THE ART OF CELEBRATION

Special occasions demand special festivities. If you are stumped for radical jollifications to mark Muses 10th anniversary, you might draw inspiration from some of the lesser-known manifestations of British merrymaking. The following are my personal choices from our nation's most significant festivals and sporting events.

BOG SNORKELING

Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales, is the smallest town in Britain. It's very pretty, but there isn't a lot to do there. At least there wasn't until 1976, when Gordon Green took over the Neuadd Arms Hotel and started inventing exciting new sports for the locals.

It took him nine years to conceive his masterpiece. Green and his mates dug a 60-yard trench into a nearby bog called the Waen Rhydd.The trench promptly filled up with murky, peat-laden water, festooned with weeds, alive with water scorpions, and reeking of methane. Lovely! He then announced that the first Bog Snorkeling Championship would take place on the forthcoming Bank Holiday Monday. Competitors would leap into the trench and swim to the other end and back, wearing a snorkel and mask and using only their legs for propulsion.

Amazingly, there were 20 entrants. Bog snorkeling was a huge success, and now the annual championship attracts television crews and participants from all over the world. It's put Llanwrtyd Wells back on the map.

SHIN KICKING

In 1612, Captain Dover, of Chipping Campden, in the English Cotswolds, held the first Cotswold Olimpicks. Apart from periodic bans, they've been running ever since. Events featured over the centuries include dancing, sack hopping, walking the greasy pole, cockfighting, sledgehammer throwing, fighting with cudgels and swords, and, of course, shin kicking.

To take part in the main event, you must wear a shepherd's smock, trousers stuffed with straw, and soft shoes. You grasp your opponent's shoulders and glare at him to psych him out. Meanwhile, you flail around with your feet in a frenzied manner, attempting to knock him off balance with a resounding kick on his shin.You can then throw him to the floor, and you've won.The stickler, or referee, makes sure you don't just pull your opponent over.You have to land a good kick first.

Sound unpleasant? It was worse in the old days, when keen competitors wore hobnailed boots with iron caps and hardened their shins in advance by hitting them with hammers.Thirty thousand people would turn up to watch this stuff in the 1830s, and some of the fights that occurred weren't on the program.

BLACK PUDDING THROWING

The Wars of the Roses, between Yorkshire and Lancashire, officially ended in 1485, but the rivalry has never ceased. Yorkshire is famous for Yorkshire Pudding, a light, puffy substance made from batter, oven-baked in beef dripping, and eaten with gravy or jam. Lancashire is likewise famous for its black puddings, which are huge black sausages made from congealed, spiced pig's blood. (Yummy!)

In September each year, villagers from Ramsbottom in Lancashire (yes, it really is called that) work into the small hours "swaddling" 200 special competition-weight black puddings in cloth to strengthen them.The following day, an excited crowd gathers outside the Royal Oak pub. Then ceremonial bagpipers arrive from the nearby town of Stubbins bearing the Golden Grid, upon which competitors must stand to hurl their puddings.

A stack of Yorkshire puddings is placed on a plinth, 20 feet up on the side of the pub wall. Competitors are allowed to throw three black puddings, underarm only. The winner is the person who knocks down the most Yorkshire puddings.

The event was supposedly started in the 1850s, when Yorkshire mill workers came over to Ramsbottom looking for work.The inevitable brawl was averted when a pudding contest was organized instead.

WORLD CONKER CHAMPIONSHIPS

The fruits of the horse chestnut tree (Aesculus hippocostanum) are barely edible, even by horses. As "conkers," however, they are much sought after by schoolchildren, who derive much dangerous amusement from them.

When the conkers are ripe, children gather beneath horse chestnut trees and throw sticks, pebbles, or other convenient projectiles up into the branches to try to dislodge the seed pods.The green, spiky pod is prized open to reveal a shiny, brown conker. For the next few days, the conker is treated with great respect and often with some secret and entirely implausible chemical process to harden it.Then it is pierced and hung on the end of a piece of string, and the game begins.

One youth (the schoolyard version of the game has been played almost exclusively by boys) holds up his bit of string, with his prize conker dangling at the end. His opponent swings his conker violently in an effort to pulverize the enemy conker, or at least knock it off its string. He gets three tries; then it's the other player's turn.The game continues until one of the conkers lies in traumatized fragments on the ground, and a crestfallen child slinks off, still clutching his sad, limp string.

Inevitably, this brutal little playground game has now attracted adults and gone global. Ashton Conker Club has been hosting the World Championship since 1965.This year there were participants from 18 nations, including Latvia, Benin, and somewhere called America.

UP-HELLY-AA!

I have no idea what it means. It happens in January in Lerwick, capital of the Shetland Islands, so far north of Scotland they're halfway to Norway.There isn't much daylight up there in winter, and people need cheering up a bit. Quote from an outraged clerical gentleman in 1824: "The whole town was in an uproar: from twelve o'clock last night until late this night blowing of horns, beating of drums, tinkling of old tin kettles, firing of guns, shouting, bawling, fiddling, fifeing, drinking, fighting.This was the stated of the town all the night-the street was as thronged with people as any fair I ever saw in England."

In 1870, the locals decided to turn this chaos into a celebration of their Viking ancestry. So the modern festival was born. Each year a huge Viking longship is built on a wheeled trolley. About 50 local "guizers" dressed as Viking warriors drag the ship through the streets and down to the beach by the light of 800 torches, followed by just about everyone in town.The torches are then thrown into the ship, which goes up in a huge blaze, and everyone sings excruciatingly bad Viking-ish songs.They then head back into town for a night of Viking-inspired revelry, leaving the dangerously incendiary elements to burn out on the beach.

BOGNOR BIRDMAN COMPETITION

Like most Victorian seaside towns, Bognor Regis has a pier-a cast-iron construction with a wooden deck on top, along which Victorians could walk out to sea and imagine they were on a ship.Today the seaward end is crumbling into watery oblivion. Nevertheless, every year hordes of determined lunatics turn up there on Birdman Day, clutching their completed entry forms. Each competitor has something strapped to his body. It can be anything from a large and vaguely plausible airfoil-shaped contraption to a velvet Donald Duck suit with crepe fairy wings.These persons proceed to run, leap, dive, or otherwise project themselves off the pier in a desperate attempt to become airborne.

The launch platform is 15 feet (5 meters) long, and 35 feet (11 meters) above the water on average. Even an experienced hangglider pilot can't do much with that. Unsurprisingly, the all-time distance record is less than 300 feet (91 meters). Most competitors drop like a stone, in a flurry of chagrin and crumpled wings.The huge crowd just laughs and takes photos.

I think that will do for now. These noble traditions are what makes Britain great, and I don't want to make anyone jealous. Scour the Internet, and you will find many more.

© 2007 Carus Publishing Company Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.