EASTER EGGS AND WOODLOUSE RACING

from Felpham In Focus April 2024

APRIL HOROSCOPES

BY KIM LESLIE

Springtime and Eastertide have long been celebrated with ancient customs and folklore, some lost and forgotten, some still perpetuated year after year. Easter eggs signify new life and new beginnings, hot-cross buns the Good Friday story of the crucifixion. These buns were frequently kept from one year to the next: cold-cross buns were hung up in cottages to ward off evil. Some Sussex fishermen even carried them for protection against drowning. Good Friday skipping was another custom from days gone by. In Brighton, the fishermen didn’t go out to sea on Good Friday out of respect for the holy day. Instead they organised skipping, using their long and thick fishing ropes, when this special religious festival was called ‘Long Rope Day’.

Another popular activity was marble playing during Lent, culminating on Good Friday. As one 19th-century Sussex vicar wrote: ‘In the country districts in Sussex the marble season is strictly defined between Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and on the last day of the season it seems to be the object of every man and boy to play marbles as much as possible’. Such has been the importance of marble playing in Sussex that even today the British and World Marbles Championship takes place every Good Friday at the Greyhound Inn at Tinsley Green, near Crawley. A knock-out tournament, teams of six players compete to win the title and a silver trophy. Over the years, players from all over the world have participated alongside English teams, playing under the strict rules of the British Marbles Board of Control. It’s a very serious game.

Curiously, again in Sussex, there’s been a variant Good Friday game played not with glass marbles, but with – perhaps unbelievably – woodlice – literally a live sport! These miniature crustaceans with their armour-like bodies instinctively curl up into a neat ball when touched or disturbed, their defence against danger. Thus a fleshy, live ‘marble’ is created when they are handled. At Rusper, just north of Horsham, the miniature race track was set out in one of the dampest, soggiest places in the parish – damp is woodlouse heaven. So racing was held in Baldthorns Copse, the watery source of the River Mole. Near to the bubbling spring that feeds the little river, each competitor placed their woodlouse ball on the starting line and waited – silently and with no movement. With no danger sensed, the woodlice gradually unroll. Persuading a woodlouse to move quickly in one direction was the great challenge. To encourage them along, competitors usually laid a trail of sticky fruit, often apple or pear juice, or maybe using their own secret concoction.

In another Sussex parish, Tillington, near Petworth, some more sporting competitors liked to paint their woodlice, nail polish a popular choice because it dries quickly. Tillington became famous for its multi-coloured sporting woodlice. If the painting was timed right, the fumes from the drying varnish would make them run very quickly. Here the sport died out in the early 20th century, although the Tillington Woodlouse Challenge Cup is still treasured in the village. Rusper, more recently, was the last place to witness this unique Good Friday survival.