Many calendar customs and traditions are tied in with local fairs and processions. This is certainly case in Mousehole, Cornwall, when on the evening before Christmas Eve, a lantern procession and traditional feast of fish dishes, including in some houses the ubiquitous Stargazy Pie, takes place to mark the occasion of Tom Bawcock’s Eve.
Legend has it that Bawcock saved the small fishing village from starvation, by setting out in storms and gales that had prevented the town’s fleet sailing for weeks. Depending on the legend he either set out alone, with his cat, or with a crew coerced into risking life and limb. Bawcock returned safe and sound with seven different types of fish in his catch and the town was saved from starvation. To mark the occasion some houses hold a fish feast comprising of seven different dishes of seven different fishes, other bake the Stargazy Pie – a pie with eggs potates and whole pilchards whose heads poke out of the top of the crust (gazing at the stars). The lantern procession probably recalls the anxious villages searching the horizon, anxiously waiting for Bawcock to return.
Of course, with the theme of finding food to stave off starvation, winter storms and hardships, the lantern procession lighting the darkness and the celebration of relief and happiness, Tom Bawcock’s Eve has resonance with many other mid-winter festivals of light, warmth, food and the promise of the spring to come.
Four days before Tom Bawcock’s Eve the town’s Christmas lights are extinguished in memory of the loss of a local lifeboat and its crew in rough weather in 1981. This certainly brings home the power of nature to heal and to harm.
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