I saw a viral facebook post about the story of Tom Bawcock and I was interested in its origin so I thought I would have a rummage online and see what I could find :)
To begin, the legend goes thus:
The story
At some time in the sixteenth century, a man named Tom Bawcock lived in a village called Mousehole in Cornwall. Tom was a fisherman, so the legend goes. One particularly bad year, the townsfolk were starving because the weather had not allowed them to go out fishing. Tom, it would seem, decided to brave the storms despite the danger to himself, and so took his boat out anyway to do some fishing in order that the townsfolk would have something to eat over Christmas. The day was the 23rd December, the year unknown!
Despite all odds, and a treacherous sea, Tom did in fact make it back to land, and in his boat was enough food to feed everyone! Large open topped fish pies were cooked from the fish Tom caught, with the heads and tails of the pies still on show, so that the villagers could see that the pastry contained actual fish! This dish is known as stargazey pie.
The legacy:
Today the village of Mousehole celebrates Tom Bawcocks Eve every 23rd December with people baking pies as well as lights and celebrations in the streets. A book, The Mousehole Cat was written in 1991 which tells of the deeds of Tom and "mowzer" , his cat, who the book proposed purred the waves to calm.
The history:
Ok, so first off, interestingly, Bawcock wasn't really localised to Cornwall as a name in this era. Whilst this isn't conclusive, that would at once make a historian like me more skeptical. It's also true that these old traditions and such are often not this specific. A short internet search found me the theory from another blogger which seems to have merit, that "Bawcock" was a word used by Shakespeare. This generally meant "a fine chap". To me this makes more sense in the usual pattern of these type of traditions. The fisherman who went out, therefore, may not have been named Tom Bawcock at all, but was merely Tom, a fine chap!
The origin:
Another theory, much older, is that of Cornish folklorist Robert Nance (1920s), who thought it was a translation of Beau Coq - a French term which translates to beautiful rooster! He attributed the figure of Tom with the "rooster bearer" in a pre-christian winter festival. There doesn't seem to be a lot to substantiate this though and several modern folklorists even go so far as to say Nace was known for his embellishing! It was Nance, however, who
brought us the song of Tom Bawcock, having found a scrap of it and been inspired to put the rest together himself!!
In newspapers, the earlier record I can find about Tom Bawcock is actually 1928. This is quite interesting as if it was an age old tradition, you would expect to see much more mention in earlier newspapers! Thus gives support to several accounts I read which claimed that the festival was revived early in the 1900s, rather than one which has ever been celebrated. It's no coincidence whether, that this is the era that Nance first started writing about it. This is not to say that it didn't exist earlier, only that perhaps it wasn't celebrated the way it is now before then, or in fact that it is an older festival which died out and was revived :)
Let me know your theories in the comments!