The Globe, Inca Cola and remembering and honouring the Outcast Dead: The Cross Bones Graveyard
For
the last few years I’ve bought a fabulous Leonie Dawson’s Create your Shining Life
workbook planner. One of the planning
activities is to create a list of 100 things to do in the year. For the past two years I have planned to see
a Shakespeare production and The Globe and to attend the vigil at The Cross
Bones Graveyard. It didn’t happen in
2014, or 2015, but by golly 2016 is the year for getting things done.
Those
that fail to plan, plan to fail. Or at
least have nothing to aspire too. I
haven’t seen taking time to achieve these goals as failure, but if they had
never been in my consciousness, or rolled over to the next 100 list. I
never would have found the right buddy who would be up for a day trip to London
to do see a massive tourist and cultural icon and un-consecrated medieval graveyard
for prostitutes and paupers. I
manifested an amazing, wyrd sister all of my own and I am very grateful to the
powers that be for allowing us to find each other and just be so into throwing
ourselves headlong into whatever unusual adventures we can conjure…When shall
we two meet again and what we will be doing is anybody’s guess.
The
production at the Globe was Macbeth.
Being a witchy woman I was hooked, it’s amazing to see a performance at
the Globe, what can be achieved with such limited staging and props, actors
literally being rolled off stage into the groundlings, somehow less is more and
your imagination does suspend belief.
OHMERGERD
top tip spend a £1 and hire a cushion.
Your bottom will thank you. Overall
I loved the production. Slightly bewildered
about 33% additional witches (4 rather than the more traditional 3 – possibly Hecate
popped by???) and a young child is on stage at several points during the
production and it’s not apparent if he is their child or a ghost of a lost
child or a metaphor for lost innocence, or a page boy.
Absolute
star of the show was Nadia Albina makes a brilliantly bawdy Porter whose
additions on Trump and Brexit were hysterical.
My
first degree is in English Literature and I am a complete Shakespeare nerd and
Sue not so much, so it was all the fun in the world to show off my inner literary
geek. Words will not do justice to the
following conversation.
Sue:
“But everyone is born of woman?”
Jenny:
“Wait for it…no some come out the sun roof!”
Oh
but how quickly the tables turn as a surprise Sue had booked Tito's Peruvian
Restaurant. Sue having lived in Peru for
6 years ordered and chatted away to everyone in Spanish. It was though an absolute joy to see Sue
enjoying and sharing with me something that had obviously been so much a part of
her personal narrative, the food, language, culture and the Inca Cola a very unusually
flavoured and hued soft drink.
After
the meal with bimbled along to Redcross Way to the Cross Bones Graveyard, where
on the 23rd of every month a vigil is held to remember and honour
the outcast dead. The site has been used
since medieval times as a graveyard for single woman a quaint euphemism for prostitutes. It was closed in 1853 because it was
"completely overcharged with dead".
Excavations
were conducted on the land by the Museum of London Archaeology Service between
1991 and 1998 in connection with the construction of London Underground's
Jubilee line. Southwark Council reports that the archaeologists found a highly
overcrowded graveyard with bodies piled on top of one another. Tests showed
those buried had suffered from smallpox, tuberculosis, Paget's disease,
osteoarthritis, and vitamin D deficiency. A dig in 1992 uncovered 148 graves
(just a small section of the site), dating from between 1800 and 1853. Over one
third of the bodies were perinatal (between 22 weeks gestation and seven days
after birth). A further 11 percent were under one year old. The adults were
mostly women aged 36 years and older.
It
smacks of the hypocrisy of the times that the women and girls had to pay to
sell themselves, known as the Winchester Geese for they were licensed by the Bishop. Can we say that much has changed in modern
social order who speaks today for the outcast, those living on the fringes of
society?
Perhaps
this is partly why the Southwark Mysteries and the Cross Bones vigil were birthed
by John Constable. As a way to remember
and honour those marginalised.
The Southwark Mysteries were allegedly revealed
to John Crow, trickster familiar of the Southwark poet and playwright John
Constable, by The Goose, the spirit of a medieval Bankside whore, licensed by
the Bishop of Winchester to ply her trade within The Liberty of The Clink. In
Constable’s apocalyptic vision, John Crow encounters The Goose at Crossbones,
the whores’ graveyard unearthed during work on the Jubilee Line Extension. She
initiates him into a secret history spanning 2000 years, a healing vision of
the Spirit in the flesh, the Sacred in the profane, Eternity in time…
Here lay your hearts, your flowers,
Your Book of Hours.
Your fingers, your thumbs,
Your Miss You, Mums.
Here hang your hopes, your dreams,
Your Might-Have-Beens,
Your locks, your keys,
Your Mysteries.
Your Book of Hours.
Your fingers, your thumbs,
Your Miss You, Mums.
Here hang your hopes, your dreams,
Your Might-Have-Beens,
Your locks, your keys,
Your Mysteries.
John Crow
The Southwark Mysteries
The
vigil is very respectful; people of all or no faith are welcome. Those that wish to remember their own
departed. In the words of John Crow
these rituals are:
To renew the shrine...
To honour The Goose Spirit...
To remember her outcast dead...
To light and sweep clean the open pathways...
To commune with the living in transforming acts of
vision...
and to receive the transforming energies that flow
back and forth through the Cross Bones Portal…
We gathered together and some of the history of the
graveyard was shared. There is a
memorial guardian and the gates are festooned with ribbons, toys, photos and mementos. We ritually held a light and participants were
given a ribbon that they to fasten to the shrine.
There was then an opportunity to share our own
stories, poems and songs of loss. The
ritual finished with a libation of gin and a call-and-response blessing:
Goose may you never be hungry!
Goose may you never be thirsty!
Goose may your Spirit fly free!
The vigil can run from 15 minutes to an hour
depending on how many people are in attendances and how many people feel called
to share. All though it is a remembrance
of the dead it is also a celebration of life.
After the vigil we continued to talk and share with other participants.
It really is a fascinating place.
Some further links for you to explore. Including the BBC cold case history
documentary about the investigations and character sketch of one of the young
women interred at the Cross Bones Graveyard.
The Crossbones Girl BBC Cold Case Documentary
Love it Jenny, had a chuckle at you and Sue 'bimbling'! Globe and Crossbones are both on my to do list, I will now be googling Leonie Dawson and creating my own 100 things to do list..thank you x x
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