h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

... sounds all too like home. If you have no problem with the copyright issues please publish some of them here!

Anyway - welcome to hootoo, and have fun ...

a girl called Ben

The Middenshire Festival of Dumpling Thursday

This was celebrated each year on March 29th, whether it fell on a Thursday or not, for no readily apparent or particular reason. The Middenshire Court de Jure made it a requirement to eat dumplings upon this day, and there were heavy penalties for those who failed to do so, or who made dumplings of the wrong size or from the wrong ingredients. The entire Mullett family, who were violently allergic to suet, attempted every year to leave the county on the pretext of visiting sick relatives in London. However, they were invariably caught by the Constables, and force fed with dumplings. As a result, they were red, bloated, and suffering from inverted pores before they even got as far as Chesil, and the trip was invariably called off. The famous idiot, Jethro Thuck, is purported to have nearly died during one particular Dumpling Thursday, when he made his own dumplings with 'Soot' and not `Suet'.

... inverted pores ...

More! Please!

Ben

OK, you asked for it...

Pussing town was the birth-place of Middenshire's most interesting saint, Murrain; patron saint of both insects and diseased cattle. He was born around 300AD, the son of a small holder. His parents despaired of their dreamy, other worldly child who, when given the task of looking after the cattle, would more often than not be found in the farmyard, preaching to a collection of insects and arthropods. News of his holiness soon reached other communities in the county, and people came from far and wide to listen to his daily preachings. Often, he would have an attentive audience of more than three people at a time. At length, his fame reached the son of the Roman Governor, Sextus Strabo, who was so moved by Murrain`s parable of the mislaid spider, that he there and then converted to Christianity and burned his toga. Strabo`s father, Quintus, was furious at his son`s conversion and sent a detatchment of troops to kill Murrain.
On their arrival in the farmyard they found him attempting to baptise a particularly atheistic ant. The centurion immediately drew his sword and struck off Murrain`s head, which rolled into a duck pond. Murrain`s headless body ran round and round the farmyard, evading all the soldiers` efforts to catch it. Eventually, he jumped into the pond, retrieved his head (which had been shouting directions to his body all the while) and sped out of the yard. Unfortunately, the incident had been too much for Murrain, and he died of a severe chill two weeks later as a result of the thorough soaking he had received. Immediately after his death, his father's cows, which up to then had been thin and sickly, began to recover and were eventually sold for a good price. Some immediately ascribed this miracle to Murrain. Other, more cynical people put it down to the better care they had received from a cowherd appointed by Murrain's father after his son's untimely death. Unfortunately, the cynical view prevailed, and Murrain's belief was quickly forgotten, swept aside by the gods of Imperial Rome.

Nearly 1,000 years after his death, a man farming on the same site had a herd of cows which were much troubled by disease. He visited the local wise woman for advice, and she, whilst in a trance, had advised him to model his life on that of the Holy Murrain who had died so long before. The farmer, taking her at her word, had himself beheaded and thrown into a pond. Subsequently, all of his cows died, except one which recovered completely. This miraculous cure was ascribed to Murrain, and he was canonised by Pope Lego IX at a special ceremony in Rome in 1390.

This is fabulous stuff. Tell me we haven't spent hours drinking in the same rural pubs, and you know me, but are just holding out on me for dubious kicks. Please.

I hate to think how much time you have spent in 'Local History' night classes in dust-smelling classrooms. (Do schools still smell the same way?)

I particularly like the head catching a head-cold, though I will retain a fondness for Pope Lego for a while yet.

I am not hounding you - but next time you feel like posting some, please do!

Ben

Ben,

I'm afraid there are a hundred-odd pages of similar tat, mainly the product of my warped imagination, crossed with information gleaned from visits to the British Library.

I'll go through the manuscript in due course and edit some more bits for publication over the next few days.

Strange to think that a County forgotten for more than three hundred years should suddenly come to notice again.

William.

Well, I am going to rustle up the Post (see the front page). This deserves a wider audience.

Thanks for sharing what you did share. I LOVED it!

B

*pulls up a chair and lights his long, curly and wooden pipe*

This is most interesting and entertaining.

Mud Monday

Paplynch, a village on the Middenshire coast, was surrounded by and steeped in mud. Many of its inhabitants were members of the Guilds of Mudders and Daubers, and so owed their livelihoods exclusively to this substance. It is not unnatural, therefore, that one day a year was set aside to give thanks for this bounty. The festival was called Mud Monday, and it took place at Paplynch.

At dawn on the Monday nearest to September 1st, the young men would go to the mud banks along the coast and gather mud in special ceremonial leather buckets. In the meantime, a Mud Queen was chosen from among the most beautiful girls in the village. She was dressed in a white robe, her hair was decked in flowers and she was placed on a floral throne, attended by two handmaidens holding peat shovels. On the return of the young men, the Queen would be smeared from head to foot in mud. To avoid unnecessary rivalry, the men would have previously drawn lots, to decide who would smear what where, and with how much.

