Sons of Crispin

Book excerpt: The association of shoemakers (cordiners in Scotland) with St Crispin, their patron saint, remained so strong that, at least until the early twentieth century, a shoemaker was popularly called a “Crispin” and collectively “sons of Crispin”. Medieval Scottish cordiners maintained altars to St Crispin and his brother St Crispianus and their cult can be traced to France in the sixth century. In the late sixteenth century, an English rewriting of the legend achieved immediate popularity and St Crispin’s Day continued to be remembered in England throughout the seventeenth century. Journeymen shoemakers in Scotland in the early eighteenth century commemorated their patron with processions; and the appellation “St Crispin Society” appeared in 1763. Shaped by collections held by Scottish museums and archives, the longevity of the shoemakers’ attachment to St Crispin is investigated, as are the origin, creation, organisation, development and demise of the Royal St Crispin Society and the network of lodges it created in Scotland in the period 1817–1909. Although showing the influence of freemasonry, the Royal St Crispin Society devised and practised rituals based on shoemaking legends and traditions; and this study affords a rare insight into the “secret” associational life of a group of Scottish working men in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.