At Burghead, in Morayshire, on the evening of the last day of December (old style), the youths of the village assemble about dusk and obtain two empty barrels (by force if necessary). They then repair to a particular spot on the sea-shore to commence operations. A stout pole is firmly fixed in one of the barrels, and supports are nailed round the outside. Tar is then put into the barrel and set on fire; the other barrel being broken up, stave after stave is thrown in until it is quite full. The “Clavie” as it is called, burning fiercely, is shouldered and borne away at a rapid pace. As soon as the bearer gives signs of exhaustion another takes his place, and should any of those who are honoured to carry the blazing load meet with an accident, the misfortune incites no pity even among his near relatives.
In making the circuit of the village they confine themselves to its old boundaries, and also (formerly) visited the fishing-boats. The “Clavie is finally carried to a small artificial eminence near the point of the promontory where a circular heap of stones is hastily piled up, in the hollow centre of which the “Clavie” is placed still burning. This eminence is called the “Durie.”
After being allowed to burn for a few minutes, the “Clavie” is most unceremoniously hurled from its place, and the smoking embers scattered among the assembled crowd, by whom they are eagerly caught at, and fragments carried home and carefully preserved as charms against witchcraft. With them the fire on the cottage hearth is at once kindled. It is considered lucky to keep this flame all the rest of the year. – Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. ix. 38, 106, 169, 269; Book of Days, ii. 789-791.
No stranger may join the band of workers, but as an onlooker. The sons of the original inhabitants only handle the primitive tools that make the Clavie. Unwritten but unvarying laws regulate all their actions. Every article required is borrowed, nothing bought. As darkness comes on a band of coopers and sailors makes its way to a particular spot overlooking the bay to the west of the village. The band, till a few years ago, was headed by an old man who superintended the building of the Clavie. Now he has resigned the post, and a young man of another family is the recognised chief.
A tar barrel is sawn in two, and the bottom half is retained. A long nail is specially made by the village smith, and with it the bottom half of the barrel is firmly nailed to a pole. The staves of another barrel are nailed to the lower rim of the half-barrel, and their lower edges to the pole some distance down. Sufficient space is left between two of the staves for a man’s head to be thrust in, for the Clavie is carried round the village on the head and shoulders. The pole, or “spoke” as it is called, to which the half-barrel has been thus nailed, is set up, and there stands the empty Clavie.
As each additional performance is completed, the workers stop and give three cheers, the crowd of children and onlookers usually joining. “Three cheers for that,” rings out again and again, and as the sounds rise, a strange feeling of great excitement gets abroad. When the last stave is nailed on, the greater part of the work is over. The round stone used for a hammer is thrown aside, and the work of filling the Clavie with sticks and tar beins. When all is ready, one of the band is sent for a burning peat, which is always supplied from the same house. This is applied to the tar, and soon the Clavie is ablaze, and the cheers literally become howls of excited glee.
The first to put his head under this mass of flames is usually some one of their number who has recently been married. The first “lift” of the Clavie is an honour, and is bought in the orthodox fashion – a round of whiskey to the workers. And now the strange procession hurries along the streets. He who carries the tar-dripping and flaming Clavie does not walk; he runs, and the motley crowd surges around him and behind him, cheering and shouting. On they hurry, along the same streets where similar processions have gone year after year. At certain houses, and at certain street-corners, a halt is made, and a brand is whipped out of the Clavie, and hurled on its flaming errand of good-luck among the crowd. He who seizes the brand shall be the favourite of Fortune during the months of the coming new year.
Near the head of the promontory is the Doorie Hill, the only remaining “Baillie.” To this mound the Clavie is finally carried. A stone altar stands on the summit of the Doorie, into a hole in the centre of which the spoke of the Clavie is inserted. In this position it is visible from all parts of the village. Another barrel of tar is emptied into the fire, and the great flames leap up into the black night and roll down the sides of the altar and stir up the flaming mass, or hit the sides of the barrel. The spoke of the Clavie is rescued from the flames and sold, while the charred sticks are eagerly snatched up by the villagers and set up in the ingle neuk, to be bringers of good luck and averters of evil in the coming year. – The Evening Dispatch, Edinburgh, Wednesday, January 16th, 1889.
Collected together in The Folk-Lore Journal, vol. 7 (1889).
