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Medieval English rural goddesses

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Alisha Marie Klapheke
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Medieval English rural goddesses

Post by Alisha Marie Klapheke » Sun May 8th, 2011, 9:07 pm

Is that title ridiculous? Yes, perhaps. I just wanted to know...what goddesses were still revered (if only in certain ongoing yearly events) in rural medieval england? I would like a Harvest Queen...maybe Nerthus? Would they call her that at all in the 13th c? I know everyone is Christianized--I wanted simply to mention the older beliefs alongside the Christian ones. Can anyone help me out?

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Post by Margaret » Tue May 10th, 2011, 9:17 am

I don't know what names a harvest goddess would have been known by in medieval times. Probably most of the old Celtic gods and goddesses would no longer be known by their old names, because the Christian Church would have stamped them out. But many of the old pagan religious customs were retained even beyond the Middle Ages. An example would be the "corn dollie" - a figure made out of straw (see Wikipedia) - which likely represented a goddess before the Christianization of Europe. The Church tried to suppress the custom, but succeeded only in sending the symbolism underground.

Some of the old Celtic goddesses were absorbed into the Catholic Church as saints. Brigid is a prime example (see Wikipedia). The attributes of the pagan goddess were carried over to the qualities St. Brigid was supposed to have power over. Others of the old goddesses were absorbed into the Virgin Mary, who was far more important in medieval times than in modern times.

There was also a lewd figure known as the Sheela-na-Gig who in Christian times seems to have been regarded as a sort of protective ogress who scared away bad influences. Perhaps a fertility goddess in pagan times? Anyway, she was even carved into church walls. But she may not be one you would want to deal with if you only want to mention them briefly along the way.

I'll bet Annis and EC can tell you more than I can.
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Post by Lel » Tue May 10th, 2011, 9:37 am

Don't think this is quite what you want, but I'd guess the nearest thing to a harvest goddess was the corn dolly, corn maiden, corn mother etc., which helped keep pre-Christian "harvest home" customs going. Have you tried looking in "The Golden Bough"? It's on google books.

Oops - hadn't seen Margaret's post mentioning corn dollies.
Last edited by Lel on Tue May 10th, 2011, 9:43 am, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Hadn't seen previous post.

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Post by wendy » Tue May 10th, 2011, 11:25 am

Alisha - I was brought up in rural England, and Margaret is correct that the Catholic / Celtic connection is Brigid. May Day was a big event in the Church calendar, giving nod to the fertility / spring regeneration process. Each village celebrated in its own way and there are still remnants surviving to this day. My home town celebrates Club Day (second Saturday in June) with a religious "pilgrimage" procession through the streets, a crowning of the Rose Queen, Church fetes, fairground, and carnival. Other villages have Rushbearing ceremonies. Some of the ancient churches (ie Newchurch in Pendle, site of the Lancashire Witch Trials) even still have corn dollies adorning the inside of the church.
The locals only paid lip-service to the multiple changes of The Reformation, and many Druid - Celtic practices were assimilated by the Catholic Church, and never completely eradicated by the Protestants. I hope all this helps!
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Post by Carla » Tue May 10th, 2011, 11:54 am

Kathleen Herbert's book Looking for the Lost Gods of England quotes a description written by a German visitor travelling in southern England near Eton College in September 1598:
...by lucky chance we fell in with the country folk celebrating their harvest home. The last sheaf had been crowned with flowers and they had attached it to a magnificently robed image which perhaps they meant to represent the goddess Ceres. They carried her hither and thither with much noise; men and women were sitting together on the waggon, men-servants and maid-servants shouting through the streets until they came to the barn.
This is three centuries later than the 13th century of your question, but it doesn't seem unlikely that some sort of ceremony celebrating the harvest would also have been around much earlier. Tacitus describes the Angles in Germany in the 1st century AD as worshipping Nerthus, a fertility goddess who rode in a waggon, consistent with the German visitor's description, so it seems a reasonable assumption that a similar ceremony also happened in the centuries in between. So your Harvest Queen is perfectly plausible.

Then there's the question of what to call her. Unfortunately, the German visitor doesn't say what the English in 1598 called their corn-dolly/harvest goddess/harvest queen. He says tentatively that perhaps the image was 'meant to represent' Ceres. The name Ceres is the classical Roman name for the goddess of harvest and agriculture (from whence modern English 'cereal'), and would be familiar to someone with a classical education. It strikes me as unlikely that it would be the name used by the country people. Nerthus is also unlikely by the 13th century, as that's well over a thousand years since Tacitus recorded the name and for more than half of that time Christianity had been the dominant religion in England. Early Christianity was quite happy to adapt pre-existing ceremonies and religious sites to a Christian gloss, as Pope Gregory explicitly advised the missionaries to England in 601 AD, but it wouldn't accept the pre-Christian gods themselves. I would expect that any pre-Christian English rural fertility goddess would have acquired a name that could be at least construed as Christian by the thirteenth century, even if the ceremonies honouring her hadn't changed much.

For what it's worth, I would guess a likely name would be something like "Lady" or "Mother" or "Queen". These don't explicitly refer to a specific named pagan goddess and could be seen as Christian (e.g. referring to the Christian Mary), so they are much more likely to have been acceptable to the Church than a specific non-Christian goddess name (which the Christian Church would probably have felt obliged to denounce). Tacitus explains the name Nerthus as "...that is, Terra Mater", implying that Nerthus was seen as a mother goddess figure, and the title may have lasted much longer than the name. The Old English goddess Frija or Frea has a name that translates more or less as 'Lady', and in the areas of England that had strong Norse influence in the tenth and eleventh centuries (the Danelaw in Northern and Eastern England) that could also have been reinforced by the Norse goddess Freyja, whose name also means 'Lady'. So there are several pre-medieval traditions for goddesses who could be called "Lady" or "Mother".

