Why Walk Round the Parish Hitting Boys With Sticks? Somebody Had to Remember the Line

The days before Ascension carried a set of processions in which the parish clergy and a substantial part of the congregation walked out into the fields, stopping at appointed places to read scripture, sing and pray for the crops in the ground. The name comes from a Latin word meaning asking, since the prayers ask for a good harvest and for protection against blight, storm and flood. The observance is early, recorded from the fifth century, and became universal across western Europe, with the procession following a fixed route through the parish and returning to the church.

The route was the parish boundary, and walking it served a second purpose:

• •Boundaries were marked by trees, stones, streams and banks
• •None of that is self-explanatory a generation later
• •No maps existed at the necessary scale for most of the period
• •Walking it annually kept the line in many people's memory
• •Disputes with neighbouring parishes turned on exactly this
• •Tithes and poor relief depended on which parish somebody was in

The most notorious element of the custom follows directly from the memory problem. Children were taken on the procession specifically because they would live longest and would therefore carry the knowledge furthest into the future, and at each boundary marker something memorable was done to them so that they would not forget the spot. Practices recorded include being beaten with willow wands, being bumped against the boundary stone, being held upside down, and being thrown into the stream that formed the boundary. Money or food was sometimes given instead or as well. The logic is explicit in contemporary accounts, which state that the point is to fix the location in memory.

The physical boundary itself was made of whatever was to hand, and knowing what to look for makes old boundaries legible in the landscape. A prominent tree was the commonest marker and was maintained deliberately, with a replacement planted when one died. Stones were set upright and sometimes marked with initials or a cross. A stream, a ditch or an ancient bank served where one ran conveniently. Where a boundary crossed featureless ground, a stone was buried at the point with charcoal or broken pottery beneath it, so that digging would confirm the spot generations later, which is a deliberate archaeological signature left for future disputes.

The observance survived the Reformation in England in reduced form, since the practical function remained necessary even where the processions were regarded as too close to the older religion, and official direction retained the perambulation while restricting the ceremonial. It faded through the nineteenth century as accurate large-scale maps were produced, tithes were commuted to money payments and civil administration was reorganised, all of which removed the reasons for needing the boundary in anybody's head. A number of parishes revive the walk periodically as a community event, and the custom left a substantial mark on place names along the routes.

Processions in the days before Ascension asked for protection for the crops and followed the parish boundary, which mattered because boundaries were marked by trees and stones that nobody could interpret a generation later and no maps existed. Children were taken and struck at each marker specifically so they would remember the spot for longest. Accurate maps removed the reason for it.