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March
25
was the day, in 31 CE,
of the first Easter, that is, the day on which
Jesus Christ rose
from the dead, according to early calendar-maker Dionysius
Exiguus. It was once also known to the Christians of Britain as
'Lady Day'.
Lady
Day is an abridgement of the old term ‘Our Lady's day’ –
a ‘gaudy day’ of the Catholic Church, and it represents the
Christianization of older, pagan
Spring Equinox festivals, in the much
the same way that St Patrick's Day and Easter do.
This holiday
celebrates the Annunciation, when the archangel
Gabriel announced
to the Virgin Mary that she was pregnant. It seems appropriate to
acknowledge the sacred dimension of birthing at this time of the year
when Persephone is emerging
from her time underground, animals are bearing young, and plants are
producing flowers.
Known as
the first day of the year, from the 12th
Century
till until the adoption of the
Gregorian
calendar in 1752, it is the first of the four traditional Irish Quarter days
and English quarter days. In
England, it was actually celebrated as New Year's Day
until 1752 when,
following the move from the Julian Calendar to
the Gregorian Calendar,
January 1 was first declared to begin the year. A vestige of this remains in the United
Kingdom's tax year, which starts on April 6,
which is March 25 adjusted for the 11 lost days of the calendar change.
The
placement by the monk Dionysius Exiguus of the first Easter on this date in 31 CE, was no doubt to
correlate the resurrection of Jesus with the supposed date of his conception. It
is celebrated in Rome by sumptuous festivities. The Pope's horse-guards
ride in full uniform, each wearing in his hat a myrtle sprig, as a sign
of rejoicing.
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The Annunciation, by
Carlo Crivelli, 1486
The National Gallery, London
Spot the UFO?
An eerie, intense beam of light goes through the building
and onto the head of what we believe is Mary.
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The horsemen are traditionally followed by a shaven-headed monk on a
white mule, bearing the host in a gold cup, at the sight of which
everyone bows. At one time the Pope himself rode on the mule, and all
the cardinals followed in their magnificent robes of state, mounted on
either mules or horses. The
Eminentissimi were generally
not good horsemen so they were fastened on.
In
England it was traditionally only remembered by those who pay rent to
landlords.
Once,
a country gentleman in England wrote a letter to a noble lady, only
addressed
To
The 25th of March,
Foley-place, London
and
the post office duly delivered to Lady
Day.
Lady Day was once considered to be the date of
the Creation of the world as it was the date of the conception of Christ.
A
legend says that a noble and ignorant knight entered an abbey but was so
foolish that all he could say was Ave
Maria, constantly. When he died, out of his grave grew a fleur-de-lis,
and in every flower grew, in letters of gold, the words Ave
Maria. At this miracle his friends were amazed and, opening his grave,
found that the flower’s root was in his mouth. The virgin had honoured him
for his simple devotion. Or, so it is said.
Today’s (and Mary’s) flower is
Cardamine
pratensis, or Lady's Smock, its white flowers
blooming in England about March 25. Many goddess worshippers call today
"Return of the Goddesss". It is the conception date of the divinity that
enters the world on
Christmas Day,
December 25.
Lady
Day correlates in time and theme, with the ancient Roman festival of Cybele,
about which there is another Wilson's Almanac page here.
The American jazz singer,
Billy Holiday (1915
- '59), was nicknamed 'Lady
Day'.
When
Lady Day is also Easter –
"When our Lord falls in our Lady's lap"
When Easter Sunday falls on the same date as Lady Day (25 March) and is said
to be an omen of evil for England.
The
Tichborne
Dole
In
olden days in Hampshire, England, a certain Lady
Mabella, on her deathbed from a crippling disease, asked Lord Tichborne
to give her the means to bequeath a dole
of money to anyone who asked for it on Lady Day, the day of Annunciation.
Sir Roger must have been a
difficult man, or perhaps just parsimonious, for he promised her only the
proceeds of as much land as she could go over while a firebrand was burning.
However, a miraculous amount of strength came to her and she crawled around 23
acres, an area still to this day called the Crawls.
On her deathbed the lady warned her family that they must keep the promise,
and she predicted that the family name and its estates would die out if they
neglected the Tichborne Dole,
because a generation of seven sons would be succeeded by seven daughters, and
the manor house itself would crumble.
It became tradition
to bake 1400 loaves for the Dole, and to give twopence to any applicant if
1440 loaves did not go far enough. Only those families in Tichborne,
Cheriton and Lane End have ever been entitled to this charitable
disbursement. So it went for centuries, until the Tichborne estates had
become a place of assembly for many paupers. By 1796, when rowdy vagrants
assembled in large numbers on the common, the number of these paupers caused
the Tichbornes to discontinue the Dole.
Local
people remembered the final part of the Tichborne legend and Lady Mabella’s
curse on any of her successors who should fail to distribute her dole. The
penalty for such failure would be a generation of seven daughters (immediately
following a family of seven sons), the family name would die out and the
ancient house would fall down. Thus, it was seen as an omen when, in 1803,
part of old Tichborne House collapsed into ruins. At the time, there were
seven Tichborne sons.
