St Clement and the hatters

23 November · Ireland

Lore and belief

Ireland

Hatters had a tradition that St Clement, fleeing his persecutors, put wool between his sandals and his blistered feet, and found at the end of his journey that it had pressed into a firm cloth. That, they said, was the first felt, and Clement improved the art when he settled in Rome, so the hatters took him as their patron. Hone added that hatters in Ireland still kept their festival on St Clement’s Day.

Hatters in Ireland, and other Catholic countries, still hold their festival on St. Clement's day.

From Hone's Year Book, col. 1386. Read the original

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Folklore from the old calendars

St Clement’s pot No longer kept StaffordshirePlot's Staffordshire recorded an old custom of going about on the night of St Clement's Day to beg drink to make merry with.
The smiths’ ode for St Clement No longer kept LondonThe secretary of the Benevolent Institution of Smiths, writing from Southwark in 1825, asked Hone not to forget St Clement, the smiths' saint.
Clementing in Worcestershire No longer kept WorcestershireA correspondent born in Worcestershire remembered boys going in a band from house to house on the afternoon of St Clement's Day.
Old Clem at Woolwich No longer kept Kent, LondonOn the evening of St Clement's Day the blacksmiths' apprentices of Woolwich dockyard chose one of their seniors to be Old Clem, in a greatcoat, a mask, an oakum wig and a long white beard.

St Clement and the hatters

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