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Ancient roots Further information |
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Introducing Hare Pie Scrambling and Bottle Kicking Each Easter Monday around two thousand people come to visit Hallaton. Many are family members returning to join family parties, many are players in the game of bottle kicking, and many just come to watch. For most, the point of the day is the bottle kicking game that is a sort of very primitive rugby, using small barrels of beer instead of a ball. The "bottle" is an old field barrel holding about a gallon of beer, and only the unwise try to kick it. The game starts in the afternoon, but is the culmination of a traditional ritual of processions, a church service and the cutting of the hare pie that dates back for well over two hundred years, and may have roots in the iron age. The modern ritual of boittle kicking starts in the morning with the childrens' procession to the church leading up to the church service. After lunch there is the hare pie parade from the Fox Inn to the church gates for the ceremonial cutting and distribution of the hare pie. This is followed by the decoration of the bottles and the distribution of penny loaves at the Buttercross. Then there is a parade up to the Fox, and back down through the village and up to Hare Pie Bank. At Hare Pie Bank the rest of the hare pie is thrown out for scrambling, and the game begins with the tossing up of the first bottle. The game is between Hallaton and the neighbouring village of Medbourne, and involves carrying the bottle towards your own vilage and winning a bottle by carrying the botttle across the stream that separates Hare Pie Bank from your village. The winning team is the first to win two bottles, and the game continues until that happens, often ending well into the dusk. For more about modern bottle kicking, see bottle kicking today and rules of the game. Photographs of bottle kicking from a hundred years ago show that it was very similar to today, with processsions and a service leading up to the bottle kicking. Then the local friendly societies played a large part in the processions with their banners flying, and between the service and the rest of the ritual was a large lunch for the members of the societies. Of course everyone in those days wore hats as a matter of course The earliest written record of bottle kicking is the Tailby letter of 1796, when the ritual was significantly different from now, and centred on scrambling for hare pie, loaves and barrels of beer. But many other elements were much the same. Tailby described the ritual as ancient even then, and "Hare Pie" is found as part of field names back to 1600. Hare Pie Bank is probably the site of the small mediaeval chapel of St. Morrell, indicating that this was a place for rituals well back into the middle ages, while recent surveys suggest that the hilltop had a ritual significance back in the iron age. Has there been a continuous tradition since then? We cannot say with certainty. To understand all of the references here and elsewhere, you will need an introduciton to the geography of bottle kicking. |
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