ST. TAPIR’S FEAST THIS WEEKEND
Come one, come all: Froghill is gearing up for the biggest event in its calendar, to be held on Froghill Common this Saturday (November 25).
Celebrations for St Tapir’s Feast will start at 2pm sharp, when Mayor Peter Rudge, dressed as St Tapir the Mendicant, begins his traditional walk of shame across the Common. Starting from Priory Patch, he will stop every quarter of a mile to be beaten across the shoulders with a boiled turnip by ‘a mayd chaste and virginale’.
Upon reaching the gibbet erected at Dead Man’s Barrow, the mayor will be trussed with strips of leather and then symbolically hung by a party of pestilent townsfolk. The official proclamation of his death will serve as cue for the lighting of the ceremonial fire, upon which all and sundry may roast St Tapir’s Offal (on sale throughout the afternoon, courtesy of Bingley’s the Butchers).
Wassail, served in traditional oaken buckets, will be available in the King’s Arms car park.
At dusk, the St Tapir’s Revelries will commence. This year’s ‘Dance of the Goitres’ will be performed by seven-year-old Kelly Bilgepump of Cheetingham CE Primary School. The perennially popular ‘Ballade of St Tapir in the Underworld’ will be sung and enacted by the St Winifred’s School Choral Society. (All whips and chains generously donated by Hot Weals of Froghill High Street.)
Due to the recent reduction in the Council’s public decorations budget, the annual closing fireworks display, symbolising the Resurrection of St Tapir, will not be held. In its place, a single pig’s bladder will be inflated from a gas cylinder and released into the air.
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20/11/06 @ 09:34