A very interesting article is to be found in “Mélusine,” Paris, May 5, 1888, which may be read with great profit at this moment; it is entitled “Les Rites de la Construction,” and relates the popular tradition of the failure to maintain a bridge at a place called Resporden, in Cornwall, as each was swept away by flood almost as soon as completed. The good people of the vicinity suspected sorcery and witchcraft, and consulted a witch, whose directions were couched in these terms: “Si les gens de Resporden veulent avoir un pont qui ne fasse plus la culbute, ils devront enterrer vivant dans les fondations un petit garçon de quatre ans.... On placera l’enfant dans une futaille défoncée, tout nu, et il tiendra d’une main une chandelle bénite, de l’autre un morceau de pain.”
An unnatural mother was found who gave her infant son for the sacrifice, receiving some compensation, and the poor victim was walled up alive as directed; the bridge was completed, and has since withstood all the ravages of storm and freshet; but the tale still repeats the last words of the hapless babe,—
“Ma chandelle est morte, ma mère,
Et de pain, il ne me reste miette.”
The unnatural mother very properly went insane in a few days after the sacrifice; and the wail of the abandoned babe is still to be heard in the moaning of the winds and the sobs of the rains that fall upon Resporden.
XXIV.
OBSCENE SURVIVALS IN THE GAMES OF THE ENGLISH RUSTICS.
The rough games of the English rustics are not altogether free from vestiges of the same nature as have been recorded of the Arabian sheik in preceding pages. For example, in Northumberland, England, there was a curious diversion called “F⸺g for the pig.” Brand gives no explanation of the custom, which may be allied to the jocular tenures mentioned by Blount, and with them to the worship of Bel-Phegor. Brand says: “The ancient grossièreté of our manners would almost exceed belief. In the stage directions to old Moralites we often find, ‘Here Satan letteth a f⸺.’”—(“Popular Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 9, article “Country Wakes.”)
In London itself such “survivals” lingered down to very recent periods. “In former times the porters that plyed at Billingsgate used civilly to entreat and desire every man that passed that way to salute a post that stood there in a vacant place. If he refused to do this, they forthwith laid hold of him, and by main force bouped his ⸺ against the post; but if he quietly submitted to kiss the same, and paid down sixpence, then they gave him a name, and chose some one of the gang for his godfather. I believe this was done in memory of some old image that formerly stood there, perhaps of Belius or Belin.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 433, article “Kissing the Post.”)