One of the Best Things About Editing Parish Pump Is Getting to Meet the Contributors, And

EDITORIAL

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One of the best things about editing Parish Pump is getting to meet the contributors, and hear their stories. Everyone told me how difficult it would be to fill the magazine each month. Well, it has not been a problem so far, and I thank one and all for their articles, letters, poems, and news. (But new contributors are always welcome, so do have a go.)

As well as the usual news from the Rector and the Church, and from Round Our Villages, you can read about the curious dress-sense of RS Hawker of Morwenstow (who gave us the Harvest Festival, and excommunicated cats), about the Severn Bore (a world-class natural phenomenon on our door-steps), the philanthropic Garters of Kencot, what happens to the stuff we put in the recycling boxes, naked ladies at Ditchley Park, how to make an onion tart, and the trees in the Bible.

We also return to Alvescot Peace Camp. The tents have been dismantled, but after last month's somewhat flippant editorial, Kate Holcombe, one of the erstwhile campers asked if she could put their case in Parish Pump. Some of us might find her views unusual, but we are delighted to offer anyone with a heartfelt opinion the opportunity to voice it in Parish Pump.

It is a merry world that can keep turning while encompassing, as it does, people of such diverse outlook. Perhaps it is the diversity which keeps the world turning?

And, as Aldous Huxley almost said, we should remember that,: `Facts begin as heresies, and end as superstitions.' So, who knows what future generations will believe to be self-evident truths?

Parish/village A B

Alvescot £6i 6

Black Bourton £230 46

Broadwell £150 79.

Filkins/Broughton Poggs £27s 30

Holwell £105 34

Kelmscott £70 36

Kencot £255 78

Langford £206 25

Little Faringdon£110 55

Shilton £128 20

Bradwell Grove £130 17

Westwell £100 49.

We are often asked `who pays for Parish Pump?'

The answer is our advertisers, postal subscribers, and you, dear Benefice Readers

The table to the above shows, in column A, the donations from each parish/village and, in column B, the percentage of copies distributed in that

parish/village for which a donation has been received

Thank you very much for your donations, but even more for reading the magazine

Richard Martin

PARISH & BENEFICE SERVICES

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1st October - Trinity XVI

10.30am Holwell/Westwell Combined Holy Communion HM

10.30am Filkins Harvest EJ

11.00am Broadwell Harvest NUW

6.00pm Kencot Harvest HM

6.00pm Shilton Harvest NUW

8th October - Trinity XVII

9.00am Alvescot Holy Communion NUW

9.00am Broadwell Holy Communion HM

10.30am Shilton Parish Communion HM

11.00am Langford Harvest EJ

11.00am L Faringdon Harvest NUW

3.30pm Kelmscott Harvest EJ

6.00pm Black Bourton Harvest AP

6.00pm Westwell Harvest HM

15th October - Trinity XVIII

9.00am B Bourton Holy Communion NUW

10.30am Langford Morning Prayer NUW

11.00am Alvescot Harvest HM

6.00pm B Poggs Evensong NUW

6.00pm Holwell Harvest HM

22"a October - Trinity XIX

9.00am Kencot Holy Communion (BCP) HMI

9.00am Westwell Holy Communion MP

10.30am Broadwell Matins AP

11.00am L Faringdon Parish Communion HM

6.00pm Alvescot Evensong HM

29nd October - Trinity XX

9..00am Langford Holy Communion HM

10.30am Filkins Parish Communion HM

10.30am Shilton Parish Communion NUW

6.00pm Holwell Evensong EJ

5th November - IV before Advent

10.30am Kelmscott Benefice Eucharist Service HM, EJ, NUW

6.00pm B Bourton Evensong HMI

There is also a Communion Service at Black Bourton every Wednesday at 10.00am

CELEBRANTS

AP Arthur Pont

EJ Liz Johnson

HM Harry MacInnes

MP Martin Pierce

NUW Neville Usher-Wilson

BENEFICE SERVICES

The Benefices services for the remainder of 2006 are:

5"' November 10.30am Kelmscott

3rd December 10.30am Langford

THE LECTIONARY

1st October - Trinity XVI (G)