At the conclusion of this part of the ceremony, a curious dance would take place to the accompaniment of shawms and sackbuts. All participants would take ten steps forward, and then shake each leg, starting with the left, three times to symbolise the shaking off of the thick, clinging mud. They would then take five steps back and the whole monotonous sequence would start again.

The dance would continue unabated for twelve hours, at the end of which a feast would begin. A huge pie, containing pigs' giblets in boiled blood, was eaten to the accompaniment of "Musspot", a drink made from fermented and distilled soil. A huge phallic totem was then built of mud on the beach, and everyone would dance round it until it sagged under its own weight and collapsed.

Mud Monday was followed by Purgation Tuesday. Much of this day was spent either in, or running to and from, the jakes, in order to purge the system of the previous day's over indulgence. The air, it was noted, was foul and green and filled with great wails, farts and screams of men and women in torment. A different sort of dance altogether occurred upon this day, as people, heads in hands, staggered forth from their dwellings, muttering "Nevermore! Nevermore!" Strangely enough, all pain and anguish forgotten, the festival would take place with renewed vigour the following year.

You HAVE been to Gloucestershire... I know you have!

B

Curiously, my family originated from Gloucestershire. Perhaps this is evidence of some folk memory, buried deep within my double helix. Or, more likely, perhaps it isn't.

W

A very small selection of Middenshire proverbs:


Red skye at nighte, ye barne be alighte.

Black skye by daye, thy sight's gone away.

Every cloud hath a puffy shape.


Any more suggestions?

W.

.... suggestions?

Just to say 'more please'? (Selfish, I know!)

B

OK, you asked for it.

Wernmunkle was a board game popular all over the county and believed invented by monks (Hence the 'munk' in 'wernmunkle'). William Thuck, chronicler of the County of Middenshire, tells us that, in a relatively quiet corner of the cloister of the Stentorian Abbey of St. Peter in Middenbury, could be found "a bord for ye playing of ye auntient game or passe tyme of Wernmunkle." This is a difficult game to describe. Its nearest equivalent is Nine Mens' Morris, at least in terms of the layout of the board. However, it is at this point that the similarity ends. Wernmunkle, although a game of strategy, also possessed an element of physical violence which would now be regarded as wholly unacceptable.

The board, usually carved into a stone slab and only rarely taking the form of a wooden game table, consisted of a square grid with 144 small depressions, some of which were painted black, laid out in rows of twelve. Each of the two players had 24 game pieces, generally made of bone and coloured red or green, and the object of the game was to surround one of the opponent's pieces with eight of one's own. Achievement of this was called a "Munkle." Failing that, the player could try to place seven of his pieces in the shape of a modern letter "Z" (a "Wern.") with at least one piece on a black game space. The opponent would try to block the manoeuvre, using either the conventional method of placing his own pieces, or by guile (for example, feigning illness, lunacy, or pointing at imaginary spiders) in an effort to distract the other player. If these methods failed, but only if he was one game piece away from being "Munkled," he could resort to violence. He could kick his opponent's ankles, and claim one of his opponent's pieces for every howl of pain that the player let slip. Likewise, punches, pokes and gouges could exact the same penalty, if the result was a yell of agony. Perhaps the game was originally a test of stoicism, intended to see how well the brothers could bear pain without complaint. The nature of the game would have placed elderly and infirm players at a serious disadvantage, but for the fact that they were permitted to use a "thwackett" to defend themselves. Thuck describes this only as "Two strugges tyed together." Elsewhere in his writings, Thuck tells us that a strugg was 'an smalle piece of woode for whych no practicall purposse can be guessed.' The game would continue in this manner, either until one player "Munkled" the other, or one or both were too seriously injured to continue.

Have our students escaped again?

Curiously, many people have asked where I have escaped from. I'm not altogether sure now, but I think it had some attractive-looking bars on the windows and nice squishy walls.

William.

Ho William!

How truly excellent to have discovered you upon this magickal electronic engine! It is I, Gavin of Puckworth, Middenshire's most notorious bandit!

I pray ... do tell these base H2G2 coves all about my rollicking, swashbuckling adventures in the dark - and muddy- forests of Middenshire; the county once described by Hubertus Wugg as 'Ye Myddenfhire - so fmall and fo foul yet stench it has that it puts the gong farms of a dozen larger counties to shame. How I abhor it.'

Ya found me! Huzzaa!

Will send a longer communication in a day or so; my Internet Explorer always seems to play up at night. I have no idea why.

Yours,

William.

PS Check out the personal spaces of Jane Pyecruste and Stuff Bag,

W.

I wasn't implying that you'd escaped from anywhere but since you mention it......

I was more struck by the resemblance to a game our sports students play that they've always claimed was quiet and civilized. They've never been able to explain the need for the large lumps of wood that come with the board though!