Blog Status: Template only
| Date: | 28th. May 2007 | |
| County: | CORNWALL | |
| Location: | St. Agnes | |
| Type: | Folk Event | |
| Sub-Type: | Procession, Fête | |
| Viewed by: | WALK from car park | |
| Car Park: | Free (outside town) | |
| Difficulty: | Easy. Some climbing if parked below village. | |
| Distance: | xKm | |
| Season: | Spring | |
| Weather: | ? | |
| Time Of Day: | Late Morning | |
| Camera: | Casio Exilim EX-Z850 Pocket Zoom (JPG) | |
| Scene Rating: | ••••• |
Please note: all data and opinions presented on this site are offered in good faith, but they are advisory only and are utilised at the risk of the user. The authors can accept no blame or liability for any loss or accident or other negative effect resulting from errors, omissions or data that has changed over time.
Original photographs found on this website are Copyright © Richard Baskerville 2015, All Rights Reserved. If small versions of other photographs are found here, they act only as links to larger versions on their originating websites. Such images may be copyrighted by their original owners. Please see the linked websites for copyright details.
Original photographs found on this website are Copyright © Richard Baskerville 2015, All Rights Reserved. If small versions of other photographs are found here, they act only as links to larger versions on their originating websites. Such images may be copyrighted by their original owners. Please see the linked websites for copyright details.
Introduction
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Photo description
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So far in this photo-blog the emphasis has been on the local Cornish scenery (which necessarily involves tin mining in the 18th and 19th centuries, since this has impacted the local environment so much and left so many engine houses cutting the horizon) with sallies into Cornish flora and, occasionally, fauna.
A typical shot of St Agnes would, therefore, be like this one (of the Gooninnis engine house, taken from the top of British Road, just below the Barclays Bank corner.)
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But obviously this is just a small part of the "Cornwall experience" and gives an undue emphasis on industry and mining as it was practiced during the last 300 years. Particularly it de-emphasises people - the local community - and the rich heritage of culture and folklore which has percolated through the ages to modern-day Cornwall, or rather "Kernow" (as it is in the modern Cornish language, the successor to the Brythonic and earlier Celtic languages in which the mythological stories were told or sung.)
The photographs in this post come from the 2007 "St Agnes Victorian Street Fayre" and in truth there aren't that many since it's quite a small event - there's a much larger festival in August, which hopefully I'll shoot at that time. It is, however, one of the few occasions when the men of St Agnes bring out an effigy of the Giant Bolster, the story of whom involves a fascinating period of British history where early Christiany was battling Celtic folklore and mythology for the minds and souls of the Cornish people.
I could just relate the story of the Giant Bolster without preamble, but when I first heard the tale myself I found that it raised as many questions as it answered - about the influences on Cornwall (mythical, historical and contemporary) in the Post-Roman period - so I want to try to establish some of the background to Cornish culture and history first. This isn't easy and it will probably get a bit long-winded!
Cornwall has been settled since the Stone Age. The ancient hill-fort of Carn Brae (just south-west of Redruth) has remnants of a stone-age settlement dating from 3900BC. With the discovery of metal, tin started to be panned and mined in Cornwall. It's said that this was done by "people associated with the Beaker culture," (Wikipedia) although I'm not clear whether these people migrated from the Iberian peninsula during the stone age or the bronze are. It's clear, though, that tin was needed to make bronze and that by about 1600 BC Devon and Cornwall were exporting tin to Wales and across Europe.
There may have been another migration into southern Britain in the 12th century BC, but the next migration for which we have substantial evidence was between 1000 and 500 when various Celtic peoples spread their culture across the British Isles. From 750 AD the migrants brought with them the knowledge of how to smelt and work iron, bringing Britain into the iron age.
The Celtic peoples did not have a written language, so much of what we know about the Cornish comes from Roman historians who documented the region (with which Rome traded) even before Claudius' invasion of Britain in the 1st century AD.) The Romans called the area "Cornubia" (latinised from the word "Kerniw," which was name of the area in the Brythonic language of the time) and the Celtic tribe were called "Cornovii" or "people of the horn". It's not clear whether they were a separate tribe or a sub-tribe of the Dewnans or Dumnonii who occupied much of the West Country at that time.
Cornwall was never really conquered by the Romans. Major Roman roads extended no further west than Isca Dumnoniorum (Exeter). The British tin trade had been largely supplanted by mines in Iberia, so there was no real need for the Romans to establish direct control. There are remains from some Roman villas in Cornwall (e.g. near Tehidy) so at least some of the local Britons were romanised - but the level of Roman influence on Cornish culture was slight compared to areas where there were sizable Roman cities.
This political isolation continued into the 5th and 6th centuries AD. The Romans withdrew their forces from Britain circa 407 AD (the exact year and the nature/reasons for the withdrawal are argued about by scholars) and Post-Roman Britain gradually fell more and more under the influence of the Saxons. Again scholars debate how much this was a migration and how much an invasion (or whether it was either of these, since many troops in Roman garrisons throughout Britain had be recruited from foreign barbarian tribes - like the Saxons - and so they already had a large presence here.)
One pre-historian, Francis Pryor (in his BBC Series "Britain AD") even suggests there was no substantial migration at all, but that the local Britons merely adopted the language and culture of Germanic tibes like the Frisians. His argument in that series is persuasive, although if you ask why the whole mainland culture of a nation should, over a period of 200 years, change their language and the practises of centuries to become like a foreign fashion then you soon start to doubt the proposition again. It should be noted, though, that the migration or cultural influence wasn't just one way. As Saxon culture was migrating to Britain, Celtic peoples and culture were also migrating eastwards to Brittany.
Whatever the reason for the influx of Saxon culture in the east of Britain, however, Cornwall remained under the rule of local Romano-British and Celtic élites.
Throughout the 5th and 6th centuries AD, the Cornish were still dominated by the kings of the Dumnonii - whose rule extended throughout Devon and into Somerset - although a separate King of Cornwall is thought to have existed as a vassal to the Romano-British King of Dumnonia, helping him resist the advance of the West Saxons between the 6th and 8th centuries. The Dumnonii defeated the Saxons at Hehil in 721 AD - although even an alliance with the Danes could not save them from relentless Saxon expansionism.
In 838 the Dumnonii were beaten by the Saxon King Egbert of Wessex and in 936 Athelstan (grandson of Alfred the Great, King of Mercia and Wessex and sometimes called "the first King of England") finished the conquest and set his western boundary at the Tamar (massacring many of the Dumnonii who remained on his side of the river.) The defeat of the Dewnans (Dumnonii) allowed the King of Cornwall to rise from being a client King to become a fully independent ruler. The Tamar is still the boundary between Devon and Cornwall to this day.
