Saturday 1 July 2023

Real Life Wicker Man - The Earl of Rone

 

The Hunting of the Earl of Rone is an ancient ceremony in the village of Combe Martin in England which resembles the film “The Wicker Man”. Although local legend has it that the ceremony derives from the capture of the Earl of Tyrone who fled from Ireland in 1607, I demonstrate in this documentary that it has clear parallels in European pagan customs and in Hinduism, which proves that the procession, the hobby horse, the fool, and the drowning of the straw idol originate in pre-Christian seasonal Anglo-Saxon rites. 

Sources:

-Ashe, R., Ashe, G., ‘Folklore, Myths And Legends Of Britain’ 1973
-Fern, Chris ‘Early Anglo-Saxon Horse Burial of the Fifth to Seventh centuries AD’ in Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 14, (Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology, 2007).
-Frazer, James George. ‘The Golden Bough; a Study in Magic and Religion’, 1935.
-Walker, C. ‘Strange Britain’ 1989
-Tacitus, Cornelius, The Agricola; and, The Germania, H. Mattingly (trans)
- Sources for Earl of Rone
- Marzanna

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