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Customs of Hallamshire


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The following article is reproduced from the Transactions of the Hunter Archaeological Society, Volume 1, page 17, by kind permission of the Society

http://www.shef.ac.uk/archaeology/hunter/index.html

THE CUSTOMS OF HALLAMSHIRE.

By S. O. ADDY, M.A.

(A Lecture read to the Society on the 11th of November, 1913.)

By a custom I mean the usage, fashion, or habits of a community, and I use the word Hallamshire as a convenient expression for Sheffield and the surrounding villages, such as Ecclesfield, Bradfield, and Handsworth, without attempting to define its original limits. Many places have preserved customs which have ceased to exist elsewhere, as their dialect has preserved words unknown in other parts of the country. They may both be compared to rare plants which were once common to other districts, but are now isolated.

Let me, by way of illustration, give an instance of a custom which still exists at Castleton, near Hope, and which survived in Sheffield down to 1826, under the name of Scotland Feast - I mean the Summer Game, or Garland, as it is called at Castleton.

In a book published this year, Mr. T. Walter Hall has told us of certain "fantastical pastimes " called May Games, and other

"vain plays and interludes"

which, about 1550, were not only an object of great attraction to the whole town of Sheffield and its neighbourhood, but which, by the money they produced, were the chief means of support of the three chaplains of the Parish Church.

The May Game was the Summer Game, and at Castleton it is performed on the 29th of May every year. The King and Queen of May ride on horseback through the town, accompanied by a band which plays a tune which has been long in use, and still is played by the Morris Dancers at Eyam.

The King is almost smothered by a huge garland, or rather by a load of branches, leaves, and flowers which conceals the greater part of his body, and the Queen is crowned and veiled.

Having ridden through the town and called at every public house, the King rides alone into the churchyard, when six or eight men, standing on the summit of the tower, let a rope down, to which the King fastens the garland. It is then drawn up to the top, and fastened to a "pike" or pinnacle on the south side. Nowhere else in Great Britain does this custom still linger.

But it is very ancient, and existed in other parts of Europe. Thus, at Grossvargala in Saxony, in the eighteenth century a Grass King, as he was called, was led about in procession at Whitsuntide, encased in a pyramid of poplar branches, and only an opening was left in it for his face. He rode in procession to the town hall, the parsonage, and so on, where they all got a drink of beer.

Then under the seven lindens the King was stripped of his green casing, his crown was handed to the mayor, and the green branches were stuck in the flax fields to make the flax grow tall.

At St. Edmund's, Salisbury, the King-ale lasted for three weeks, and in 1461 the churchwardens received 23 pounds odd from this source – a sum equal to nearly 300 pounds of our money.

We can understand therefore why the May Game was so profitable in Sheffield. The money was raised by a prodigious drinking of beer, brewed in the church-house, and sold at a high price, the nearest modern analogy being the church bazaar, or the charity dinner.

The object of the Summer Game, which was known by various names, such as the Sport of Robin Hood, was to bring summer in. It was once believed that grass could be made to grow, and the crops to spring up, by a device which imitated summer.

There are places in the world where people still believe that they can make rain by imitating the dripping of water on the earth, or the noise of thunder; so they pour water on the ground, and beat gongs. This is the practice known to anthropologists as imitative magic - the belief that you can produce a thing by doing something which resembles it.

But this year's summer has gone, and I turn to the days called Bull Week, which will soon be here. The name Bull Week is peculiar to Sheffield.

In 1829 the Rev. Joseph Hunter defined it as

" the week before Christmas, in which the workpeople at Sheffield push their strength to the utmost, allowing themselves scarcely any rest, and earning twice as much as in an ordinary week to prepare for, the rest and enjoyment of Christmas."

It is likely enough that the inhabitants of other towns worked hard for this same purpose; but what has to be explained is the term Bull Week. There is reason for believing that it is associated with a time when the inhabitants of Sheffield subscribed for a bull to be baited and eaten as Christmas beef.

On the 24th of last December the writer of an article in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph referred to a local book published in 1855 which, we are told, says that it was customary for the employers of Stannington to club together for the purchase of a bullock to be roasted whole on Christmas Day, and distributed among the workpeople. As Bull Week is the week before Christmas, it would seem that the name refers to a custom like that which is said to have obtained at Stannington, and it is curious that the oldest of the Icelandic sagas mentions the sacrifice of a bull, which was purchased, like the bullock at Stannington.

It is said by many old authors that a bull's flesh was not fit to be eaten unless the animal had been baited by dogs. The Corporation of Leicester once made an order that no butcher kill a bull to sell within that town unless it had first been baited. It was so in many other towns.

That old Puritan, William Perkins, who thought that witches ought to be burnt, and atheists tortured, approved of bull-baiting. The belief that the flesh of a baited bull was more tender and nutritious than that of animals slaughtered in the ordinary way does not excuse the brutality of the act, and perhaps if Perkins had known that there is no such thing in the world as a witch or an atheist, he might have been more merciful to animals.

In 1637, a place in Church Street, just above the Cutlers' Hall, was known as Bullstake Croft. The name proves that at certain times a bull was fastened to a stake, and baited there.

