Royal Oak Sprigs |
Royal Oak Day is also known as Oak Apple Day, Shick-Shack Day*, Yack-Bob Day, Bobby-Ack Day and other names relating to the Oak. Anti-monarchists often call it Nettle Day.
Oak decorations are a reminder of how Charles II escaped by hiding in the oak tree.
On Royal Oak Day, branches are traditionally placed around statues of Charles II.
Oak branches are also traditionally used to decorate pubs and homes on this day.
‘On Royal Oak Day branches of that tree... decorate many of the signs of public houses...’
Jour. Of the Arch. Assoc., 1853, vol. viii. P.234
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'It is customary, especially in the North of England, for the common people to wear in their hats the leaves of the oak, which are sometimes covered with gold leaf'. Brand, Pop. Antiq., 1849, vol. i. p. 273.
.Wearing oak sprigs on Royal Oak Day has been continued all over the world. In Bangkok, Thailand - where English oak is very difficult to find, some English people even wear oak leaf stickers!
For over 200 years oak sprigs were worn on Royal Oak Day by almost everyone in England – high and low, male and female, adult and child.
Baroness Thatcher attends the Founder's Day Parade at The Royal Hospital Chelsea, 2010
Of course, with all this use of Oak, Royal Oak Day is also an ideal time to plant an oak tree!
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Oak Apple Day
The sprig of oak traditionally worn would often have a gall or ‘oak apple’ attached – so the name ‘oak apple day’ became popular.
What is an OAK APPLE?
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For hundreds of years those who refused to wear an oak sprig were often set upon – you could be pinched, kicked, stung with nettles, pelted with eggs (sometimes rotten ones), 'cobbed' at, or smothered in chalk!
Pinch Bum Day
In some places Royal Oak Day became known as Pinch Bum Day. School children would challenge others to show their oak sprig or have their bottoms pinched.
“These pinches are no common ones; they hurt pretty well and a kick is generally administered with it”
(Sir Alfred Lyall, who was at Eton in 1845)
Nettle Day
In other parts of England, those not wearing Oak leaves could be whipped by children with stinging nettles.
“I was travelling from Crewe to Runcorn on the 29th May [1889]. There were six girls in the carriage with me all wearing oak leaves and two of them carrying bunches of nettles. On being asked what the nettles were for, they said, “To beat those who have no oak”.
Anti-monarchists got fed up with getting beaten with nettles, so many decided to take up the nettle as their own anti-monarchist symbol on the 29th of May.
Chalky Back Day
In some villages within the Yorkshire moors, people who did not wear oak were smothered in powdered chalk, and so it was known as Chalky Back Day.
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*'The origin of the term Shick Shack if noted in dictionaries at all, is said to be obscure, but I find that at Gloucester College School the boys not wearing oak apples on the 29th of May were hooted at by their comrades, who yelled ‘shig-shag’ as an “opprobrious epithet” after them (Notes and Queries, 5th S. Vol. iv, pp. 176-7). Shack in the Western United States means a roughly built house or cabin, especially such a one as is put up for temporary occupation while securing a claim under the United States pre-emption laws. This may be a sidelight, for many old Hampshire and Sussex words are to be found nowadays in Yankee ‘slang’. Common of Shack is the right of all members of a community to turn their cattle after harvest into the common field. Shag is, according to Sjeat, Danish for wattle'.
Moutray Read, D.H (1911) Hampshire Folklore, Folklore 22:3 292-329
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