Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

The formality of planting the Penny Hedge in the bed of the River Esk, on Ascension Eve, was performed on Wednesday last, by Mr. Isaac Herbert, who has for fifty years discharged this onerous duty. The “nine stakes,” “the nine strout-stowers,” and the “nine gedders” have all been once more duly “planted.” The ceremony was witnessed by a number of ladies and gentlemen, and that highly important functionary, the bailiff of the lord of the manor, Mr. George Welburn, of Fylingdales, was present, and blew the usual malediction, “Out on you, out on you, out on you!” through the same identical horn which seventeen centuries ago roused with its lugubrious notes, on Ascension Eve, our ancestors from their “peaceful slumbers.” Whether the wood was cut at the “Stray Head,” and with a “Knife of a Penny Price,” we are not able to say, but a good hedge was planted; and although each stake may not be quite “a yard from another,” the hedge will doubtless be of such strength as to withstand the effect of the prescribed number of tides.

Ascension Eve is on 8 May 2024.

Comment

Comment

Walter Scott knew of the myth:

Then Whitby’s nuns exulting told,
How to their house three barons bold
Must menial service do;
While horns blow out a note of shame,
And monks cry, “Fye upon your name!
In wrath, for loss of silvan game,
Saint Hilda’s priest ye slew.”
“This, on Ascension Day, each year,
While labouring on our harbour-pier,
Must Herbert, Bruce, and Percy hear” (Scott 1888).

Whitby Museum says that there may be a pre-Romantic element of truth:

Local historians, past and present, are unanimous in their view that the legend which now embellishes the ceremony is an invention. Each offers his own explanation, while at the same time dismissing all others, often in intemperate terms. They all agree, however, that the Horngarth Service is very ancient and that it was a form of tenure payment to the Abbot (Green 2021).

I can’t see anything wrong with George Young’s rebuttal of the notion that the horngarth/penny hedge thing is anything but a modern fable (Young 1817).

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Original

The following notice … is from the Whitby Gazette of May 28:

THE PENNY HEDGE.-The formality of planting the Penny Hedge in the bed of the River Esk, on Ascension Eve, was performed on Wednesday last, by Mr. Isaac Herbert, who has for fifty years discharged this onerous duty. The “nine stakes,” “the nine strout-stowers,” and the “nine gedders” have all been once more duly “planted.” The ceremony was witnessed by a number of ladies and gentlemen, and that highly important functionary, the bailiff of the lord of the manor, Mr. George Welburn, of Fylingdales, was present, and blew the usual malediction, “Out on you, Out on you, Out on you!” through the same identical horn which seventeen centuries ago roused with its lugubrious notes, on Ascension Eve, our ancestors from their “peaceful slumbers.” Whether the wood was cut at the “Stray Head,” and with a “Knife of a Penny Price,” we are not able to say, but a good hedge was planted; and although each stake may not be quite “a yard from another,” the hedge will doubtless be of such strength as to withstand the effect of the prescribed number of tides.

201 words.

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• English folklore (17) ·
• Fakelore (2) ·
• Feast of the Ascension (3) ·
• Fylingdales (1) ·
• Notes and Queries (1) ·
• Penny Hedge (1) ·
• River Esk (2) ·
• Tourism (11) ·
• Whitby Gazette (1) ·
• 📌Whitby (20), town, port and parish on the east coast of North Yorkshire/the North Riding at the mouth of the River Esk ·

All tags.

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