Kmflett's Blog

Whitsun & John Barleycorn

The Late Spring Bank Holiday, which is fixed as the last Monday in May sometimes coincides with the date of Whitsun and in 2026. Whitsun is on May 24th

However this need not concern us too much because historically people didn’t bother too much either.

I’ve been looking at the late Alun Howkins History Workshop Pamphlet (1972) on Whitsun in Nineteenth Century Oxfordshire. The 80 page Pamphlet (which can be downloaded for free with a little Googling) is a classic exposition of the research methods of the early History Workshop. Howkins was born in Bicester and was at Ruskin College in Oxford which until recently had a student body of trade union focused people. The pamphlet is a rich mixture of quotations from original documents and some oral history.

Howkins makes the point in the introduction that in the nineteenth century and earlier the celebration of Whitsun (and it definitely was a celebration) was often mixed up with both Easter and May Day.

All were focused on the end of winter, and the cold, and the return of warmth and growth of seeds planted many months earlier.

Howkins notes that one of the oldest traditional songs John Barleycorn captures this. While it is obviously about drinking its also about the resilience of barleycorn returning each Spring despite efforts to stop it from happening either natural or man made.

There were three men came out of the West,
Their fortunes for to try,
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn must die.

They’ve ploughed, they’ve sewn, they’ve harrowed him in,
Threw clods at Barley’s head,
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn was dead.

They’ve let him lie for a very long time,
Till the rains from heaven did fall,
And little Sir John sprung up his head,
And so amazed them all.

They’ve let him stand till midsummer’s day,
Till he looked both pale and worn,
And little Sir John’s grown a long, long beard,
And so become a man.

They’ve hired men with the scythes so sharp,
To cut him off at the knee,
They’ve rolled him and tied him by the waist,
Servin’ him most barbarously.

They’ve hired men with the sharp pitchforks,
Who pricked him to the heart,
And the loader he has served him worse than that,
For he’s bound him to the cart

They’ve wheeled him around and around the field,
Till they came unto a barn,
And there they made a solemn oath,
On poor John Barleycorn.

They’ve hired men with the crab-tree sticks,
To cut him skin from bone,
And the miller he has served him worse than that,
For he’s ground him between two stones.

And little Sir John and the nut-brown bowl,
And he’s brandy in the glass
And little Sir John and the nut-brown bowl,
Proved the strongest man at last.

The huntsman, he can’t hunt the fox,
Nor so loudly to blow his horn,
And the tinker he can’t mend kettle nor pots,
Without a little Barleycorn