\u201cThe turning of the agricultural year is a route through which a number of customs have emerged,\u201d explains Warren. \u201cThe Boy\u2019s Ploughing Match at St Margaret\u2019s Hope in Orkney is a 19th-century custom which was revived in the 20th century for young boys to show off their ploughing skills. It is very likely to have ancient roots.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nowadays boys aged between five and early-teens must plough a 4ft-by-4ft patch of beach with miniature wooden ploughs, keeping their furrows as straight as possible to win the prize.<\/p>\n
Ras Beca \u2013 Preseli Hills, PembrokeshireMid-August<\/p>\n
Fell running has become rather fashionable lately, but one of the oldest and strangest runs is the Ras Beca, which commemorates a period of social unrest in the area: Tthe Rebecca Riots. In 1839, an English landowner had set up a toll gate across the countryside which the local Welshmen couldn\u2019t afford to use. That evening, a mysterious figure in ringlets calling herself \u201cRebecca\u201d, followed by gang members calling themselves her \u201cdaughters\u201d, appeared to hack the gate into pieces and destroy the adjacent toll booth.<\/p>\n
Nowadays, the fell-running race sees the victor draped in women\u2019s clothing at the finish line and handed an axe in homage to the mysterious, and never-identified, Rebecca.<\/p>\n
The Ritual Year: A New Calendar of Britain\u2019s Feasts, Festivals and Folklore by Kiera Chapman, Lulah Ellender, and Rebecca Warren (\u00a314.99, Granta) is available from Aug 13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe turning of the agricultural year is a route through which a number of customs have emerged,\u201d explains…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,2527,9866,2447,424,325,33911,1143,330,6,333,31669],"class_list":["post-112779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-britain","tag-cornwall","tag-derbyshire","tag-family","tag-lifestyle","tag-pembrokeshire","tag-relationships","tag-scotland","tag-standard","tag-united-kingdom","tag-us-content","tag-west-sussex"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117172371701729125","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}