Some of the remote villages in the wild and beautiful Peak district have strong faith in their traditional superstitions and customs. An excellent way for a young damsel to discover who her future husband is to be is to go to the churchyard on St. Valentine's Eve, and when the clock strikes the hour of midnight, if she runs round the church she will see the happy man running after her. It has never been known to fail, perhaps from the fact that it has never been tried, for it is very doubtful if a girl could be found in Derbyshire or any other county with sufficient pluck to test it. An old remedy for the toothache was to attract the "worm" into a glass of water by first inhaling the smoke of some dried herbs. Those who had plenty of faith, and some imagination, have actually seen the tiny offender. Maypoles and the parish stocks are still to be found in nooks and corners of the Peak and farther south, and that pretty custom once prevailed of hanging garlands in memory of the village maidens who died young. From a little crown made of cardboard, with paper rosettes and ornaments, pairs of gloves cut out of paper were suspended fingers downwards, with the name of the young deceased and her age duly recorded upon them. And so they hang from the oak beams of the roof. In Ashford church, near Haddon, there is quite a collection of them suspended from a pole in the north aisle. The oldest dates from 1747, but the custom was discontinued about ninety years ago. In Hampshire, however, these "virgins' crowns" are still made. At the ancient village church of Abbotts Ann, near Andover, there are about forty of them, and only the other day one was added with due ceremony. The garland was made of thin wood covered with paper, and decorated with black and white rosettes, with fine paper gloves suspended in the middle. It was carried before the coffin by two young girls dressed in white, with white shawls and hoods, who each held one end of a white wand from which the crown depended. During the service it was placed upon the coffin by one of the bearers, and at the close was again suspended from the wand and borne to the grave. It was afterwards laid on a thin iron rod branching from a small shield placed high up on the wall of the nave of the church. One of these garlands may still be seen in St. Albans Abbey.
Another pretty custom is that of "well-dressing," which yet survives at the village of Tissington above Ashbourne, and of recent years has been revived in other Derbyshire villages, like the modern modified May-day festivities. It dates from the time of the Emperor Nero, when the philosopher Lucius Seneca told the people that they should show their gratitude to the natural springs by erecting altars and offering sacrifices. The floral tributes of to-day, which are placed around the wells and springs on Holy Thursday, are of various devices, made mostly of wild flowers bearing biblical texts; and the village maidens take these in formal procession and present them after a little consecration service in the church. One would like to see this pretty custom revived in other counties.
At Hathersage, beautifully situated among the hills some eight miles above Bakewell, Oak Apple Day is kept in memory by suspending a wreath of flowers on one of the pinnacles of the church tower. The interior, with its faded green baize-lined box-pews duly labelled with brass plates bearing the owners' names, has a charming old-world appearance. In the church is a fine altar-tomb and brasses to the Eyres of North Lees, an ancient house among the hills of the Hoodbrook valley.
The ancient ceremony of rush-bearing at Glossop, formerly connected with the church, has, we understand, degenerated into a "public-house show"; which is a pity. In Huntingdonshire, however, there was until some years back a somewhat similar custom of strewing green rushes, from the banks of the river Ouse, on the floor of the old church of Fenstanton, near St. Ives; but in Old Weston, in the same county, newly mown grass is still strewn upon the floor of the parish church upon the village feast Sunday: the festival of St. Swithin. The original ceremony of "rush-bearing," a survival of the ancient custom of strewing the floors of dwellings with marsh rushes, was a pretty sight. A procession of village maidens, dressed in white, carried the bundles of rushes into the church (accompanied, of course, by the inevitable band), and hung garlands of flowers upon the chancel rails. The festival at Glossop, and in places in the adjoining county of Cheshire, however, was more like the last survival of May-day: the monopoly of sweeps,—a cart-load of rushes was drawn round the village by gaily bedecked horses with a motley band of morris-dancers accompanying it, who, having made a collection, resorted to the public-house before taking their bundles to the church. Had they reversed the order of things it is possible the custom in some places would have been suffered to continue. Until a comparatively recent date the floor of Norwich Cathedral was strewn with rushes on Mayor's day; and there is still preserved among the civic treasures a wonderful green wickerwork dragon hobby-horse, or rather hobby-dragon, with wings, and movable jaws studded with nails for teeth, which always made its appearance in the streets on these days of public festival.
[NOOKS IN YORKSHIRE]
In a journey across our largest county, so famous for its grand cathedrals and ruined castles and abbeys, one could not wish for greater variety either in scenery or association. Between the Queen of Scots' prison in Sheffield Manor and the reputed Dotheboys Hall a few miles below the mediæval-looking town of Barnard Castle, there is vast difference of romance; and yet what more unromantic places than Bowes or Sheffield! Indeed, take them all round, the towns and villages of Yorkshire have a grey and dreary look about them; and the houses partake of the pervading character, or want of character, of the busy manufacturing centres. But the natural scenery is quite another matter, and with such lovely surroundings one often sighs that the picturesque and the utilitarian are so opposed to one another. We do not, however, merely allude to the buildings in the southern part of the county, for many villages in the prettiest parts have nothing architecturally attractive about their houses. The snug creeper-clad cottage, so familiar in the south of England, is, comparatively speaking, a rarity, and one misses the warmth of colour amid the everlasting grey.
The express having dropped us in nearly the southernmost corner, our object is to get out of the busy town of Sheffield as quickly as possible; but, as before stated, romance lingers around the remains of the ancient seat of the sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, who lies buried in the parish church, for under his charge the Scots' queen remained here a prisoner for many years; and Wolsey, too, was brought here on his way to Leicester.
Upon the road to Barnsley there is little to delay us until we come to a turning to the right a couple of miles or so to the south of the town. After the continual chimney-shafts the little village of Worsborough is refreshing. The church has many points of interest. The entrance porch has a fine oak ceiling with carved bosses, and the original oak door is decorated with carved oak tracery. The most interesting thing within is the monument to Sir Roger Rockley, a sixteenth-century knight whose effigy in armour lies beneath a canopy supported by columns very much resembling a four-poster of the time of Henry VII. The similarity is heightened by the fact that the tomb is entirely of carved oak, painted and gilded. The bed, however, has two divisions, and beneath the recumbent wooden effigy of Sir Roger with staring white eyes, is the gruesome figure of a skeleton in a shroud, also made more startling by its colouring. How the juvenile Worsboroughites must dread this spectre, for its position in the church is conspicuous! There is a brass to Thomas Edmunds, secretary to William, Earl of Strafford, who lived in the manor-house close by, a plain stone gabled house with two wings and a small central projection. It is a gloomy looking place, and once possessed some gloomy relics of the martyr king, including the stool upon which he knelt on Whitehall scaffold. These relics belonged to Sir Thomas Herbert, the close attendant upon Charles during the later days of his imprisonment, and descended to the Edmunds family by the marriage of his widow with Henry Edmunds of Worsborough.[31] The park presumably has become public property, and the road running through it is much patronised by the black-faced gentlemen of the neighbouring collieries. Nor are the ladies of the mining districts picturesque, although they seem to affect the costume of the dames of old Peru by showing scarcely more than an eye beneath their shawls.