Dido the Seagull
The strange legend of Dido the Seagull dates from Exeter City's run to the quarter-finals of the FA Cup in 1931. The sight of the bird perched on the crossbar at the St James' Road end soon became regarded as a sign of good luck.
To what extent the story of Dido was fanned by newspaper correspondents of the day is something of a moot point. Certainly by the time of the Grecians' trip to Roker Park for the sixth-round tie at the end of February 1931 the Sunderland Echo was carrying headlines such as 'Weird Cup Mascots in Sunderland' and 'Mysterious Birds'. Cyril Payne - The Chiel of the Football Express - had been on the story for at least a month since the game at Bury in the previous round when manager Billy McDevitt had told him of encountering a seagull on the St James' Park pitch prior to setting off for Lancashire. Deemed to be the same bird that had previously been sighted perched on one of the crossbars, local folklore was already interpreting the bird's presence as a sign of good luck and The Chiel was telling readers that 'an old lady of his acquaintence' had assured him "that it's wonderful, though, what luck the City are getting when the birds are about". With gulls rather less prevalent in the city than in the future, any spotting of the birds in the vicinity of St James' Park was enough to add to the telling of the story. In some versions of the tale a single gull is mentioned; in others two or more.
In reporting Billy McDevitt's enthusiasm for the story, The Chiel hints that groundsman Harry Greenaway was very much in on the act and it was after Dido, Harry's whippet, that the new 'mascot' (as the bird came to be regarded) was duly named. The Chiel later reported that some of City's five hundred followers to Sunderland wore seagull feathers and one adamantly told the Sunderland Echo that "Dido has never been known to let us down. It flew over the train when we left Exeter last night, so we are sure to win!"
With the Roker game ending in a draw, the teams returned to Exeter for the replay watched by a record 20,984 crowd. In a chapter entitled 'Dido's Day!' in Aidan Hamilton's The Story of Exeter's St James' Park, the author reproduces The Chiel's match report which speaks of how 'minature Didos were sported by the locals' and that:
"'Dido's Day!' was the general comment when the spectators saw the watery playing pitch and pictured the old seagull mascot taking his bath in the puddles (cheering) lustily every now and then as a seagull passed by overhead."
City lost the game 4-2 but it wasn't the end of the Dido story. The whole episode had now taken many forms varying from the accepted truth to a simple communal joke. In a unusual twist Dido was eventually recorded for posterity when stonemasons working at Exeter Cathedral carved a seagull over the west door that was universally held to be the bird in question. Dido spottings continued at St James' Park for many years with the suspicion that 'Dido' had become a generic term to describe any gull flying anywhere near a game involving Exeter City. Perhaps it took the passage of time, and the sheer number of gulls in the city in latter times, for the Dido sightings to eventually become less common.
Meanwhile also, from the late 1960s, Torquay United - one of the City's closest rivals - became 'The Gulls' and in time some of their supporters carried inflatable seagulls during a brief craze. The idea of any connection between City and a common sea bird was certainly to be played down. Torquay became known as 'the Chipnickers' amongst Exeter supporters but, of course, any suggestion that Dido had flown over Telegraph Hill to a new home is quite another matter.
To what extent the story of Dido was fanned by newspaper correspondents of the day is something of a moot point. Certainly by the time of the Grecians' trip to Roker Park for the sixth-round tie at the end of February 1931 the Sunderland Echo was carrying headlines such as 'Weird Cup Mascots in Sunderland' and 'Mysterious Birds'. Cyril Payne - The Chiel of the Football Express - had been on the story for at least a month since the game at Bury in the previous round when manager Billy McDevitt had told him of encountering a seagull on the St James' Park pitch prior to setting off for Lancashire. Deemed to be the same bird that had previously been sighted perched on one of the crossbars, local folklore was already interpreting the bird's presence as a sign of good luck and The Chiel was telling readers that 'an old lady of his acquaintence' had assured him "that it's wonderful, though, what luck the City are getting when the birds are about". With gulls rather less prevalent in the city than in the future, any spotting of the birds in the vicinity of St James' Park was enough to add to the telling of the story. In some versions of the tale a single gull is mentioned; in others two or more.
In reporting Billy McDevitt's enthusiasm for the story, The Chiel hints that groundsman Harry Greenaway was very much in on the act and it was after Dido, Harry's whippet, that the new 'mascot' (as the bird came to be regarded) was duly named. The Chiel later reported that some of City's five hundred followers to Sunderland wore seagull feathers and one adamantly told the Sunderland Echo that "Dido has never been known to let us down. It flew over the train when we left Exeter last night, so we are sure to win!"
With the Roker game ending in a draw, the teams returned to Exeter for the replay watched by a record 20,984 crowd. In a chapter entitled 'Dido's Day!' in Aidan Hamilton's The Story of Exeter's St James' Park, the author reproduces The Chiel's match report which speaks of how 'minature Didos were sported by the locals' and that:
"'Dido's Day!' was the general comment when the spectators saw the watery playing pitch and pictured the old seagull mascot taking his bath in the puddles (cheering) lustily every now and then as a seagull passed by overhead."
City lost the game 4-2 but it wasn't the end of the Dido story. The whole episode had now taken many forms varying from the accepted truth to a simple communal joke. In a unusual twist Dido was eventually recorded for posterity when stonemasons working at Exeter Cathedral carved a seagull over the west door that was universally held to be the bird in question. Dido spottings continued at St James' Park for many years with the suspicion that 'Dido' had become a generic term to describe any gull flying anywhere near a game involving Exeter City. Perhaps it took the passage of time, and the sheer number of gulls in the city in latter times, for the Dido sightings to eventually become less common.
Meanwhile also, from the late 1960s, Torquay United - one of the City's closest rivals - became 'The Gulls' and in time some of their supporters carried inflatable seagulls during a brief craze. The idea of any connection between City and a common sea bird was certainly to be played down. Torquay became known as 'the Chipnickers' amongst Exeter supporters but, of course, any suggestion that Dido had flown over Telegraph Hill to a new home is quite another matter.
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