Frazer, , Golden Bough V: I, pp. 218–22, 274–5, 281, 283, 290.Google Scholar

18. Frazer, , Golden Bough V: I, p. 219.Google Scholar No source or date cited.

19. Allen, Judith, ‘It is the Custom in this Village’, Folklore 92 (1981), p. 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. Frazer, , Golden Bough V: I, p. 149.Google Scholar No date or source given.

21. Maclagan, R. C., ‘The Corn Maiden in Argyleshire’, Folk-Lore 7 (1896), pp. 78–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. Gregor, Walter, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the North East of Scotland (London, 1881), p. 182.Google Scholar

23. L. C. Martin in his edition of Herrick interprets ‘Some crosse the Fill-horse’ as ‘some sitastride the leading horse’. I do not think this fits the context well, for the surrounding language is that of love and veneration (‘blesse … kisse … great devotion …’). I think it more likely that Herrick meant ‘some make the sign of the Cross over the leading horse’ – a Catholic survival which he would probably have regarded with tolerant amusement.

24. Bushaway, Bob, By Rite: Custom Ceremony and Community in England 1700–1880 (London, 1982), p. 127.Google Scholar

25. Bushaway, pp. 124–6.

26. Hobsbawm, E. and Rudé, G., Captain Swing (London, 1969), p. 39.Google Scholar

27. For various interpretations of the political attitudes underlying Herrick's poems on folk customs and festivals, see Marcus, Leah, The Politics of Mirth (Chicago, 1986), pp. 140–50Google Scholar; Miner, Earl, The Cavalier Mode from Jonson to Cotton (Princeton, N.J., 1971), pp. 191–3Google Scholar; Stallybrass, Peter, ‘ “We Feaste in our Defence”: Patrician Carnival in Early Modern England and Herrick's Hesperides’, English Literary Renaissance 16 (1986), 234–52.Google Scholar