ABSTRACT
Each year on 23rd December, the Cornish village of Mousehole celebrates Tom Bawcock’s Eve. According to local legend, Tom Bawcock braved terrible storms to bring back a huge catch of fish to feed the village, which the villagers made into a ‘Starry Gazey’ pie. The relatively recent, but now-traditional, celebrations involve lantern processions through the streets, serving the pie (a dish of pilchards, egg, and potatoes, the fish heads and tails emerging through the crust of the pastry), and singing ‘Tom Bawcock’s song’ in the village pub. Mousehole is a picturesque fishing village in the far south-west of Cornwall, UK, a region whose industrial past of fishing and mining has been replaced by over 5 million visitors a year and an estimated one in ten houses as holiday homes, as well as an increasing number (particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic) of permanent incomers working remotely or retiring to a rural idyll. Over time, in a village well on the ‘tourist map’, the event increasingly attracted attention from ever larger numbers of visitors. The narrow streets became over-crowded, and sometimes raucous, until one year many villagers no longer felt comfortable for their children to process along the street. The next year, the event was held incognito and low-key inside the village hall, limiting who could participate and spectate to those who were, literally, insiders.
