Bonfire Night

I watched an episode of Modern Family during the week (which was very funny) where the various characters all celebrated Halloween in their own way.  But, wow, the trouble they went to!

As anyone in Britain knows, Halloween has really taken off in recent years. A lot of people grumble in newspapers and magazines that we’re all slavishly following the Americans, where Halloween has always been big news. I know for a long time it always struck a faintly exotic note when various American TV shows – The Simpsons for instance – always had such a carry-on about Halloween.   When I was a kid, Halloween hardly impinged on our consciousness.  I remember bobbing for apples one year, but that was about it.  The dressing-up part, which we would have embraced enthusiastically, didn’t occur.  No, our big event – and it was massive – was Bonfire Night.

From September onwards, the 5^th of November dominated our thoughts.  We spent hours (literally) logging.  That meant going into the local woods and lugging back whatever fallen branches we could carry. Nature only provides so much, however – particularly as a load of other kids are also on the hunt – so we also knocking on doors, asking for wood for “The Bunty”.  (I don’t know why a bonfire was called a Bunty but it was.)  The bonfire was built up on the waste ground at the back of my friend Anne’s house where it was a tremendous source of pride.  Adults from the neighbouring houses would look with pride at our bonfire, and it was a rare Dad or older brother who didn’t want to be in on the construction.  They’d stand round in a manly way, discussing how the Bunty would burn.  We children had to make the guy, however, which was a collection of old rags in vaguely human shape.  Although we were mostly Catholics, I can’t remember ever being aware of a religious connotation, as we consigned poor old Guy Fawkes to the flames.

Bonfire Night means, of course, fireworks.  Now fireworks are expensive.  In this day and age, they simply get bought by parents (I’ve bought plenty of fireworks for the family) but way back then – this is in Northern England – the way to get fireworks was by a process known as cob-coaling.  Don’t ask me where the name comes from because I haven’t the faintest idea!  However, it was akin to Trick or Treating because it involved knocking on doors and then, when the grumbling householder answered, launching into cob-coaling songs.  I suppose, in a way, it was more like carol-singing than trick or treating. Now I can’t honestly say these were priceless gems of folk-poetry.  For instance;

Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching.  Who’s that knocking at the door? It’s little Mary-Anne with a candle in her hand and she’s going down the cellar for some coal-coal-coal.

The songs were handed down, in that mysterious way true folklore has, from one generation to another.  No parents were involved in this process!  Cob-coaling has more or less died out now, to be replaced by Trick or Treating.  Why?

Well, bonfires, as such, are more or less confined to public events now.  The back of a pub, the back of a scout hut, say, will host a bonfire together with traditional food such as meat-and-potato pie, parkin (a rich, treaclely, gingerery cake) roasted apples and potatoes roasted in the bonfire.  Nowadays these are usually wrapped in foil and look fairly edible, unlike the charred lumps we used to retrieve from the embers!  Safety has played a big part in moving bonfires from a private to an organised event, but, more than that, I think it’s the lack of waste ground. Common spaces at the back of houses have been turned into gardens and car-parks and Hitler’s attempts at the urban reorganization of Britain (ie bombsites) have been filled in, grassed over and built on.  It’s all much nicer, cleaner and better organised, but it’s hard not to feel a nostalgic twinge that the big shared private children’s secret of bonfire night is no more.