Esther 7.1-6, 9-10; 9.20-22 Psalm 124

James 5.13-end Mark 9.38-end

8thOctober - Trinity XVII (G)

Job 1.1; 2.1-10 Psalm 26

Hebrews 1.14; 2.5-12 Mark 10.2-16

15th October - Trinity XVIII (G)

Job 23.1-9, 16-end Psalm 22.1-15

Hebrews 4.12-end Mark 10.17-31

22nd October - Trinity XIX (G)

Job 38.1-7 [34-end] Psalm 104.1-10 [26, 35c]

Hebrews 5.1-10 Mark 10.35-45

29th October - Trinity XX (G)

Job 42.1-6, 10-end Psalm 34.1-8 [19-end]

Hebrews 7.23-end Mark 10.46-end

5th November- IV before Advent (R/G)

Deuteronomy 6.1-9 Psalm 119.1-8

Hebrews 9.11-14 Mark 12.28-34

CHILDREN'S CHURCH

Dates for remainder of 2006 (10.15 in Shilton Old School)

12th November 10th December (Christingle)

Thank you for supporting our Children's Church and we hope that many more of you would like to join. For more information or any queries please contact Harry McInnes (01993 845954) or me on 01993 847039.

Debs Price

BENEFICE CHOIR

W e are leading another `Choral Evensong' on 22"d October at Alvescot. I am still hopeful that there are members of the benefice who would like to come and swell our numbers. We don't bite (well the choir doesn't anyway!) and would love to welcome some more voices to support what we try

and achieve. As usual my number is either 01993 841807 or 07850 064775. If you are still undecided, just come to the service and listen.

David New

THE RECTOR'S LETTER

Dear Friends

Back in 1843 a clergyman in the Cornish village of Morwenstow wrote to his congregation. The minister concerned was the Rev R S Hawker (right). He is recorded as being a popular minister. He was a compassionate man with an eccentric personality. This is what he wrote:

`Brethren, God has been good to us. He has filled our storehouses. He has opened his hand and filled all things living with plenteousness. Let us offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving among such as keep the Holy Day.'

The congregation responded.

The following Sunday they decorated the church. Each and very person, each farmer

and every small holder brought a selection of the harvest. There was grain from the fields, apples from the orchard, vegetables from the garden, eggs from the hen house. Word soon spread of the congregations' activities. Other churches copied Morwenstow's example, and within a couple of decades harvest festival became an annual event in churches all over the world.

For us here in this wonderful Benefice harvest festivals are still big occasions. Many of our churches will be beautifully decorated with the fruit and vegetables both from our farmers and from our many keen gardeners. The

children will be celebrating harvest festival at our two schools in St Christopher's, Langford and St Peter's, Alvescot, and across the Benefice there will be a great number of wonderful harvest lunches and suppers in our villages following services of thanksgiving in our churches.

So what is the point of it all? For me, harvest festival is about several things as I gather in the produce I have grown in our garden.

Firstly it is about appreciation, the opportunity to thank you to God for all his provision and his goodness to us, and especially to thank God for those who serve us through farming the land. Secondly it reminds me about

sustainability, of the importance for us to care for our environment, to be good stewards of this world that we have been entrusted so that we can pass something good for the next generation. And thirdly it reminds us of our responsibility for those beyond ourselves. It's a chance for us to remember and respond to the needs of the poor in our world, especially those who are suffering the direct consequence of a failed harvest.

Harry MacInnes

HAWKER OF MORWENSTOW

In his Rector's Letter; Harry writes of RS Hawker, the author of the Harvest Festival. He was

Robert Stephen Hawker was born in Plymouth into the family of a poor Cornish curate in 1803. He paid for his own education at Pembroke College, Oxford through the expediency of marrying a rich (and much older) woman, and became a priest in 1831.

After a spell as a curate in North Tamerton, he became vicar of Morwenstow where he remained for 41 years. The North Cornwall coast was still a wild and comparatively lawless place, with smugglers and wreckers who, according to a contemporary account, would `allow a fainting brother to perish in the sea without extending a hand of safety.'

