Brutus in Totnes, 2024

THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF BRUTUS 19-20 July 2024

At 7.30 pm on Friday 19 July 2024  I gave a talk on ‘Brutus of Troy and Totnes’, based on my book Brutus of Troy, and the Quest for the Ancestry of the British, at Nigel and Claire Jones’s superb independent East Gate Bookshop at 62 Fore Street, Totnes, Devonshire.  Their two bookshops in Fore Street (East Gate and The Rowan Tree) are the life-blood of the free and independent thought that makes Totnes such a special place, and I was delighted to see my Brutus book in the window of both.

My book, and two posters advertising the talk, in the widows of the East Gate Bookshop, Totnes

The talk had very kindly been organised for me by Stephen Holley of Dartington Morris as part of The Amazing Adventures of Brutus event in Totnes. The talk was well attended, copies of my books on Brutus of Troy and his great grandfather Aeneas were signed and sold, and at the end Stephen explained the rest of the event and sang his stirring Brutus Song, with the chorus:

We’ll unite on the Land,
We’ll unite on the Sea,
Britain, oh Britain!
For here in Totnes Town,
Brutus claimed Britain’s Crown!

After this, Stephen’s fellow Morrisman Michael Dadson (above) sang the wonderful Tree Song, which Rudyard Kipling wrote for Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906), but whose roots seem to twist their way right back, as Kipling intended, to the very dawn of Britain. The song includes this verse:

Oak of the Clay lived many a day,
Or ever Aeneas began;
Ash of the Loam was a lady at home,
When Brut was an outlaw man;
Thorn of the Down saw New Troy Town
(From which was London born);
Witness hereby the ancientry
Of Oak and Ash and Thorn!
[[chorus] Sing Oak and Ash and Thorn, good Sirs
(All of a Midsummer’s morn)!
Surely we sing of no little thing,
In Oak and Ash and Thorn!

Despite having had a copy of the book for years, the song missed my radar completely when I wrote my Trojan books, I wished I’d included it in both. I enjoyed meeting some of the Totnesians who came along, especially

Local guide Bob Mann,  who includes Brutus in his popular ‘ghost walks’ of the town, and who was kind enough to write to me afterwards ‘Many thanks for a great talk, and for the book, which I bought as soon as it came out, and which I am re-reading. It is brilliantly done, and is the book we had long been wanting… it is good to see your book being publicised in the town at last, and let’s hope that people here gain a clearer understanding of what a unique tradition they possess’. A huge thank you to Nigel, Claire, Stephen and Michael for such a special evening. 

Saturday morning dawned unpropitiously grey and drizzly – Cornish mist, we used to call it in Falmouth – but when I reached The Plains down by the Dart I was pleased to find Dartington Morris dancing merrily while the cast of their Brutus play looked on. Here, I met Brutus of Troy himself.

Anthony Adolph, author of Brutus of Troy and the Quest for the Ancestry of the British, meets Brutus of Troy himself.

Dancing over, former Totnes councilor David Matthews retold the story of Brutus to the crowd, and we set off up Fore Street to the Brutus Stone. Chris and I were given the honour of carrying the two coat of arms included in the celebration – Totnes (me) and City of London (Chris), because Brutus founded London after he founded Totnes, and the giants Gog and Magog, originally Gogmagog and Corineus) still live in the Guildhall, and are brought out for their Lord Mayor’s procession every November.

The Brutus Stone in Fore Street, Totnes, specially adorned for the Brutus event

The last significant bruit or announcement made at the Brutus Stone was of the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the accession of King Charles III, in 2022. Today, a frame of flowers had been placed around the stone and the old bit of Devonshire verse attributed to Brutus when he stepped ashore (onto the stone, before it was moved here in the distant past) was declaimed:

Here I stand,
and here I rest,
And this place shall
Be called – TOTNES!

We continued up the hill to St Mary’s Church, with the giant Goemagot (played by Robin Springett), his large woolen head sensibly under a large see-through plastic sack to stop it shrinking in the rain, booming out genuinely blood-curdling threats to kill and devour any Trojan in his path.

Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum!
I smell the blood of a Trojan man.
Let him be live or let him be dead,
I’ll crush his bones to make my bread.

We, the British, are all descendants of Brutus and his Trojan followers, so it was a wonder we all made it to the church door intact. Here, we were greeted by the Mayor of Totnes, Councillor Emily Price.

David Matthews gave a short speech, reminding us all that the Trojans had first come ashore in Totnes, and then spread out to live – as its first human inhabitants, according to the myth – across the whole of Britain. ‘They brought their energy here to Totnes’, he said, and then founded Britain, and Totnes has remained a place of exceptional creativity, where new ways of living were imagined. ‘Perhaps now is the opportunity to start re-founding Britain, and the world, to be a fairer, and more environmentally responsible’, he suggested.

The Brutus Mummers’ Play, ‘Bold Brutus’, written by Stephen Holley, would have been performed outside, but because of the on and off rain, permission had been granted to hold it inside, and in fact the superb Gothic interior added its own lustre to proceedings.  Stephen has reimagined the Brutus myth in exactly the way the Medieval mummers would have performed it (and indeed it’s entirely possible that they actually did, albeit I have never found any details of such performances). Solemn, declamatory speeches were mingled perfectly with ludicrous slapstick. Stephen himself took one of the Molly roles (men dressed humourously as women), a big blob of rouge on each cheek and a hat that could have been used to carry home a chicken, introducing the play, after which we encounter Pandrasus, King of the Greeks, played with suitable hubris by Roger Easterbrook, who has enslaved the Trojans. But he has not bargained on the sudden appearance of Brutus:

In comes I Brutus the strong
My Trojan brothers you have wronged.
Banished long from my own land,
My father killed by mine own hand.

They fight and Pandrasus yields:

Tis true you have me on bended knee,
I’ll yield and set your brothers free.
My life you have spared, I do not deny,
So leave Greece, take my ships and supplies.
And in marriage I will give my one and only,
My loveliest daughter the beautiful Ignoge.

Enter Ignoge, played again in ‘Molly’ style by Stephen Holley, and, to the  general amusement of the audience, and in departure from the more traditional tellings of the tale, Brutus flees from her to set sail without her.

Brutus at sea

I sail, I sail, let the wind blow,
I sail, I sail, blow high, blow low.

 Brutus comes to a land with a ruined temple, where he falls asleep and encounters in a dream the goddess Diana, played (in another Molly role) by Alan Prichard with a blonde wig and wooden bow and arrow (for she was goddess of the hunt). As Brutus recalls when he awakes,

A dream I have had like none before,
A fair place on a distant shore.
So tis Albion that I am bound,
To raise a nation of renown.
To the western ocean I seek my prize,
Over treacherous seas my future lies.

Brutus and Diana

Brutus sails on, is beset by a Siren (played by Alan Prichard this time in a lurid green wig: ‘My voice is like the birds that sing, / Don’t you think I am a funny old thing’) but he escapes. He sails on to Spain, where he meets another Trojan, Corineus, played by Dan Shearer, who agrees to ‘help you in your noble deeds’.

Together they land in France and kill a deer, thus incurring the wrath of King Goffarius Pictus, wearing an Asterix helmet and declaiming his lines in brilliant mock-French outdoing the best of ’Allo ’Allo!, who threatens:

I’ll inch thee, mince thee, cut thee as small as flies,
And send you to the cookshop to make mincepies.

Brutus and Corineus slay Gofarius

They fight and overcome Goffarius, whom Brutus then pardons. They set sail again, and finally Brutus and Corineus spy the ‘fair isle’ of their destiny and, landing, Brutus proclaims: ‘Here I stand and here I rest and this good town shall be called…’, and after a moment’s hesitation he declares, ‘Totnes!’ But at once they are beset by terrible Goemagot, who comes booming up the aisle:

Here comes I the giant, Goemagot is my name,
And all the nations round do tremble at my fame.
Where’er I go they quiver at my sight,
No lord or champion, long with me will fight.

