On Michaelmas-day the sheriffs of London, previously chosen, are solemnly sworn into office, and the lord mayor is elected for the year ensuing.
Pennant speaking of the mercers’ company, which by no means implied originally a dealer in silks, (for mercery included all sorts of small wares, toys, and haberdashery,) says, “This company is the first of the twelve, or such who are honoured with the privilege of the lord mayor’s being elected out of one of them.” If the lord mayor did not belong to either of the twelve, it was the practice for him to be translated to one of the favoured companies. The custom was discontinued in the mayoralty of sir Brook Watson, in 1796, and has not been revived.
E. I. C.
The “Gentleman’s Magazine” notices a singular custom at Kidderminster—“On the election of a bailiff the inhabitants assemble in the principal streets to throw cabbage stalks at each other. The town-house bell gives signal for the affray. This is called lawless hour. This done, (for it lasts an hour,) the bailiff elect and corporation, in their robes, preceded by drums and fifes, (for they have no waits,) visit the old and new bailiff, constables, &c. &c. attended by the mob. In the mean time the most respectable families in the neighbourhood are invited, to meet and fling apples at them on their entrance. I have known forty pots of apples expended at one house.”
Michaelmas Goose.
“September, when by custom (right divine)
Geese are ordain’d to bleed at Michael’s shrine.”
Churchill.
Mr. Brand notices the English custom of having a roast goose to dinner on Michaelmas-day. He cites Blount as telling us that “goose-intentos” is a word used in Lancashire, where “the husbandmen claim it as a due to have a goose intentos on the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost; which custom took origin from the last word of the old church-prayer of that day: ‘Tua, nos quæsumus, Domine, gratia semper præveniat et sequitur; ac bonis operibus jugiter præstet esse intentos.’ The common people very humourously mistake it for a goose with ten toes.” To this Mr. Brand objects, on the authority of Beckwith, in his new edition of the “Jocular Tenures:” that “besides that the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, or after Trinity rather, being movable, and seldom falling upon Michaelmas-day, which is an immovable feast, the service for that day could very rarely be used at Michaelmas, there does not appear to be the most distant allusion to a goose in the words of that prayer. Probably no other reason can be given for this custom, but that Michaelmas-day was a great festival, and geese at that time most plentiful. In Denmark, where the harvest is later, every family has a roasted goose for supper on St. Martin’s Eve.”