GREAT DUNMOW, England (AP) — Thanks to a 900-year-old tradition, Nicole and Tim Sheehan are going to be eating Dunmow bacon for months.
GREAT DUNMOW, England (AP) — Thanks to a 900-year-old tradition, Nicole and Tim Sheehan are going to be eating Dunmow bacon for months.
The couple were able to prove that, for a year and a day, they have "not wished themselves unwed," so, in keeping with ancient custom, their reward was a flitch — a side of bacon.
"We know the butcher, so he'll let us have it in batches," joked a beaming Mrs. Sheehan, who was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and met her English husband on a night out in Dunmow, 40 miles northeast of London.
"It's nerve-racking because you don't know what to expect," she said. "But it was fun to be part of something so historic."
Since the 1100s, people have come to Dunmow to try to win the flitch. The 17th-century herald Sir William Dugdale summed up the custom like this: "He which repents him not of his Marriage, either Sleeping or Waking, in a Year and a Day, may lawfully go to Dunmow and fetch a Gammon of Bacon."
The practice has been updated since the days when it was advertised by town criers and on printed handbills. Now held every four years, it's publicized on the Internet and filmed for television.
Applicants no longer must kneel on rough stones, but stand in a dock before a special court.
To general hilarity, TV anchor Mary Bard, — appearing "for the bacon" — accused the Sheehans of "a heinous plot to make away with our bacon and prostitute it on the world stage" by selling pieces on the Internet. The couple, standing arm-in-arm, pulled mock expressions of surprise.
But some historic aspects remain, including the trial format and the jury of "six bachelors and six spinsters."
Winners are still carried shoulder-high through the town on a carved wooden seat by cheering locals dressed in peasants' smocks.
Custom may date to Saxon times
The origin of the flitch ceremony is uncertain, but there are references to trials going back to around 1100.
According to former Essex county archivist Francis Steer, the custom may go back even earlier, to Saxon times, when the bonds of marriage were interpreted more loosely and some ecclesiastical authorities reportedly gave sides of bacon to couples who promised to stay together.
But Steer says the custom is more popularly attributed to a member of Dunmow's noble FitzWalter family and his wife who — according to local legend — went, disguised as "humble folk," to the priory of St. Mary's at nearby Little Dunmow for a blessing a year after their marriage.
Impressed by their devotion, the prior summoned a passing kitchen hand and presented the couple with the side of bacon he was carrying. FitzWalter promptly revealed his identity and announced he would give a piece of land to the priory on condition that a flitch be given to any couple prepared to swear they "had not repented of their marriage for a whole year."
It was not always easy to win, apparently.
The 14th-century writer William Langland, in his great work, "The Vision of Piers the Plowman," records that many couples lied about the happiness of their marriages, but "Though they go to Dunmow /(Unless the devil help them) /To try for the flitch / They will never steal it ..."
Toilet seat question stumps couple
The first recorded winner is named in priory documents from 1445, now in the British Museum in London, as "one Richard Wright, of Bawburgh next Norwich, ... yeoman."
In 1701, in the first ceremony held after Henry VIII closed the monasteries, a small jury was added, probably to lend some semblance of propriety to what had become a jocular manorial court. By 1751, the last time the award was made by a lord of the manor, the jury had grown to its present size.
After a century of disuse, the town fathers of Great Dunmow revived the trials in 1855.
Among the early applicants were James and Hannah Barrick, who carried off a flitch one rainy afternoon in 1877.
Their great-grandson Brian Eley and his wife, Jean, took part in this month's trial. Although married 46 years, they didn't win, having failed to convince the jury they weren't at loggerheads over the perennial question of whether to leave the toilet seat up or down.
"It doesn't matter," Eley said. "It's just nice to think we're following in my family's footsteps."
