Sortez du clos,
Ou j’ vous brul’rai la barbe et l’s os!
Le lendemain au soir on allume un nouveau feu qu’on appèle une Bourgulée, et l’on renouvelle le même chant, qui commence encore par ‘Adieu les Rois,’ etc. Dans la Commune de Créance, une grande partie de la population passe presque toute la nuit du premier Dimanche de Carême à faire la même sommation aux taupes et aux mulots.… Le Dimanche des Brandons est une date commune et naturelle des actes du moyen age.”
The “Dimanche des Brandons” was also kept up in the centre of France with very much the same ceremonies. See Croyances et Légendes du centre de la France, Laisnel de la Salle. Tome 1er. Page 35.
“At Dijon, in Burgundy, it is the custom upon the first Sunday in Lent to make large fires in the streets, whence it is called “Firebrand Sunday.” This practice originated in the processions formerly made on that day by the peasants with lighted torches of straw, to drive away, as they called it, the bad air from the earth.”—From Nori Bourguinons, p. 148. Quoted in Brand’s Observations on Popular Antiquities, p. 57.
Good Friday.
On the morning of Good Friday it is the custom of the young people who live near the sea shore to make parties to go down to the beach to collect limpets. When a sufficient quantity of these shell fish has been taken, a flat stone or rock of sufficient size is selected, and, after being carefully swept and divested of all extraneous matter, the limpets are arranged on it with their shells uppermost. A head of dry furze or other brushwood is then placed over them and set on fire, and the limpets are left covered with the hot embers until they are supposed to be sufficiently cooked. Bread-cakes, fresh baked—if hot from the oven so much the better—with an ample supply of the rich butter for which the island is so famous, and a few bottles of cider or beer, have been provided beforehand by the members composing the pic-nic, and the limpets, now done to a turn, are eaten as a relish to the simple meal, with a better appetite, and more real pleasure than probably a far more elaborate feast would afford.[18]
Hot cross buns on Good Friday were unknown in Guernsey at the commencement of the present century.
[18] Editor’s Note.—“In Sark, on Good Friday it is the custom for boys to go and sail small boats on the ponds or pools by the sea-shore; and these boats are made a good while beforehand, or treasured up of long standing; this custom they never fail to keep up. Numbers of these same boys also go in the afternoon to the Eperquerie drill-ground, to play a game which they call rounders. It is played with a ball and a stick, and somewhat resembles cricket.”—From A Descriptive Sketch of the Island of Sark, by the Rev. J. L. V. Cachemaille (for many years Vicar of the island), published in Clarke’s Guernsey Magazine, October, 1875.