Another alternative might be for a pre-Christian rural fertility goddess to become a saint, rather than an actual goddess as such. Christianity wouldn't accept non-Christian gods/goddesses, but it was quite happy to accept saints, as Margaret mentioned. Some of the holy wells scattered up and down England (e.g. St Anne's Well at Buxton) may have originally been associated with pre-Christian goddesses who were then diplomatically renamed. So the Harvest Queen figure might have been called by the name of an important saint - St Anne, St Helen, St Mary, St Brigid - or by the name of a local saint. Local saints are particularly a feature of the west of Britain, e.g Wales, Cornwall, where often all that exists is the name of the dedication of the local church.

I would be cautious about The Golden Bough. It was tremendously influential (as was Robert Graves' The White Goddess, which drew on some of Frazer's ideas), but recreating long-lost religions is always going to involve a lot of interpretation. If you really want to get into pre-Christian religions in Britain, Ronald Hutton's book The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy is first-rate, scholarly but clear and readable, with a clear distinction between evidence and interpretation (so you can make your own mind up and draw your own conclusions). However, it's quite a read! - probably not worth it if you just want to mention a thirteenth-century Harvest Queen in passing. You might find Kathleen Herbert's booklet Looking for the Lost Gods of England useful as a source; it's short, available on Amazon, has a lot of information in a small space, and only costs about £5.

Hope this helps!
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Post by Alisha Marie Klapheke » Tue May 10th, 2011, 7:36 pm

Thank you Margaret, Wendy, Lel, and Carla!

Margaret, I wasn't sure if St. Brigid was known all around England at the time or not, but perhaps her name would work best for what I'm doing. I just read about the Sheela na gigs yesterday. Very interesting stuff. It is difficult to get a grip on what peasants knew about...
Lel, I have read The Golden Bough--that is where I actually heard first of the Harvest Queen figure in rural medieval England.
Wendy, it's great to hear personal experience. I am a bit jealous of the fantastic cultural events that go on in England. Being an American, I feel such a separation from what my ancestors used to celebrate. I am such a mutt that I don't feel connected in a satisfying way, you know what I mean? Anyway, thanks and I will use your information.
Carla, thank you specifically for the info on Ceres. I was wondering about that mention due to its source and you've cleared that up nicely for me! I do think the Lady and Mother should about do it for what I'm working on. I don't want to bring up Virgin Mary because it doesn't evoke quite the right feeling for the scene. I'm kinda doing a "She is known by many names...Old Mother, Cerridwen(for my Welsh character), Spirit of the Harvest" thing. I think with the info everyone has given me, I can make it work with all respect to history within my historical fantasy WIP. Thanks again everyone!

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Post by Margaret » Thu May 12th, 2011, 2:02 am

Glad to be helpful!

Saint Brigid was Irish, but I think the underlying Brigid goddess was pan-Celtic. There was a tribe in pre-Roman and Roman Britain known as the Brigantes, and it seems safe to assume it was named for this goddess. If you use this name, you might play with using a root form rather than Brigid - Brig or Briga, maybe - so readers won't jump on you for using an Irish name in Britain. Perhaps Hutton's book, which Carla recommends, will mention a more local British name.
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Post by Alisha Marie Klapheke » Thu May 12th, 2011, 3:49 am

Thank you, Margaret. I'll remember that and read Carla's recommendation. Have a good day!

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Post by wendy » Thu May 12th, 2011, 11:34 am

[quote=""Margaret""]Glad to be helpful!

Saint Brigid was Irish, but I think the underlying Brigid goddess was pan-Celtic. There was a tribe in pre-Roman and Roman Britain known as the Brigantes, and it seems safe to assume it was named for this goddess. If you use this name, you might play with using a root form rather than Brigid - Brig or Briga, maybe - so readers won't jump on you for using an Irish name in Britain. Perhaps Hutton's book, which Carla recommends, will mention a more local British name.[/quote]

I think you can use Brigid for your time period as Celtic deities were assimilated by the early Catholic church and still commonly used. My guess is that Irish names were made unpopular by the Puritans in the late C17th.
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Post by Carla » Thu May 12th, 2011, 12:19 pm

Hutton's book discusses St Brigid, and mentions that Brigantia was a tutelary goddess of the Brigantes tribe (roughly the area that's now Northern England). However, as I understand it (and I haven't got statistics to hand) there are not many churches dedicated to St Brigid in England and they are concentrated in the far west (where one might expect Irish influence). So if there was a goddess Brigantia worshipped in northern England she doesn't appear to have turned into a local St Brigid. The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian names says the earliest recorded use of the name Bridget in England was in 1480, so I personally would be cautious about using Brigid/Bridget in England in a 13th-century context.

For what it's worth, if you're looking for a saint's name I'd say you could do worse than look for a suitable dedication in the area where your story is set. If your story is set in the far west there may be a local saint you can choose (e.g. like St Morwenna in Cornwall, or St Brigid if it's an area with Irish influence). Elsewhere in England St Anne and St Helen come to mind as being associated with holy wells; there are St Anne's Wells in Malvern (Buckinghamshire) and Buxton (Derbyshire) and there's a St Helen's Well near Gargrave in Yorkshire. Helen is the same as the Welsh name Elen.

I like your ""She is known by many names...Old Mother, Cerridwen(for my Welsh character), Spirit of the Harvest" thing." That would work for me if I came across it in a novel.
Last edited by Carla on Thu May 12th, 2011, 12:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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