The Anglo-Saxons called the people to the west of the Tamar "Cornu-Wealha" - "Cornu" from "Kerniw" or latin "Cornu" and "Wealha" meaning "foreigners," which has come down to us today as "Welsh" (The Saxons also called Cornwall "West Wales.")
The British hero "King Arthur" is now thought to be largely fictitious, although the character may have been based on a Celtic king who fought against the Saxon expansion at some time during this period.
Given that Cornwall was never really subjected to either direct Roman or Saxon overlordship, it is unsurprising that many of its myths and folklore have come down to us today. Cornish folklore shares a cultural base with the folklore of other Celtic peoples (specifically the Welsh and Irish) - for example, giants seem to occur in the stories of all three regions. But much of Cornish folklore is unique.
Cornish giants were often portrayed as bad-tempered, tyrannical and malevolent. Legend tells us that they were common sights throughout the region and the Penwith area, in particular, was plagued with them. The wicked Giant Cormoran lived on St Michael's Mount and devastated the Penzance area by slaughtering cattle and hanging them on his belt for later consumption - until he was dispatched by Jack the Giant Killer.
A giant called The Wrath of Portreath lived in a huge cavern known as his "cupboard." He could wade out to sea and take ships back to his cupboard tied to his belt. The sailors in the ships were taken from the cupboard to the dining table ... not as guests, of course! The giant gorged himself on them, having crushed them with a flick of his fingers...
As in other cultures, giants were often used as explanations for phenomena that people didn't understand. Long after the Romans had left Britain and their history had been forgotten, Saxon peasants believed that Roman buildings (of which many ruins remained) had been built by giants, because they couldn't believe that men could have done it. In Cornwall, the actions of giants centre around boulders and stones. The Wrath of Portreath hurled stones at ships trying to avoid him - some of which remain as a dangerous reef off Godrevy Head. The giant John of Gaunt (who lived at Carn Brae) was the enemy of the giant Bolster (who lived on St Agnes Beacon) and they would often engage in battle by throwing boulders at each other. Bolster was the more successful, evidenced by the fact that there are many more boulders on Carn Brae than St Agnes Beacon...
But giants were by no means the only creatures in Cornish folklore. There were also mermaids, dragons (the last one of which was persuded to swim away from Cornwall by St Petroc,) sea serpents (Morgawr,) fairies, piskies (pixies,) knockers, spriggans and other small people.
Piskies were identical inch-tall old men who wore red caps, white waistcoats, green stockings, brown coats and trousers - and buckled shoes. They were often good and helped the old, but could be mischievous and play cruel pranks.
Spriggans were ugly and feared by the Cornish. They had large heads on small bodies, stole babies, raised whilwinds to damage crops and terrified lone travellers.
Knockers were elfin creatures that lived in mines. Miners left food out for them, so that they didn't inflict bad luck. When a mine closed the knockers continued to inhabit it.
In an age which has easy access to folklore characters from writers as disparate as Hans Anderson and J.R.R. Tolkein this mythic pantheon may not astound us. What is astounding, though, is the way in which the holy men and women of the early Christian Church have become so tightly integrated with the mythic figures that already existed in the oral tradition of the bards.
The best short summary I've seen of this can be found on cornwall-calling.co.uk: "It has been said that Cornwall boasts more saints than were ever enthroned in heaven. For about a hundred years in the 5th and 6th centuries Celtic missionaries arrived in numbers from Wales and Ireland, settled on the shores of Cornwall, and began converting small local groups of people to Christianity. Most of these missionaries established a cell or church near sites that were already in use for religion - places like holy wells, springs, standing stones, shrines."
"Although many of these men were never officially designated saints by the church in later years, their names do continue to live on with the the designation saint in over 200 old Cornish churches. Legend and reality became confused in the telling of the stories. Various saints were credited with arriving floating on such diverse craft as a millstone, a barrel or a stone alter. Many were reported to have embarked on stone throwing contest with local Cornish giants, which the saints invariably won thanks to divine intervention. Many have also left their names to the present day in town names like St Austell or St German."
This confusion "in the telling of the stories" is nowhere encapsulated better than in the story of Bolster and St Agnes, but before I relate that tale, let's have a look at the background to Christianity in Cornwall.
The resistance of the Dumnonii and the Cornish to the encroaching Saxons are thought to have had a religious as well as a political dimension - which is reflected in the strongly Christian thread that runs through the Arthurian legends, alongside the strongly mythic (with Merlin, the Lady of the Lake and so on.)
According to the historians who were nearest in time to the wars of the western Britons and the encroaching Saxons, the Celts had already converted to Christianity while the Saxons were pagans. Those historians say that Christian missionaries only started to have notable success with the Saxons when St Augustine (of Canterbury) - arrived in Thanet from a priory in Rome in 597 and converted King Ethelbert of Kent and 10,000 of his subjects.
But some modern scholars are now questioning the reliability and motivation of early British historians - particularly monks Gildas and ("The Venerable" or - according to Oxford freshmen - "The Venomous") Bede.
Despite the high level of learning and literacy amongst British monks and churchmen during the 5th and 6th century, they tended to write in "florid" Latin and did not much concern themselves with the documentation of contemporary events - although St Patrick's "Confessio" does discuss some aspects of life in Britain and the state of Christianity at the time (St Patrick, the patron Saint of Ireland, was actually a Briton who was kidnapped as a youth and taken to Ireland - where he lived for many years, learning the local language and culture - which stood him in good stead when he returned as a missionary later.)
What has often be considered the first history of the period - Gildas' 6th century work: "De Excidio Britanniae" - is now acknowledged as being polemical and selective, aimed at proving that sinful rulers are punished by God (for example, through the destructive wrath of the Saxon invaders) rather than providing a dispassionate description of events during the previous two centuries.
Bede's "Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum" covers the history of England from the time of Caesar to the early 8th century. It was completed in 731 - almost two centuries after Gildas's work - and, in it's coverage of the 5th and 6th centuries, drew heavily on Gildas's book. Bede spent his entire life in Benedictine monasteries in Monkwearmouth (Sunderland) and modern Jarrow, constructing his history mostly from the monks' extensive library. This means that any selective interpretation of events in sources like Gildas were then likely to transmitted into Bede's own work.
Some modern scholars also put question marks over Bede's own conscious or unconscious motivation. The Christian tradition of the cathedrals, churches and monasteries in most of Saxon Wessex and Mercia - the tradition in which Bede worked - was Anglo-Saxon Christianity (English Roman-Catholicism) which the institutions of the period would have traced back to St Augustine of Canterbury. St Augustine's great triumph was his breakthrough in converting so many pagan Saxons and yet there had been a Christian presence in the British Isles for over 300 years before this - for instance, Britain's first martyr (St Alban) was beheaded at Verulamium circa 304 AD.
