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Nadger's History of England by Brampton historian A B.Nadger
 | These articles have kindly been donated by The Brampton Bugle. See this excellent site at www.brampton-bugle.co.uk/links.html
Did you know?
English "morris" dancing is the earliest known example of biological warfare. Mediaeval documents recently discovered by historians indicate that villagers who showed the early symptoms of bubonic plague were dressed in colourful outlandish costumes with bells tied to their legs and sent to neighbouring hamlets to perform their macabre ritual.
It is quite remarkable to note that, although little or no knowledge of germs or viral infection was existent at the time, the fact that waving handkerchiefs full of plague infested mucus in the vicinity of one's enemies had a detrimental effect was commonly known, particularly in the south of England.
"They did comme in garish clothe wythe bells about their legges and brandishinge shorte poles of wudde which they did hitte together in a devilishe danse, each holdinge a fylthie ragge soaked all in snotte. Soone after this the plague was upon us. They did also a-molly their cludges in the ftreete, gruntinge lyke pygges"
It would also seem that this was used as a convenient way of ridding the community of its worst musicians.
"They did also bringe wythe them uglie daemons from the underworlde who did make a foule dinne upon pypes, fidils and nakers and did take muche ale. These wretched beaftes were not fytte to danse."
Research by scientists has shown that the average career of a morris dancer would have lasted about two weeks, which would account for the musical and terpsichorean simplicity of the "performance" and the pitifully low level of skill involved, which is still in evidence today in some areas, faithfully reproduced.
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Cludge Mollying
 | Cludge mollying in the Middle Ages
The Ancient Guild of Cludge Molliers was formed in 1404 at a time when, to molly one's own cludge, particularly in public, had become so socially unacceptable that the perpetrators became outcasts in their own communities, sometimes even to the point of joining the village morris dancers in their depraved activities. This was mainly due to the puritanical influence of the church on society, which could account for the noticeable lack of biblical references to the mollying of cludges after about 1356. Consequently, by the late 14th century it had become necessary for the outlawed practice to be carried out covertly by skilled, professional cludge molliers who usually preferred to work under cover of darkness, often leading a double life to avoid detection. Indeed, the church was so effective in its effort to stamp out cludge mollying, it is virtually impossible to find any written reference to either cludges, or the general act of mollying in its original sense today, except in the word "mollycoddle". Obviously to coddle one's cludge is very different to actually mollying it, especially in public, and the church, for all its faults, recognized this. It has been suggested by some historians that a certain amount of clandestine coddling was popular among the clergy at that time, and so would consequently have been viewed with somewhat more lenience than outright mollying. However, it should be noted that the word has now completely lost its original meaning, no doubt in part due to religious zealots misusing it loudly from the pulpit, as with the word "molly" itself, which had taken on a completely different meaning by the early 18th century with which we are not here concerned.
In order to preserve what was by then a dying skill, and maintain the necessary secrecy to appease the church, yet keep the public's cludges well mollied, the Guild of Cludge Molliers came into existence. Local legend has it that the formative gatherings were held in the back room of "Ye Forke and Twine", a busy ale house in late 14th century Brampton on the site of which now stands "O' Clackerty's Bar", quite close to the original Brampton castle by the sparkling river Hipper. Naturally, little is known of the actual membership, save for rumour and speculation, but evidence of some structure of apprenticeship can be found in J. M. Blunt's "Folke Songes of Olde Englande" published in 1892. The only known reference to female cludge mollying is in the relatively unknown song, "Come Molly my Cludge, Oh Damsel Fair", but this is generally regarded by scholars as little more than a perverse fantasy, or at best, the mediaeval idea of comedy. The practice has now of course completely died out in the U.K. (along with life-size corn dollies) since the invention of modern string, and more recently the steam engine. However, it is rumoured that mollying still continues in parts of Europe, albeit in a somewhat more symbolic fashion than hitherto, due to the lack of cludges, but nonetheless poignantly. The northern French town of Couilles to this day boasts an imposing granite monument to "Les Molliers de la Clourge" in the centre of its picturesque market place.
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A Song
Come Molly my Cludge, Oh Damsel Fair
Come molly my cludge, oh damsel fair,
But first thou'd best tie up thy hair,
For tangled locks with flailing string,
Can only bring ill fortune.
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And when thou molliest, damsel fair,
Be sure to wear clean underwear,
Else if an accident thou had,
The doctor would not cure thee.
