Dear Friends
When I was young, I remember a time when my father was intent on travelling to London to attend an auction at Sotheby’s. The item that had so piqued his interest was a ‘packman stick’ — a curved wooden staff held across the shoulders, upon which bags could be slung while travelling great distances on foot.
This was the signature item of the Cornish ‘packman’, a wandering peddler who, before powered transport, walked from village to village carrying a treasure trove of goods, often weighing as much as he did. Known by many other names — buffers, duffers, dustyfoots — some packmen were out-and-out crooks, but many of them were honest tradesmen. Well, more or less.
I remember taking only a vague, half-cocked interest in my father’s stories about our Cornish heritage and the packmen. I can see now he was trying in his own way to convey the importance of ancestry, but I wasn’t listening with the right kind of ears — and he never made that trip to London.
The late Malidoma Somé, a West African elder, author and regular teacher at the Minnesota Men’s Conference, emphasised the importance of maintaining a connection with our ancestor spirits.
In his Dagara tradition, it’s said that the wellbeing of the living is intimately tied to the wellbeing of the ancestors. We must all work together to tend ancestral wounds for the emotional and spiritual healing of both the individual and the community.
Our ancestors are the bridge between the living and the spirit world, and provide access to the soul-roots of our existence that foster a deep understanding of our place in the larger tapestry of life.
My keys to entering this realm appeared jangling from the belt buckle of the rambling packman. They have opened the door to a much greater understanding of the men standing behind my father.
For several hundred years, the packman was a welcome sight wherever he arrived. Writer H.V. Morton said that villagers “consider themselves fortunate in having to entertain the packman; for he is their newsmonger, their storyteller and their friend.”
Despite such hospitality, the packman remained an outsider, a man from the margins. In many ways, he is engaged in the role of trickster. Negotiating boundaries and challenging conventions, changing shapes, and causing the kind of trouble that brings about transformation. He could be Hermes. Coyote. Eshu.
The packman collects stories and carries them with his wares to be shared around the hearth fire. He pulls shiny objects from his bag and even shinier words from his jaw.
He has your undivided attention.
By the mid-1800s, the number of packmen had declined substantially, however, a few remained as late as the 1920s. They survived where modern transport (and the licensing laws of 1810) couldn't reach them, out on the Celtic fringe in the Scottish Highlands, the remote hills of mid-Wales and the furthest reaches of Cornwall.
Around 1926, our man Morton — on his own epic journey at the time — encountered what might have been the last packman, somewhere just south of King Arthur's fortress at Tintagel.
In a location like that, it’s hardly surprising that the two men engaged in a somewhat mythic conversation:
“How long have you been a packman?” I asked him.
I felt the question to be absurd; and it would not have surprised me had he replied: “Well, I began my round, working for Eli of Nablus, general merchant of Sidon, who came over to Britain once a year from 60BC onwards with a cargo of seed pearls, which he swopped for tin. Then when the Romans left I did a rare trade in strops for sword blades.”
“These heere fifty years, sur,” he replied.
“Then you must be nearly seventy?”
“Well, I caan’t tell ‘zactly,” he replied, “but putten one thing agen another, I b’lieve that’s so, sure ’nuff, sur.”
“And you still carry that heavy pack?”
“Yes, sur, I carries him easy, though I do be an old man.”
They fell to talking some more, and the old man revealed perhaps his trade’s greatest secret, sharing a cautionary tale about a gossiping packman who had lost all his customers.
“you’ve need of a still tongue on your head, sure I tell ee.”
A still tongue and a storied jaw. Trickster wisdom, to be sure.
Maybe next time I will tell you of the Packman brothers, William and Henry, who were hanged during the Swing Riots in Kent, and about the mythical Captain Swing himself.
August at The Fifth Direction sees us dive into shadow work with mythologist, Dr Nicole K. Miller, and hold intimate conversations on death with renowned celebrant, Wendy Haynes — both sessions very much about working with our ancestors.
In addition, we will be hosting our regular sharing circles, meditation, breathwork and storytelling.
Oceans of love.
Asher
REF: ‘The Last of the Cornish Packmen’ published by The Smithsonian Magazine (2011)