Special Christmas Edition No. 1½ (Free)

Well, Christmas comes but once a year, and this is it if you hadn't noticed. Due to Roger having written the special Christmas article that occupies most of this special edition, it was felt by the editorial committee—me, having been fairly(?) elected in a strange primaeval ritual on a hilltop in Derbyshire—that we should have a Christmas edition, just a few pages to prove Thrutch has crawled past its first edition—just. Anyway, I would like to thank Steve for getting Thrutch off the ground and helping me with this issue. The future of your magazine depends on you, so get the articles rolling in.

The next real issue should be out about halfway through next term.

St. Nicholas—a Biography

It is not generally known that St. Nicholas, on his canonisation, wsa created patron saint of cavers. Over the last few hundred years, this position has been allocated to St. Mathurin and St. Nicholas himself has been confused with a character of doubtful authenticity who frequented pawnbrokers due to his habit of mislaying bars of gold. The true speleological nature of St. Nicholas is happily still evident, even in the distorted traditions associated with him today.

St. Nicholas was born Nicholas Major in the mid-16th century, in Birmingham. It was also in this period that Ansells was founded in the same city. The object of this venture was to keep the populace too paralytic to revolt against the Tory government. (This had disastrous effects on productivity and resulted in the Great Depression, which was relieved in 1588 by auctioning the country to Spain and declaring war on the Armada which came to take possession). Nicholas developed claustrophobia early, through a necessity to hide under the bed when his father was drunk.

At the age of four, Nicholas determined to find out what happened to his excrement when he flushed the toilet, free-dived the sump in the lavatory pan and entered the drain-pipe. He emerged from the pipe at ground level and was forced to abandon his quest due to the presence of a grille over the drain. He was never to forget this experience, one of the most important in his life.

In 1576, when in his early twenties, Nicholas was working in an explosive factory. He was one of a group who acquired a consignment 'off the back of a stagecoach', for use in murdering Lord Darnley, husband of Mary Queen of Scots. Nicholas kept back some explosive, with which he blew open the grille on the drain at his home, free-dived a second sump immediately beyond it and entered the sewers where he was to spend about thirty years of his life.

Little is known of Nicholas' 'hidden years' in the sewers. It is conjectured that he lived on rats and the occasional sanitation worker. It is certain that, during these years, he developed the perfect sense of direction which is one of the greatest assets fo the modern breed of caver, since, in later years, he displayed an intimate knowledge of Birmingham's sewer system.

In 1598, the great Ansell's strike resulted in thousands of gallons of beer being emptied down the drains. After two weeks, Nicholas was brought from the sewers by a team from the RSPCA, whose mission was to save inebriated rats from drowning. Nicholas then had the biggest beer gut known to man (waist measurement 114 inches), hair and beard bleached from lack of sunlight, and was totally drunk. He remained in this condition for two weeks, during which the Greek government demanded his extradition on the grounds that he was an incarnation of Bacchus.

Nicholas had developed another trait common amoung today's cavers—a tolerance for large quantities of alcohol—and woke without a hangover. Since the Tories had returned to power, following a Socialist government's attempt to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of race, sex or ability, he was compelled to find employment. He took a course in advanced craftwork at Sutton Coldfield College of Further Education, during which he founded the Ansell's Orthodox Church in order to obtain tax-free earnings.

His first church, the Three Tuns, was opened near the College and rapidly drew a congregation from Nicholas' fellow students. Worship was conducted between the hours of 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. and also 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. The sacrament was administered in the form of crisps and beer, and hymns were sung, of which only the fragment entitled 'Newcastle Brown' has survived. In 1601, the year of Nicholas' graduation, a schism over the question of drinking-up time resulted in the seceding of a faction led by Mitchells and Butler, to form the M & B Non-conformists.

Following his graduation, Nicholas went to live in an unidentified cave (traditionally Giant's Hole, which is now a shrine which can only be entered after making an offering at nearby Peakshill Farm), where he made a living by manufacturing souvenirs from Pwllheli. Disillusioned with the state of his churches, he aided an excommunicated priest named Ward (expelled from the orthodox church for opposing electric pumps) to found the first Ward's temple, the Devonshire Arms near Peak Forest. (This has resulted in a belief that he lived in P8 or Gautries, not Giant's and a shrine has been established at Perryfoot Farm).

During the next five years, Nicholas gathered a team of apprentices, mainly gnomes expelled from Scandinavia for reindeer poaching to whom he taught the art of caving, preaching and making Welsh dolls. The period ended when he was accused of a number of assaults on women, who claimed that their assailant entered and left their homes by way of the chimney. Nicholas moved away, changed his name to Robinson and founded the first Robinson's chapel, the Wanted Inn, in 1606. He was soon identified by his habit of wearing red, fur-lined clothes, and a few months later was caught leaving a house in Buxton by way of the chimney. Protestations of innocence were, probably with justification, disbelieved, and he was forced to flee again.

It would be pointless and repetitive to give an account of Nicholas' final twenty years. It is worth noting, however, that during his odyssey he compiled a series of cave guides and surveys which have never been surpassed. It should also be mentioned that he established many more churches, including Theakston's and Pollard's during this period, thus providing a vital training ground for many proto-cavers.

Nicholas died in 1625, in his late seventies, after entering a girl's room and being unable to carry out his original intention. He then drowned himself in a vat of Old Tom's, only getting out three times to go to the toilet. (Robinson's claim that Nicholas had thus declared them supreme among his churches was to result in the Civil War, 1642–1648). By this time, the religion he had founded was developing into the Allied Breweries Church, which was finally declared supreme in 1649, after the Civil War. It supported many priests, or landlords as they were called, and also an organisation of lay ministers, the Birmingham Cave and Crag Club, which was to have many successors. One of the most distinguished of these, the British Cave Research Association, created Nicholas a saint at the first BCRA Conference in 1655.

It is unfortunate that over the past two hundred years, the influence of St. Nicholas has been distorted and forgotten. It is to be hoped that this article will do something to redress the balance, and restore this great man to his rightful place in history.

Adapted from St. Nicholas and the Early Church to be published by Kaust Publishing Corporation at the end of this month.