British bushcraft - a dying art?

[John Fenna]

It is interesting - having just reread the thread - to see that coracles are mentioned. The National coracle museum is just down the road from me (with samples from around the world on display inc Afghanistan and Vietnam, USA and England), I have built a Bull Boat (years before RM did although I used a nylon covering!) can happily paddle a Teifi style corracle (except in a strong breezr - that is HARD work!) and coracles are still being built and used for fishing on my local river in the time honoured way.
Now the number of Coracle licences on Welsh rivers are being cut - to "preserve fish stocks" - while at the same time the EA are giving FREE taster sessions on learning how to fish with rod and line!
Most waters are closed to paddlers of any craft and no Access For All is planned (unlike unimproved land, seashores etc) so a great part of our Heritage is ACTIVELY being taken from us.
Rivers were our first highways, now they are the preserve of "sport" fishermen and it seems that only the Scots are preserving a reasonable access to the waters!
Has the world gone totally mad?
Answers on a postcard.......

 

[xylaria]

Yes back to the thread topic:
Lost British bushcraft doesnt just have to be typical things we might associate with the subject such as foods and alike, I think we often don't realise how much Folk tradition we have lost in this country. Before the last century for instance, child birth was done at home usually midwifed by a local woman, not unlike the many indigenous peoples from other parts of the globe. people worked locally, usually specialising in single trades, cottage business or roles whereas todays society sees people who stick to one specialised subject losing out to those who are jacks of all trades. I come from a long long history of peasant weavers, ending with my grandparents. Weaving is a skill dating back to hunter gatherer times, though it changed over the years, it has always been present.
Women have their secrets!

I find the things I can craft up while out through weaving are endless. I am not even that good. The last midlands meet I made the most rubbish looking bender, but stayed upright which is what counts. The children used it as a sitting room.

As for women secrets, chuck a penny up saves on the pennywort.

Things I would class as native british skills
Weaving
Wombling ( I don't know any other country where wayside pickings are so plantyful:AR15firin )
Ferreting
wool and knitting
linen
Corricles
Etc etc

There is more, like absorbing stuff from new cultures, is very a old skill of the people of these isles. I have seen felt making demos from a pakistan woman and it looked pretty much the same as any other felt making, the embriodary was that put on it was new to me but very beautiful all the same.

 

[Wayland]

Whilst I can appreciate the desire to retain some folk tradition this is one practice I do not have a problem with having received some modernisation. Were it not for the wonders of modern medicine and todays midwifery skills I would have lost both my wife and son.

Yes it's very easy to get dewy eyed about how the world has changed but some things have changed for the better too.

Until the 1920s child birth was still a major killer.


I'm going to be controversial here, and say I think we in the West live in the golden age.

We have the best of everything if we have the money for it, we can travel anywhere if we have the time. Science and technology gives us a better quality of life than ever before and has put miracles in our pockets.

I'm not sure how long this will all last, but surely, we've never had it so good.

 

[xylaria]

I'm going to be controversial here, and say I think we in the West live in the golden age.

.

Yes, I feel like we are at a cultural pinacle, like the romans and the norse. We even now have the wisdom to see that other great cultures have been felled by nature biteing back, and the same can happen to us. We know our rome can burn.

I don't think british bushcraft is dying art i just think it is not marketed in the way canadian or swedish bushcraft is. I still think that building shelters out of rocks heather and moss is far useful to know in britian than building lean-tos out of pine.

 

[SOAR]

I think this is a very interesting thread, the arguments and points raised are of great importance, as the emotions are high because it is a shame that these skills and ways of living are lost to modernisation, mainly down to the fact that mass production and mechanisation have overtook the old ways of making things,I agree alot of the changes are for the better for mankind and can be hailed as miracles, and Waylands post about the influences from different parts of the world that make up Britain is a good one. I for one love the idea and take great pleasure in making my own things, like so many folk on here. I know very little on hunting or the history of British crafts unlike alot of people on here but I love to learn and that is where sites like this one come in, for it is keeping the ways of old alive. This is a great thread and I hope it can provide answers, or at least a list of the things that that can be resurected or passed on to the next generation to understand and enjoy, or hopefully envoke in people a more self reliant way of living and understanding.

 

[andy_e]

And people PLEASE! It is the Welsh Longbow........

LOL! Apparently lots of people think that, however some think that's down to a historical mistranslation of The Historical Works of Giraldus Cambrensis - a quick Google brings up...

http://margo.student.utwente.nl/sagi/artikel/longbow/longbow2.html

http://www.edinformatics.com/inventions_inventors/longbow.htm

Looks like whoever first used it in Britain, they nicked it from the Scandinavians and since it's on the Interweb it must be true

 

[Toddy]

For those interested in the longbow, there's a society dedicated to it's continuing use and promotion. The British Longbow Society.
The Scottish branch has a website here

http://www.blbsscotland.co.uk/

cheers,
Toddy

 

[John Fenna]

I stick by WELSH longbow - whatever the Sais claim!
Go steal your own culture!
Although I am of half Scottish decent, trace my family back to Flintshire in the C16th and my family name back to Ireland and have livedmost of my life in Wales some people call me an Englishman!
I have lived almost as long in Belgium as I have in England.....
These days I think of myself as British (with a bias to Welsh)...
Is our bushcraft not as mongrel?
British/Norse
British/Scots
British/Welsh
Etc etc?
Geraldus had a pint near my house.... and reports a man giving birth to a cow near Hay (famous for the "mushrooms" growing near the site now called Miracle Pass) is he anyone to quote in evidence of anything?