Misfortune befell the family in many ways.
George, the sixth son, died in 1802, aged
only 13. In 1806, John, the fifth son, died in the East Indies. Four years
later, Benjamin, the second son, died in China, a bachelor like his brother
John. A few years later, Roger (son number seven) died – married but
childless.
Henry, the
eldest son who succeeded to the baronetcy in 1821, managed to father
seven children, but all were females. In 1826, Edward, the third son,
changed his name, so the estate later fell into the hands of a new
family name, Doughty as he produced the male heir so desired by the
Tichborne heritage, but in 1835, the six-year-old Henry suddenly died.
Edward Doughty immediately revived the Dole, which has continued ever
since – and who can blame him? It is distributed today from St
Andrew’s, the 11th-century Tichborne church.
The
fourth Tichborne son, James, had married in 1827 and produced two sons.
The eldest, Roger Charles Tichborne, was lost at sea in 1845, and was
impersonated two decades later by Arthur Orton, a butcher with an eye
for a quick fortune. See below for the tale
The Tichborne family won in court, but the
celebrated case dragged on for two years and cost the family £100,000
to defend their ancient estates. Alfred Joseph Tichborne, the youngest
of James's seven sons, was the only one to survive Mabella's deathbed
curse and was the great grandfather of the late Sir Anthony Doughty
Tichborne, the 14th baronet.
A
curse fulfilled
The Tichborne church contains a number of
interesting memorials to the Tichborne family. One in particular is the
monument, erected in 1619 to Richard, the infant son of Sir Richard Tichborne.
Tichborne tradition says that a gypsy woman who begged for food at Tichborne
House was refused and laid a curse on the toddler, predicting that Richard
would drown on a certain day. When that fateful day arrived, servants were
ordered to take the child up onto Gander Down which is well away from the
local River Itchen. When at that place, the attention of his guardians was
diverted as young Richard
tumbled
out of his baby carriage and drowned in a
water-filled cart rut.
Another
Tichborne oddity
The
strange Tichborne
Case
On
February 28, 1874, Arthur Orton, the false claimant to the Tichborne fortune,
was found guilty of perjury after 260 days, the longest trial in England, and
was sentenced to 14 years' hard labour.
So
ended a celebrated English impersonation case. In March, 1853, Sir
Roger Charles
Doughty Tichborne, heir to the ancient Hampshire baronetcy, sailed for South
America. On April 20, he departed
from there on the Bella for
Jamaica. The ship sank, and Tichborne was not heard of again. In October,
1865, ‘RC Tichborne’ showed up in Wagga Wagga, Australia, in the
person of a man known locally as Tom Castro.
On Christmas Day 1866,
Tichborne/Castro landed in England where he claimed the baronetcy. The real
Roger's mother, Dowager Lady Henriette Felicité Tichborne, confirmed the
impostor as her son, though the rest of the family was not deceived at all.
We should note here that antique pictures show that Roger Tichborne was a
very slender man, but the claimant was very obese, looking about twice the
weight of Roger.
Finally the impostor lost in
court, where he was revealed as Arthur Orton, son of a Wapping (England)
butcher. Orton found himself sentenced to 14 years' hard labour. The false
claimant to the Tichborne fortune had been found guilty of perjury after 260
days, in the longest trial in English history to that time.
The Gilbert and Sullivan
opera, Trial by Jury,
is said to have been partly based on the famous Tichborne Case.
"Henriette died before
the trial got to court. Eventually, Orton was convicted of fraud and
perjury. He was sent to prison for 14 years, and after serving ten
years, he was released and immediately sold his story to a newspaper for
£3,000. He died a few years later, and his gravestone was inscribed:
'Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne; born 5 January 1829; died 1 April
1898'."
Source
Ticborne Claimant, on Wilson's Almanac
Tichborne Claimant, on ABC
Dysmas's
Day
March 25, Lady
Day, is also
the Feast Day of St Dysmas. Dysmas
is the traditional name of the penitent thief who was crucified next to
Christ. In some old calendars he was commemorated on this day. His
relics are claimed by the Italian city of Bologna. In the apocryphal Gospel
of Nicodemus he is called Dimas, and elsewhere Titus; the impenitent
thief is Gestas or Gesmas.
Alta petit Dismas, infellx infima Gesmas.
Part of a Charm.
To paradise thief Dismas went,
But Gesmas died impenitent.
Ivor H Evans,
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London,
1988
In Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow's The Golden Legend ('The Miracle Play',
V), both Dumachas (Dysmus or Dysmas) and Titus – apparently two separate
characters in this version – belonged to a gang of bandits who harassed
the Holy
Family on their flight into Egypt. An old tale from an Arabic gospel
says that when
Joseph,
Jesus and
Mary were refugees en route to Egypt, they were attacked by a band
of thieves including Dismas and Gestas. One of the bandits realised
there was something special about the fleeing family, and ordered his
fellow robbers to leave them alone; this thief was Dismas.
Image: Calvary, by Vrouwekerk, 1534
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