November 23 - Old Clem's Night

Posted on November 23, 2020

Key points

What do you think about a holiday that’s a mix between the Fourth of July and Halloween – but with blacksmiths?

The way Old Clem’s Night was celebrated like the Fourth is that people would enjoy watching booms and bright sparks flying! But instead of the relative safety of professional fireworks shows and “Safe and Sane” fireworks, the blacksmith would pack a small hole in an anvil with gunpowder – and then would hit the anvil with a hammer until the gunpowder exploded!

Yikes!

This “firing of the anvil” would sometimes result in an anvil breaking under the pressure of the explosion. And that can’t have been very safe!

The way Old Clem’s Night was celebrated like Halloween was that blacksmiths and/or their apprentices would dress up in wigs, masks, and cloaks to represent “Old Clem” (who was Pope Clement I – wow, way to show respect to a pope!) and would go door to door begging for beer, fruits, nuts, or money!

I guess among the eating and drinking and making merry, the blacksmiths would sometimes sing their “anthem,” which was called “Twanky Dillo,” and which included rhymes like this:

Health to the jolly blacksmith,

The best of all fellows,

Who works at his anvil,

While the boy blows the bellows!

You may have guessed that Saint Clement, who was pope during
the 1st Century, is considered the patron saint of blacksmiths. Legends say that he was the first human to ever refine iron from ore, plus the first to ever shoe a horse – but of course people had smelted iron thousands of years before Clement lived!