 

[Ogri the trog]

In the old texts,
theres a passage that goes something like recommending the best archers in the land lived - " between the valley of the Severn and the upper reaches of the Wye" .... Not that it favours the place where I was born nor where I now live......



Ogri the trog
Long time member of BLBS, and have several times shot in the grounds of the Royal Toxopholite Society in Burnham Slough. But if you want a real challenge, forget the Silver Challace and other so called medeival tournaments, Rex Bradley - one time keeper at Margam Park in South Wales used to sponsor a clout shoot for a culled haunch of venison - that was a shoot I shall never forget!

 

[gregorach]

Welsh, English, Scots... all relatively modern concepts. Even for a long time after unification, most people would have thought of themselves as members of a tribe or clan, not a nation. Some people still do...

And of course, the links between Welsh and Scots culture go back a long way. The P-Celtic speaking tribesmen of the Gododdin (in south-eastern Scotland and Northumbria) would almost certainly have felt more kinship with both the "Welsh" and the Picts of Orkney than with the Q-Celtic speakers to the west.

Personally, I'm of the view that the divisions we now think of between the various "indigenous" Britons, the Angles, the Saxons, and the Norse would have seemed slightly strange to them. I suspect that they would have seen the North Sea as joining them rather than separating them, and have regarded the tribal divisions we now tend to forget about as far more important than the distinctions between what we now regard as the major cultural groups. Cultural intermixing is not a new phenomenon.

 

[andy_e]

...Geraldus had a pint near my house.... and reports a man giving birth to a cow near Hay (famous for the "mushrooms" growing near the site now called Miracle Pass) is he anyone to quote in evidence of anything?

Probably says more about the strength of your local brew

 

[hiraeth]

In the old texts,
theres a passage that goes something like recommending the best archers in the land lived - " between the valley of the Severn and the upper reaches of the Wye" .... Not that it favours the place where I was born nor where I now live......



Ogri the trog
Long time member of BLBS, and have several times shot in the grounds of the Royal Toxopholite Society in Burnham Slough. But if you want a real challenge, forget the Silver Challace and other so called medeival tournaments, Rex Bradley - one time keeper at Margam Park in South Wales used to sponsor a clout shoot for a culled haunch of venison - that was a shoot I shall never forget!

Could not agree more ogri, Margam is a fine place to shoot clout, done so many times myself. My own longbow was made for me by Rex.

 

[Bogman10]

Agree with you on the bowhunting Red, but unfortunately that law will remain for ever, and serious skilled bowmen, will never be able to practice there art on live quarry,but it can still be practised,in the states and some European countries.

Bernie

Don't forget Canada! We even allow for a longer hunting season with Bows over Rifles. So If you want to get a heads start on a trophy Deer, go with the Bow! I do both Rifle and Bow, but I only hunt with the bow if I have had lots of time to practice so I can make sure it's a clean Humane kill.
By the Way, why is Bow hunting not allowed in Britain? It's a much safer style of hunting.

 

[John Fenna]

Why is bow hunting banned?
Probably for the same reason we cannot canoe our rivers, own hand guns, carry knives etc....
Ooops - mustn't get political!

 

[Bernie Garland]

Why is bow hunting banned?
Probably for the same reason we cannot canoe our rivers, own hand guns, carry knives etc....
Ooops - mustn't get political!

You've hit the nail on the head there John.

Bernie

 

[Bernie Garland]

Don't forget Canada! We even allow for a longer hunting season with Bows over Rifles. So If you want to get a heads start on a trophy Deer, go with the Bow! I do both Rifle and Bow, but I only hunt with the bow if I have had lots of time to practice so I can make sure it's a clean Humane kill.
By the Way, why is Bow hunting not allowed in Britain? It's a much safer style of hunting.

If it wasent for my age i'd be in Canada with you.

Bernie

 

[Wayland]

By the Way, why is Bow hunting not allowed in Britain? It's a much safer style of hunting.

Because in this country we're ruled by the media.

 

[Wallenstein]

Yes it's very easy to get dewy eyed about how the world has changed but some things have changed for the better too.

Until the 1920s child birth was still a major killer.


I'm going to be controversial here, and say I think we in the West live in the golden age.

[...]

I'm not sure how long this will all last, but surely, we've never had it so good.

As Terry Pratchett points out:

"If you said to a bunch of average people two hundred years ago "Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world's music and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost, travelling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don't have to die of dental abcesses and you don't have to do what the squire tells you" they'd think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say 'yes'."

 

[MikeDB]

Just to stay a little confusion until I find the relevent link for those with an interest.

Hunting any bird or mammal was prohibited by the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981
Part 1, Section 5 and 11

This was a fair time ago now so it's likely the pros and cons are well buried however, in reply to a previous comment, the Countryside Alliance didn't help because it / we only formed 1997 with the amalgamation of several bodies including the BFSS.

Mike

 

[Celt_Ginger]

There are loads of traditional crafts etc still out there. Just look at some of the more traditional recipes that are still popular. Black pudding. We all secretly love it, but how many know how to make it? In Northern Ireland, a staple of the famed "Ulster Fry" is Potato bread (known locally as potato farls or even fadge) and Soda bread, yet most people buy it in the supermarket, while it is inexpensive to make at home. We are somewhat fortunate in Northern Ireland in that we have a number of laws that differ from the rest of the UK. Hunting with Dogs is still perfectly legal, as is owning handguns. Permission for shooting is still reasonably easy to obtain. Country sports and crafts are still popular. I do believe though that the disposable age and the availability of cheap goods from abroad will slowly kill off the traditional crafts/skills, leaving only a very small core of enthusiasts to keep the flag flying. then when it's all gone, people will muse "Do you remember the old guy who used to make corricles? Shame no one can do it now"