If any of the theories about the new Saxon influence coming not from invasion, but from migration or mere cultural infiltration are true, then it's possible that parts of eastern Britain were already partially Christian at this time. This means that Augustine was not just trying to instill his form of Christianity into pagans who believed in many gods, but also trying to gain ascendency over a different (and, in this area, longer-standing) branch of Christianty - which endeavour carried far less evangelistic kudos.
The strain of Christianity which already existed in Britain (and which was the kind which was practised in Cornwall) was so-called "Celtic Christianity" or "Insular Christianity," which developed around the Irish Sea in the 5th and 6th centuries and had liturgy and ritual which differed in some respects from practises developed in the greater Post-Roman world. In the post-Augustine era, both kinds of Christianity co-existed in the same areas. In Mercia Bede's monasteries were in the Augustine tradition, while in Northumbria, the great Lindisfarne monastery had been founded in 635 AD by missionary monks from Iona Abbey(in Scotland) which, in turn, had been founded in 563 by St Columba, a missionary originally from the Uí Néill clan in Ireland.
This proximity meant that traditions particular to Insular Christianity came into dispute, especially the matter of the proper calculation of Easter (which Lindisfarne and other monasteries from the Celtic tradition set on a different date to Anglo-Saxon Bishops.) Insular Christian monks also had a different style of tonsure to main-stream monks, and shaved the hair above their forehead.
The roots of "Insular Christianity" can be dated back to Roman Britain. As the most outlying province in the empire, Christianity was slow to make progress in the Britain until after 313 when the Emperor Constantine announced toleration of Christianity in the Edict of Milan and opened the way for Christian missionaries to travel through the Empire with less chance of persecution.
The end of Roman Britain circa 407 did not mean the suspension of Christianity in the British Isles. Post-Roman British continued to spread the religion. St Patrick went from either Scotland or Northern Britain to Ireland in 432 and the distant insularity of both the British Isles plus the limited Roman influence in the Imperial era in the first place (for example, Britain came into the Post-Roman era still using Brythonic languages - not converted to latinate "romance" languages like France and Spain - while Ireland had never been part of the Roman Empire) meant that both the local culture and local Christianity developed traditions and practices distinct from the rest of the Romanised world. (Irish Christianity was organised around monastic networks ruled by aristocratic abbots, for example, rather than episcopal dioceses.)
The Irish Sea acted as the centre from which this new Celtic culture, with its own style of Christianity, was disseminated. Many missionaries came to Cornwall across the sea from Ireland and North Wales, bringing Insular Christianity with them. Because of the absence of any written records, the exact dates of the arrival of these missionaries is unknown. St Petroc (founder of monasteries in Padstow and Bodmin) is known to have died in 564 and must have spent his entire life in the 6th century AD. St Piran is thought to have been active in the 5th century. Both of them are believed to have been trained in Irish monasteries.
All early Christian missionaries tried to take the power away from existing (pagan) religions by taking over their holy places and holy festivals. For example, Churches in Saxon Britain were often built on megalithic sites or the intersection of ley-lines - which were supposedly imbued with mystic power - and the festival of Christmas was set close to the winter solstice to tap the power of celebrations or pagan festivals like Saturnalia and Yule (from which we get the Christmas tree.) As we've seen from the passage quoted from cornwall-calling.co.uk (above) the missionaries coming into Cornwall were no different and set up oratories and missions "near sites that were already in use for religion - places like holy wells, springs, standing stones, shrines."
What is unusual is that the missionaries to Cornwall seem to have made no attempt to suppress the myths that grew up about them interacting with fabulous characters from the Celtic tradition. (This must have been the case, since many of these stories exist today and they could only exist with the at least tacit approval of the Christian ministry.)
While the lack of written records make it difficult to establish the true history of the period, it also opened the way for folkloric myth and fable - featuring the missionaries - to grow up unchallenged. Since the holy missionaries (by convention called "Saints") always appeared as being cleverer than their mythic adversaries or able to call up divine assistance to vanquish them, the Church must have considered that the stories were good "PR" and that they could only increase the faith of the newly-converted by putting the holy men and women in the Cornish cultural context. This was not unique (everyone knows that St Patrick banished snakes from Ireland, for example,) but in Cornwall it was so prevalent that we can say that the Cornish Saints actually became absorbed into the folklore of the people - and it's probably this which led to so many missionaries becoming honorific Saints and having settlements named after them in what is sometimes referred to as "the Age Of Saints."
One Cornish legend even embodies some of the opposition that early missionaries must have faced into the story of the formation of a pile of large stones called the Cheesewring, on Stowe's Hill (Bodmin Moor, near Minions village.) The local giants reckoned the Saints were setting up too many crosses, taking too many wells as holy and claiming too many tithes from the harvest.. The giants were especially annoyed because they had inhabited Cornwall far longer than the Saints and yet were receiving much less attention now. Diminutive St. Tue had just claimed a well on the Moor and decided to use the opportunity by challenging their leader (Uther) to a rock throwing contest. St. Tue vowed that if Uther won, all the Saints would leave Cornwall, but if he won the giants must abandone sin and follow the cross. The giants thought such a small and weak man had no chance of winning and gathered twelve flat round rocks to be used in the contest. Uther pitched the first rock onto Stowe's Hill. St. Tue cast his eyes to heaven for divine assistance and the next heavy rock flew towards the first rock and capped it. The competition went on until all twelve rocks were balanced one on the other. To break the draw, the giants argued that it was customary to have a thirteenth rock. Uther struggled to a large final rock and pitched it, but the rock fell short and rolled back to St. Tue's feet. St. Tue prayed silently until an invisible angel flew away with the rock and balanced it atop the Cheesewring as a marvel for Mankind....
This is just one of many existing fables about the time of Saints and Giants. In fact, nearly every Cornish saint has a fable of some sort attached to them. St Budoc arrived floating in a barrel. St Piran floated in on a millstone (to which he had been tied and cast into the sea by sinful men in Ireland, while St Ia (a woman of noble birth) arrived "floating on an ivy leaf" (probably a coracle) and another Saint arrived floating on an altar-stone.
St Neot is the subject of many fables, some of which put his height as only 15 inches. He was reputed to spend the day praying in his holy well, immersed to the neck. Legend describes how he achieved many miracles with birds and animals (which can be seen in the stained glass windows of St Neots Parish Church.) There are also surviving stories about St Mawes, St Petroc, St Levan and many others - including, of course, St Agnes.
Whereas the stories featuring Christian missionaries have a clear root, legends featuring giants and piskies are less easy to explain. One source thinks that these originated with the tall Celts (the Giants) with the small Beaker peoples but this seems to require a large stretch of imagination. Many fables seem to be very localised - related to specific geological formations and parts of different oral traditions from different story-tellers or bards. Even simple facts featuring the same characters seem to have very little in common: for example the height of the giants. While the giant Uther could only pitch rocks a few hundred feet, the giants Bolster and John of Gaunt threw much larger rocks at each other from a distance of 6 miles. Yet even this story does not gel with other Bolster myths, where it is related that he could stand with one foot on St Agnes' Beacon and the other on Carn Brea. This would make him 11-12 miles tall - in which case he wouldn't have needed to throw rocks at John of Gaunt (standing on Carn Brae,) he could just drop one on his head!
