A rural festival of ancient customs

It is the feast day of St Michael the Archangel, who is unusual among other saints because he was not human. He is a spirit and, until the twentieth century, he was the only archangel to be honoured in this way within the western Church. (The angel Gabriel's feast day is now March 24.)

St Michael's feast day has been a feature of the Catholic church since before the seventh century, when a church in Rome was dedicated to his honour. He was also venerated by the Jews.

Such was his esteem that churches, chapels and monasteries in his honour were built on hilltops in many parts of the world, many of which still exist.

Even after the English Reformation, a St Michael chapel on Skirrid Fawr in Wales attracted frequent pilgrimages and he remains a patron of many churches.

In the English countryside, however, Michaelmas Day tends to be regarded more of a rural festival than a religious event, although on the Eve of Michaelmas there used to be a curious custom of cracking nuts in church.

This became known as Nutcrack Night, but its origins and purpose are very obscure. It was once described as "a night of great rejoicing with mysterious rites and ceremonies", but little else is known about it.

This is also the day when the Bainbridge Horn is sounded across Wensleydale every evening from September 28 until Shrove Tuesday.

Michaelmas Day, when masses are celebrated in churches throughout the world, was largely known in this country as the day for attending hiring fairs.

Although most hiring fairs were at Martinmas (the feast of St Martin, November 11), a few were held earlier. Hopeful youngsters, youths and girls, would attend these fairs with the wish of being hired by a landowner or farmer either as a labourer or a servant girl and, if they were lucky, they were expected to remain in work until the next hiring fair. The fairs were usually the only annual holiday for these youngsters and so they enjoyed themselves with sports, games, feasting, drinking and dancing.

Various other rural events, such as sheep sales and goose fairs, were also held on Michaelmas Day - the largest of the latter being the Nottingham Goose Fair, now held on October 3 - and, of course, this weekend is said by many to be the day for picking rose hips and the last time one may safely pick brambles.

Ancient lore says the devil puts his foot on brambles at Michaelmas, although some people reckon he spits on them, thus making them unpalatable for humans.

The fact is, of course, that brambles are generally past their best by this time and it is wise to leave them to the birds, animals and insects. It is an insect which makes them mushy, not Satan!

A very odd practice used to occur on Michaelmas Day in some parts of the North Riding of Yorkshire, although the same thing happened on the Eve of St Mark (April 24).

It was called Porch Watching or Church Watching, and people believed that if a person watched their parish church porch at midnight on these nights they would see the ghostly figures of those who would die the following year.

It was important the watcher never fell asleep, otherwise he or she would die immediately. Another vital ingredient was that once a person started the practice of porch watching, he or she must continue until the end of their natural life, otherwise their own spectral image would appear and the watcher would die prematurely.

It makes one wonder why such people began this habit in the first place and there is a record of a man called James Haw, who lived at Burneston near Bedale, seeing himself during such a watch. True to the legend, he promptly died. I reckon he died of fright.

On the subject of saints, my colleague "Spectator" referred in his column (D&S Times, Sept 6) to St Hedda, who is patron of the huge Catholic church in the tiny village of Egton Bridge near Whitby.

He suggests we hear very little of St Hedda because he is so obscure, and, to be honest, I have often wondered why that beautiful and impressive church is dedicated to this little-known saint.

The present church, however, is not the first in this village. The previous and much smaller church, also dedicated to St Hedda, dates from 1797 and is now the primary school, appropriately known as St Hedda's. It is there that I learned my four Rs - reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic and religion. The school is also the venue of the famous Egton Bridge Gooseberry Show each August, but above its doorway there is a statue of St Hedda.

However, a correspondent from Saltburn reliably informs me that this is not really St Hedda - it is actually a statue of St Patrick with the shamrock painted out! This, then, serves to make St Hedda even more obscure.

Quite surprisingly, however, there are at least two saints called Hedda, both male, although Hedda is a female name in some places, Holland for example.

One St Hedda is known to have died in AD 870. He was abbot of a Benedictine monastery at Peterborough when he was martyred along with 84 of his monks. The culprits were Danish invaders.

The feast day of this St Hedda is April 9, which he shares with St Wardru of Chateaulieu, a lady who spent her life caring for the sick and poor, and who built a convent at Mons.

The other St Hedda is thought to have been born in the north of England and either educated at Whitby or been a monk of Whitby Abbey. His early work is associated with that of St Birinus, a bishop sent from Rome to preach to the people of Wessex. Birinus established a see at Dorchester and built many churches, then divided his diocese into two parts. The first bishop of the new Winchester see was St Hedda; he had been consecrated bishop by St Theodore of Canterbury in AD 676 and was described by the Venerable Bede as "a good and just man who in carrying out his duties was guided rather by an inborn love of virtue than by what he had read in books."

When St Birinus died, Hedda transferred his remains to Winchester and later died there himself in AD 705. I understand St Hedda is still honoured in Winchester and also at Crowland in the Fens, where he established a monastic foundation.

His feast day is July 7 which, coincidentally, was the date of this year's Father Postgate rally at Egton Bridge. It is this St Hedda to whom the Egton Bridge church is dedicated - so perhaps he is not quite so obscure as we believe.

A reader has asked if I know the origins of the word holm. This appears in lots of place names in our region, such as Moorsholm, Lealholm, Newholm and elsewhere.

In some cases, the letter 'e' is added at the end to produce holme, and the pronunciation appears to vary from 'home' to 'um', eg Moorsum, Lealum, Newum.

My standard English dictionary provides two meanings for this word. One derives from an old word for holly, while the other suggests it is linked to an area of land, such as a low-lying patch near a river, or even an area prone to flooding. It can even mean an island in a river or perhaps a mound of some kind.

Not all the villages which bear this suffix stand upon low-lying riverside areas, although in the case of Lealholm the name rings true. This pretty Eskdale village does stand on a low-lying patch of ground close to the river, but the same can hardly be said about Moorsholm in its moorland setting near Loftus. One suggestion is that Moorsholm literally means "the home on the moor."

The alternative meaning of holly is revealed in the name of the holm oak, which is an evergreen tree. It has spiky lower leaves which have resulted in comparisons with the holly, and indeed in some areas of England the tree is called the holly oak.

It is not a native of this country, however, being introduced from the Mediterranean regions about 400 years ago. It has adapted very well to our climate and I am told that if the tree is clipped regularly from its young days, it will produce a very substantial hedge.

Another name for holly is hollin, and this also appears in names like Hollin Farm, the Hollins or Hollin Hill, so I wonder if there is anywhere called Hollinholm