[70] Birch. p. 75. Ambassades de la Boderie. Vol. I, p. 400.
CHAPTER IX.
HENRY FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES (continued).
All English and American children have heard of the Fifth of November. It was a day of mingled terror and delight in our childhood. Just at dusk a band of men and boys used to tramp down the road, and gather close under the windows. They were armed with guns, and bore on poles a chair upon which was seated a hideous life-size effigy of a man, dressed in an old tattered coat and battered tall hat. Then they began in sepulchral voices to repeat the following words, very fast, with no stops, and in broad Hampshire dialect:
Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder trayson and plot.
I know no rayson why gunpowder trayson
Ever should be forgot.
Old Guy Fox and his companions,
With fifty-two barrels of gunpowder
To blow old England up.
Look into your pocket, there's a little chink,
Pray pull it up and give us some drink;
All we wants is a little more money
To kindle up our old Bonfire.
If you won't give us one bavven[71] we'll take two,
The better for we and the wuss for you.
Holler, boys, holler, boys, God save the King!
Holler, boys, holler, boys, make the house ring.
Hip! Hip! hip! Hoorah![72]
And "holler" they did. While the children, knowing what was coming, cowered shuddering inside the window curtains, frightened to death, and yet so fascinated with horror they were obliged to look, "Bang, bang, bang," went all the guns, fired up into the air round old Guy, with tremendous shouts. But that was not all. In the evening the huge bonfire twenty feet high down on the Common, for which all the men and boys had been begging "bavins" or cutting furze for days, was lighted. And round it every one in the parish assembled.