Chapter XIII: The Bacon Over Sea

A few years ago Mr. Hastings Worrin, J.P., a churchwarden of the Priory Church of Little Dunmow, and a well-known collector of memorials of the Bacon ceremonies and of the old Priory, to whom the writer of this record is greatly indebted, received a letter addressed to "The Prior of Dunmow." It was from a New York lawyer and his wife, also a member of the legal profession, who had had a little Flitch celebration on their own account, and seemed to think (as the _Times_ of August 21, 1803, actually did) that the old Priory still existed--

Whereas, (runs a little fly sheet which they issued to their friends) Girdwood Mulliner and Gabrielle his wife, in reverence for the old tradition, its quaint basic thought so sweetly resting in the sanctity of the marriage relation, knowing in their hearts that they have earned the Flitch of Bacon by the sure right of their living, although far from the Priory and the pointed stones, do here and now kneel and lay claim to it--

I, Leslie Allen Wright, the chief attendant to the Bridegroom upon his day of wedding, praying a grace of pardon for usurping the Prior's rightful duty, yet feeling the fine prompting spirit of the ancient custom, do now bestow upon these two worthy persons, Walter Girdwood Mulliner and Gabrielle his wife, a Flitch of Bacon.

May they in all the added years of their life grow in Ripeness and in Spirit. Amen.

A Bacon custom in Brittany has been referred to. Mention may also be made of a German story, "The Man and the Flitch of Bacon"; also of the Flitch which hung in the old Red Tower of Vienna with doggerel below it which Dr. Bell has thus translated--

Is there to be found a married man
That in verity declare can,
That his marriage him doth not rue,
That he has no fear of his wife for a shrew,
He may this Bacon for himself down hew?

The tale goes that a would-be possessor of the Red Tower Bacon asked, when a ladder had been brought for his assistance, that some one should cut down the Flitch for him, as if he got a grease-spot on his best clothes his wife would scold him! Needless to say, this applicant was not allowed to have the Bacon.

Dr. Bell traces to the earliest times the origin of all customs of hanging up Bacon. Does not Dionysius Halicarnassus mention the presence of a fine Flitch in the chief temple at Alba Longa? Jewellers still sell as charms little pigs of gold, silver and bog oak, and in time past the side of what had once been a sow was no doubt displayed as an emblem of fertility.