Marlborough 5th November Custom.
—At Marlborough, Wiltshire, on the 5th of November, two or three years ago, I noticed a peculiar custom the rustics have at their bonfires, to which I could attach no meaning; and I did not, at the time, inquire of any person there regarding it.
They form themselves into a ring of some dozen or more round the bonfire, and follow each other round it, holding thick club-sticks over their shoulders; while a few others, standing at distances outside this moving ring, with the same sort of sticks, beat those the men hold over their shoulders, as they pass round in succession, all shouting and screaming loudly. This might last half an hour at a time, and be continued at intervals till the fire died out. Can any correspondent inform me whether this has any meaning attached to it?
J. S. A.
Old Broad Street.
Spectral Coach and Horses (Vol. iv., p. 195.).
—A similar legend was within a few years current near Bury St. Edmunds, in the same county, where on Christmas Eve, at midnight, a coach drawn by four headless horses, and driven by a headless coachman, might be seen to come in a direction from the parish of Great Barton, across the fields, regardless of fences, and proceed to a deep hole called "Phillis's Hole" near "the two-mile spinney," in the parish of Rongham, and there find a resting-place. A few years since, wishing to learn whether this sight was among the things still looked for or believed in, I proceeded to the locality at the time stated, but met with no one but a gamekeeper, whom I found to be quite familiar with the legend. He said he had heard a good deal in his younger days about the "coach," but had never seen it. There was, however, an old woman then living who had seen it often, and who declared that the coach was occupied by a gentleman and a lady, also without heads, but he did not know what to say to it. All he knew was, that when a man was out on dark nights, "he could draw anything into his eye that he liked!"
BURIENSIS.
ANTIQUARIES OF THE TIME OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.
I have a copy of Weever's Ancient Funerall Monuments, which once belonged to William Burton, the historian of Leicestershire; on a fly-leaf at the end of the volume is the following list in the autograph of that celebrated antiquary, which, perhaps, may not be without its interest to the readers of "N. & Q." I have appended some notes of identification, which I have no doubt some of your correspondents could easily render more complete.