What is Bonfire Night? It's also known as Guy Fawkes Night because on November 5, 1605, Guy Fawkes was arrested in a gunpowder plot to blow up the House of Lords, and King James I along with it. It was one of those Catholics (Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators) vs. Protestants (King James I) struggles although people lit bonfires around London to celebrate the fact that the king had survived the plot and it became an annual public day of thanksgiving. Guy Fawkes, however, was tortured and sentenced to be hung, drawn, and quartered for his crime but mercifully was spared the drawing part of the punishment as he broke his neck and died during the hanging. He still ended up being quartered.
I can remember children in our village in England making a Guy (he loosely resembled a scarecrow) and popping him into a wheelbarrow as they ran around crying "A penny for the Guy!" in an attempt to raise money to buy fireworks for Bonfire Night. Poor Guy ends up in the bonfire, he just can't get a break.
Bonfire Night is burned, pardon the pun, into my memory as we attended a Bonfire Night event put on by the local fire department one year during which a burning ember flew from the bonfire and hit my Mum in the face. They moved the cordon back significantly the next year.
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