Bringing Home the Bacon

There are few things quite as disheartening as not having a single thought for a column anywhere in your head with a deadline looming. Such is the situation I found myself in this week.

I spoke with my mother on my way home from the Pulse office on Tuesday, and she suggested I write something about the 4th of July. Well, I’m sure there is plenty to write about this country’s most famous holiday, but I have done several columns about the upcoming holiday through the years. But my mother’s suggestion did give me an idea. So after dinner I set out to discover what holidays – besides Independence Day here in the States – are celebrated during the month of July?

Those of you who have already researched this subject (and I know that includes many of you!) know that July 14 in “National Nude Day,” followed on July 15 by “National Tapioca Pudding Day” and “Celebrate Canada Day.” Perhaps you have even celebrated these festive occasions. Or, if your schedule was hectic and you were unable to spend two days in revelry, perhaps you combined these festivities into one big “Nude Canadians in Tapioca Pudding Celebration Day.”

The one holiday in July that particularly caught my eye was “Flitch Day.” For those of you who don’t know the term “flitch” (and I count myself among you prior to tonight), a flitch, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “the side of an animal, now only a hog, salted and cured.” In other words, dear readers, a “flitch” is a side of bacon.

The gist of “Flitch Day” is this: beginning in the 15th century, the monks of Dunmow Priory offered a flitch of bacon to any couple who had been married for at least one year and one day and who could prove to a jury of bachelors and maidens that they had lived in harmony and fidelity since they were married. How or why the ceremony began is lost in history, and though the custom originated with the monks, it probably originated with the districts manor house since the ceremony continued after the priory was dissolved.

The ceremony is mentioned in the poem “Piers Ploughman,” which dates from the mid-14th century, and less than half a century later Chaucer has his Wife of Bath elude to it in The Canterbury Tales in a way that implies that the custom was widespread in western England.

The Illustrated London News of July 1855 provides some additional history for “Flitch Day.” According to the paper, the first recorded recipients of a flitch of bacon were Stephen Samuel and his wife of Little Easton in Essex in 1467. Thomas Fuller of Coggeshall also received a flitch in 1510. The paper goes on to explain, that tradition required the recipient (known as the “pilgrim”) to take his oath kneeling on two sharp stones located in the churchyard with the convent in attendance.

The “pilgrim” was then carried on the shoulders of the townsmen around the priory church and then through the streets of the town with the flitch of bacon carried aloft at the front of the procession.

In 1751, Thomas Shakeshaft, a weaver of Weathersfield, and his wife claimed the flitch. The couple had been married for over seven years at the time and their claim seems to have created quite a stir in the countryside. No less than 5,000 people are reported to have attended the ceremony and the distinguished couple reportedly realized a considerable sum of money by selling slices of bacon to the crowd.

After this event, “Flitch Day” seems to have been abandoned until 1851. One full century after the last recorded gift of bacon, Mr. And Mrs. Hurrell, farmers in the town of Felsted near Little Dunmow, made a claim which the Manor Lord refused to hear. This caused a great deal of discontent among the parishioners, until the Manor Lord implied that if the couple would go to Easton Park on July 16 (where a festival was already scheduled) and went through the usual ceremony, they would receive their side of bacon.

When the day arrived, over 3,000 people, including a brass band, escorted the couple to the park and after swearing their oath they were given the bacon – apparently without any jury present.

I cannot reasonably end this column without reprinting the oath that claimants swore (while kneeling on “two sharp stones”) in order to claim their bacon – it is simply too wonderful. Thus without further ado, the “Oath of the Flitch” as reported in the Illustrated London News:

“We do swear by custom of confession

That we ne’er made nuptial transgression

Nor since we were married man and wife

By household brawl or contentious strife,

Or otherwise at bed or board,

Offended each other in deed or word;

Or since the parish clerk said amen,

Wished ourselves unmarried again;

Or in a twelvemonth and a day

Repented in thought in any way,

But continue true and in desire

As when we joined in holy quire.”

Finally, for those who haven’t guessed by now, Flitch Day, or more precisely, the bestowing of a flitch of bacon to a deserving married couple, is the most likely origin of the term “bringing home the bacon.”

And that brings an end to a column that grew out of a complete dearth of ideas on what to write about.