Dorsetshire and Wiltshire.
In these, if not in other counties, a practice called Lent Crocking is observed. The boys go about in small parties visiting the various houses, headed by a leader, who goes up and knocks at the door, leaving his followers behind him, armed with a good stock of potsherds—the collected relics of the washing-pans, jugs, dishes, and plates, that have become the victims of concussion in the hands of unlucky or careless housewives for the past year. When the door is opened, the hero—who is, perhaps, a farmer’s boy, with a pair of black eyes sparkling under the tattered brim of his brown milking-hat—hangs down his head, and, with one corner of his mouth turned up into an irrepressible smile pronounces the following lines:
“A-shrovin, a-shrovin,
I be come a-shrovin;
A piece of bread, a piece of cheese,
A bit of your fat bacon;
Or a dish of dough nuts,
All of your own makin!
“A-shrovin, a-shrovin,
I be come a-shrovin,
Nice meat in a pie,
My mouth is very dry!
I wish a wuz zoo well-a-wet,
I’de zing the louder for a nut!
Chorus.—A shrovin, a-shrovin,
Chorus.—We be come a shrovin!”
Sometimes he gets a bit of bread and cheese, and at some houses he is told to be gone; in which latter case he calls up his followers to send their missiles in a rattling broadside against the door.—Book of Days, vol. i. p. 239.
The late Dr. Husenbeth in N. & Q. 4th S. vol. ix. p. 135, gives another version of the above rhyme:
“I’m come a shroveing,
For a piece of pancake,
Or a piece of bacon,
Or a little truckle cheese,
Of your own making.
Give me some, or give me none,
Or else your door shall have a stone.”