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…and for this kind deed Saint Valentine … 7. In many parts of the country, children would also go Shroving …. . 8. Mid-Lent Sunday is a day when Christians can relax from … 9. Simnel cakes were once baked by daughters throughout England who would decorate their mother‟s homes with … and prepare …, and give…. 10. Visitors to the Chelsea Flower Show can …. 11. The wearing of a sprig of oak on the anniversary of Charles‟ crowning showed… . 12.

…shops would close and school children would lock their teachers out of the classroom until promised an extra day‟s holiday - in a ceremony… . 13. One of the most famous competitions, which takes place in Olney, Buckinghamshire, is …

. … are necessary. 14. Men have been lifted in kites … . 15. This is where most of the exhibits of cut flowers are displayed, and … .

Task IV. Are the statements true or false? Correct the false ones.

1.Church-clipping is a popular ceremony only on Mothering Sunday.

2.Kite flying is just a hobby.

3.The Chelsea Flower Show differs from other flower shows in its emphasis on individual plants, in addition to mass displays.

4.Holi is a time when Christians seek absolution and confess their sins.

5.The Straw Bear is actually a toy-bear filled with straw.

6.Valentine‟s Day in old England was traditionally a combination of the commemoration of the martyrdom of St. Valentine with the pagan celebration of Lupercalia.

7.The main event at Burns Night celebrations is a “Burns Dinner”, opening with the traditional cake.

8. Because of a change in English law in 1754, English couples seeking a quick marriage were obliged to cross the border into Scotland, where Scottish law required only that the couples declare before witnesses their wish to be married. At Gretna Green the ceremony was usually performed by the blacksmith, though any person might officiate, and the tollhouse, the inn, or (after 1826) Gretna Hall were the scenes of many such weddings.

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13. Shrovetide

Task VII. What is it?

Plough Monday, a mud race, a Valentine card, Shrovetide, Threading the Needle, Pancake tossing, Shrovetide football, Ash Wednesday, Laetare, church-clipping.

Task VIII. What do these things symbolize?

A gowk or cuckoo, a pair of gloves, a sprig of oak, a Valentine card.

Task IX. Answer the questions.

1. What do the first three days of the year reflect? 2. What game is played in Haxey? 3. What event was transformed into a small folk festival with morris dancers? 4. What kind of holiday is Plough Monday? 5. What holiday is celebrated on January 30? 6. What kind of holiday was celebrated in ancient Rome on

February 14? How is the history of Valentine‟s Day connected with Emperor

Claudius II? 7. Why do thousands of people travel to a tiny village Gretna Green every St. Valentine‟s Day? 8. How is Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day, celebrated? 9. Why was Shrove Tuesday Eve once known as Mischief Night? 10. What two events are associated with Shrove Tuesday? What traditions are linked to Mothering Sunday? 11. How did April Fools‟ Day get started? 12. What examples of April Fool‟s tricks can you give? 13. What is kite flying originated from? 14. How were the kites used by people of different nationalities? 15. Which holiday is acknowledged to be the premier occasion of its kind in the world? Why? 16. Whose name is Royal Oak Day associated with? How is this day celebrated?

Task X. Which holiday do you consider to be the most … ? Give your reasons.

1) picturesque; 2) pleasant; 3) thrilling; 4) prominent; 5) scary.

Chapter IV

CALENDAR OF SPECIAL OCCASIONS

(SUMMER – AUTUMN)

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June

The Queen’s Official Birthday Celebration. Trooping the Colour.

The ceremony of “Trooping the Colour” takes place annually in London on the Official Birthday of the Sovereign in the first days of June, though Queen

Elizabeth‟s actual birthday is April 21. It is notable for the colourful appearance and precise movements of the Foot Guards who perform it, and for the part taken in it by the Queen herself.

