A bear must eat. It is a Law of Nature. A bear without food will quickly tend towards ill temper, and bad-tempered bears do nothing but make life difficult for everyone else. Indeed, it could be said that a bear’s need for food is the very foundation of Anglo-bear relations. And that, in its way, such hunger brought about the only period in English history when the bear was accorded, first, respect, then, albeit briefly, something approaching reverence.
Early English Man had tried his hand at bear-consumption, with decidedly poor returns. The consumption, by necessity, had to be preceded by a little hunting, but just as every bear-hunt neared its natural conclusion the bear had a habit of turning the tables and making a meal of the very people who had been planning to dine on him.
Chastened, the Early English hunter-gatherer retreated to his homestead to raise chickens and rabbits and other creatures which might more easily end up in the pot. And the bears were left to roam and generally go about their business, just as long as their business did not too greatly interfere with Early English Man.
This is possibly not the place to speculate whether the English are more prone to sinning than any other nation. Certainly, they are just as keen to remove any stain or blemish in this world before going on to the next. And it is here that the Common Bear, which had proved so unreliable when it came to being hunted, finally found a place for itself in Early English life.
A tradition had long existed whereby an individual of lowly means and meagre income, and in other words in want of a solid meal, would partake of bread and ale before a house in mourning, and in so doing, take on the sins of the departed prior to their Judgement Day.
It was a job no sane man would aspire to. In fact, it was the sort of job guaranteed to keep one at the very periphery of society. So it is no surprise that there came a point when such sin-eaters decided that they had had their fill. Perhaps the accumulated sin began to weigh too heavily on them. Perhaps they feared that when their own time came to meet their Maker no man or woman would be sufficiently hungry to take up their own lamentable load. But traditions change. Sometimes they evolve by increment. Sometimes that change happens overnight.
An old man died. At dawn, bread and ale was put out, according to convention. The widow-wife took up a seat beside her husband, who was laid out on his bed. The sun rose and slowly headed off across the firmament. The widow sat. The widow waited. In fact, she sat and waited right through the day. Outside, the bread grew stale; midges danced about the beer. But the eater failed to show.
At dusk the widow got to her feet and went and looked out of the window – was, in fact, about to fetch the bread and ale, when she saw a figure coming down the lane. She stood stock-still as the bear slowly advanced towards her. It was a middle-aged bear, slightly mangy, and as it ambled along it kept an eye out for any threat or sudden movement. At first, it went straight past the cottage. Then it stopped, backed up a little, and had another look.
In an ideal world, the widow later admitted, she would have had a human do the eating. But in the circumstances she was just grateful that the sins were being eaten up at all. As the bear dined she studied it, for any signs of corruption. She was well aware of several sinful acts which would require absolution and had suspicions regarding another two or three. But the bear just ate and drank with apparent indifference. It scratched an ear on a couple of occasions, but the widow decided not to read too much into that.
When the bear finished with the bread it brushed its paws together, to clean the crumbs off. Then it looked up and saw the old woman, watching at the window. On her life, she said, the brute looked directly at her, its eyes penetrating her so absolutely that she felt it examine her very soul. It duly identified her as the wife of the fellow whose sins it had just ingested. And as it continued to hold her in its gaze the bear gave her a single solemn nod. Just a little one, she said, but unmistakable, as if acknowledging some of the misery she’d had to endure. Then it swigged the last of the beer, wiped its mouth with the back of a paw and carried on its way.
Within a matter of months the role of sin-eater had passed to hungry bear from hungry peasant. Of course, the bears were quite oblivious. All they knew was bread and beer. They were vaguely aware of the recent increase in its availability. They may even have had a suspicion that such stuff was being left out for them. But they had no notion of the service they were meant to be providing in return.
But this didn’t hinder the way people chose to perceive them, which, increasingly, took on a mystical bent. Stories began to circulate of hunters, deep in the woods, stumbling upon Bear Conferences – secret ceremonies where a bear stood at a makeshift pulpit and preached to vast bear-congregations. Others spoke, in hushed tones, about the existence of Bear Monasteries, high up in the mountains – the sort of peaks unreachable by anything but a bear – where they would sit, for days on end and privately ponder the universe. One or two (admittedly mostly idiots and degenerates) even claimed to have lost their way or suffered some dreadful injury and regained consciousness in a cave-hospital, where they were tended by bears.
This marked the beginning of what has come to be known as the era of the Holy Bear: a sainted creature who could heal a man simply by raising a paw in his direction. And there was no shortage of otherwise quite sensible people prepared to testify that they had personally felt the benefit of the ‘healing paw’.
With hindsight, such an estimation was plainly unsustainable, and so it proved to be. Their fall from grace was swift and brutal. They were cast out from their role as healer and mystic just as quickly as they had been sworn in. The change in attitude can be traced back to a particular incident when a bear, having eaten free bread and drunk free beer one evening, retired to its cave in order to get some sleep. It slept long and hard, but slowly found its dreams invaded by something foreign: human thought … human memory.
Something sinister had wormed its way into its psyche. The bear twitched and turned, but could not wake. Then it saw blood. Heard a voice cry, ‘Murder!’ Felt human guilt rise up and flood its soul.
The bear woke to find itself charging through the forest. It clutched its head as if it brimmed with bees. And without knowing why, the bear headed back towards the village where it had taken bread and ale the previous day.
The family and friends attending the funeral were unaware of what was about to befall them. They had attended a short service where thanks had been given, then followed the body as it headed to its final resting-place. The first sign of trouble was a distant howl from up in the woods. Only a handful of mourners heard it, and did not pay it too much attention. Their thoughts were with the fellow whose coffin was about to go into the ground.
The next thing they knew was a tremendous roar as the bear climbed the wall fifty yards away. Then it was among them. It came clattering through the graveyard, knocking over several stones and markers on its way. It roared again as it neared the graveside, but by that point people were running and screaming in every direction and the service had rather fizzled out.
The bear didn’t seem to notice. It landed on the wooden box and within a matter of seconds had ripped it open. It grabbed the occupant and dragged him out. Some of the mourners, having run a little distance, couldn’t help but stop and turn, to see what happened next. They saw the bear’s huge head drop towards the dead man. They imagined that, having had its appetite whetted by bread and beer, it had returned for a more substantial meal.
In fact, it was quite the contrary. In four great heaves the bear brought up the contents of its stomach. And almost immediately, even as it crouched there getting its breath back, the bear felt its condition improve. The visions ceased, the pain abated. Whatever sins it had taken on the previous evening had been ejected – and returned to their rightful owner.
The bear stepped off the coffin and looked around it, which provoked another round of screaming and running. But the bear just took a moment to compose itself, then turned and headed back towards the woods. It felt a little queasy, but no worse than you or I might feel, having overindulged the previous night.
In that minute the era of Bear Worship was terminated and Bear Fear and Hatred was restored. The halo had slipped; the healing paw was neutered. The bear had rejected its role of assuager of English guilt and obliged the country’s inhabitants to take responsibility for their own actions. And for that it would never be forgiven.
