Pops on parade: a ‘very Stromness’ Bonfire Night tradition

Ghoulish faces and favourite film characters will be popping up in Stromness tonight, as children show off their creations in the town’s annual pop competition.

Pops are a “very Stromness thing” says Phyllis McLaughlin, chairwoman of the town’s community council, which organises the even each November 5.

Indeed, the carving and decorating of neeps (turnips) has been the traditional Bonfire Night entertainment for Stromness bairns for generations.

The creations can resemble anything from a terrifying face to a famous personality or favourite cartoon character.

Unlike pumpkins or hollowed-out neepie lanterns, most traditional pops are solid, with the neep sculpted into a head and held up on a stick.

Writing in The Orcadian in 1978, George Mackay Brown captured the variety of creations carried though the town.

“The children kept coming all day – sometimes singly, sometimes in groups,” Brown writes.

“There was an endless variety of ‘pop’, from the very primitive carvings to sculptures of some sophistication.

“Some were hollowed out, so that they could hold a lighted candle after dark. one very tiny child has a potato with a face on it.”

While children elsewhere asked for a “penny for the guy”, generations of young Stromnessians went from house to house seeking a “penny for me pop”, before their creations met with a fiery fate on the bonfire.

The name recalls the tradition’s darker, anti-Catholic origins, when effigies of the Pope were burned on bonfires (pop being an abbreviation of Pope).

These days, however, the creations owe more to Disney films, computer games and Hallowe’en nasties than they do to antipathy towards the Vatican.

Tonight’s competition will be judged by sponsors R. S. Merriman, with every entrant receiving a prize and awards for the best entries in each age group and the best traditional pop.

Judging starts at 6.30pm at the top of Coplands Dock pier, ahead of the bonfire being lit at 7pm.