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When thou hast done, oh fairest maid,
That which the parson hast forbade,
My cludge once more will then be free,
To do what it is able.
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So haste away, thy fork must fly,
Thy mollying string thou must apply,
With vigour, thou should'st nibble hard,
Ere daylight should surprise thee.
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And when my cludge at last is done,
Thou must away and homeward run,
For daylight is the mollier's bane,
And thou would'st lose thy fork dear.
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Thy fork and string, thy bread and butter,
To lose them thou would'st be a nutter,
Fly like the wind, sweet mollier lass,
And meet me here next Tuesday.
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(Extract from "Folke Songes of Olde Englande" - J. M. Blunt 1892)
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Pointless Tripe
Pointless TripeBy Brampton Bugle tripe writer
Norbert Phlegm
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Wise but snuffling parsimonious tinkle shafts betray the greying clusters of mocked meandering, while foul dreams play the spent tantrums left from groundless wooden oddities. Putrid traumas spill into gaping pageants, only to frighten the oily dexterity - but nevertheless stretched over the trembling and sickly fruited monoliths of blunted frailty, they draw holes by limpid recrimination. Sordid indeed, a chewing melodeon spike is often of a septic but just ilk, and a likely lubrication for the permeated drenching veneration of smiling and rubber bewilderment straps.
Simple teeth rarely daunt the paddling volume of devious greasy hats, while reasonable hobblings addle the fractions of humorous brown circles mingling conspicuously downwards. Fat juxtaposition slices the mouldering vaults through plentiful filtration bandits, pausing to bleed palpable gravy boats underestimated by the inky wastrels of bland putrefaction. Is scurrilousness the trumped gland of a gliding bone? Abrupt finger...
Cereal mahogany, lamenting within brindled cornucopia; festering jubilee pots agog, whereby soft gaggles endlessly billow, thrown amidst fortuitous rumbles. "Sluggish truss bottlings?", the young spattered armistice gesticulates, winking copiously behind plump, wet, alien guttering. "Vicious bangles are undaunted by the black spoon of unicycling lust, but only memorial tongues are cloistered benignly." Harbingers of sniffed tribal paper can but rent yams for swelling decisions, and with old quivering bonnets.
The joyous loincloth of bestial superstition is unfolding our gratuitous offal clamps with not a nibble of architectural fumbling. Without luscious foes or boldly gaping treadles, the insane rumbustious follicles of humbled flea cottages cannot crumble with desirable cutlery babies. How can flaunted pedestals graciously ignite the portals of lard fetishes, when biliously dancing for a paltry and mucous acceleration? Phantom plinth stoppers are the only recourse of a gnarled cycle antagonist; after all, pork pie tickling is the only true detriment, save for the interruptions of leather bound brain cleaners.
"Oiled rabbits of doom!", the braying mince cluster laughs, portcullis akimbo, flared bandicoots lolling boisterously over the bovine threads of jewelled irony. "What underpants are these?" - Nothing is the stunted tuba of falsehood when fish beckon and the bad farthing pricks his blind tentacles. Echoing mastication makes a sombre giblet tessellation of all ruthless and jaded caverns.
Posturing rancidly for fungal machine based competitive artefacts, gentle deflation to within exercise pork brings a regular fetlock vestibule in any string scandal plumage. When? The mumbling outside fruit pillows will have rhythmic lard rubbing, and the homicidal bean support grapples thus harmlessly so. Every practicality bracing, pestilent mortar board beneath cheese begrudging slowly to an untimely abstraction. Flustering pastel heavily drained, pointless frilly brass portal failure.
Not wishing proudly to incinerate impudent but slightly fortified granary bells, the thin pudding shouted with smugly drifting poodles. Flying buttresses are, after all, the very essence of how many green things will slip between simple and yet fruitfully bloated pump remnants. Too many to contemplate with yam fur, or indeed rub lightly with a calm moist ferret. "Long may the fusty groves edge your spoon, including nightly!" is the niggardly floating truss, so soon after the Whitsuntide measles hamlet. Scientific plunge handkerchief, shaken, but not highly divided, will never yearn for lint candles, particularly with the accepted and massively gusseted flintlock marmalade banjos implied therein. "Blood!" whispers the occasional hooting barnacle, ovulating with plenitude for dinner's blazing but fashionably cunning pantaloons.