Corineus wrestles Goemagot and send him packing. In the final scene, Brutus decares

I am the captain of this worthy crew,
Whose famous acts and deeds are shown to you.
We’re come to act the Champion,
And for to bear the name,
For so it is recorded,
All in the books of fame.

For I am Brutus that bold and valiant knight,
Who spilled his blood for Britain’s right.
For Britain’s right, for Britain’s reign,
And all her glories I’ll maintain.

The cast, with Stephen Holley in the centre, holding his broom

‘Three Cheers for Brutus’ and the play was over. The credit is entirely to Stephen and his cast for which a well thought-out and brilliantly performed masterpiece of raucous slapstick and noble solemnity. This is precisely the way to introduce everyone, young and old, Totnesian or otherwise, to the wonderful myth of Brutus, who landed at Totnes and founded the whole of Britain – or to remind those who already know about it what a remarkable and precious asset Totnes has in such an incredible story.

My book about Brutus of Troy explains how his myth arose and was then developed into a full story by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 1100s, and then how it was retold, embellished and altered throughout the Middle Ages and then almost generationally through the centuries down to the present. The story did not stop when I finished writing my book. In 2021, Charles Newington successfully restored battling Corineus and Gogmagog – albeit temporarily – to the cliff-tops of Plymouth, and now in Totnes we have had this wonderful reimagining of Brutus’s story, told far more accessibly than many of his older, more literary manifestations. Here is Brutus, as he should always have been, as an accessible, people’s myth, to be admired and enjoyed in equal measure.

The presentation of the coats of arms of Totnes and London by Anthony Adolph and David Matthews to the Mayor of Totnes, Emily Price (courtesy of Martin Jones, bagman of Dartington Morris)

Stephen Holley’s Brutus Song and Rudyard Kipling’s Tree Song were sung again, and Stephen  did me the fresh  honour of introducing me as the author of Brutus of Troy, and the Quest for the Ancestry of the British, and inviting me to present the coat of arms of Totnes to the Mayor of Totnes, on behalf of Brutus of Troy himself.

Brutus of Troy enjoying a well-earned pint in the King Billy.

The day’s events had the feel of time-worn tradition, but in fact these celebrations of Brutus date back only to 2022, when Stephen Holley and a fellow member of Dartington Morris who has since moved away ‘felt we should do more in Totnes (as it is our local town).  We were both interested in old customs and folklore and the Brutus Story seemed a good way of linking with the town (I also thought the town didn’t make the most of this story and that it should be much more prominent in its consciousness)’. Stephen approached Totnes Town Council, who provided a £550 community grant and in summer 2022 he organised the first Brutus Event, involving Dartington Primary School, who designed and made the original motif for the frame to put around the Brutus Stone frame, his Dartington Morris Brutus Mummers’ Play, and also a much longer play ‘The Amazing Adventures of Brutus the Mighty Trojan – or how the town of Totnes got it’s name’, which they performed in Totnes and elsewhere around the South Hams of Devonshire. These celebrations of Brutus were such a success that Stephen organized a further event in summer 2023, this time with Dartington Morris in collaboration with Charlebury & Finstock Morris from Oxfordshire. This was therefore the third year of Brutus celebrations, this time in conjunction with David Matthews’ speeches and my talk in the East Gate Bookshop. Stephen told me ‘this year’s event was probably the best, as we are getting better with experience, we had more external input (from yourself and David) and the use of the church gave it an extra dimension.  So I was very pleased with the final outcome’.

Stephen’s aim is for the event to grow each year, and it was a shame that rain dampened things this year: but next year, hopefully the sun will shine on his Trojans once again and the event will indeed grow, and grow, to become one of the most enjoyed and anticipated events in Totnes’s calendar, or indeed in our national calendar. Because remember, in our island’s ancient mythology, it all started in Totnes, with Brutus of Troy.

Copies of Brutus of Troy, and the Quest for the Ancestry of the British are for sale in and via the East Gate Bookshop.