Cragen Beca is a conch shell horn. It was allegedly blown to call the legendary Rebecca and her ‘Daughters’ to action during the infamous Rebecca Riots of Carmarthenshire in the mid-19th century (1839 – 43).
Taxation was cripplingly high and government policy harsh for small farms and farm labourers who were struggling to survive. It was a period of civil unrest, and the local landowning gentry were often absent or unsympathetic to their plight.
A period of daring and flagrant insurrection ensued. During the riots the men dressed as women when they attacked and broke the turnpike toll gates of west Wales to demonstrate their dissent towards one of the main causes of rural poverty and a powerful symbol for controlling and exploiting the rural population.
As a newspaper article at time of the Rebecca Riots commented: “… Who is Rebecca? We answer, Rebecca is an impersonality – a mere political abstraction, or if she has any corporeal form or essence, we say that she is THE EMBODIMENT OF THE PRINCIPLES OF REVOLUTION…”
Carmarthen Journal, 23 Mehefin // June 1843
Cragen Beca was donated to Carmarthenshire Museums Service in the 1980s by a family from the small hamlet of Talog in Carmarthenshire, who had kept this remarkable and subversive object hidden in their home since the time of the riots.
Artist Kathryn Campbell Dodd has been considering the importance of Cragen Beca and what this historically significant object might mean for the people of Carmarthenshire today.
This simple and symbolic artefact is a mouthpiece; its resounding cry called out across the Carmarthenshire countryside to conjure the presence of Rebecca, its darkly ambiguous, anonymously costumed superhero. She emerged from the hills, hamlets and farmsteads to embolden her ‘children’ to undertake defiant acts and save her citizens from injustice. Cragen Beca sounded a rallying call and invited collective action, a focus around which working people could challenge the injustices of the day and find purpose to express discontent in the destruction of the much-despised tollgates.
Even in the mid 19th Century Rebecca had an almost supernatural reputation, she could appear in two places at once and evade the powers that be, everywhere and nowhere, the perfect freedom fighter. Rebecca taunted the forces of law and order and her fires lit up the darkness as beacons of defiance. Her intentions were sometimes ambiguous, she was feared even by those she represented.
Rebecca’s identity and actions were deeply influenced by cultural customs; the topsy turvy worlds of rough justice and seasonal revelry, local ritual and carnival. She was formed by her community from the offcuts of their experience and the everyday availability of items for her costume. Being neither man nor woman (under her petticoats she wore her breeches and was sometimes reported to wear a false beard to accentuate the contrast), she was a curious embodiment of grass roots power.
In 2022 we are a diverse and often conflicted society; our concerns and attitudes are complex. In our times, can there be a single, unifying cry that calls us together to reach for a better and more just society? If we could call Rebecca to us today, who would she be? What would she stand for? What voice or voices would she amplify?
In response to the original Cragen Beca and the project, Kathryn has worked with a number of creative partners to create a set of three contemporary Rebecca costumes and a series of performances and artist films.
Kathryn says: “I am re-imagining Cragen Beca and the deeply complex character of Rebecca for my own times and through my own ideas and experiences. As the Carmarthen Journal asked in 1843, at the height of her insurrection in Carmarthen town: “Who is Rebecca?” I’m inviting you to find her for yourself and imagine what she may be able to do for us today. One of the slogans from the Paris student riots of 1968, was ‘L’imagination au pouvoir’, ‘Power of imagination’ and that is at the heart of this project. We imagine the superheroes we need for our generation and create them from the historical moment we are living through, investing in them the power to fight for us in our darkest hours. What might it mean to step forwards and inhabit the figure of Rebecca if we were called? What could she do for us now to better our lot?”
cragenbeca.co.uk 