The Giant Bolster suffers more from such inconsistencies than other characters in the Cornish oral tradition, since he occurs in so many fables and is used to explain so many structures.
For example, in a valley running upwards from Chapel Porth there is a stone in which you can see the impression of the giant's fingers, where he rested his hand while drinking from a well.
Bolster was an evil giant who ate sheep and cattle, children and adults as the mood took him. He was also cruel to his wife (usually just called "Mrs. Bolster!) and there are various versions of stories which deal with this. When he was angry with his wife he would make her carry stones up to the top of St Agnes Beacon - some versions say she carried them on her back until her back broke, while others say she carried them in her pinafore. Mrs Bolster's assiduousness is said to explain why you can find groups of stones on St Agnes Beacon, while a farm at the foot of the beacon is to this day remarkably free of rocks.
The most famous of the Bolster stories is, however, the story of Bolster and St Agnes. Yes, I've spent several eons leading up to it, but now I'm going to tell it (at last!)
Tired of the loss of cattle and children to the insatiable giant, the people of the region asked Sir Constantine and local dignitaries to hunt Bolster to death, but Bolster defeats them in a battle at Chapel Porth and its left to the young and innocent Lady Agnes to rid them of the giant. St Agnes was probably not a missionary, although she is said to have been a model of virtue, a champion of Christianity and a pattern of beauty.
The giant Bolster became emphatuated with St Agnes and followed her incessantly, proclaiming his love. Agnes rejected him again and again. How could she accept someone who was so evil and who was already bound by vows of marriage? Bolster's ardour was not cooled and her pleas for him to leave her alone fell on deaf ears. She realised that there was no release from this situation while the giant lived and, wishing to rid the community of his manifest evil, she told him that she would be less cold towards him if he could offer proof of his love by filling a hole in the cliff at Chapel Porth with his blood.
The giant thought he had so much blood that he could easily fill the small hole and be none the weaker, so he readily agreed. He plunged a knife into a vein and watched his blood pour into the hole. The blood flowed and flowed, but the hole was not filled and the giant fell weak on the ground. He realised he had been tricked, but it was to late to staunch the wound and soon he collapsed into the final swoon of death. The saintly Agnes knew that the hole was open at the bottom, so that as rapidly as the blood flowed in, it ran out again - down the cliffs into the sea. The hole at Chapel Porth still remains, with a red stain which marks the outflow of the giant's blood.
Needless to say, in the 3 annual festivals held in St Agnes (the town) every year, it's not the goodness of the Lady Agnes that's remembered - but the evil giant Bolster!
The largest event is in August, when not only the effigy of Bolster is paraded, but also Mrs. Bolster and (I believe) the figure of Sir Constantine. The parade is also much longer and has floats as well as the large figures. It makes a full circuit through Peterville, as well as the area around the Church and Vicarage Road.
For the last 13 years or so, street theatre groups have also acted out the story of Bolster and St Agnes on "Bolster Day" (not St Agnes' Day, you'll notice!) - May 1st. This follows a lantern and torch procession to the Bolster bonfire on St Agnes beacon on 30th April. On May 1st, the Bolster Drummers and Sir Constantine lead the procession in search of the giant, who they find at Chapel Porth Cove...
Compared to these, the Whit-Monday Victorian Street Fayre is a smaller affair and it's only the figure of the giant Bolster who is paraded in the street - and then for no great distance. Looking at his haggard grey face, it's no wonder the virginal St Agnes wanted nothing to do with him (although his being 11 miles high and his taste in violet and green clothes might just have tipped her favour away from him too!)
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Bolster and the other figures are kept in their own shed in Trevaunance Road, which joins the main through road opposite the Anglican Church.
This was where the crowd was thickest, since there was a traction engine by the Church Wall, food available outside the St Agnes Hotel and a chair-a-plane ride for kids between the Porthvean and Lee's Estate Agents.
The job of clearing a path through the crowd was that of St Agnes' very elegant and dapper Town Crier, who strode ahead of Bolster, warning of the giant's approach and calling to onlookers to applaud, so as to encourage the bolstermen who were taking the giant's weight.
The 15ft effigy of the giant is carried by 5 men - one inside, acting as the giant's "legs," two helping support the weight from the back and one operating each arm.
The arm-men were the most active since they had to raise the arms when coming to narrow areas (like the small gap between Costcutter and the Post Office,) stalls and places where people were thick on the footpath, taking videos and photographs.
Despite the weight (or maybe because of it!) the bolstermen set a cracking pace, so it was hard to get good photographs - particlarly since, although the light was sometimes sunny, the sky was white with cloud and many places had ugly wires crossing the road close to Bolster's head.
There must be several people with shots of the giant with a frenetic person sporting long hair and a black anorak scuttling ahead, turning and popping off a quick shot with a cigarette-pack sized Casio camera as the giant bore down on him, and then scuttling off again to try for another shot with a bluer patch of sky!
As the giant raised his arms to avoid the ladies in Victorian dress who were manning (or should that be "personning" the various stalls selling cakes and bric-a-brac for the lifeboats and other local charities, there was a definite sense that he was grinning and waving at the crowd, enjoying the attention he was taking away from the Lady Agnes and the other saints.
Behind him came the pleasant musical accompaniment of the St Agnes Silver Band (whom someone later congratulated for being in step - as if this was a rare occurance) and a few ladies in Victorian country dress (neither of which parties I managed to get any good photographs off, since the parade's cracking pace meant that they were past me before I could get a good framing!)
Having reached Barclay's Bank (the only Bank Branch left in St Agnes) on the corner of British Road (which was narrower than normal, since there was a steam organ parked opposite) the bolstermen then turned, and walked back without their escort of Silver Band and Victorian Ladies, past Churchtown Square (where there were tables laid out for those who wanted to eat fish and chips in the patchy sunlight) to Trevaunance Road, where the giant will rest until August.
The traction parked outside the church wall was not a show engine, although the brass and paintwork were in good condition.
The rubber on the metal rear-wheels seemed in need of some attention, but with wheels that size they probably don't carry a spare or a jack. It's possible that the machine had been burning rubber by accelerating too fast up to what the driver said was its top speed of 6 mph.
The traction engine was in steam and was ticking over - although it was difficult to see why, since it did not seem to be driving any belts or generators. It must have been thirsty work anyway, since the driver and his mate were well provided with pints of bitter from the St Agnes hotel, just across the road.
In the days of my father's youth, the travelling funfairs were towed, driven and powered by steam engines. The star attraction at that time was "The Galloppers" or the "Gallopping Horses" roundabout, which was so large and heavy that it could not have existed before the age of steam.
