Bonfire Night as featured in 'The Return of the Native' by Thomas Hardy

                                                      A Pagan Connection ?

One puzzling aspect of Thomas Hardy's 'The Return of the Native', first serialised in Belgravia magazine 1878, was the depiction of Bonfire Night as some sort of Pagan festival with links to a tradition going back centuries. It must be noted straight away that the 'Wessex' depicted in Hardy's novels is a fictional creation, though obviously he was drawing on his extensive knowledge of rural Dorset when writing. However, at first reading it is strange to think that the main festival to commemorate the Protestant triumph over a Catholic attempt to seize power was somehow 'Pagan'. 

On to the text; Clym Yeobright has returned to Egdon Heath and on the prehistoric mound 'Rainbarrow' we are offered a gorgeous description of a bonfire burning away 

"It was as if these men and boys had suddenly dived into past ages, and fetched therefrom an hour and deed which had before been familiar with this spot. The ashes of the original British pyre which blazed from that summit lay fresh and undisturbed in the barrow beneath their tread. The flames from funeral piles long ago kindled there had shone down upon the lowlands as these were shining now. Festival fires to Thor and Woden had followed on the same ground and duly had their day. Indeed, it is pretty well known that such blazes as this the heathmen were now enjoying are rather the lineal descendants from jumbled Druidical rites and Saxon ceremonies than the invention of popular feeling about Gunpowder Plot." TheReturnofTheNativeBK1/CH3

The question of how Bonfire Night was commemorated on a local level is worthy of study. In Sussex many towns have their own bonfire societies, which hold their own gatherings, before finally converging on Lewes for a serious of parades, usually on the 5th of November each year. Lewes has six bonfire societies of its own. The town was the scene of 17 Protestant martyrs burned to death for their faith in 1556-1557 during the reign of Mary 1, and burning crosses are carried to remember them during the annual parades. The event also celebrates the downfall of Guy Fawkes and the failure of the Gunpowder Plot. Effigies  of currently unpopular figures regularly end up being placed on top of bonfires. 

James Sharpe's Remember Remember the Fifth of November-Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot  appeared in  2005 as part of the  400th anniversary commemoration of the Gunpowder Treason. The title is misleading as the book,though a superb work, looks at how the failure of the 'Plot was commemorated rather than a history of the conspiracy itself. And raises the question of the future of Bonfire Night, and whether it could stave off competition from Halloween as being the main Autumn festival in future years. 

Doctor Sharpe's work covers how Bonfire Night could lead to outbreaks of public disorder, and the examples such as the riot in  Exeter in 1867 when the civic authorities attempted to ban the annual bonfire on 5th November.Future disturbances occured in the city in 1879. SHARPE  Another example would be Worthing which saw Bonfire Night disturbances in  1852,1877, 1883, and 1884. The latter was a protest against the presence of the Salvation Army in the town, and led to troops being called SUNNY WORTHING Of course what adds to the 5th November festivities being a stridently Protestant festival is that William of Orange landed in Devon on 5th November 1688. 

David Cressy's Bonfires and Bells, National Memory and Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England looks at the question of 5th November being a 'politicised festival': Sir Richard Moryson's advice to Henry VIII to "to adopt an annual triumph with bonfires feasts and prayers, to act as a perpetual memorial to the good Fortune of the English People in their deliverance from the bondage of the Papacy" is cited which seems a model for future Bonfire Night celebrations. Henry VIII declined to do so. CRESSY

In 'Return of the Native' Bonfire Night is quite a jolly occasion, with music and dancing.  The novel covers a time period of over a year, so there is a second Bonfire Night commemoration added to the storyline. 

But perhaps an alternative view is necessary ;  To return to the quoted passage 

"..it is pretty well known that such blazes as this the heathmen were now enjoying are rather the lineal descendants from jumbled Druidical rites and Saxon ceremonies than the invention of popular feeling about Gunpowder Plot."TheReturnoftheNativeBK1/CH3

The people of Hardy's fictional realm of Egdon Heath have subverted the standard Protestant triumphalism surrounding the failure of the Gunpowder Plot and somehow made their own connection to a Pagan past via their own bonfire ceremony centered round Rainbarrow. And to add to the element of Folk Horror, one 6th November, an inhabitant of Egdon Heath makes a poppet into a likeness of another woman who she has accused of being a witch, then permeates the wax model with fifty pins, then slowly melts it over a fire, with 'a murmur of words'.

"It was a strange jargon-the lord's Prayer repeated backwards-the incantation usual in proceedings for obtaining unhallowed assistance against an enemy."TheReturnoftheNativeBK5CH7

Basically the passage is a set of instructions on how to curse someone.It is hard to think of a comparative scene in the fiction of these times. 

 Moreover, The Return of the Native depicts Nature as being somehow more real and significant than human activity. Two leading characters drown in a flood, another character is exhausted by tramping around the Egdon Heath on a futile mission, and dies after being bitten by an adder.If anything the 'Pagan' version of Bonfire Night that Hardy creates may not be an authentic one, but adds an intriguing and disturbing  dimension to the depiction of life on  Egdon Heath  and to the novel itself. Perhaps the fact that his portrayal of Bonfire Night is probably not accurate can be overlooked. 

Picture Acknowledgement   Bronze Age round barrows on the ridge of Bronkham Hill, Dorset,courtesy of Jim Champion, via Wikipedia Commons. 

SOURCES : The Web 

The Return of the Native  Online text 

The Bonfire Boys   Webpage from 'Sunny Worthing' 

Sussex Martys Commemoration Council  webpage about Lewes's Bonfire Night tradition. 

University of Exeter  research into Bonfire Night commemoration in the 19th century .

SOURCES: Books

David Cressy Bonfires and Bells, National Memory and Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England  University of California Press, 1989 

James Sharpe Remember Remember the Fifth of November-Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot  Profile Books 2005

RELATED BLOGPOSTS

Thomas Hardy's Egdon Heath  Another post about 'Return of the Native' from this blog.

Guy Fawkes or The Gunpowder Treason blogpost about William Harrison Ainsworth's 1841 novel from 'A Burnt Ship' blog

OTHER BLOGS BY THIS WRITER 

A Burnt Ship  17th century War & Literature 

World War 2 poetry Not been updated for a while but still attracting visitors

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