Yorkshire.
A correspondent of the Gent. Mag. (1811, vol. lxxxi. pt. i. p. 423) says, that in the North Riding of Yorkshire on the feast of St. Stephen large goose pies are made, all of which they distribute among their needy neighbours, except one, which is carefully laid up, and not tasted till the Purification of the Virgin, called Candlemas.
On this day, also, six youths, clad in white and bedecked with ribbands, with swords in their hands, travel from one village to another, performing the “sword dance.” They are attended by a fiddler, a youth whimsically dressed, named “Bessy,” and by one who personates a physician. One of the six youths acts the part of a king in a sort of farce, which consists chiefly of music and dancing, when the “Bessy” interferes while they are making a hexagon with their swords, and is killed.—Time’s Telescope, 1814, p. 315.