Smaller and lighter roundabouts - like this one for children - seem to require no external motor, but can be powered by someone winding a highly-geared handle. I think I've also seen this one in Truro - in Lemon Quay.
The roundabout was not far from the traction engine, just across from the entrance to the Anglican churchyard. As the chairs swung out, pushed by the invisible fingers of centrifugal force, proud parents surrounding the ride slowly eased back to be out of range of small flying feet, the crowds trying to make their way along the road would find their way progressively choaked, until the roundabout slowed again, allowing the ring of adults to shrink, merge with dizzy kids and disperse like bubbles into the flowing throng.
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Background
What follows is a brief history of St Agnes festivals, with a focus on the Giant Bolster. If you want to get straight into the description of the walk, please click here to jump down the page.
So far in this photo-blog the emphasis has been on the local Cornish scenery (which necessarily involves tin mining in the 18th and 19th centuries, since this has impacted the local environment so much and left so many engine houses cutting the horizon) with sallies into Cornish flora and, occasionally, fauna.
A typical shot of St Agnes would, therefore, be like this one (of the Gooninnis engine house, taken from the top of British Road, just below the Barclays Bank corner.)
2 - Photo descriptionThe photographs in this post come from the 2007 "St Agnes Victorian Street Fayre" and in truth there aren't that many since it's quite a small event - there's a much larger festival in August, which hopefully I'll shoot at that time. It is, however, one of the few occasions when the men of St Agnes bring out an effigy of the Giant Bolster, the story of whom involves a fascinating period of British history where early Christiany was battling Celtic folklore and mythology for the minds and souls of the Cornish people.
I could just relate the story of the Giant Bolster without preamble, but when I first heard the tale myself I found that it raised as many questions as it answered - about the influences on Cornwall (mythical, historical and contemporary) in the Post-Roman period - so I want to try to establish some of the background to Cornish culture and history first. This isn't easy and it will probably get a bit long-winded!
Cornwall has been settled since the Stone Age. The ancient hill-fort of Carn Brae (just south-west of Redruth) has remnants of a stone-age settlement dating from 3900BC. With the discovery of metal, tin started to be panned and mined in Cornwall. It's said that this was done by "people associated with the Beaker culture," (Wikipedia) although I'm not clear whether these people migrated from the Iberian peninsula during the stone age or the bronze are. It's clear, though, that tin was needed to make bronze and that by about 1600 BC Devon and Cornwall were exporting tin to Wales and across Europe.
There may have been another migration into southern Britain in the 12th century BC, but the next migration for which we have substantial evidence was between 1000 and 500 when various Celtic peoples spread their culture across the British Isles. From 750 AD the migrants brought with them the knowledge of how to smelt and work iron, bringing Britain into the iron age.
The Celtic peoples did not have a written language, so much of what we know about the Cornish comes from Roman historians who documented the region (with which Rome traded) even before Claudius' invasion of Britain in the 1st century AD.) The Romans called the area "Cornubia" (latinised from the word "Kerniw," which was name of the area in the Brythonic language of the time) and the Celtic tribe were called "Cornovii" or "people of the horn". It's not clear whether they were a separate tribe or a sub-tribe of the Dewnans or Dumnonii who occupied much of the West Country at that time.
Cornwall was never really conquered by the Romans. Major Roman roads extended no further west than Isca Dumnoniorum (Exeter). The British tin trade had been largely supplanted by mines in Iberia, so there was no real need for the Romans to establish direct control. There are remains from some Roman villas in Cornwall (e.g. near Tehidy) so at least some of the local Britons were romanised - but the level of Roman influence on Cornish culture was slight compared to areas where there were sizable Roman cities.
This political isolation continued into the 5th and 6th centuries AD. The Romans withdrew their forces from Britain circa 407 AD (the exact year and the nature/reasons for the withdrawal are argued about by scholars) and Post-Roman Britain gradually fell more and more under the influence of the Saxons. Again scholars debate how much this was a migration and how much an invasion (or whether it was either of these, since many troops in Roman garrisons throughout Britain had be recruited from foreign barbarian tribes - like the Saxons - and so they already had a large presence here.)
One pre-historian, Francis Pryor (in his BBC Series "Britain AD") even suggests there was no substantial migration at all, but that the local Britons merely adopted the language and culture of Germanic tibes like the Frisians. His argument in that series is persuasive, although if you ask why the whole mainland culture of a nation should, over a period of 200 years, change their language and the practises of centuries to become like a foreign fashion then you soon start to doubt the proposition again. It should be noted, though, that the migration or cultural influence wasn't just one way. As Saxon culture was migrating to Britain, Celtic peoples and culture were also migrating eastwards to Brittany.
Whatever the reason for the influx of Saxon culture in the east of Britain, however, Cornwall remained under the rule of local Romano-British and Celtic élites.
Throughout the 5th and 6th centuries AD, the Cornish were still dominated by the kings of the Dumnonii - whose rule extended throughout Devon and into Somerset - although a separate King of Cornwall is thought to have existed as a vassal to the Romano-British King of Dumnonia, helping him resist the advance of the West Saxons between the 6th and 8th centuries. The Dumnonii defeated the Saxons at Hehil in 721 AD - although even an alliance with the Danes could not save them from relentless Saxon expansionism.
In 838 the Dumnonii were beaten by the Saxon King Egbert of Wessex and in 936 Athelstan (grandson of Alfred the Great, King of Mercia and Wessex and sometimes called "the first King of England") finished the conquest and set his western boundary at the Tamar (massacring many of the Dumnonii who remained on his side of the river.) The defeat of the Dewnans (Dumnonii) allowed the King of Cornwall to rise from being a client King to become a fully independent ruler. The Tamar is still the boundary between Devon and Cornwall to this day.
The Anglo-Saxons called the people to the west of the Tamar "Cornu-Wealha" - "Cornu" from "Kerniw" or latin "Cornu" and "Wealha" meaning "foreigners," which has come down to us today as "Welsh" (The Saxons also called Cornwall "West Wales.")
The British hero "King Arthur" is now thought to be largely fictitious, although the character may have been based on a Celtic king who fought against the Saxon expansion at some time during this period.
Given that Cornwall was never really subjected to either direct Roman or Saxon overlordship, it is unsurprising that many of its myths and folklore have come down to us today. Cornish folklore shares a cultural base with the folklore of other Celtic peoples (specifically the Welsh and Irish) - for example, giants seem to occur in the stories of all three regions. But much of Cornish folklore is unique.
Cornish giants were often portrayed as bad-tempered, tyrannical and malevolent. Legend tells us that they were common sights throughout the region and the Penwith area, in particular, was plagued with them. The wicked Giant Cormoran lived on St Michael's Mount and devastated the Penzance area by slaughtering cattle and hanging them on his belt for later consumption - until he was dispatched by Jack the Giant Killer.
