61 nails and a billhook meet the REMEMBRANCER: a tale of (very) old england that plagues us yet

"The billhook is supposed to be dull: one early instruction said it should 'bend in green cheese'…"

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/london-is-still-paying-rent-to-the-queen-on-a-property-leased-in-1211

The headline suggests some ancient and crappy injustice in which the landed gobble down yet more unearned pelf… and it kind of is, but it's also fabulous and absurd enough to end-run that problem. Maybe. (1211 is early in Henry III's reign.)

is this the thread for shooting Scotsmen from York Minster at high noon on Michaelmas or whatever

(with a longbow)

chesterwiki begs to differ: http://chester.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Shoot_the_Welsh

(it was welshman in chester after sundown and it never existed as a law in that form)

i think i was portmanteauing several urban legends there

but yes, i am very taken with this billhook farrago. i wonder which other pre-modern ceremonies persist

god knows i've been to enough stately homes in the past year or two to pick something up. let's think

It is pleasing that nobody even knows where the land is any more.

Not as old or absurd and I suspect you don't really want Oxbridge/public school stories, but one of the oddest things I've done in too many years of hanging round this town is hearing through the gates the Mallard Song and once-a-century ceremony of All Souls College, Oxford in 2001

as the unknown moors in question are in shropshire there's a good chance my dad took students to them in the 60s to study the plantlife and maybe even me to wander round as a tiny while they did this

there is a place nearby where I take my dog every day. There is a moated island that was lived on from about 900 ad or something + and the demise of the old hall occurred in the 1600's. A load of Royalists were surrounded by Parliamentarians and had surrendered, but somebody accidentally dropped a fag in the gunpowder stores and they blew themselves to kingdom come. Just the fireplace remains standing and since it became a grade II listed site some contrivances have been added, but the place still has an aura about it.

Possibly not a useful contribution to this thread, but just saying.

tbh i am happy for this thread to become "britain: weird or silly shit ongoing from before the glorious revolution"

(1211 is early in Henry III's reign.)

It was so early, it was during John's reign.