Norwich Whifflers

This webpage is still under construction. In the meantime you may find the following of interest:

http://www.compusmart.ab.ca/jdewing/Whiffler.html contains an short history of some whiffling activities prior to ad. 1730

and from 1653 we have the following extract concerning Norwich processions and ceremonials

Geoffrey Whitney and Henry Peacham wrote - "Intensively, for one day a year, through processions and displays paradoxical conjunctions of the visual and verbal were combined with allusions to their classical and christian sources. These were exploited in order to project for all levels of the populace an ideal of the urban community. It could, indeed, be argued that this transformation of the workaday world of the city into a festive liminal space made of at least its ceremonial heart an emblematic environment that as a whole bodied forth the messages crucial to the creating and sustaining of the civic ethos. The procession involved not only the civic dignitaries and their officials, such as the sword bearer, but also characters such as the so-called whifflers, the dick-fools, and the snap-dragon. These characters had all been incorporated from a purged pre-Reformation ceremonial and their significations had been transformed in order to accomodate them to the increasingly puritanical leanings of the City's governors. The day's proceedings included a sermon at the Cathedral, a swearing in at the Guildhall, and a civic feast at the old Blackfriars which had been municipalised at the dissolution of the monasteries."

You can also see two whifflers and Snap followed by the Mayoral coach, in the Lord Mayors procession from 1951, below.

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