The ceremony derives from two old military ceremonies: Trooping the Colour and Mounting the Queen‟s Guard. From earliest times Colours and Standards have been used to indicate the position of the commander in battle and act as rallying point for the soldiers, and were honoured as symbols of the spirit of military units. It was probably in the eighteenth century that it became customary in the British Army, before a battle, to salute the Colours by beat of drum before carrying them along the ranks (this is what the expression “Trooping” means) so that every soldier could see them and be able to recognise them later. It soon became usual to troop the Colour daily at the most important parade or the day: for the Regiment of Foot Guards (who traditionally have the honour of guarding the Sovereign) the most important was obviously the Mounting of the Queen‟s Guard.

Trooping was discontinued early in Queen Victoria‟s reign, the full annual parade on the Sovereign‟s Birthday continued and has done so to this day, except during the two world wars. On the Sovereign‟s Birthday all the Regiments of Foot

Guards took part in the Trooping. Only one Colour, however, can be trooped at a time, and the five Regiments (Grenadier Guards, Coldstream, Scots, Irish and Welsh) therefore take their turn year by year in strict rotation.

The ceremony can be divided into the following phases: the arrival of the Queen at the Horse Guards Parade, her inspection of the troops, the actual Trooping, the march past, and the Queen‟s return to Buckingham Palace.

Before the Queen arrives, the crowds have assembled around the Parade and along the approach routes, and the Queen Mother, the Royal children, and other members of the Royal Family have arrived by horse-drawn carriages and entered the Horse Guards Buildings to watch the ceremony from a balcony. The massed bands of the Guards Division have formed up at one side of the parade ground, and the guardsmen are standing in line in an L-shaped formation on two sides of it. The

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Queen then leaves the Palace, riding side-saddle. She wears the uniform of whichever Guards‟ regiment is trooping and a specially-designed tricorn hat. She is followed by her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, also on horseback, and accompanied by the Sovereign‟s Escort found by the Household Cavalry Regiment

(Mounted). She rides down the Mall on to the Horse Guards Parade and as she turns to face her Guards from the saluting base the National Anthem is played.

The Colour is then trooped through the ranks to the sound of the drums beating, while the band plays traditional marches.

After the trooping, each battalion of Foot Guards taking part marches past the

Queen to the sound of the band playing the regiment‟s slow and quick marches. As each “guard” passes her the order “Eyes Right” is given, and the Queen returns the salute. Afterwards the mounted division of the Household Cavalry Regiment, their mounted band playing, first walk and then trot past the saluting base. The Guards have been carrying out their duty of guarding the sovereign since 1660 (the time of the Restoration).

The Queen then rides back to the Palace, preceded by the Sovereign‟s Escort and followed by the Foot Guards. On her arrival, the Old Guard is already formed up in the courtyard, and the New Guard enters; the remaining troops once more march past the Queen, who has taken her position in the Palace gateway, before returning to the barracks. Finally, the Queen enters the forecourt and rides between the Old and the New Guard into her Palace, and the ceremony of Trooping the Colour is over for another year.

Father’s Day

Father‟s Day is the third Sunday in June. This is probably just a commercial invention – and not a very successful one either. Millions of British fathers don‟t even know they have a special day.

The Bath Festival

The number of festivals held in Britain every summer goes on and on increasing but few are as well established or highly thought of, particularly in the wider European scene, as the Bath Festival. In June when the city is at its most beautiful the festival attracts some of the finest musicians in the world to Bath as

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well as thousands of visitors from Britain and abroad.

The festival presents a programme of orchestral and choral concerts, song and instrumental recitals and chamber music, so well suited to the beautiful 18thcentury halls of Bath. The range of music included is wide and young performers are given opportunities to work with some of the leading names in their fields. But the festival is not all music.

The programme usually includes lectures and exhibitions, sometimes ballet, opera, drama, or films, as well as tours of Bath and the surrounding area and houses not normally open to the public, often a costume ball, maybe poetry – the variety is endless.

