Over the hills, behind her

Every year in August this village sets Our Lady on a car and takes her through its streets, and every year people come over the hills from Kerala to walk behind her. They were doing it long before anyone now living can remember. A church historian of Travancore, writing in 1903 about a feast kept here generations earlier, set it down as ordinary settled custom: the Assumption festival at this church, “where several inhabitants of Malabar are accustomed to go annually”. He was not a Catholic and had no reason to flatter the place. In 1891 the village built the car itself — a ther thirty-five feet high, carved by local sculptors out of jackfruit, teak and neem. It carried her through these streets for more than a hundred years, and rests now as the cradle of the Pilgrims' Mother; a newly designed ther has taken its road since 2014. The procession still goes out in the small hours of 15 August, and something close to a hundred thousand people walk with it.

DocumentedThis moment rests on 4 sources.

Agur 1903p. 317

4M excursion in company with the Collector in the woods of Vadakkanculam, 14 or 15 miles North of Cape Comorin. In every village, in Collector's presence, he is said to have enlisted great numbers ot Christians,and under that officer's patronage also got assurance that other Missionaries would not be admitted into their churches. 'The Collector however took care to give an order to Fr. Mey prohibiting his entrance into Streevikundam and Vadakkanculam churches but permitted the French Missio- nary to celebrate the Christian Festivals there that he might have the opportunity to win more adherents, or the majority of Christians. On the 5th of August Fr. Mey celebrated the Assump- tion Festival at Vadakkanculam church where several inhabi tants of Malabar are accustomed to go annually. Fr. Mey gained several others and carefully secured from them certificates calling him over to Tra- vancore. He further promised to come to Travancore, and expressed that his aim above all was the ancient church of Kottar. It seemed also probable that a sufficient number of partisans would enter the Church of Kottar by force to celebrate the Festival of St. Francisco Xavier, that year. But that great and learned prelate Bishop Manoel de Joaquim Neves the vigilant shepherd of Cochin, to whom at this time belonged Surrana, Surgany, Vadakkanculam, Kottar and other great Churches could not. brook to see his churches being thus invaded and disturbed by French Ecclesiastics, nor could he allow his powers and jurisdiction to be curtailed in any way. It is true he much feared the tresspasses of these French Missio- Fr. Mey's plans.

317

What this source establishes

⭐ The pilgrimage from the Malabar side to the Assumption feast AT THIS CHURCH, recorded by a non-Catholic historian: "On the 5th of August Fr. Mey celebrated the Assumption Festival at Vadakkanculam church where several inhabitants of Malabar are accustomed to go annually." ⚠ The episode Agur is narrating is early-19th-century, so this attests the ANNUAL PILGRIMAGE as long-established -- it is NOT evidence about the 1891 chariot, and the dot must not be worded as though it were.