Hiram, in recounting the circumstance to me, confidentially, after long years had elapsed, declared that the run on that hogshead was immense. It was relished by his customers, old and young, and was the occasion of more oatmeal being consumed in the village than had ever previously been known, so that what at first appeared to Hiram to be an irretrievable misfortune, turned out profitable in more ways than one.
"Eh! but, mon," said Hiram, shaking his head, and with a solemn countenance, "that hogshead o' treacle wur th' ruination o' me."
"Ruination!" I exclaimed in puzzled surprise. "How do you mean?"
"Well, yo' see, me and our Betty had been wed for three yer, and up to then we'd had no childer, but hoo began from that time forrud, and never once stopped till hoo had thirteen! Eh! that hogshead o' treacle wur t' ruination o' me!"
Mr Milner thus describes and explains a curious old Lancashire custom: "When a young fellow goes courting his sweetheart on a Friday night, the neighbours come out and ring a frying-pan to scare him away. The reason of the practice is clear. Friday is the especial night when in working men's houses the Penates are worshipped with pail and brush, and a fellow skulking about the place is an intrusion and a hindrance. In a quiet street the well-understood sound heard, then all the people rush to their doors, and probably catch a glimpse of the swain who loves not wisely but too well, darting down a passage or round a corner, glad to escape with his face unseen!"
"Riding the Stang," or pole, is still common in out-of-the-way Lancashire villages. It is usually resorted to in those rare instances where a wife has given her husband a thrashing. The neighbours mount a boy on a "stang," or pole, and carry him through the streets in the neighbourhood where the incident has occurred. The procession stops at intervals, and the boy recites the following doggerel rhymes to the accompaniment of the drumming of pans and kettles:—
"Ting, tong to the sign o' the pan!
She has beat her good man.
It was neither for boiled nor roast,
But she up with her fist, an'
Knocked down mesther, post!"
