Rushbearing

[a] The festival was widespread in Britain from the Middle Ages and well established by the time of Shakespeare,[2] but had fallen into decline by the beginning of the 19th century, as church floors were flagged with stone.

The custom was revived later in the 19th century, and is kept alive today as an annual event in a number of towns and villages in the north of England.

In AD 601 Pope Gregory I wrote a letter to Mellitus (a member of the Gregorian mission sent to England to convert the Anglo-Saxons from their native paganism to Christianity) which read:[3] When, therefore, Almighty God shall bring you to the most reverend man our brother bishop, St Augustine, tell him what I have, upon mature deliberation on the affair of the English, thought of; namely, that the temples of the idols in that nation ought not to be destroyed.

Church services began at sunset on Saturday and the night of prayer was called a vigil, eve or, due to the late hour, wake, from the Old English waecan.

The Household roll of Edward II (1307–1327) shows a payment to a John de Carlford for "a supply of rushes for strewing the King’s chamber".

[6] The festival often attracted unsavoury characters, such as pedlars, cutpurses and pickpockets, and became a pretext for heavy drinking in otherwise quiet communities, such that even pillars of the community would occasionally disgrace themselves:[7] Tristram Tyldedesly, the minister at Rufford and Marsden on Sundays and hollidaies hath danced emongst light and youthful companie both men and women at weddings, drynkings and rishbearings; and in his dancing and after wantonlye and dissolutely he kissed a mayd...whereat divers persons were offended and so sore grieved that there was weapons drawn and great dissenssion arose.

[15] Previously to our leaving Glossop we visited the village church...Here we observed the remains of some garlands hung up near to the entrance into the chancel.

It is denominated rush-bearing; and the ceremonies of this truly rural fête take place annually, on one of the days appropriated to the wake or village festival.

All the ribands in the place may be said to be in requisition on this festive day, and he who is the greatest favourite amongst the lasses is generally the gayest personage in the cavalcade.

The rushes and flowers are then taken into the church and strewed amongst the pews and along the floors, and the garlands are hung up near the entrance into the chancel, in remembrance of the day.

The ceremony being ended, the various parties who made up the procession retire, amidst music and dancing, to the village inn, where they spend the remainder of the day in joyous festivity.

Septimus Collinson, Provost of Queen's College, Oxford and a native of the village, after being extinct for about thirty years, but an attempt to revive it at Great Langdale proved unsuccessful.

[16] Rural Ceremony Closing the sacred Book which long has fed Our meditations, give we to a day Of annual joy one tributary lay; This day, when, forth by rustic music led, The village Children, while the sky is red With evening lights, advance in long array Through the still churchyard, each with garland gay, That, carried sceptre-like, o'ertops the head Of the proud Bearer.

To the wide church-door, Charged with these offerings which their fathers bore For decoration in the Papal time, The innocent procession softly moves:-- The spirit of Laud is pleased in heaven's pure clime, And Hooker's voice the spectacle approves!

.everyone who chose came – young and old; and all who carried "burdens" ( garlands-on-poles ) received a good big cake of gingerbread, made by Old Mickey the baker .

[19] Rushcart is a tradition of rushbearing that originated in north-west England, whereby decorated carts were loaded with rushes and taken to the local church, accompanied by Morris dancers and other entertainment.

[21] Some of the old rushcart traditions have been revived in recent years: Rushbearing ceremonies have survived, or been revived, in a number of towns and villages in northwest England including: Lymm and Forest Chapel in Cheshire, Gorton, Littleborough, and Saddleworth in Greater Manchester, Newchurch in Pendle in Lancashire, Sowerby Bridge in Yorkshire, and Ambleside, Great Musgrave, Grasmere, Urswick and Warcop in Cumbria.

Common club-rush (Schoenoplectus lacustris) prefers to grow in shallow water such as that found in lakes, ponds and along the edges of slow moving streams and rivers.

The RSPB advises farmers in the North Pennines that the optimum habitat for curlew and lapwing is a mix of grass (70%) and rush (30%).