Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on September 06, 2002 at 22:27:07 from 213.210.19.116 user ACB.
In Reply to: Re: Pull devil, pull baker posted by Ed Kiser on September 06, 2002 at 20:52:13:
Bill, Pete and Joe would have known, though. You need to have gone to, or at least read about, a "Regatta Day", at any waterside town or village in the East of England.
It's a nautical Tug Of War, with a twist.
Two rowing boats are tied together with a rope, stern to stern, at a distance of thirty feet or so. Usually two people row and two others stand in the stern of the boat. One boat contains "bakers", dressed in white. The other boat contains "devils", dressed in black.
At the start, each boat tries to tow the other backwards over the line.
The Bakers are armed with paper bags full of flour, with which they bombard the Devils, hoping to put them off their stroke. The Devils are similarly supplied with bags of soot....
Winners and losers invariably dive overboard at the end....
The other standard item is the Greasy Pole, which is a spar rigged horizontally over the water with a flagstaff at the outboard end, slathered in tallow. He who gets to the end and grabs the flagstaff gets the prize....