England’s Midsummer Celebrations

Technically speaking, the Summer Solstice falls on June 21, when the sun climbs highest in the sky and shines for longest. It is also the night when modernday Druids perform „ancient rites‟ at Stonehenge, Wiltshire, as the dawn breaks – indeed, it isn‟t unknown for some 30,000 visitors to gather behind the ancient stone circle in order to experience the rising sun shining through the great megaliths and take part in the Stonehenge Free Festival.

In spite of this, Midsummer Day is normally celebrated on June 24 and many pagan customs that have their origin in sun worship are still practised on this day. For instance, bonfires are lit in memory of the Druid Baal fires, when children join hands and jump through the embers in an ancient celebration of plentiful crops. At one time farmers would also have driven their livestock through the dying flames, believing it would protect their animals from disease.

Several druidic fertility rites are still enacted during the Midsummer Eve or St. John‟s Eve celebrations, such as dropping melted lead into water, throwing a newly cut oak handle into a fire and planting hempseed in the local church grounds at midnight. Surprisingly, there are still a handful of rural English folk who will hang a black velvet cushion full of pins in the right foot of a stocking in expectation of glimpsing their future spouse. The ancestors of these people associated this night with fairies, ghosts and spirits of the past and would pick a garland of St. John‟s Wort at dawn and nail it to the front-door to protect their homes. Midsummer Eve is also the time when the Federation of Old Cornwall

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Societies light bonfires across their county (one of England‟s most ancient), and children leap over the flames, in what is a very old purification rite.

Midsummer Day has always been a day of great revelry. In the past, Cornish tin miners were given the day off and the people of Dartmoor, in Devon, would build platforms in trees in order to dance on them. There is also an old superstition that the devil will appear at midnight if a person runs backwards seven times around Chanctonbury Ring in Sussex. However, one of the most popular traditions

– still maintained in parts of Derbyshire – is the art of well-dressing, whereby villagers spend many hours attractively decorating their local water wells.

Royal Ascot

It is one of the biggest horse-racing meetings in Britain. It is held at Ascot, in the south of England. The Queen drives there from Windsor Castle. Ascot lasts for 4 days. It is traditional for men and women to go to the horse-racing at Ascot wearing their best hats.

July

Henley Regatta

It is held at Henley-on-Thames, where the Thames runs in a straight line for over 2 km and makes it an ideal place for rowing. The regatta, or boat racing competition, has been held there almost every year since 1839. It is still a picturesque sight, for the surroundings of the course are very beautiful and the oarsmen are decked in blazers and caps and voluminous scarves of every colour or combination of colours imaginable. One additionally interesting feature of the scenery will be the number of elderly gentlemen, many of them clergymen, who are to be seen watching from banks of the river and who put on their heads for the occasion the little shrunken, faded caps originally awarded to them when they represented their school or college anything up to fifty years ago. The cap and blazer habit is much favoured by cricketers as well as oarsmen, and also by tennis players and to a less extent by football players. The most impressive feature of the blazer is the badge, woven onto the breast pocket. It is usually an elaborate crest done in gold or silver thread with the addition of the club‟s initials or motto – the last being in Latin.

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Henry Wood Promenade Concerts – the Proms

Amongst music-lovers in Britain – and, indeed, in very many other countries

– the period between July and September 21 is a time of excitement, of anticipation, of great enthusiasm. The reason is that the Proms present every year a large repertoire of classical works under the best conductors and with the best artistes. A season provides an anthology of masterpieces.

The Proms started in 1895 when Sir Henry Wood formed the Queen‟s Hall Orchestra with a Mr Robert Newman as its manager. The purpose of the venture was to provide classical music to as many people who cared to come at a price all could afford to pay, those of lesser means being charged comparatively little –one shilling – to enter the Promenade, where standing was the rule. The coming of the last war ended two Proms‟ traditions. The first was that in 1939 it was no longer possible to perform to London audiences – the whole organisation was evacuated to Bristol. The second was that the Proms could not return to the Queen‟s Hall after the war was over – the Queen‟s Hall had become a casualty of the air-raids (in 1941), and was gutted.

