Please to remember the
Fifth of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot.
And I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.



A penny for the Guy! A penny for the Guy!

The merry shouts of children asking for money echo up and down the streets. And with them they have "the Guy", a straw dummy dressed in old clothes. Many of the children are wearing costumes and masks.

It is November 5, and people in England are celebrating a holiday called Guy Fawkes Day.

It is a wonderful excuse to have family and friends round to enjoy either a bonfire party in your garden, with lots of fireworks, or maybe just a barbeque and a few sparklers. When you do build your own bonfire, make sure it is in a open space, well away from trees over hanging the area, and not near dry grass, and please check for hibernating hedgehogs inside the bonfire.

My favourite part of the evening, is the jacket potatoes, with perhaps coleslaw and chicken drumsticks. And of course, you must have toffee apples for afters :-)

The story behind this day:-

About four hundred years ago, in 1605, a man named Guy Fawkes tried to blow up a government building, "The Houses of Parliament". He was hoping to kill King James I and all the king’s leaders. Guy Fawkes was one of a group of men, who felt that the government was treating Roman Catholics unfairly.

On the 5th of November, the king and his leaders were about to meet. So, Guy Fawkes men placed barrels of gunpowder in one of the cellars beneath the building where the king was having his meeting. Guy Fawkes was to light the fuse that would set off the explosion. But the plot was discovered before he had a chance to do this. The king was saved, and Guy Fawkes was hanged.



Ever since, Guy Fawkes Day has been a time for merrymaking. It is a holiday that both children and adults can enjoy. And the fun really begins when darkness falls, then "the "Guy" is tossed onto the bonfire, and set alight. Then the fireworks go off, and "the Guy" goes up in a flames.

As early as 1607 there are records of bonfire celebrations on the 5th of November. James I had declared the day a public holiday in his joy at the overthrow of the Gunpowder Plot.

Children would often blacken their faces with the ashes on Bonfire night, in imitation of Guy fawkes who it was believed to have done this also, to try to camouflage himself.

It is not certain when "the guys" were first introduced, but it did happen during the reign of James I, and after the reign of Charles II, children made "the guys" a few days in advance of the event, and paraded the streets with it chanting, "a penny for the guy", often it is pushed around in a old pram or leaning up against the wall, at street corners. And this still happens today.

As well as burning "the guys" the bonfires were used to cook the potatoes, and this custom can be traced back many many years. For weeks, large potatoes - 'roasters' as they were called in Derbyshire, were stored in readiness for 'Bunfireneet'. Some potatoes weighed as much as half a pound and there was nothing nicer or so the locals thought, than eating a hot floury roaster with just a 'pinch o' sawt', with the glow of the bonfire on your face and the merry jests and chants of the party around you.

Firework displays were also popular on the 5th of November. Torches and flares were popular with ordinary people. They felt safe holding a cabbage stalk dipped in grease and lighted at one end, and enjoyed parading them around their village or town in a torchlight procession on this bonfire night.



A BONFIRE SONG
This was sung by children
around the burning bonfire, with the guy on top.

Rumour, rumour, pump and derry,
Prick his heart and burn his body,
And send his soul to Purgatory.



THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER

There's a plot to beguile
An obstinate isle.
Great britain that heretic nation.
Why so slyly behav'd
in the hopes to be saved
By the help of the curs'd reformation.

There's powder enough
And combustible stuff
In thirty and odd trusty barrels,
We'll send them together
The Lord can tell whither
And decide at one blow all their quarrels.

When the King and his son
And the parliament's gone
And the people are left in the lurch
Things will take their old station
In the curs'd nation-
And I'll be the head of the Church.

~Author Unknown...possibly a Jesuit priest~



Nowadays, in the Houses of Parliament in London in England, the "vaults" are searched ceremoniously by an officer and ten men of the Yeoman of the Guard wearing their traditional uniforms, and carrying a lantern. Though more modern methods are employed to enforce security inside the buildings today.



The Houses of Parliament


~Some of information was found in The World Book Encyclopedia~









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