Bodmin OCS proudly displayed their banner at the town's Remembrance Parade this year.
Crying the Neck – Looe OCS
We held our Crying the Neck on Tuesday 27th August, despite the rain. Fortunately it cleared up enough for our ukulele group (miraculously, 9 of them turned out) to play some folk tunes, and local Cornish expert Dr Ken George read the service in Cornish for us. John Little read the English and cut the corn, using the sickle given to Looe OCS by our Past President, Ken Terry. Someone had seen John in the Museum the previous Friday and told him that the sickle should be wrapped in a gold cloth and blessed with spring water, so we found some gold tissue paper and sprinkled the sickle with the Cornish equivalent of Peckham Spring!
The farmer had gone home in disgust as the corn was too wet for his harvester, but it did mean we were spared the dust from tractors going back and forth to the granary. At the time we fixed the date he was confident harvest would be over by the last week in August, but the weather intervened.
We served cider or apple juice and saffron cake to around 30 people, including the musicians, so while we haven’t achieved total authenticity it was the most enjoyable Crying the Neck we have had for years, despite the weather.