When the Green Knight enters the hall at Camelot he carries in one hand a bunch of holly and in the other an axe. Most critics have associated the holly with a peaceful intent.
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| --Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (206-208) | ||
Savage [SAVAGE56] (p.15) has noted that in the novel Scarsdale (Sir J. Kay-Shuttleworth, London, 1860, p.60-62), centred on the Whalley area, “An emissary was sent out to the workmen from the beleaguered mill, and on his journey he carried a holly-bob as a sign of his peaceful intention, that he might not be stoned or shot.”. Savage concluded that the use of holly as a symbol of peaceful intentions had a five century existence in the area. Interestingly, a little further south, Mr. Thornton in Elizabeth Gaskell's “North and South” (1854-5, ch.22) meets his rebellious workmen without any holly, and stones fly.[22]
James Cottrell certainly had strong family connections in the Scarsdale-Whalley area, and it is possible, as Savage claims, that this use of a holly-bob was an old local tradition.
[22] In “Mary Barton” (1848, ch.23), by the same author, a child in danger of death is referred to as a “pearl of price” although the complete Pearl did not appear until 1864 – could it be that Gaskell had read some of the published snippets of the work of the Gawain-Poet in Warton's “The History of English Poetry? Or is the pearl of price a long-lived local custom?”.
© 2005-2007 Ron Catterall