—Bye-gones, December 11, 1872.
[59] i.e. “good ale (in) this place.”
Aubrey wrote regarding Shropshire thus:—
“In Salop the die õnium Animarum (All Soules-day, Novemb. 2d) there is sett on the Board a high heap of soule-cakes lyeing one upon another like the picture of the Sew-bread in the old Bibles. They are about the bignesse of 2d cakes, and n’ly all the visitors that day takes one; and there is an old Rhythm or saying—
‘A soule-cake, a soule-cake,
Have mercy on all Christian soules for a soule-cake.’”
“The late Mrs. Gill, of Hopton, near Hodnet, had soul-cakes made in her house to give away to souling children every year up to her death in 1884. They were flat round, (or sometimes oval) cakes, made of very light dough, spiced and sweetened.”[60]
[60] Burne-Jackson’s Shropshire Folk-Lore, p. 382 et seq. Mr. Wirt Sykes, in his British Goblins, quotes this, and also the information about Tenby, but adds nothing to our knowledge.
We find some of the words of the “Souling Song” in nearly every itinerant begging custom. In Montgomeryshire a New Year’s rhyme is:—
“The road is very dirty,