A giant called The Wrath of Portreath lived in a huge cavern known as his "cupboard." He could wade out to sea and take ships back to his cupboard tied to his belt. The sailors in the ships were taken from the cupboard to the dining table ... not as guests, of course! The giant gorged himself on them, having crushed them with a flick of his fingers...
As in other cultures, giants were often used as explanations for phenomena that people didn't understand. Long after the Romans had left Britain and their history had been forgotten, Saxon peasants believed that Roman buildings (of which many ruins remained) had been built by giants, because they couldn't believe that men could have done it. In Cornwall, the actions of giants centre around boulders and stones. The Wrath of Portreath hurled stones at ships trying to avoid him - some of which remain as a dangerous reef off Godrevy Head. The giant John of Gaunt (who lived at Carn Brae) was the enemy of the giant Bolster (who lived on St Agnes Beacon) and they would often engage in battle by throwing boulders at each other. Bolster was the more successful, evidenced by the fact that there are many more boulders on Carn Brae than St Agnes Beacon...
But giants were by no means the only creatures in Cornish folklore. There were also mermaids, dragons (the last one of which was persuded to swim away from Cornwall by St Petroc,) sea serpents (Morgawr,) fairies, piskies (pixies,) knockers, spriggans and other small people.
Piskies were identical inch-tall old men who wore red caps, white waistcoats, green stockings, brown coats and trousers - and buckled shoes. They were often good and helped the old, but could be mischievous and play cruel pranks.
Spriggans were ugly and feared by the Cornish. They had large heads on small bodies, stole babies, raised whilwinds to damage crops and terrified lone travellers.
Knockers were elfin creatures that lived in mines. Miners left food out for them, so that they didn't inflict bad luck. When a mine closed the knockers continued to inhabit it.
In an age which has easy access to folklore characters from writers as disparate as Hans Anderson and J.R.R. Tolkein this mythic pantheon may not astound us. What is astounding, though, is the way in which the holy men and women of the early Christian Church have become so tightly integrated with the mythic figures that already existed in the oral tradition of the bards.
The best short summary I've seen of this can be found on cornwall-calling.co.uk: "It has been said that Cornwall boasts more saints than were ever enthroned in heaven. For about a hundred years in the 5th and 6th centuries Celtic missionaries arrived in numbers from Wales and Ireland, settled on the shores of Cornwall, and began converting small local groups of people to Christianity. Most of these missionaries established a cell or church near sites that were already in use for religion - places like holy wells, springs, standing stones, shrines."
"Although many of these men were never officially designated saints by the church in later years, their names do continue to live on with the the designation saint in over 200 old Cornish churches. Legend and reality became confused in the telling of the stories. Various saints were credited with arriving floating on such diverse craft as a millstone, a barrel or a stone alter. Many were reported to have embarked on stone throwing contest with local Cornish giants, which the saints invariably won thanks to divine intervention. Many have also left their names to the present day in town names like St Austell or St German."
This confusion "in the telling of the stories" is nowhere encapsulated better than in the story of Bolster and St Agnes, but before I relate that tale, let's have a look at the background to Christianity in Cornwall.
The resistance of the Dumnonii and the Cornish to the encroaching Saxons are thought to have had a religious as well as a political dimension - which is reflected in the strongly Christian thread that runs through the Arthurian legends, alongside the strongly mythic (with Merlin, the Lady of the Lake and so on.)
According to the historians who were nearest in time to the wars of the western Britons and the encroaching Saxons, the Celts had already converted to Christianity while the Saxons were pagans. Those historians say that Christian missionaries only started to have notable success with the Saxons when St Augustine (of Canterbury) - arrived in Thanet from a priory in Rome in 597 and converted King Ethelbert of Kent and 10,000 of his subjects.
But some modern scholars are now questioning the reliability and motivation of early British historians - particularly monks Gildas and ("The Venerable" or - according to Oxford freshmen - "The Venomous") Bede.
Despite the high level of learning and literacy amongst British monks and churchmen during the 5th and 6th century, they tended to write in "florid" Latin and did not much concern themselves with the documentation of contemporary events - although St Patrick's "Confessio" does discuss some aspects of life in Britain and the state of Christianity at the time (St Patrick, the patron Saint of Ireland, was actually a Briton who was kidnapped as a youth and taken to Ireland - where he lived for many years, learning the local language and culture - which stood him in good stead when he returned as a missionary later.)
What has often be considered the first history of the period - Gildas' 6th century work: "De Excidio Britanniae" - is now acknowledged as being polemical and selective, aimed at proving that sinful rulers are punished by God (for example, through the destructive wrath of the Saxon invaders) rather than providing a dispassionate description of events during the previous two centuries.
Bede's "Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum" covers the history of England from the time of Caesar to the early 8th century. It was completed in 731 - almost two centuries after Gildas's work - and, in it's coverage of the 5th and 6th centuries, drew heavily on Gildas's book. Bede spent his entire life in Benedictine monasteries in Monkwearmouth (Sunderland) and modern Jarrow, constructing his history mostly from the monks' extensive library. This means that any selective interpretation of events in sources like Gildas were then likely to transmitted into Bede's own work.
Some modern scholars also put question marks over Bede's own conscious or unconscious motivation. The Christian tradition of the cathedrals, churches and monasteries in most of Saxon Wessex and Mercia - the tradition in which Bede worked - was Anglo-Saxon Christianity (English Roman-Catholicism) which the institutions of the period would have traced back to St Augustine of Canterbury. St Augustine's great triumph was his breakthrough in converting so many pagan Saxons and yet there had been a Christian presence in the British Isles for over 300 years before this - for instance, Britain's first martyr (St Alban) was beheaded at Verulamium circa 304 AD.
If any of the theories about the new Saxon influence coming not from invasion, but from migration or mere cultural infiltration are true, then it's possible that parts of eastern Britain were already partially Christian at this time. This means that Augustine was not just trying to instill his form of Christianity into pagans who believed in many gods, but also trying to gain ascendency over a different (and, in this area, longer-standing) branch of Christianty - which endeavour carried far less evangelistic kudos.
The strain of Christianity which already existed in Britain (and which was the kind which was practised in Cornwall) was so-called "Celtic Christianity" or "Insular Christianity," which developed around the Irish Sea in the 5th and 6th centuries and had liturgy and ritual which differed in some respects from practises developed in the greater Post-Roman world. In the post-Augustine era, both kinds of Christianity co-existed in the same areas. In Mercia Bede's monasteries were in the Augustine tradition, while in Northumbria, the great Lindisfarne monastery had been founded in 635 AD by missionary monks from Iona Abbey(in Scotland) which, in turn, had been founded in 563 by St Columba, a missionary originally from the Uí Néill clan in Ireland.
