Outside the front entrance of a village pub in mid-Cheshire, an autumnal drizzle just about starting, a motley gang has assembled with all manner of strange costumes and disguises. An ambassador has already run ahead to warn the bar staff and order in a round. Then, as one, the group opens their mouths and start singing: “Here come one, two, three jolly good hearty lads, and we’re all in one mind / For this night we come a-souling, good nature to find / for this night we come a-souling as it does appear / and it’s all that we are souling for is your ale and strong beer.” Inside, some unsuspecting patrons look around quizzically, wondering what the fuss is about. Once the singing has finished, there is a loud knock on the front door and all hell breaks loose.
This is a typical visit of the Antrobus Soul-Cakers, who come together every year to continue mid-Cheshire’s most iconic folk tradition. Soul-Caking is a real hodgepodge of a custom – part-play, part-visitation, part-fertility ritual of unknown ancient origin – performed on October 31 (and for a couple of weeks afterwards) at pubs throughout the region, usually four per night. Once, every village had its own Soul-Caking gang, but nowadays Antrobus is the only one with an unbroken lineage stretching back centuries.
Officially, I’m here to record the performances for the British Library sound archive, adding to the recordings of the same group from the 1950s and 1970s. We met up at the gang’s base at the Antrobus Arms to chat and listen to the old recordings, and then it’s off to delight the patrons of pubs in nearby Stretton, Rudheath, Davenham and Moulton with my recording equipment in tow. But I’m actually here for a more personal reason.
I’m from Cheshire – I grew up in a village only four miles away from Antrobus – yet I’d never even heard of Soul-Caking until after I’d left home, moved to the city and gained a belated interest in folk music and traditions in earnest. That such an important, old and well-known custom had existed just down the road from me without ever entering my consciousness left me in wonder, and with a tinge of shame. I’ve returned to finally witness a living part of my home culture for the first time.
So I find myself in a pub, surrounded by madness. The play is a whirlwind of sword-fights, madcap characters, shrieking, bellowing, poetry, jokes, braggadocio, heckling, light-hearted pint theft and a star turn by Dick the Horse, a real horse’s skull painted black, white and red, with a jaw that snaps at the command of its puppeteer hidden under a sackcloth body. After 20-or-so minutes, and with a final song and a quick drink afterwards, the gang are away to their next stop.
For the punters in the pub, it can all be a bit baffling. Some people know it’s happening and have come down especially. Others are completely bemused: pleasant family meals and girls’-nights-out are interrupted by the completely unexplained chaos. Some take it well, gazing with perplexed wonderment and getting into the spirit of things by the end; others ignore the weirdness with bored indifference, and a few – always men – seem to take its existence in their space as an insult or challenge and get a bit aggressive.
Each pub has its own distinctive atmosphere and audience, and a different performance because of it. Some pubs are electric, everyone gets into it and the Soul-Cakers adlib all over the place; in others, the crowd is dead and the play is rushed through as quickly as possible, with a bunch of material skipped and much grumbling from the players. Every performance is a new experience – it also helps that everyone becomes successively more lubricated as the night wears on. In true folk fashion, things stay the same while changing constantly.
I leave the last pub at gone midnight, knackered, tipsy and slightly stung by a few errant whips of a riding crop, but absolutely buzzing. My official duties are fulfilled, and my soul feels nourished too. Not only have I experienced an important part of my own cultural heritage for the very first time, but I’m back speaking in a broad Cheshire accent I hadn’t even noticed I’d lost. What an honour.
At the end of each play, to cheers from the pub-goers and a frying-pan passed around to collect for charity, the Antrobus Soul-Cakers strike up for a final verse: “And now our play is ended, and we can no longer stay / But with your kind permission we will come another day / But before we go, we’ll have you to know, we'll have you to understand / We’re a credit to old England, we’re the boys of the Antrobus gang!”
Photos: (top) The Antrobus Soul-Cakers in their natural habitat (the pub); (middle) Dick the Horse and his driver. Both photos by Nigel Farr.