Dream-like prudence shall arise for gifted buttocks, fastidiously grunting like the tragic springs from a bartered cauliflower membrane. Pipe and trickle works, pending young barking terraces, have never diced with insufficient mirth - only on bewildered drainage biscuits, and consequently plummeted with the smell. The unfruitful but notional bedsprings of crispy attitude bundles are but small string in the corridors of self mutilation.
A thousand whimpering pigeon goddesses will never attain the compost of a saddle, brought diligently, and without custard or idiotic poles, however normal. Not even the handbooks of fulsome languish could ripen the penitence of a twisted bladder plate, let alone the harmless pies of the east coast. None but the most yellowed can incline between the wax turtles of irregularity without first proving the open rigidity of imitation.
"Finch mental tool-shed": the frantic after dribble is a morose predator! Soon, the pithy fat stabber, which although thoroughly dainty brings precipitation - but only from decorative pikestaff waste. "Gloom! Harvest jangling trollop in smell basket?" Nimble omnibus tale - precision plumage. Haughty breakfast? Thimble screaming artichoke pincer. Too few bladder weasels. "Bring in the forward loaf polish Norbert, is no grim velocity backwardly glistening for an angular throne, singing wetly?" Stumble buckets in surprise tripe when pressed into lavatorial encyclopaedia muffins.
Too long have deviously flamboyant pickling guns of stringless proportion graced the forgotten arbitrary bondage flutes of triangular misfortune. The distracting bray of plurality behind gravelled whimsy often heralded archetypal nipple orchestras, badgering malignant nunnery spoons against the grotesque dripping of extraordinary blossom gantries:
"A mottled cruet brings sheep upon the noxious,
And riddled turnstiles grate with bawdy fuel
To press the blatant rook; an easy poultice?
Yet braced within a grummet lies the string
Of fettered mutton, lamps beneath a gracious
But solid crust; and casting the whores of drivel
To rampant piles of remotely painted fish,
We grout the harnessed pudding without trouser."
"Trickery cyst, trickery cyst!" - Stooping flaccid custard grinder; "Plimsoll when little impersonation gratitude." Bruised category - urgent malleable goat boiler, despite the bracket's flustered mention. Ephemeral casting brochure; "Dripping humble lawn, greased warily?" Poultry again. Plausible chihuahuas gain fast runcible - under probable forlorn tidal stooping. Trembling broadly, single nervous vest up with leaking bend, inside from savage indentations to mindlessly cultivate the grinning lubricated paddle-steamers.
Mad batter fusty gruesome, doing chimpanzee bottles for teetering gently. Tiny fool preparations press Wednesday's gibbering brown tackle, monogamous cheeses in delicate flying trousers with cattle, through sympathy marquees to formulate circulation twenties for mariners. Smooth droppings, placed courageously into circumstantial wedges, will isolate hardy and intimately sculptured nonsensical grimace pools.
Flange, grisly inordinate primrose of which throat-bench nasty. Your banana stained helicopters sin in fish, my jolly wellingtons! The brazen haddock's portfolio lynch sandwiches where throbs their musty water box. Furiously plopping, oscilloscope bramble post to dangles went under brandishing lightly three.
Once pastry, Bengal Lancer teapot thread whereupon. Edelweiss bongo and wrinkled . . . utter bold latitude? - Wensleydale pencil once or tinkling gracelessly over. Being Cleckheaton, listless volleyball polite veering toast: rendition normally to therefore banter, and of bulging pastille did from.
"Plank!, PLANK!!" sang beside, did elsewhere pester roofing timber; "Whole fragile, rage was." Bread for xylophone independent nose too kindly? (limp but three!) Sad forest, inkling draught posthumously beef drizzle. "Hold beside twenty!" Topsoil greatness through linoleum was proper fjord worship. Vast, vast treacle brawn fettled noiselessly, joined to measly boiling for covert ambiguity - thrice buttoned sediment lustre. Wanton carriage! Threadbare . . . only porcupine tubas yodel dossier gravy; "Tough hoist lucidly?" Solid spleen nicely vector undulate. "Lid formation billboard?" Anchovy did altogether seminar anglepoise front. Fog-rancid vowels griped upward between tooth drastic mending envelopes, turgid over sand braces with removable elves.
Grandly, pig stencil earlobe thrust; "Posture gripe-water when obliged." Foolish slices to winklepicker "nib" gestation bucket - against sixteen jelly harnesses clustered, mangle drooping, pedals lunging to formation gas-pipe through bundle gripping rodent extractor. Why Cleethorpes? The meat is still laughing . . .
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