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Written around 20 years ago, I have sent this piece to numerous magazines. It also features in my book, TELLING TALES: From a Corner of Lancashire.
Sweeping the Old Year Out
I don't go in for New Year's resolutions - if there are changes it's because I'm ready and willing to change something. Despite that, one bright New Year's Eve a few years ago, I found myself wielding the long-handled duster, ‘de-cobwebbing’ from ceiling to floor. I was well into it, when it sprang to mind what I would have done as a youngster at home in Lancashire, on New Year's Eve. It's called 'sweeping the old year out' and this is how it would go.
In preparation, the family needs to make sure the fire has been out for some time, so that the soot along the back of the grate is not hot. Some form of fat (mum would have done it and I expect it was lard) is spread all over your face; the soot is then applied as evenly as possible; afterwards, a form of disguise is applied - dad's hat, old trousers and jacket. To sweep, of course, you need a brush and shovel (most folk now say ‘dustpan and brush’ but that was too posh), then the little troupe of mummers is ready for off - don't forget the box or can for money!
Perhaps in the distant past, the tradition would entail a performance of some kind, long ago lost, but all we knew was that on a dark and chilly New Year's evening, we moved from door to door throughout the whole village and up the hill, humming loudly outside each house. If they didn’t hear, we would knock at the door as well. At some doors, the occupants would be familiar with the custom, and humming had the desired effect of bringing to the door a smiling and expectant face - you would be let in and, still humming confidently would go about cleaning up. No-one minded at all. I'm talking of the 1960s, so most people in a Lancashire village would still have open fires. This would mean a modest amount of dust, or ashes anyway, enough to make you feel you were doing a real job, before they popped a threepenny bit in the can. I got used to being peered at with comments such as 'Jack's daughter in't it?' to which I tried not to grin.
But the tradition was on its last legs, and it stopped when my friends and I stopped. We had performed this custom for perhaps three years, no doubt following many generations before us, but I saw that one terraced cottage after another was occupied by 'new people'. I'm sure they were local enough, but it didn't feel so - and they didn't all welcome us. The final year, we foolishly spent too long knocking and humming at a door, determined to get in! Eventually a young girl, apparently a baby-sitter, came to the door and spoke angrily,
"Get lost, yer mummish nits, yer’v woken t'baby"!
That did it. The language was restrained by present day levels, and I noted that she recognised us as mummers, but somehow, we never went round again.
from Marianna Michell
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