Rite on time: Spring ritual that brings a town together

The evening light is thinning at Lanark Cross and there is a hush.

- By Libby Brooks

Then the wee bell in St Nicholas's church tower, which has lain silent since last autumn, starts up its six o'clock chimes.The waiting crowd of children explodes into movement and noise. About a hundred youngsters, helped by grownups, then make three laps clockwise around the church, swinging homemade balls of paper on string above their heads as they run.

This is Whuppity Scoorie, a rite of spring that takes place every year in the historic market town of Lanark. Its precise origins are lost to time, but its continued practice and popularity speak to a revival across the UK of folkloric customs.

"It's about heralding spring and banishing the winter woes," said Eleanor McLean, the secretary of the Royal Burgh of Lanark community council, which has in recent decades hosted the event that takes place every 1 March, aside from when that falls on a Sunday - as happened this year, meaning it moved to the second day of the month.

McLean says local historians have an array of theories about the original practice of the tradition and its unusual name. It was first reported in the Hamilton Advertiser in 1893, when it was claimed the tradition was already 150 years old.