Hawker loved Morwenstow, and built himself vicarage with chimneys modeled on the towers of all the churches with which he had been associated during his life. He also built himself a driftwood hut from where he would gaze out to sea, and where he would smoke opium and write romantic poetry about Cornish history. He thought that the sea-faring traditions of Cornwall werc particularly- important, and upset the church establishment by burying drowned smugglers in his churchyard rather than (as thitherto) in holes on the beach where they were washed ashore.

Actually, even by the standards of Church of England priests, Hawker had some bizarre habits. He hated what he called `the crow-garb of the church', and boasted that only his socks were black. Hawker generally dressed in claretcoloured coat, blue fisherman's jersey, long sea-boots, a pink brimless hat and a poncho made from a yellow horse blanket, which he claimed was the ancient habit of St Padarn, a medieval Welsh saint to whom he was partial. On one occasion he dressed as a mermaid and swam out to a rock in the bay, from where he held forth to a surprised crowd on the beach.

His services were often a mishmash of different religious traditions. Sometimes he celebrated communion prostrate in the chancel like an Eastern Orthodox priest, and his burial services incorporated what he fondly hoped were the traditions of early medieval Cornish saints. He also talked to birds, invited his nine cats to services, and excommunicated his cat for mousing on Sundays.

He also mistrusted people with squints, accusing them of giving him `the evil eye'. This was unfortunate for at one time his vestry committee consisted of five squinty farmers, with whom Hawker inevitably quarreled.

Apart from the modern Harvest Festival, one of Hawker's best known legacies is his `Song of the Western Men' (see below) , which has become Cornwall's unofficial anthem. The Trelawny mentioned in the chorus was the Cornishborn Bishop of Bristol, Jonathon Trelawny, who was one of seven bishops imprisoned by the Catholic James II for refusing to read in church a Declaration of Indulgence towards Catholics. Hawker was so successful in making the poem sound authentic, that Charles Dickens published it in his `Household Words' as a 17th century ballad, not realizing that it had just been written.

After the death of his wife, Hawker married the daughter of a Polish count, and had three daughters. And just before his own death, Hawker converted to Catholicism.

The big question is: was Hawker ultimately just a funny old buffer, with a romantic view of Cornish history? The answer is partly yes, but there is a good deal of evidence that he deliberately cultivated his eccentricities to capture the interest of his parishioners. When Hawker arrived there, Morwenstow had not had a resident vicar for over a 100 years.

Perhaps also, his eccentric front was a deliberate part of his burning quest for fame, a quest which Hawker thought was unfairly unsuccessful. He wrote sadly about his ballad `The Song of the Western Man':

`The history of that Ballad is suggestive of my whole life. I published it first anonymously in a Plymouth Paper. Everybody liked it. It, not myself, became •• popular. I was unnoted and unknown. It was seen by Mr Davies Gilbert, President of the Society of Antiquaries, etc., etc., and by him reprinted at his own Private Press at Eastbourne. Then it attracted the notice of Sir Walter Scott, who praised it, not me, unconscious of the Author. Afterwards Macaulay (Lord) extolled it in his History of England. All these years the Song has been bought and sold, set to music and applauded, while I have lived on among these far away rocks unprofited, unpraised and unknown. This is an epitome of my whole life. Others have drawn profit from my brain while I have been coolly relinquished to obscurity and unrequital and neglect.'

How pleased Hawker would be to know that Cornish Rugby fans still bellow out the question `And shall Trelawny die?', that every year we still celebrate his cod-medieval Harvest Festival, and that tourists still flock to Morwenstow (now largely in the care of the National Trust) in search of a bit of Old English individuality. That's not a bad legacy for an obscure country vicar.

100 years after Hawker's death, at a service of thanksgiving for his life, Michael Ramsey, then the Archbishop of Canterbury described Hawker as `a beyond man in a beyond place', to whom all English Christians should be grateful. Quite right.

SONG OF THE WESTERN MAN

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A good sword and a trusty hand! :

A merry heart and true!

King James's men shall understand

What Cornish lads can do!

And have they fixed the where and when?,

And shall Trelawny die?

Here's twenty thousand Cornish men

Will know the reason why!

Out spake their Captain brave and bold: ;

A merry wight was he: :

'If London Tower were Michael's hold,

We'd set Trelawny free!