Real Britain Company News…

This horse race, run at Aintree close to Liverpool, is probably the most famous in the World. It is the one race on which almost everyone has a bet, even if it’s just in the office sweepstake. It started in 1839, making it one of the oldest races in the World.

Some animal lovers would say it is notorious rather than famous as so many horses fall as they negotiate the high fences and ditches, and, despite improvement in recent years, there is often one horse fatality during the race.

Red Rum is the most famous horse to have won this race, doing it no less than 3 times.

Today an annual sporting event takes place that is just one race between only two teams and lasts only about 17 minutes, and yet thousands of people will come from miles around to watch it, suffering the often inclement weather of the season to do so. What’s more thousands more will watch the BBC live coverage.

What is it? The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race or just ‘the boat race’. The two oldest & most prestigous universities in Britain have been challenging each other (last years’ loser always puts down the challenge) to a boat race on the Thames for 156 years.

I recall as a child being taken to see this race. I chose the dark blue rossette to wear (Oxford colours) because I liked the colour, but I swapped half way through when the light blues (Cambridge) were winning.

Why is it such a big deal? Who knows! Just one of those quintessentially British traditions.

St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated on March 17, his religious feast day and the anniversary of his death in the fifth century. The Irish have observed this day as a religious holiday for over a thousand years.

On St. Patrick’s Day, which falls during the Christian season of Lent, Irish families would traditionally attend church in the morning and celebrate in the afternoon. Lenten prohibitions against the consumption of meat were waived and people would dance, drink, and feast—on the traditional meal of Irish bacon and cabbage.

The first St. Patrick’s Day parade took place not in Ireland, but in the United States. Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched through New York City on March 17, 1762. Along with their music, the parade helped the soldiers to reconnect with their Irish roots, as well as fellow Irishmen serving in the English army.

The celebration of St Patrick’s Day as a big scale event remained the domain of the US, Canada and Australia. Recently, however, the Irish have cottoned on to its commercial value and the St Patrick’s Day Festival in Dublin is a growing event.

If there is one day that celebrates Scottishness it is not St Andrew’s Day or even Hogmanay but Burns night, the celebration of the birth of the Scottish poet.

In 1801, on the fifth anniversary of the death of Robert Burns, nine men who knew him met for dinner in Burns Cottage in Alloway to celebrate his life and works. The Master of Ceremonies was a local minister – a liberal theologian and an equally liberal host. Hamilton Paul and his guests shared Masonic brotherhood with Rabbie and Paul devised an evening which looked a bit like a lodge ceremonial, centred on a fine fat haggis; with recitation and singing of Burns’s works and a toast (in verse) to the memory of their friend and hero.

It was such a jolly evening, all agreed to meet again the following January for a Birthday Dinner for the bard, little knowing that they had invented a global phenomenon that we know as the BURNS SUPPER – which still broadly follows the Reverend’s original plan.

Robert (or Rabbie) Burns was far more commercially successful after his death than during his life. Although moderately successful as a poet he never could give up his day job as a hard working farmer and exciseman.
He was, however, very fond of the ‘lassies’. Jean Armour, Burns’ wife, bore him 9 children in 10 years, the last being born on the day of the poet’s funeral. He may have fathered up to 5 more with various other women. He was always in love and perhaps this is why he was such a prolific romantic poet.

Extracted, with thanks to the author, Clark McGinn , from www.Scotland.org

January is a dull, anti climactic sort of month with nothing much going on, so why not head for the Highlands for the Celtic Connections Festival? From 15 January until 1 February around 1,500 artists will be performing in over 300 events across 14 venues. There is bound to something there to induce good cheer!

Sometimes Geese, Goosey or Guize dancing is a Cornish winter tradtion practiced during the Christmas period, Plough Monday and some feast days. Guise dancing is a celebration of mischief, topsy turvey, and role reversal. People dress in gentleman’s hand me downs, and masked ball style masks to hide their features sometimes blacking or whiting up to complete their disguises, gender reversal was often a part of the celebration with some women dressed as men an vice – versa. They are sometimes dressed in tatters like those worn by some kind of morris dancers.

Extracted from Cornish Culture

National Mistletoe Day was endorsed by Parliament in 2005. It is the 1st of December or the first Saturday following. It came about because the people of Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire were concerned for the future of their traditional Mistletoe (and Holly) auctions which had been running for over 100 years.

Visit the website of the Tenbury Mistletoe Festival

St Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland. However, like St George, who never set foot in England, St Andrew didn’t ever reach Scotland. Well, not intact in any case!

St Andrew was of course the Galilean fisherman chosen to be Christ’s first disciple. It is said he preached the Gospel around the Black Sea and in Greece and was eventually crucified on an X-shaped cross in Patras. Indeed he is also the patron saint of Russia and of Greece.

So how did he become associated with Scotland?

Three hundred years after Andrew’s martyrdom the Roman Emperor Constantine, who was a Christian, ordered that the saint’s bones should be moved from Patras to his new capital city of Constantinople. Before the order was carried out a monk called St Rule (or St Regulus) had a dream in which an angel told him to take what bones of Andrew’s he could to ‘the ends of the earth’ for safe-keeping. St Rule did as he was told and embarked on a sea journey which eventually ended in a shipwreck on the east coast of Scotland. He possibly felt that he had indeed reached the ‘ends of the earth’!

St Rule’s Tower still stands among the ruins of St Andrew’s Cathedral, which was a great centre of Medieval pilgrimage, however the whereabouts of the relics is unknown. They were probably destroyed in the Scottish Reformation. During his visit in 1969, Pope Paul VI gave further unspecified relics of St Andrew to Scotland with the words “St Peter gives you his brother” and these are now displayed in a reliquary in St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral in Edinburgh.

Whatever the truth of these ancient legends, the Saltire is without doubt based on the cross of Andrew’s crucifixion. However, it was only after Robert the Bruce’s famous victory at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 that St Andrew was officially named patron saint of Scotland and the Saltire became the national flag of Scotland in 1385.

St Andrew’s day is celebrated more by people of Scottish origin living outside of Scotland, and “St. Andrew’s Societies” flourish. The Saint’s Day is usually a celebration of general Scottishness with traditional food (such as haggis), music (especially bagpipes) and dancing, and of course good Scotch. In Scotland itself Burns night is the more recognised celebration of being Scottish.

Recently however there has been a move to make more of the celebration of St Andrew’s day and a week long festival is planned for the last week of November around the city of St Andrew’s in the Kingdom of Fife.