"A fair number of Cotswold sides (most?) have encouraged the old fertility rite nonsense"

Well, at Bampton there is the cake...and there's this sword that gets thrust through the cake...and if a woman eats the cake she is supposed to be more likely to fall pregnant...

Bu nobody takes that stuff seriously, do they? it's a bit of a laugh. The problem is that the notion of the fertility rite was propigated in Victorian times, by sources who were considered reputable at the time. That sort of thing takes a lot of de-bunking. My personal hobby horse is the Green Man (or carved foliate head),and its re-invention as a "medieval nature spirit",as the BBC recently described it. I heard something similar on a tour of Lincoln Cathedral. The problem is, once these things become part of popular culture, it's really hard to de-bunk them.

I was told recently that the Bacup Coco-nut dance was definitely brought to Lancashire by Cornish tin miners. when I argued that no one knows for sure where the dance originated or why, this person was unshakeable: "I know it for a fact, because one of the Coco-nutters themselves told me."

Unfortunately, even the people to whom the dances belong are happy to take on a little mythology, whether there's evidence for the particular theory or not. After all, everyone is curious about the origins of calendar customs and traditions, and it would be really lovely to be able to give a nice, pat answer when people ask...