29 May - Royal Oak Day

Today is the date of another defunct English national celebration - this one celebrating the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. The famous legend of the future Charles II hiding in an oak tree to avoid his captors after the Battle of Worcester in 1651 gives its name to this day, just like it does to the countless 'Royal Oak' pubs throughout England. One of its other names is 'Oak Apple Day' and there is a well-documented popular custom (lasting well into the nineteenth century) of wearing an oak sprig or an oak 'apple'. Even better, there's a slightly more scurrilous custom of children attacking anyone not wearing an oak sprig with nettles - as Simpson and Roud point out in their Dictionary of English Folklore, this gives today another name: Nettle Day.
The oak apple's other name is oak gall and it was used from the Middle Ages onwards in the production of ink. If you can get hold of enough, you can even follow the instructions given on the Science in School website for making it! We were out on a walk today and came across some young oaks in the woodlands at Apedale Country Park. The picture of the oak - with gall! - at the top of this post is one we snapped today.

Today's traditions have all but died out - Simpson and Roud cite just a couple of contemporary traditions: the festooning of Worcester Guildhall's gates with oak branches and the placing of an oak wreath around the neck of a statue of Charles II at Northampton.

The speed with which the custom seems to have established itself originally, and its extent, taken together with the popularity of the oak story and all those pub names, all adds up to a genuinely popular festival, a collective national sigh of relief that England's grim Puritanism was at an end. Something worth raising a glass to! After our walk we did just that, visiting an excellent pub called The Bush, in Silverdale. Friendly, with a great selection of beers, it even had a really nice children's play area out the back. It's not surprising that the local Camra think so highly of it. We enjoyed a deliciously rich and slightly hoppy mild called Ruby Mild from the Rudgate brewery in Tockwith, Yorkshire (May is mild month, after all) and a fresh, floral and lightly malty golden ale called Audley Ale, from the more local Townhouse Brewery in Staffordshire.

We were actually hoping to find either Hawthorn blossom or Elderflowers today, which we could turn into a brandy liqueur and a cordial respectively. The elder's almost ready, as you can see from the photo at the end of this post; the hawthorn in many places has gone over. If you're planning to gather seasonal blossoms to make things with you have to pick it when it's at its best - bright white with no browning - and on a nice sunny day when the flowers are fully open. I should think that our previous haunt - the Mill Road graveyard in Cambridge - could well be full of elder blossom, it being that much further south. But nothing here as yet...