Bottle-kicking is an old Leicestershire custom that takes place in the village of Hallaton each Easter Monday. Records of bottle-kicking date to the late 18th century, but the custom is thought to originate much earlier, from before the Christian era.
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Origin and history
Local lore claims that the custom began when two ladies of Hallaton were saved from a raging bull by a startled hare, distracting the bull from its charge. They showed their gratitude to God for sending the hare by donating money to the church on the understanding that every Easter Monday, the vicar would provide a hare pie, twelve penny loaves, and 2 barrels of beer for the poor of the village. The Hallaton villagers would fight each other for the food and drink, and on one occasion, the residents of the neighbouring village of Medbourne joined the fray and stole the beer. The Hallatonians cooperated to retrieve the spoils, thus beginning the village rivalry that continues to this day.
Other explanations of the custom's origin include the idea that the tradition harks back to England's pagan past, when hares were sacrificed to the goddess Ēostre.
Bottle-kicking has been an annual tradition for over 200 years. The tradition has been cancelled only once in that time, in 2001 because of concerns over foot-and-mouth disease. Legend has it that the rector of Hallaton, opposed to the tradition because of its pagan origins, tried to ban the event in 1790. However, he relented the next day, after the words "No pie, no parson" appeared scrawled on the wall of the vicarage overnight.
Procession and hare pie scramble
The event starts with a parade through the villages of Medbourne and Hallaton. Locals carry a large hare pie and the three "bottles", which are actually small kegs or barrels. Two of the bottles are filled with beer; the third, called "the dummy", is made of solid wood and painted red and white.
The pie is blessed by the Hallaton vicar before being cut apart and thrown to the crowd for the "scramble". The rest is placed in a sack to be carried up the nearby Hare Pie Hill.
The bottles are then taken to the Buttercross (a conical structure with a sphere on top, used for keeping butter and cheese cool when the village was a market town) on the village green to be dressed with ribbons. Here, the penny loaves are distributed to the crowd.
The order of events in 2009 was as follows:
9.30am: Parade through Medbourne, traditionally held to ‘wake’ the villagers.
10am: Tug-of-war match between Ashley and Medbourne in the field behind The George pub in Ashley.
11am: Church service in Hallaton at 11am.
1.45pm: Hare Pie parade from the Fox Inn, Hallaton, to the church gates.
About 2.50pm: Parade departs to the bottle kicking field, with the pie handed out to the crowd.
3.15pm: ‘Kick-off’
Game
There are virtually no rules to the bottle-kicking, except that there is no eye-gouging, no strangling, and no use of weapons. In the early afternoon, the hare pie is spread on the ground at a dip at the top of Hare Pie Bank, which is possibly the site of an ancient temple. Each bottle is then tossed in the air three times, signaling the start of the competition. Each team tries to move the bottles, on a best-of-three basis, across two streams one mile (1.6 km) apart, by any means possible.
The contest is a rough one, with teams fighting to move the bottles over such obstacles as ditches, hedges, and barbed wire. Broken bones are not unheard-of, and emergency services are generally on standby.
After the game, participants and spectators return to the village. Those players who put in an especially good effort (for example, carrying a barrel across the goal stream or holding on to a barrel for quite some time) are helped up onto the top of the ten-foot-tall Buttercross, and the opened bottle is passed up for them to drink from before being passed around the crowd.
The festive day normally draws to a close with participants and spectators retiring to pub for drink and banter.