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Montol087
The Montol Festival (often just Montol) is an annual festival in Penzance, Cornwall, United Kingdom, which has been held on 21 December each year since 2007. The festival is a revival or reinterpretation of many of the traditional Cornish midwinter customs & Christmas traditions formerly practiced in and around the Penzance area and common to much of Cornwall at one point. The festival spans several days, but the main events are held on the traditional date of the feast of St Thomas the Apostle, usually 21 December, which always coincides with the winter solstice. Origin and history Montol came about from the same community which had created Golowan, a midsummer festival also held in Penzance, though different people were involved. The idea was formed after the success of Golowan, in order to celebrate the winter solstice in a similar manner. Montol sought to revive practices recorded by antiquarians, some of which reportedly only died out after the Second World War. The first fes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guise Dancing
Guise dancing (sometimes known as goose, goosey or geese dancing) is a form of community mumming practiced during the twelve days of Christmastide, that is, between Christmas Day and Twelfth Night in West Cornwall, England, UK. Today, guise dancing has been appropriated for feast days at other times of the year. Guise dancers dress in a disguise to hide their identity allowing them to perform in an outlandish or mischievous manner in the hope of receiving payment of food or money. The principal activities associated with guise dancing have changed through time. These have included the performance of Christmas plays such as Duffy and the Devil or St George and the Turkish Knight and traditional Cornish dance, music and song. Historical description Guise dancing was observed in the late 19th century by Cornish antiquarian M. A. Courtney who reported that the practice had been largely eliminated by 1890 in Penzance due to a decline in the traditional nature of the celebrations an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mummers' Play
Mummers' plays are folk plays performed by troupes of amateur actors, traditionally all male, known as mummers or guisers (also by local names such as ''rhymers'', ''pace-eggers'', ''soulers'', ''tipteerers'', ''wrenboys'', and ''galoshins''). Historically, mummers' plays consisted of informal groups of costumed community members that visited from house to house on various holidays. Today the term refers especially to a play in which a number of characters are called on stage, two of whom engage in a combat, the loser being revived by a doctor character. This play is sometimes found associated with a sword dance though both also exist in Britain independently. Mumming spread from the British Isles to a number of former British colonies. It is sometimes performed in the street but more usually during visits to houses and pubs. It is generally performed seasonally or annually, often at Christmas, Easter or on Plough Monday, more rarely on Halloween or All Souls' Day, and of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Bottrell
William Bottrell (1816–1881) was born at Rafta, St Levan in Cornwall on 7 March 1816. He contributed greatly to the preservation of Cornish mythology. Both he and Thomas Quiller Couch Jonathan Couch (15 March 1789 – 13 April 1870) was a British naturalist, the only child of Richard and Philippa Couch, of a family long resident at Polperro, a small fishing village between Looe and Fowey, on the south coast of Cornwall. A bl ... contributed folk stories of West Cornwall for Robert Hunt's ''Popular Romances of the West of England'', published in 1865. Although Bottrell's contributions were acknowledged in Hunt's introduction to the book (his name given there as Botterell), there was no individual acknowledgement for each story, which was the case for Couch's contributions. The "Cornish Telegraph" invited Bottrell to write his own versions for their newspaper. These were published between 1867 and 1869 and then published as ''Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christmas Carol
A Christmas carol is a carol (a song or hymn) on the theme of Christmas, traditionally sung at Christmas itself or during the surrounding Christmas holiday season. The term noel has sometimes been used, especially for carols of French origin. Christmas carols may be regarded as a subset of the broader category of Christmas music. History The first known Christmas hymns may be traced to 4th-century Rome. Latin hymns such as Veni redemptor gentium, written by Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, were austere statements of the theological doctrine of the Incarnation in opposition to Arianism. Corde natus ex Parentis ('' Of the Father's heart begotten'') by the Spanish poet Prudentius (d. 413) is still sung in some churches today. In the 9th and 10th centuries, the Christmas sequence (or prose) was introduced in Northern European monasteries, developing under Bernard of Clairvaux into a sequence of rhymed stanzas. In the 12th century the Parisian monk Adam of Saint Victor be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bucca (mythological Creature)
Bucca is a male sea-spirit in Cornish folklore, a merman, that inhabited mines and coastal communities as a hobgoblin during storms. The mythological creature is a type of water spirit likely related to the Púca from Irish, the Pwca from Welsh folklore, and the female mari-morgans, a type of mermaid from Welsh and Breton mythology. Rev W. S. Lach-Szyrma, one 19th-century writer on Cornish antiquities, suggested the Bucca had originally been an ancient pagan deity of the sea such as Irish Nechtan or British Nodens, though his claims are mainly conjecture. Folklore however records votive food offerings made on the beach similar to those made to the subterranean Knockers and may represent some form of continuity with early or pre-Christian Brittonic belief practices. Etymology In 1611, in the Cornish language book the ''Creation of the World'' the Bucca is mentioned and some believe that the word is a borrowing into Cornish from Old English 'puca'. Use of the term Púka in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
