Uncommon Folk 31 Days of Winter - Calenig

Discover the whimsical world of Calenig, a cherished Welsh New Year tradition that promises to enchant and amuse. Imagine children parading through the streets with ornately decorated apples and oranges, transformed into charming tripods with flour, nuts, oats, and fragrant herbs. Weaving through communities with rhymes and songs, these young ambassadors of the new year collected coins, bread, and cheese, all while delighting in the varied responses of their neighbors. From the warmth of generous hosts to the antics with miserly ones, Calenig brings to life a vivid tapestry of community spirit and festive creativity.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Calenig. Now, calenig is a Welsh word. The rough meaning is sort of New Year celebration gift, but it actually translates literally as the first day of the month and it comes from the Latin calens, which means calendar as well. Now it's a tradition where children traditionally children they'd carry a decorated apple. Now, this decorated apple is the Kalanick itself. They'd carry this apple and it's described as sort of well, having three sticks pierced it. So it's like turned it into a sort of a tripod, as it were, and they would have an apple or an orange, turn it into a tripod, smear it with flour stuck with nuts and oats wheat, they'd top it with thyme or some other fragrant herb and then it would be held together by a skewer. They might put cloves in there as well and they'd carry this from house to house hoping to get some money. Now, there's lots of different variations of this in Welsh, lots of variations. But they'd have a little rhyme that they would say something like um, which literally translates as today's the start of the new year and I've come to ask you for coins or a crust and bread and cheese. Oh, come to the door for coins, or a crust and bread and cheese. Oh, come to the door cheerfully, without changing your appearance. Before the next arrival of the new year, many will be dead. I mean, it's quite accurate. Yes, many people will die, but it seems a bit brutal. There are other versions of it, there are other verses of it. In English they say Get up on New Year's morning, the cocks are all a-crowing, and if you think you're awake too soon, why get up and look at the stars and moon? The roads are very dirty. My shoes are very thin. I wish you a happy New Year and please to let me in. But also they would approach the houses of people they knew to be quite miserly. So they would knock on the doors and often these miserly people would refuse to give anything. They had another verse then, for when they left it went like this A bad new year to you and a house full of smoke. I'm not sure that they're hoping to commit arson there, but generally farmers were very kind to all comers in Cardiganshire, carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire, unless they'd been disappointed by seeing a girl first that morning, which was unlucky. So boys are generally luckier with the cash. They'd be welcoming the girls afterwards, but if it was a girl first that's bad luck. So there's a lot of tradition against that. Yeah, the first boy came to the door, came before a boy. He's warmly welcomed to the house and even taken upstairs to the bedrooms so that those who are in bed still might see him and have the satisfaction of him. He would be given a sixpence as a rule, which is pretty good actually. Sometimes you'd get a loaf of bread instead. Now, this is a tradition I've actually taken part in when I was younger and it goes back for centuries. But in the book, the 1944 book the Pleasant Land of Gwent, fred Hando has a report from Arthur Macken, the fantastic folklorist and writer, who noted about his experience of Calanig.

Speaker 1: 4:45

When I was a boy in Caerleon-on-Usc. The town children got the biggest and bravest and gayest apple they could find in the loft, deep in the dry bracken. They put bits of gold leaf upon it, they stuck raisins onto it, they inserted into the apple little sprigs of box and they delicately slit the end of hazelnuts and so worked that the nuts appeared to grow from the ends of the holly leaves at last. Three bits of stick were fixed into the base of the apple tripod wise, and so it borne around from house to house and the children got cakes and sweets and those were wild days. Remember small cups of ale. So there's a suggestion even the kids got a bit of booze on those days. So that's clennig.