Wimbledon

Wimbledon is one of the four great world tennis championships and the only one, which is played on grass. It is held in the last week of June and the first week of July at Wimbledon, in southwest London. Tickets for Wimbledon are sold on the day. Lots of people queue overnight to get ticket for the Centre Court, the best tennis court. The queue often turns into a party.

August

The Edinburgh Festivals

The post-war years have seen a great growth in the number of arts festivals in Britain and other European countries. Among them the Edinburgh International Festival has now firmly established its reputation as one of the foremost events of its kind in the world. On most evenings during the festival there are as many as six events to choose from on the official programme: symphony concerts, ballets, plays, recitals – all given by the finest artists in the world.

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The idea of the festival originated in the first post-war year when all over Europe rationing and restrictions were the order of the day. And in 1947 the Festival was inaugurated. Glyndebourne Opera, the Vienna Philharmonic

Orchestra, the Old Vic Theatre and Sadler‟s Wells Ballet were only a few of the participants of this first venture. The Festival was a success, and has been held annually ever since.

It is a good thing that the Edinburgh Festival hits the Scottish capital outside term time. Not so much because the University hostels are needed to provide accommodation for Festival visitors, but because this most exhilarating occasion allows no time for anything mundane. It gives intelligent diversion for most of the twenty-four hours each weekday in its three weeks (it is not tactful to ask about Sundays – you explore the surrounding terrain then). The programmes always include some of the finest chamber music ensembles and soloists in the world. There are plenty of matinees; evening concerts, opera, drama and ballet performances usually take place at conventional times – but the floodlit Military Tattoo at Edinburgh Castle obviously doesn‟t start till after dark, and late night entertainments and/or the Festival Club can take you into the early hours of the morning.

“Fringe” events bring performing bodies from all over Britain and beyond, and student groups are always prominent among them, responsible often for interesting experiments in the drama. Then there is the International Film Festival, bringing documentaries from perhaps 30 countries; Highland Games, and all sorts of other plays from puppet to photo shows.

Royal National Eisteddfod of Wales

The huge annual National Eisteddfod is certainly the most picturesque and most moving ceremony in Wales. For here the love of song and poetry of the Welsh is organised to provide a spectacle unique in the world. Presided over by white-robed druids with their attendant blue-robed bards, the Eisteddfod summons the people of Wales each year to send forth its singers and poets to participate in this colourful tournament.

The culminating event is the choosing of the winning poet, and so intense is the nationwide interest in this ceremony that special newspaper editions are snatched up eagerly by those, who, unable to go to the Eisteddfod, follow the

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proceedings with the anxiety that in England is reserved for dog races and football matches.

A visit to the Welsh National Eisteddfod is unforgettable, for there you will realise the passionate devotion of the Welsh to the things they have guarded so jealously throughout the centuries. And you will hear the Welsh sing! You will become as intoxicated as they with the subtle blending of voices and the plaintive beauty of the songs. The Royal National Eisteddfod of Wales is held annually early in August, in North and South Wales alternately.

In addition to the Eisteddfod, about thirty major Welsh Singing Festivals are held throughout Wales from May until early November. The habit of holding similar events dates back to early history, and there are records of competitions for Welsh poets and musicians in the twelfth century. The Eisteddfod sprang from the Gorsedd, or National Assembly of Bards. It was held occasionally up to 1819, but since then has become an annual event for the encouragement of Welsh literature and music and the preservation of the Welsh language and ancient national customs.

The programme includes male and mixed choirs, brass-band concerts, many children‟s events, drama, arts and crafts and, of course, the ceremony of the

Crowning of the Bard.

Notting Hill Carnival

People, who take part in Notting Hill extravaganza, dress up in fabulous costumes. The Notting-Hill event, organised by two separate local committees, is a Caribbean-influenced carnival with music and revelry. Steel bands play African and Carribian dance and blow whistles. Every back street seems to have its own sound, system with banks of speakers blasting out a heavy beat which echoes between the houses. It‟s the biggest carnival outside Brazil.

September

Royal Highland Games

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