Palm Sunday brings some curious customs. At Roundway Hill, and at Martinsall, near Marlborough, the people bear "palms," or branches of willow and hazel, and the boys play a curious game of knocking a ball with hockey-sticks up the hill; and in Buckinghamshire it is called Fig Sunday, and also in Hertfordshire. Hertford, Kempton, Edlesborough, Dunstable are homes of the custom, nor is the practice of eating figs and figpies unknown in Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Wilts, and North Wales. Possibly the custom is connected with the withering of the barren fig-tree.
Good Friday brings hot-cross-buns with the well-known rhyme. Skipping on that day at Brighton is, I expect, now extinct. Sussex boys play marbles, Guildford folk climb St. Martha's Hill, and poor widows pick up six-pences from a tomb in the churchyard of St. Bartholomew the Great, London, on the same Holy Day.
Easter brings its Pace eggs, symbols of the Resurrection, and Yorkshire children roll them against one another in fields and gardens. The Biddenham cakes are distributed, and the Hallaton hare-scramble and bottle-kicking provide a rough scramble and a curious festival for Easter Monday. On St. Mark's Day the ghosts of all who will die during the year in the villages of Yorkshire pass at midnight before the waiting people, and Hock-tide brings its quaint diversions to the little Berkshire town of Hungerford.
The diversions of May Day are too numerous to be chronicled here, and I must refer the reader to my book for a full description of the sports that usher in the spring; but we must not forget the remarkable Furry Dance at Helston on May 8th, and the beating of the bounds of many a township during Rogation Week. Our boys still wear oak-leaves on Royal Oak Day, and the Durham Cathedral choir sing anthems on the top of the tower in memory of the battle of Neville's Cross, fought so long ago as the year 1346.
Club-feasts and morris-dancers delight the rustics at Whitsuntide, and the wakes are well kept up in the north of England, and rush-beating at Ambleside, and hay-strewing customs in Leicestershire. The horn dance at Abbot Bromley is a remarkable survival. The fires on Midsummer Eve are still lighted in a few places in Wales, but are fast dying out. Ratby, in Leicestershire, is a home of old customs, and has an annual feast, when the toast of the immortal memory of John of Gaunt is drunk with due solemnity. Harvest customs were formerly very numerous, but are fast dying out before the reaping-machines and agricultural depression. The "kern-baby" has been dead some years.
Bonfire night and the commemoration of the discovery of Gunpowder Plot and the burning of "guys" are still kept up merrily, but few know the origin of the festivities or concern themselves about it. Soul cakes and souling still linger on in Cheshire, and cattering and clemmening on the feasts of St. Catherine and St. Clement are still observed in East Sussex.
Very remarkable are the local customs which linger on in some of our towns and villages and are not confined to any special day in the year. Thus, at Abbots Ann, near Andover, the good people hang up effigies of arms and hands in memory of girls who died unmarried, and gloves and garlands of roses are sometimes hung for the same purpose. The Dunmow Flitch is a well-known matrimonial prize for happy couples who have never quarrelled during the first year of their wedded life; while a Skimmerton expresses popular indignation against quarrelsome or licentious husbands and wives.
Many folk-customs linger around wells and springs, the haunts of nymphs and sylvan deities who must be propitiated by votive offerings and are revengeful when neglected. Pins, nails, and rags are still offered, and the custom of "well-dressing," shorn of its pagan associations and adapted to Christian usage, exists in all its glory at Tissington, Youlgrave, Derby, and several other places.
The three great events of human life—birth, marriage, and death—have naturally drawn around them some of the most curious beliefs. These are too numerous to be recorded here, and I must again refer the curious reader to my book on old-time customs. We should like to dwell upon the most remarkable of the customs that prevail in the City of London, in the halls of the Livery Companies, as well as in some of the ancient boroughs of England, but this record would require too large a space. Bell-ringing customs attract attention. The curfew-bell still rings in many towers; the harvest-bell, the gleaning-bell, the pancake-bell, the "spur-peal," the eight-hours' bell, and sundry others send out their pleasing notice to the world. At Aldermaston land is let by means of a lighted candle. A pin is placed through the candle, and the last bid that is made before that pin drops out is the occupier of the land for a year. The Church Acre at Chedzoy is let in a similar manner, and also at Todworth, Warton, and other places. Wiping the shoes of those who visit a market for the first time is practised at Brixham, and after that little ceremony they have to "pay their footing." At St. Ives raffling for Bibles continues, according to the will of Dr. Wilde in 1675, and in church twelve children cast dice for six Bibles. Court, Bar, and Parliament have each their peculiar customs which it would be interesting to note, if space permitted; and we should like to record the curious bequests, doles, and charities which display the eccentricities of human nature and the strange tenures of land which have now fallen into disuse.
It is to be hoped that those who are in a position to preserve any existing custom in their own neighbourhood will do their utmost to prevent its decay. Popular customs are a heritage which has been bequeathed to us from a remote past, and it is our duty to hand down that heritage to future generations of English folk.