Plough Monday and its interesting connection with the return of the season for field work of the husbandman, and its modern relic of perambulating the streets with a plough for largess, has practically passed away as a custom and has long since lost its sentiment. Another curious observance connected with the harvest was in full swing at the time of which I am writing; viz., the "hockey" load, or harvest home. Many persons living remember the intense excitement which centred around the precincts of the farmhouse and its approaches, when it was known that the last load of corn was coming home! Generally a small portion, enough to fill the body of the cart, was left for the last load. Upon this the men rode home, shouting "merry, merry, harvest home," which was a well understood challenge to all and sundry to bring out their water! Through the village the light load rattled along at a great pace, while from behind every wall, tree, or gatepost along the route, men, women and even children, armed with such utensils as came ready to hand, sent after the flying rustics a shower of water which continually increased in volume as the hockey load reached the farm-yard, where capacious buckets and pails charged from the horse pond brought up a climax of indescribable fun and merriment!
The next in order of the seasons, manners, and customs are the summer and autumn feasts and fairs. Of the fair held at Anstey, the following is an announcement of seventy years ago—
ANSTEY FAIR,
ON THURSDAY, JULY 15TH, 1817.
A Tea Kettle to be Bowled for by Women.
A Gown to be Smoked for by Women.
A Shift to be Run for by Women.
A Share to be Ploughed for by Men, at Mr. Hoy's
at the Bell, at Anstey.
How far smoking by women was a habit, or how far it was a device to contribute to the fun of the fair, cannot very well be determined—probably there was in it a little of both. The following poetical announcement is another type—
A Muslin Gown-piece, with needle work in,
For Girls to run for; for the first that comes in:
To Sing for Ribbons, and Bowl for a Cheese;
To Smoke for Tobacco, and Shoot—if you please;
For a Waistcoat or Bridle, there's Asses to run;
And a Hog to be Hunted, to make up the fun!
The regulation of licensed houses was not quite so strictly attended to under the Dogberry régime as we have it to-day. On the occasion of the Royston fairs, more particularly Ash Wednesday, and I think Michaelmas, a tippler could obtain beer at almost any house around the bottom of the Warren, and even when the supervision became less lax, within the memory of many persons living, the private residents had got so much accustomed to the practice, that they kept it up by a colourable deference to the law which led them to sell a person a piece of straw for the price of a pint of beer and then give them the beer! So rooted had this habit become under the laxity of the old system that many persons, I believe, deluded themselves with the belief that somehow or other they were only exercising their birthright conferred by charter in ages that are gone! Charters did sometimes grant some curious things, but I believe I am right in saying that the charters conferred upon the monks, who were the original governors of Royston, contain no such easy way of evading the licensing laws of the 19th century! This kind of thing happened at other "feasts" and looks a little more like barter than charter.
In some other respects, however, the old Dogberry régime was more strict than the present. Thus for the Fifth of November in the first quarter of this century we find the following for Royston—
"Ordered that notice be given that the law will be enforced against all persons detected in letting off squibs, crackers, or other fireworks in the street or any other part of this town, and that the constable be ordered to inform against any person so offending."
Stage plays were not unknown, and whether by strolling players or some local thespians "She stoops to Conquer" was a favourite among ambitious flights, with a lively tail end of such tit-bits as "Bombastes Furioso," "The Devil to pay," and "The transformations of Mad Moll," &c.
Intimately bound up with manners and customs was, of course, the lingering belief in witches, fairies, brownies, drolls, and all the uncanny beings which George Stephenson's "puffing billy" has frightened away into the dark corners of the earth! The subject is too broad for general reference here, but there are a few local remnants of the "black arts" which stamped their devotees as being in league with the evil one.