St George
Saint George (Greek: Γεώργιος (Geórgios), Latin: Georgius, Arabic: القديس جرجس; died 23 April 303), also George of Lydda, was a Christian who is venerated as a saint in Christianity. According to tradition he was a soldier in the Roman army. Saint George was a soldier of Cappadocian Greek origin and member of the Praetorian Guard for Roman emperor Diocletian, who was sentenced to death for refusing to recant his Christian faith. He became one of the most venerated saints and megalomartyrs in Christianity, and he has been especially venerated as a military saint since the Crusades. He is respected by Christians, Druze, as well as some Muslims as a martyr of monotheistic faith. In hagiography, as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers and one of the most prominent military saints, he is immortalized in the legend of Saint George and the Dragon. His memorial, Saint George's Day, is traditionally celebrated on 23 April. Historically, the countries of England, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Humphry Davy School
Humphry Davy School is a comprehensive school in Penzance, Cornwall, England. The school teaches 11 to 16-year-olds. History The oldest part of the main school building was completed in 1909. It was originally called the Penzance County School and opened with an enrolment of 130 boys on 24 January 1910. It later became known as the Humphry Davy Grammar School for Boys. It shared a canteen with the Penzance Girls Grammar School (PGGS), further up the hill, and, in the late 1970s, a joint upper sixth form block was added on the playing fields to the North East of the school, South West of PGGS. In 1980 it merged with PGGS and Lescudjack schools, becoming a co-educational comprehensive school, with the name Humphry Davy School. Much of the original building has been preserved and, in the summer of 2013, the school received funding worth over £300,000 to replace the sash windows with handmade modern versions. In 2005 the school gained specialist status, as a Music College. Notab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Morning News
The ''Western Morning News'' is a daily regional newspaper founded in 1860, and covering the West Country including Devon, Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly and parts of Somerset and Dorset in the South West of England. Organisation The ''Western Morning News'' is published by South West Media Group (formerly known as Westcountry Publications), a division of Local World. Its main office is based in Plymouth and it has journalists based in newsdesks in Exeter, Truro, Penzance and Plymouth. It also has a London editor based in Westminster. Bill Martin is editor and Philip Bowern is print editor. History The ''Western Morning News'' was founded on 3 January 1860, by William Saunders and Edward Spender, father of Sir Wilfrid Spender. It has been published continuously since the first edition, including throughout the 1926 General Strike and the Plymouth Blitz. By 1920, the Devon newspaper market was getting cramped, with all papers running into financial difficulties. In the same ye ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Federation Of Old Cornwall Societies
The Federation of Old Cornwall Societies (FOCS) was formed in 1924, on the initiative of Robert Morton Nance, with the objective of collecting and maintaining "all those ancient things that make the spirit of Cornwall — its traditions, its old words and ways, and what remains to it of its Celtic language and nationality". The motto of the federation—as written on their web site—is "", which translated into English is "Gather ye the fragments that are left, that nothing be lost". The motto in the OCS logo is the Cornish phrase ''King Arthur is not dead''. The first Old Cornwall Society was established by Robert Morton Nance in St Ives in 1920. Summer events The OCS celebrate the old Cornish tradition of midsummer bonfires, normally held on 23 June each year. The hilltop bonfires that form a chain are currently held at Kit Hill, St Breock Beacon, Castle An Dinas, and Redruth Redruth ( , kw, Resrudh) is a town and civil parishes in Cornwall, civil parish in Co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lescudjack Hill Fort
Lescudjack Hill fort is the name given to the unexcavated Iron Age settlement located in Penzance, Cornwall. It is positioned on the summit of a steep hill in the east of Penzance and consists of a single rampart enclosing an area of . The site has been damaged and contains allotments and an open area of land which has recently been cleared of thick undergrowth. It is reported that a small lead-copper mine was situated "just outside" the ramparts, however all trace of this appears to have vanished. In 2004 this land was purchased by Penwith District Council and Penzance Town Council for £45,000 following a series of campaigns in the local community including a campaign conducted by the then Lescudjack Infants School (now part of the Pensans Primary School). According to Penwith District Council's website, a full archaeological survey is being conducted by Cornwall County Council's Historic Environment Servic The site is also subject to a management plan jointly agreed by P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stick Figure
A stick figure, also known as a stickman, is a very simple drawing of a person or an animal, composed of a few lines, curves, and dots. On a stick figure, the head is most often represented by a circle, which can be either a solid color or sometimes embellished with details such as eyes, a mouth, or hair. The arms, legs, and torso are usually represented by straight lines. Details such as hands, feet, and a neck may be present or absent; simpler stick figures often display an ambiguous emotional expression or disproportionate limbs, however, most stick figures can be drawn with four or three fingers. The stick figure is a universally recognizable symbol, in all likelihood one of the most well known in the world. It transcends language, location, demographics, and can trace back its roots for almost 30,000 years. Its simplicity and versatility led to the stick figure being used for a variety of purposes: infographics, signage, comics, animations, games, film storyboards, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