This proximity meant that traditions particular to Insular Christianity came into dispute, especially the matter of the proper calculation of Easter (which Lindisfarne and other monasteries from the Celtic tradition set on a different date to Anglo-Saxon Bishops.) Insular Christian monks also had a different style of tonsure to main-stream monks, and shaved the hair above their forehead.
The roots of "Insular Christianity" can be dated back to Roman Britain. As the most outlying province in the empire, Christianity was slow to make progress in the Britain until after 313 when the Emperor Constantine announced toleration of Christianity in the Edict of Milan and opened the way for Christian missionaries to travel through the Empire with less chance of persecution.
The end of Roman Britain circa 407 did not mean the suspension of Christianity in the British Isles. Post-Roman British continued to spread the religion. St Patrick went from either Scotland or Northern Britain to Ireland in 432 and the distant insularity of both the British Isles plus the limited Roman influence in the Imperial era in the first place (for example, Britain came into the Post-Roman era still using Brythonic languages - not converted to latinate "romance" languages like France and Spain - while Ireland had never been part of the Roman Empire) meant that both the local culture and local Christianity developed traditions and practices distinct from the rest of the Romanised world. (Irish Christianity was organised around monastic networks ruled by aristocratic abbots, for example, rather than episcopal dioceses.)
The Irish Sea acted as the centre from which this new Celtic culture, with its own style of Christianity, was disseminated. Many missionaries came to Cornwall across the sea from Ireland and North Wales, bringing Insular Christianity with them. Because of the absence of any written records, the exact dates of the arrival of these missionaries is unknown. St Petroc (founder of monasteries in Padstow and Bodmin) is known to have died in 564 and must have spent his entire life in the 6th century AD. St Piran is thought to have been active in the 5th century. Both of them are believed to have been trained in Irish monasteries.
All early Christian missionaries tried to take the power away from existing (pagan) religions by taking over their holy places and holy festivals. For example, Churches in Saxon Britain were often built on megalithic sites or the intersection of ley-lines - which were supposedly imbued with mystic power - and the festival of Christmas was set close to the winter solstice to tap the power of celebrations or pagan festivals like Saturnalia and Yule (from which we get the Christmas tree.) As we've seen from the passage quoted from cornwall-calling.co.uk (above) the missionaries coming into Cornwall were no different and set up oratories and missions "near sites that were already in use for religion - places like holy wells, springs, standing stones, shrines."
What is unusual is that the missionaries to Cornwall seem to have made no attempt to suppress the myths that grew up about them interacting with fabulous characters from the Celtic tradition. (This must have been the case, since many of these stories exist today and they could only exist with the at least tacit approval of the Christian ministry.)
While the lack of written records make it difficult to establish the true history of the period, it also opened the way for folkloric myth and fable - featuring the missionaries - to grow up unchallenged. Since the holy missionaries (by convention called "Saints") always appeared as being cleverer than their mythic adversaries or able to call up divine assistance to vanquish them, the Church must have considered that the stories were good "PR" and that they could only increase the faith of the newly-converted by putting the holy men and women in the Cornish cultural context. This was not unique (everyone knows that St Patrick banished snakes from Ireland, for example,) but in Cornwall it was so prevalent that we can say that the Cornish Saints actually became absorbed into the folklore of the people - and it's probably this which led to so many missionaries becoming honorific Saints and having settlements named after them in what is sometimes referred to as "the Age Of Saints."
One Cornish legend even embodies some of the opposition that early missionaries must have faced into the story of the formation of a pile of large stones called the Cheesewring, on Stowe's Hill (Bodmin Moor, near Minions village.) The local giants reckoned the Saints were setting up too many crosses, taking too many wells as holy and claiming too many tithes from the harvest.. The giants were especially annoyed because they had inhabited Cornwall far longer than the Saints and yet were receiving much less attention now. Diminutive St. Tue had just claimed a well on the Moor and decided to use the opportunity by challenging their leader (Uther) to a rock throwing contest. St. Tue vowed that if Uther won, all the Saints would leave Cornwall, but if he won the giants must abandone sin and follow the cross. The giants thought such a small and weak man had no chance of winning and gathered twelve flat round rocks to be used in the contest. Uther pitched the first rock onto Stowe's Hill. St. Tue cast his eyes to heaven for divine assistance and the next heavy rock flew towards the first rock and capped it. The competition went on until all twelve rocks were balanced one on the other. To break the draw, the giants argued that it was customary to have a thirteenth rock. Uther struggled to a large final rock and pitched it, but the rock fell short and rolled back to St. Tue's feet. St. Tue prayed silently until an invisible angel flew away with the rock and balanced it atop the Cheesewring as a marvel for Mankind....
This is just one of many existing fables about the time of Saints and Giants. In fact, nearly every Cornish saint has a fable of some sort attached to them. St Budoc arrived floating in a barrel. St Piran floated in on a millstone (to which he had been tied and cast into the sea by sinful men in Ireland, while St Ia (a woman of noble birth) arrived "floating on an ivy leaf" (probably a coracle) and another Saint arrived floating on an altar-stone.
St Neot is the subject of many fables, some of which put his height as only 15 inches. He was reputed to spend the day praying in his holy well, immersed to the neck. Legend describes how he achieved many miracles with birds and animals (which can be seen in the stained glass windows of St Neots Parish Church.) There are also surviving stories about St Mawes, St Petroc, St Levan and many others - including, of course, St Agnes.
Whereas the stories featuring Christian missionaries have a clear root, legends featuring giants and piskies are less easy to explain. One source thinks that these originated with the tall Celts (the Giants) with the small Beaker peoples but this seems to require a large stretch of imagination. Many fables seem to be very localised - related to specific geological formations and parts of different oral traditions from different story-tellers or bards. Even simple facts featuring the same characters seem to have very little in common: for example the height of the giants. While the giant Uther could only pitch rocks a few hundred feet, the giants Bolster and John of Gaunt threw much larger rocks at each other from a distance of 6 miles. Yet even this story does not gel with other Bolster myths, where it is related that he could stand with one foot on St Agnes' Beacon and the other on Carn Brea. This would make him 11-12 miles tall - in which case he wouldn't have needed to throw rocks at John of Gaunt (standing on Carn Brae,) he could just drop one on his head!
The Giant Bolster suffers more from such inconsistencies than other characters in the Cornish oral tradition, since he occurs in so many fables and is used to explain so many structures.
For example, in a valley running upwards from Chapel Porth there is a stone in which you can see the impression of the giant's fingers, where he rested his hand while drinking from a well.
Bolster was an evil giant who ate sheep and cattle, children and adults as the mood took him. He was also cruel to his wife (usually just called "Mrs. Bolster!) and there are various versions of stories which deal with this. When he was angry with his wife he would make her carry stones up to the top of St Agnes Beacon - some versions say she carried them on her back until her back broke, while others say she carried them in her pinafore. Mrs Bolster's assiduousness is said to explain why you can find groups of stones on St Agnes Beacon, while a farm at the foot of the beacon is to this day remarkably free of rocks.
