Word: kingsteignton
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...House of Commons last week brisk Brigadier Ralph Rayner, a Tory, made an eloquent plea to Food Minister John Strachey. All that he asked on behalf of his constituents in the tiny Devonshire village of Kingsteignton was one ram. Each spring for many centuries (no one knew exactly when it began) the villagers celebrated a legendary pagan rite: they thanked the gods for their spring water by sacrificing a ram. Then they drank and danced, roasted the ram and feasted on the mutton. Rayner pleaded: "Is the Minister aware . . . that it is very unlucky to interfere with customs and traditions...
...custom dies hard in England. To Kingsteignton's rescue came Baron Clifford of Chudleigh, who invited the village's ram-roast committee to the deer park of his 3,000-acre estate, let them shoot a buck. With that slight deviation to modern complexities, the village planned to carry on its ancient rite this week. But Kingsteigntonians were still rankled by the irreverent crack of a Communist M.P. during Rayner's plea. The Commie sneered that this was "one of those heathen customs the Conservative Party wants to retain...
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