Hidden in the corners of Britain’s history are customs and laws so strange they feel plucked from a gothic folk tale. Picture villagers in masks chasing down a doomed earl, boys whipped with nettles to etch parish boundaries into memory, and statutes that once made it legal to shoot a Scotsman or a Welshman if they ventured over the border.
These ancient rituals and arcane laws may sound absurd now, but they offer a haunting glimpse into the country’s eccentric past.
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Britain’s weirdest laws and bizarrest traditions
Hunting the Earl of Rhone
Every May Day weekend, in the small seaside town of Combe Martin, a bizarre ritual known as the Hunting of the Earl of Rone takes place. This multi-day, glorified pub crawl is a heady mix of Pagan and Christian traditions.
Like watching a scene from the Wicker Man, it has colourful costumes, a mock shooting, drums and plenty of drinking and dancing! The Earl’s appearance is thanks to a historical anomaly.
Conscripts from Combe Martin were sent capture the Earl of Tyrone as he fled to France during the Nine Years War, a conflict marking the end of Gaelic Irish society.
Shooting a Welshman in Hereford or a Scotsman in Carlise.
Story has it that if you are in Hereford or York on a Sunday, you are legally allowed shoot a Welsh or Scotsman, on the spot with a bow and arrow. Both laws were put in place in attempts by the English to subdue neighbouring nations during uprisings long since passed. Although these pieces of arcane law have never been receded, modern murder and manslaughter laws and of course common sense, supersede these ancient decrees.
Beating the Bounds
In a bizarre tradition, which still takes place in villages all over England from Yorkshire to Cornwall, locals travel out to the boundary of their local villages and beat it with sticks. The practice may be Anglo-Saxon but with Roman roots, as they held festivals to celebrate Terminus, the god of boundaries (there really was a god for everything!).
Dating to a time before maps were commonplace, the beating of the boundary may have been a way confirming the borders of each parish. In some cases a boy was beaten either with sticks or nettles. If you have ever woken up in the night having remembered something stupid you said at a party 20 years ago, you know that unpleasant memories last a long time. And so it was that the beaten boy would always remember where he was whipped and could be called upon to remember the border.
Mock or Vinegar Valentines Card
The act of trolling, sending anonymous jibes, seems to be far from a modern invention. Like roller skates, food adulteration and opiate addition those good old Victorians were ahead of us every step of the way. They would send what’s known as mock or ‘Vinegar’ Valentines cards to the people they had personal vendettas for or just plain disliked. Often printed on cheap pieces of paper or thin card they were usually grotesque caricatures of the recipient and included snide jokes about their short comings or appearance.
Illegal to carry a plank of wood.
Should you find yourself in London, carrying back pieces of timber from a DIY shop you best beware. Thanks to section 54 of the Metropolitan Police Act, it is still illegal to carry a plank of wood in the streets of London unless loading or unloading it from a vehicle. Window cleaners should beware too as carrying a ladder is also classed as a criminal offence!
