Of mystics and mellow fruitfulness
LISA GLEDHILL asks whether an eccentric Victorian ritual could take on new meaning in the era of global food networks and pandemics.
Tucked into a hillside on the north west coast of Cornwall is a curious little driftwood hut, built in the late 1830s as a mancave by the eccentric Vicar of Morwenstow, Robert Stephen Hawker. He’d come here to watch for ships in distress, write poetry and take opium – and, of the three, it was his philanthropic role as unofficial coast-guard that was thought to be the most unusual hobby for a clergyman. But even by 21st century standards, let alone those of the 19th, Robert Stephen Hawker was a remarkably independent thinker.
The stories about his eccentricities were widely re-told – and probably widely exaggerated – even during his lifetime. Did he really excommunicate a cat? Or sit on a rock pretending to be a mermaid? 1 Probably not. He did dress flamboyantly for a man of his era and profession, favouring a claret-coloured coat and yellow poncho. He did marry; firstly, a woman 20 years his senior and secondly, a woman 40 years his junior. And he did write powerful, stirring romantic verse celebrating Cornish landscape and identity, and the mystical quest for the Holy Grail. 2
But the part of his legacy that most of us will be familiar with in Britain today is the Church Harvest Festival. All those altardisplays of corn dollies, artisan bread and autumn fruits, all those school collections of tinned food for the old folks, even the apple-harvest photographs in The Wicker Man, were inspired by the Reverend Hawker. Until he came along, the main established religion in the UK hadn’t realised what a great idea it would be to make a religious celebration of getting the crops in.
Of course, harvest festivities are as old as farming itself, but in Christian England they were usually a secular festival enjoyed by landowners, workers and their dependents as a reward for the year’s hard work. Many folklorists of the 19th and 20th centuries have claimed a pagan religious origin for traditions, such as choosing harvest kings and queens or games such as ‘crying the neck’, but these claims are now widely regarded as tenuous. 3 Giving charity to the poor has been a part of Christian tradition from the earliest days of the faith, and was done throughout the year, but especially at midwinter. It seems remarkable that it took nearly 2,000 years for one slightly batty Cornish vicar to bring both traditions together to create one of the most popular events in the Church calendar. But perhaps it was just a question of good timing. As Charles Fort said: “A tree cannot find out, as it were, how to blossom, until comes blossom-time. A social growth cannot find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine-time.” 4 Maybe the 19th century was Harvest Festival time…
The spread of industrialisation during the 1800s created a compensatory wave of romantic idealisation of nature and rural life in art and literature. The second half of the 19th century also saw a rise in the academic study of pre-Christian religions, especially nature-based traditions, which culminated in the 1890 publication of James Frazer’s mythological blockbuster The Golden Bough. The crosspollination of these cultural strands created fertile ground for Hawker’s quirky little ritual to take root. Hawker himself had no romantic illusions about the rough and ready rural poor of his parish and although not a conventional Anglican, he certainly wasn’t a Pagan in either the ancient or modern sense. He was a Christian mystic in the mould of William Blake, navigating his own personal spiritual path; but his Harvest Festival idea struck a chord with a later generation of clergymen who picked it up and made it mainstream. It’s usually celebrated around the Autumn Equinox, but can be held in October depending on local preference, and has even been adapted by some nonconformist and Catholic churches. As a deathbed convert to Catholicism, Hawker would surely approve.
In the UK today, all kinds of food are available at all
times of year – at least for those who can afford it. For the less fortunate, reliance on food banks, free school meals and other support is a year-round reality, not something tied to the traditional seasonal cycles of feast and famine. So does the notion of a harvest celebration still have any relevance? For the religiously inclined, celebrating the seasonal blessings of a god or gods still has spiritual meaning even if the practical importance of harvest season has dwindled. But what about secular society?
Back in March, when Covid-19 confined most of us to our homes, many people found comfort – some for the first time – in watching Spring unfold. Restrictions have now eased, but for lots of people this heightened awareness of nature and its cycles will continue. During the same period, we’ve also all become expert epidemiologists, able to discuss R values, herd immunity and the ethics of wet markets. Regardless of political views and whether we take a religious, romantic or scientific approach, there is a greater awareness that our interactions with each other and with the natural world have measurable consequences on a global scale. Perhaps the time is right for a new social ritual that recognises that in all aspects of life, we reap what we sow.
NOTES
1 The Vicar of Morwenstow, Being a Life of Robert Stephen Hawker
(1876) by Sabine Baring-Gould.
2 See www.robertstephenhawker. co.uk/ for a list of Hawker’s publications and further information on his life and work.
3 See The Stations of the Sun
(1996) by Ronald Hutton.
4 Charles Fort, Lo! (1931).
2 LISA GLEDHILL is a film maker and writer with a long-standing interest in forteana. She is a regular contributor to FT.