“There were three men came from the north,
To fight the victory;”
made famous by Burns’ additions and improvements; but which, from various expressions, seems to have been, first of all, a West-Country song, sung at different wakes and fairs, part of the unwritten poetry of the nation.
[215]The Repression of Over-much Blaming the Church, edited by Churchill Babington, vol. i., part. ii., ch. iii., p. 155.
[216]Dr. Bell takes quite a different view of these passages in his Shakspeare’s Puck and his Folk-lore. Introduction to vol. ii. p. 6. The simple explanation, however, seems to me the best.
[218]The best cheese, the same as “rammel,” as opposed to “ommary,” which see in [Appendix I].
[219]In the Abstract of Forest Claims made in 1670 some old customs are preserved, amongst them payments of “Hocktide money,” “moneth money,” “wrather money” (rother, hryðer, cattle-money), “turfdele money,” and “smoke money,” which last we shall meet in the Churchwardens’ Books of the district. The following is taken from the Bishop of Winchester’s payments:—“Rents at the feast of St. Michael, 3s. 8d. For turfdeale money, 3s. 0d. Three quarters and 4 bushels of barley at the feast of All Saints. Three bushels of oats, and 30 eggs, at the Purification of the Virgin Mary.”—(p. 57.)
[220]Against tracking hares on the snow and killing them with “dogge or beche bow,” was one of the statutes of Henry VIII., made 1523 (Statutes of the Realm, vol. iii., p. 217).
[221]In that winter 300 deer were starved to death in Boldrewood Walk. Journals of the House of Commons, vol. xliv., pp. 561, 594.