Video: Have fun, chimney sweeps! Annual Rochester Festival
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
"And to unclean chimney sweeps - shame and disgrace" - that's, perhaps, all that comes to mind of a modern person when mentioning the representatives of this ancient profession. Meanwhile, the appearance and manners of mysterious people, literally laundering their money from soot, have generated many cultural responses. Chimney sweeps still live and work next to us - and, of course, they are also in the glorious traditions of England. Moreover, once a year they organize a grand festival there!
"Twelve months a year; but the most cheerful is May!" - so thought the careless robber Robin Hood. It is on the first of May, the day of the so-called Jack-in-Green, that the streets of the city of Rochester, Kent, are flooded with wild colors and cheerful exclamations: the chimney sweep festival begins.
Actually, such festivals have existed for a long time. Even old Dickens described these merry festivities in his "Sketches of Bose" - but sadly stated that they were not at all the same: on the streets you will not find real chimney sweeps at all; they are depicted by brick-makers, scavengers and other elements alien to the furnace business. Since then, there have been no more grimy cleaners, and in 1900 they stopped gathering altogether, and the festival somehow sunk into oblivion. But in 1980, in the old and venerable city of Rochester, it was decided to revive the tradition.
But now no one would complain that not only chimney sweeps come to the festival. Revelers of all classes and professions gather from England and surrounding countries to look at people and show themselves: after all, now this is a festival of folk costumes. A variety of outfits, dances and songs, orchestras of English folk instruments, from bagpipes to banjo - and, of course, fun drinking - this is the main essence of the festival today. And, what is especially gratifying, the main note to the whole festival is set by the costumed "chimney sweeps": mysterious, even mystical people in black bowlers and grimy faces - but with a white-toothed smile and a carefree soul.
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