The most famous of the Bolster stories is, however, the story of Bolster and St Agnes. Yes, I've spent several eons leading up to it, but now I'm going to tell it (at last!)
Tired of the loss of cattle and children to the insatiable giant, the people of the region asked Sir Constantine and local dignitaries to hunt Bolster to death, but Bolster defeats them in a battle at Chapel Porth and its left to the young and innocent Lady Agnes to rid them of the giant. St Agnes was probably not a missionary, although she is said to have been a model of virtue, a champion of Christianity and a pattern of beauty.
The giant Bolster became emphatuated with St Agnes and followed her incessantly, proclaiming his love. Agnes rejected him again and again. How could she accept someone who was so evil and who was already bound by vows of marriage? Bolster's ardour was not cooled and her pleas for him to leave her alone fell on deaf ears. She realised that there was no release from this situation while the giant lived and, wishing to rid the community of his manifest evil, she told him that she would be less cold towards him if he could offer proof of his love by filling a hole in the cliff at Chapel Porth with his blood.
The giant thought he had so much blood that he could easily fill the small hole and be none the weaker, so he readily agreed. He plunged a knife into a vein and watched his blood pour into the hole. The blood flowed and flowed, but the hole was not filled and the giant fell weak on the ground. He realised he had been tricked, but it was to late to staunch the wound and soon he collapsed into the final swoon of death. The saintly Agnes knew that the hole was open at the bottom, so that as rapidly as the blood flowed in, it ran out again - down the cliffs into the sea. The hole at Chapel Porth still remains, with a red stain which marks the outflow of the giant's blood.
Needless to say, in the 3 annual festivals held in St Agnes (the town) every year, it's not the goodness of the Lady Agnes that's remembered - but the evil giant Bolster!
The largest event is in August, when not only the effigy of Bolster is paraded, but also Mrs. Bolster and (I believe) the figure of Sir Constantine. The parade is also much longer and has floats as well as the large figures. It makes a full circuit through Peterville, as well as the area around the Church and Vicarage Road.
For the last 13 years or so, street theatre groups have also acted out the story of Bolster and St Agnes on "Bolster Day" (not St Agnes' Day, you'll notice!) - May 1st. This follows a lantern and torch procession to the Bolster bonfire on St Agnes beacon on 30th April. On May 1st, the Bolster Drummers and Sir Constantine lead the procession in search of the giant, who they find at Chapel Porth Cove...
Compared to these, the Whit-Monday Victorian Street Fayre is a smaller affair and it's only the figure of the giant Bolster who is paraded in the street - and then for no great distance. Looking at his haggard grey face, it's no wonder the virginal St Agnes wanted nothing to do with him (although his being 11 miles high and his taste in violet and green clothes might just have tipped her favour away from him too!)
The Festival
Getting There and Parking
Under construction.Under construction.
Under construction.
The Event Itself
Bolster and the other figures are kept in their own shed in Trevaunance Road, which joins the main through road opposite the Anglican Church.
This was where the crowd was thickest, since there was a traction engine by the Church Wall, food available outside the St Agnes Hotel and a chair-a-plane ride for kids between the Porthvean and Lee's Estate Agents.
The job of clearing a path through the crowd was that of St Agnes' very elegant and dapper Town Crier, who strode ahead of Bolster, warning of the giant's approach and calling to onlookers to applaud, so as to encourage the bolstermen who were taking the giant's weight.
The 15ft effigy of the giant is carried by 5 men - one inside, acting as the giant's "legs," two helping support the weight from the back and one operating each arm.
The arm-men were the most active since they had to raise the arms when coming to narrow areas (like the small gap between Costcutter and the Post Office,) stalls and places where people were thick on the footpath, taking videos and photographs.
Despite the weight (or maybe because of it!) the bolstermen set a cracking pace, so it was hard to get good photographs - particlarly since, although the light was sometimes sunny, the sky was white with cloud and many places had ugly wires crossing the road close to Bolster's head.
There must be several people with shots of the giant with a frenetic person sporting long hair and a black anorak scuttling ahead, turning and popping off a quick shot with a cigarette-pack sized Casio camera as the giant bore down on him, and then scuttling off again to try for another shot with a bluer patch of sky!
As the giant raised his arms to avoid the ladies in Victorian dress who were manning (or should that be "personning" the various stalls selling cakes and bric-a-brac for the lifeboats and other local charities, there was a definite sense that he was grinning and waving at the crowd, enjoying the attention he was taking away from the Lady Agnes and the other saints.
Behind him came the pleasant musical accompaniment of the St Agnes Silver Band (whom someone later congratulated for being in step - as if this was a rare occurance) and a few ladies in Victorian country dress (neither of which parties I managed to get any good photographs off, since the parade's cracking pace meant that they were past me before I could get a good framing!)
Having reached Barclay's Bank (the only Bank Branch left in St Agnes) on the corner of British Road (which was narrower than normal, since there was a steam organ parked opposite) the bolstermen then turned, and walked back without their escort of Silver Band and Victorian Ladies, past Churchtown Square (where there were tables laid out for those who wanted to eat fish and chips in the patchy sunlight) to Trevaunance Road, where the giant will rest until August.
The traction parked outside the church wall was not a show engine, although the brass and paintwork were in good condition.
The rubber on the metal rear-wheels seemed in need of some attention, but with wheels that size they probably don't carry a spare or a jack. It's possible that the machine had been burning rubber by accelerating too fast up to what the driver said was its top speed of 6 mph.
The traction engine was in steam and was ticking over - although it was difficult to see why, since it did not seem to be driving any belts or generators. It must have been thirsty work anyway, since the driver and his mate were well provided with pints of bitter from the St Agnes hotel, just across the road.
In the days of my father's youth, the travelling funfairs were towed, driven and powered by steam engines. The star attraction at that time was "The Galloppers" or the "Gallopping Horses" roundabout, which was so large and heavy that it could not have existed before the age of steam.
Smaller and lighter roundabouts - like this one for children - seem to require no external motor, but can be powered by someone winding a highly-geared handle. I think I've also seen this one in Truro - in Lemon Quay.
The roundabout was not far from the traction engine, just across from the entrance to the Anglican churchyard. As the chairs swung out, pushed by the invisible fingers of centrifugal force, proud parents surrounding the ride slowly eased back to be out of range of small flying feet, the crowds trying to make their way along the road would find their way progressively choaked, until the roundabout slowed again, allowing the ring of adults to shrink, merge with dizzy kids and disperse like bubbles into the flowing throng.
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Cornwall,
Fair,
Folklore,
Gooninnis,
Holiday Makers,
Music,
St. Agnes,
Tradition
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