Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales Part 41

It appears from Hall's Satires, 1598, that it was customary to make presents of gloves at Easter. In Much Ado About Nothing, the Count sends Hero a pair of perfumed gloves, and they seem to have been a common present between lovers. In Devons.h.i.+re, the young women thus address the first young man they happen to meet on St. Valentine's day-

Good morrow, Valentine, I go to-day, To wear for you what you must pay, A pair of gloves next Easter-day.

In Oxfords.h.i.+re I have heard the following lines intended, I believe, for the same festival:

The rose is red, the violet's blue, The gilly-flower sweet, and so are you; These are the words you bade me say For a pair of new gloves on Easter-day.

LENT-CROCKING.

Parties of young people, during Lent, go to the most noted farmhouses, and sing, in order to obtain a _crock_ of cake, an old song beginning-

I see by the latch There is something to catch; I see by the string The good dame's within; Give a cake, for I've none; At the door goes a stone.

Come give, and I'm gone.

"If invited in," says Mrs. Bray, "a cake, a cup of cider, and a health followed. If not invited in, the sport consisted in battering the house door with stones, because not open to hospitality. Then the a.s.sailant would run away, be followed and caught, and brought back again as prisoner, and had to undergo the punishment of roasting the shoe. This consisted in an old shoe being hung up before the fire, which the culprit was obliged to keep in a constant whirl, roasting himself as well as the shoe, till some damsel took compa.s.sion on him, and let him go; in this case he was to treat her with a little present at the next fair."

CARE-SUNDAY.

Care Sunday, care away, Palm Sunday and Easter-day.

Care-Sunday is the Sabbath next before Palm Sunday, and the second before Easter. Etymologists differ respecting the origin of the term. It is also called Carling-Sunday, and hence the Nottinghams.h.i.+re couplet:

Tid, Mid, Misera, Carling, Palm, Paste-egg day.

APRIL-FOOL-DAY.

The custom of making fools on the 1st of April is one of the few old English merriments still in general vogue. We used to say on the occasion of having entrapped any one-

Fool, fool, April fool, You learn nought by going to school!

The legitimate period only extends to noon, and if any one makes an April-fool after that hour, the boy on whom the attempt is made, retorts with the distich-

April-fool time's past and gone, You're the fool, and I'm none!

MAY-DAY.

Rise up, fair maidens, fie, for shame, For I've been four lang miles from hame; I've been gathering my garlands gay; Rise up, fair maids, and take in your May.

This old Newcastle May-day song is given by Brockett, ii. 32. At Islip, near Oxford, the children go round the village on this day with garlands of flowers, singing-

Good morning, missus and measter, I wish you a happy day; Please to smell my garland, 'Cause it is the first of May.

HARVEST-HOME.

Here's a health unto our maister, The founder of the feast, And I hope to G.o.d wi' all my heart, His soul in heaven mid rest.

That everything mid prosper That ever he tiak in hand, Vor we be all his sarvants, And all at his command.

These verses were sometimes said in proposing the health of the farmer at a harvest-home supper. Another version of them is given in Hone's Table Book, ii. 334. When they have had a fortunate harvest, and the produce has been carried home without an accident, the following lines are sang at the harvest-home:

Harvest home, harvest home, Ne'er a load's been overthrown.

THE BARLEY MOW.

Here's a health to the barley mow, Here's a health to the man, Who very well can Both harrow, and plough, and sow.

When it is well sown, See it is well mown, Both raked and gravell'd clean, And a barn to lay it in: Here's a health to the man, Who very well can Both thrash and fan it clean.

ALL-SOULS' DAY.

"November 2nd is All Souls, a day inst.i.tuted by the Church of Rome in commemoration of all the faithful departed this life, that by the prayers and suffrages of the living they may be discharged of their purging pain, and at last obtain life everlasting. To this purpose the day is kept holy till noon. Hence proceeds the custom of Soul-ma.s.s cakes, which are a kind of oat-cakes that some of the richer sort of persons in Lancas.h.i.+re and Herefords.h.i.+re (among the Papists there) use still to give the poor on this day; and they, in retribution of their charity, hold themselves obliged to say this old couplet:

"G.o.d have your saul, Beens and all."

-_Festa Anglo-Romana_, 1678, p. 109.

FIFTH OF NOVEMBER.

The fifth of November, Since I can remember, Gunpowder treason and plot: This was the day the plot was contriv'd, To blow up the King and Parliament alive; But G.o.d's mercy did prevent To save our King and his Parliament.

A stick and a stake For King James's sake!

If you won't give me one, I'll take two, The better for me, And the worse for you!

This is the Oxfords.h.i.+re song chanted by the boys when collecting sticks for the bonfire, and it is considered quite lawful to appropriate any old wood they can lay their hands on after the recitation of these lines. If it happen that a crusty chuff prevents them, the threatening finale is too often fulfilled. The operation is called _going a progging_, but whether this is a mere corruption of _prigging_, or whether _progging_ means collecting sticks (_brog_, Scot. Bor.), I am unable to decide. In some places they shout, previously to the burning of the effigy of Guy Fawkes-

A penn'orth of bread to feed the Pope, A penn'orth of cheese to choke him; A pint of beer to wash it down, And a good old f.a.ggot to burn him.

The metropolis and its neighbourhood are still annually visited by subdued vestiges of the old customs of the bonfire-day. Numerous parties of boys parade the streets with effigies of Guy Fawkes, but pence, not antipopery, is the object of the exhibition, and the evening fires have generally been exchanged for the mischievous practice of annoying pa.s.sengers with squibs and crackers. The spirit and necessity of the display have expired, and the lover of old customs had better be contented to hear of it in history; even although the special service for the day, still retained in our Prayer-book, may tend to recognise the propriety of external rejoicings.

BARBERS' FORFEITS.

-- laws for all faults, But faults so countenanc'd, that the strong statutes Stand like _the forfeits in a barber's shop_, As much in mock as mark.

Steevens and Henley, in their notes on Shakespeare, bear testimony to the fact that barbers were accustomed to expose in their shops a list of forfeits for misbehaviour, which were "as much in mock as mark,"

because the barber had no authority of himself to enforce them, and they were in some respects of a ludicrous nature. "Barbers' forfeits," says Forby, in his Vocabulary of East Anglia, p. 119, "exist to this day in some, perhaps in many, village shops. They are penalties for handling the razors, &c., offences very likely to be committed by lounging clowns, waiting for their turn to be sc.r.a.ped on a Sat.u.r.day night or Sunday morning. They are still, as of old, 'more in mock than mark.'

Certainly more mischief might be done two hundred years ago, when the barber was also a surgeon."

Dr. Kenrick[55] was the first to publish a copy of _barbers' forfeits_, and, as I do not observe it in any recent edition of Shakespeare, I here present the reader with the following homely verses obtained by the Doctor in Yorks.h.i.+re:

[Footnote 55: Review of Johnson's Shakespeare, 1765, p. 42.]

_Rules for seemly Behaviour._