Remember, remember the Fifth of November!

 The falling leaves have converted muddy footpaths into yellow-leaf roads.

It’s Bonfire Night but some people seem intent on continuing to celebrate Hallowe’en. Each day their display has been slightly different with the spider and the skeleton slowly descending!

It’s Bonfire Night! 

When our children were young we used to organise a bonfire at the bottom of the garden and invite friends and family to join us. Treacle toffee, parkin and baked potatoes. My brother would usually arrive with the sort of firework that advised standing 50 yards away from it! Rather hard to do in our garden. But a good time was had by all!

When I was a child we used to make a Guy to burn on the bonfire, a manikin made of old clothes and with a frightening mask. Kids would drag their guys around calling out “Penny for the Guy!”. My father, however, would not let us do that. His children were not going to beg on the streets!

Mischief Night - November 4th - when rascals went playing tricks and making a lot of noise, seems to have been replaced by Hallowe’en. And cob coaling has also disappeared. The internet tells us:

“Cob coaling, cob-a-coaling or cob calling was a traditional  Bonfire Night custom practiced in the Yorkshire-Lancashire border region, which involved groups of people going door-to-door and singing a song in return for Bonfire Night supplies. In more recent times, singers collected firewood and money for fireworks, but "coaling" refers to the coal that would previously have been collected. The Cob Coaling Song is listed as number 9234 in the Roud Folk Song index.

History

The song was probably part of a medieval mummer’s play before being adapted to modern Bonfire Night traditions.The practice of cob coaling has parallels in other festive door-to-door begging traditions such as wassailing and souling.

Cob coaling was popular as recently as the 1970s, but probably died out some time in the 1980s.”

Here is one version of the song:

“We come a Cob-coaling for Bonfire time,

Your coal and your money we hope to enjoy.

Fal-a-dee, fal-a-die, fal-a-diddly-i-do-day.

For down in yon’ cellar there’s an owd umberella

And up on yon’ corner there’s an owd pepperpot.

Pepperpot! Pepperpot! Morning ’till night.

If you give us nowt, we’ll steal nowt and bid you good night.

Up a ladder, down a wall, a cob o’coal would save us all.

If you don’t have a penny a ha’penny will do,

If you don’t have a ha’penny, then God bless you.

We knock at your knocker and ring at your bell

To see what you’ll give us for singing so well.”

Enjoy the fireworks!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!