The Maypole festivities have been given up of recent years, but hobby-horses still prance the streets.
Hitchins gives an account of a few local superstitions, some of which are not peculiar to Cornwall:—
"The sound of the cuckoo, if first heard on the right ear, denotes good luck; but to hear the voice first on the left, is an omen of undefinable disasters. To spit on the first piece of money that is received in the morning will ensure a successful day in trade; and to hold up a silver coin against the new moon on its first appearance can hardly fail to secure lunar virtue for a month. To bite from the ground the first fern that appears in the spring is an infallible preventive of the toothache during the year; and the first ripe blackberry that is seen will put away warts. To pay money on the first day of January is very unlucky as it ensures a continuance of disbursements during the year; and to remove bees on any day besides Good Friday will ensure their death; while to work oxen on that day is an act which few would dare to perform lest they should suddenly die in the yoke. To whistle underground is an offence which few miners will suffer to pass over in silence; but to whistle while the farmer is winnowing his corn will as inevitably bring the wind as on board of a ship or boat, it is certain to secure a favourable breeze."
Polwhele says: "The custom of saluting the apple-trees at Christmas with a view to another year, is still preserved both in Cornwall and Devonshire. In some places the parishioners walk in procession visiting the principal orchards in the parish; in each orchard single out the principal tree, salute it with a certain form of words and sprinkle it with cyder or dash a bowl of cyder against it. In other places, the farmer and his workmen only, immerse cakes in cyder and place them on the branches of an apple-tree in due solemnity; sprinkle the tree, as they repeat a formal incantation and dance round it."
The harvest custom where the last handful of corn is cut, being called "a neck," and then dressed with flowers and carried off in triumph has been often referred to.
The men of Cornwall have long been celebrated for wrestling, they being no whit behind the men of Devonshire and Somerset in this.
They have other special games of their own too. Of which the chief is "hurling," though now only kept up in the parishes of St. Columb Major and Minor, in other words in the neighbourhood of Newquay, though a collection is made at St. Ives in a silver "hurlers' ball." The game is that of a ball being flung and thrown from one to the other, with goals which may be two miles apart. Sometimes one match takes days to decide. It is an extremely rough-and-tumble sport. In the season a match is played on the wide flat firm expanse of Newquay sands and hundreds take part in it, badges being used to discriminate between the players. And on Shrove Tuesday a game is played in the town of St. Columb the ball being thrown up in the market-place and all traffic being held up for the occasion. The goals used to be "either the mansion-house of one of the leading gentlemen of the party, a parish church, or some other well-known place." The ball is rather larger than a cricket-ball, but not so large as a football, and is silvered over. The struggle is expressively described by Carew:—"The hurlers take their way over hills, dales, hedges and ditches, through bushes, briers, mires, plashes, rivers; sometimes twenty or thirty lie tugging together in the water, scrambling and scratching for the ball."
These customs and sports are only samples, for there are many quaint ideas still held in certain parishes which would almost provide the material for a book by themselves, and are far too numerous to collect together in a sketch like the present. However, enough has perhaps been said to show how the Cornish spirit still lingers in spite of the influx of "foreigners" growing ever greater yearly.