The annual setting of the watch on St. John’s eve, in the city of Chester, was an affair of great moment. By an ordinance of the mayor, aldermen, and common councilmen of that corporation, dated in the year 1564, and preserved among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, a pageant which is expressly said to be “according to ancient custom,” is ordained to consist of four giants, one unicorn, one dromedary, one camel, one luce, one dragon, and six hobby-horses with other figures. By another MS. in the same library it is said, that Henry Hardware, Esq., the mayor, in 1599, caused the giants in the Midsummer show to be broken, “and not to goe the devil in his feathers;” and it appears that he caused a man in complete armour to go in their stead: but in the year 1601, John Ratclyffe, beer-brewer, being mayor, set out the giants and Midsummer show as of old it was wont to be kept. In the time of the commonwealth the show was discontinued, and the giants with the beasts were destroyed.
At the restoration of Charles II., the citizens of Chester replaced their pageant, and caused all things to be made new, because the old models were broken. According to the computation, the four great giants were to cost five pounds a-piece, at the least, and the four men to carry them were to have two shillings and six-pence each; the materials for constructing them were to be hoops of various sizes, deal boards, nails, pasteboard, scaleboard, paper of various sorts, buckram, size-cloth, and old sheets for their body-sleeves and shirts, which were to be coloured; also tinsel, tinfoil, gold and silver leaf, and colours of various kinds, with glue and paste in abundance. The provision of a pair of old sheets to cover the “father and mother giants,” and three yards of buckram for the mother’s and daughter’s hoods, seems to prove that three of these monstrous pasteboard figures represented females. A desire to preserve them may be inferred from an entry in the bill of charges:—“For arsnick to put into the paste, to save the giants from being eaten by the rats, one shilling and four-pence.” There was an item in the estimate—“For the new making the city mount, called the maior’s mount, as auntiently it was, and for hireing of bays for the same, and a man to carry it, three pounds six shillings and eight-pence.” Twenty-pence was paid to a joiner for cutting pasteboard into several images for the “merchant’s mount,” which being made, “as it aunciently was with a ship to turn round,” cost four pounds, including the hiring of the “bays,” and five men to carry it. The charge for the ship, and new dressing it, was five shillings. Strutt, who sets forth these particulars, conjectures, that the ship was probably made with pasteboard, that material seeming, to him, to have been a principle article in the manufacturing of both these movable mountains. The ship was turned, he says, by means of a swivel, attached to an iron handle underneath the frame; the “bays” was to hang round the bottom of the frames to the ground, and so conceal the bearers. Then there was a new “elephant and castell, and a cupid,” with his bows and arrows, “suitable to it;” the castle was covered with tin foil, and the cupid with skins, so as to appear to be naked, and the charge for these, with two men to carry them, was one pound sixteen shillings and eight-pence. The “four beastes called the unicorne, the antelop, the flower-de-luce (?) and the camell,” cost one pound sixteen shillings and four-pence each, and eight men were paid sixteen shillings to carry them. Four boys for carrying the four hobby-horses, had four shillings, and the hobby-horses cost six shillings and eight-pence each. The charge for the new dragon, with six naked boys to beat at it, was one pound sixteen shillings. Six morris-dancers, with a pipe and tabret, had twenty shillings; and “hance-staves, garlands, and balls, for the attendants upon the mayor and sheriffs cost one pound nineteen shillings.”[184]
These preparations it will be remembered were for the setting forth of the Midsummer-watch at Chester, so late as the reign of Charles II. After relating these particulars, Mr. Strutt aptly observes, that exhibitions of this kind for the diversions of the populace, are well described in a few lines from a dramatic piece, entitled “A pleasant and stately Morall of the Three Lordes of London:”—
—— “Let nothing that’s magnifical,
Or that may tend to London’s graceful state,
Be unperformed, as showes and solemne feastes,
Watches in armour, triumphes, cresset lights,
Bonefires, belles, and peales of ordinaunce
And pleasure. See that plaies be published,
Mai-games and maskes, with mirthe and minstrelsie,
Pageants and school-feastes, beares and puppet-plaies.”
Somersetshire Custom.
In the parishes of Congresbury and Puxton, are two large pieces of common land, called East and West Dolemoors, (from the Saxon dal, which signifies a share or portion,) which are divided into single acres, each bearing a peculiar and different mark cut in the turf; such as a horn, four oxen and a mare, two oxen and a mare, a pole-axe, cross, dung-fork, oven, duck’s-nest, hand-reel, and hare’s-tail. On the Saturday before Old-Midsummer, several proprietors of estates in the parishes of Congresbury, Puxton, and Week St. Lawrence, or their tenants, assemble on the commons. A number of apples are previously prepared, marked in the same manner with the before-mentioned acres, which are distributed by a young lad to each of the commoners from a bag or hat. At the close of the distribution each person repairs to his allotment, as his apple directs him, and takes possession for the ensuing year. An adjournment then takes place to the house of the overseer of Dolemoors, (an officer annually elected from the tenants,) where four acres, reserved for the purpose of paying expenses, are let by inch of candle, and the remainder of the day is spent in that sociability and hearty mirth so congenial to the soul of a Somersetshire yeoman.[185]
FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Our Lady’s Slipper. Cypripedium Calceolus.
Dedicated to St. Etheldreda.