About 1690, Misson, a French traveller who wrote a book on his travels in England, describes one of these baitings.

“They tie a rope," he says, "to the root of the horns of the ox or bull, and fasten the other end of the cord to an iron ring fixed to a stake driven into the ground."

This explains our Sheffield Bullstake.

The stake and ring were afterwards removed from Church Lane, as it was then called, and fixed in the open street at the bottom of the Shambles. It need hardly be said that every town had its bull-stake or bull-ring, and it seems likely that Bull Week had some connexion with bull-baiting.

I pass on to happier subjects. Books on English antiquities have told us much about Twelfth Day, but have said nothing about the eleven preceding days, or explained why the twelfth day after Christmas Day should have been marked as a feast.

But only last year I was told by a Hallamshire man that families in this neighbourhood used to watch the sky during the whole of the twelve days. They did this because they believed that as the weather of the twelve days was, so that of the next twelve months would be.

In other words, if the day after Christmas Day was fine, the month of January would be fine, and so on through the months of the year. To do this properly they watched by night as well as by day, and took it in turn to sit up and observe the sky. On the last day they had a great plum cake or pound cake. On making further inquiry I was told that a kind of almanac was constructed, and there is a story that on one occasion the almanac foretold a snowstorm on Bolsterstone Feast. But that would never do, so they "cooked" or altered the almanac.

A century ago the bakers of Sheffield used to bake immense Twelfth Cakes, as they were called, and on one occasion Benjamin Walker, a confectioner in High Street, made an unusually big one, which was baked in sections, and paid for by subscription. Twelfth Cakes were well known in every part of England, but I have nowhere else found any trace in modern times of this very interesting custom of keeping watch. Yet it must once have been universal.

And, as one discovery often leads to another, we are enabled by means of this Hallamshire custom to explain a tradition mentioned by Hunter, as well as certain passages in old records.

Writing in 1819, Hunter says that there was a tradition among the inhabitants of Wadsley " that the ancient owners of the hall were accustomed to entertain twelve men and their horses every Christmas for twelve days; and that at their departure each man was expected to stick a large pin or needle into the mantle-tree."

Let me draw your attention to the fact that history may be handed down by the mouths of the people for many centuries. The twelve men at Wadsley were those who, each in his turn, watched the sky from Christmas Day to Twelfth Day, and perhaps we should not be far from the truth if we guessed that the pins stuck into the mantel-shelf were intended to record the fact that watch had been duly kept. Again, you will notice that it was the owner of Wadsley Hall, that is, the lord of the manor, who entertained these men.

Now at Wickham, in Essex, in the year 1222, there were certain tenants of the manor whose duty it was to watch at the lord's hall, each for one day at Christmas, the lord providing the tenants' food. We are told in a somewhat later document how this service was performed.

A tenant was bound, with other tenants of the same rank, to keep watch in his turn at the hall from Christmas Day to Twelfth Day, and during the time of his watch he was allowed to have a good fire in the hall, a white loaf, a cooked dish, and a gallon of ale.

At Durham, in 1183, the watching was known as Yule-waiting, that is, Christmas-watching, and it was the duty of the tenants of the Bishop's manors to keep it, as they did at Wickham, and as they evidently did at Wadsley. It may be that our Christmas waits, who go about singing in the night, are the successors of the watchmen who, at an early time, gazed at the stars and clouds, so that they might foretell the weather of the coming year.

We will now take leave of these earlier customs, and descend to the time when Shakespeare was still writing plays, and Bacon essays.

In 1609 the Court Leet of Sheffield made a rule that nobody should walk or talk in the town street from nine o'clock in the evening until three o'clock in the morning, so as to annoy honest men and house-holders. The fine for breaking the rule was l0s, or about 3 pounds of our money, and fathers and masters were made liable for their sons and apprentices.

Curfew rang at nine, when everybody went to bed, and in some towns the day-bell rang at four, as a warning that it was time to get up. But as nobody was likely to be walking about the streets at three o'clock in the morning, we may assume that the town was kept quiet during the hours of sleep.

Have we not something to learn from this rule of our forefathers? What would they have thought of the raucous din of motor horns through half the streets where people are sleeping, and through half the night? They would not have stood it for a week, for local government in those days was far more powerful than it is now. And what should we think if every cabman or coachman blew an excruciating blast to announce his coming?

By another rule of the Sheffield Leet, also made in 1609, it was ordered that no person should make any wedding dinner for which he should take above sixpence a person, and the penalty for violating the rule was 1 pound for every offence.

This leads us to the interesting subject of courtship and marriage, on which I -will detain you for a few minutes. It was the custom in those days for the bridegroom to take the bride to his house immediately after the wedding, and to give a series of entertainments, breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, extending over ten days or a fortnight.

But these feasts were not free; the guests paid for them, and the price of each meal was sufficient to yield a considerable profit for the newly-married pair, and to set them up in life. This was done instead of giving them presents, and you will notice that the Sheffield rule says that nobody was to take more than sixpence from each person, that is, from each guest. People did not “go on their honeymoon," as we do; they remained at home to collect the money.

Not long ago there was a survival of this custom among the poorer classes of Derbyshire in what were called penny weddings, at which everybody contributed a penny, though he might give more if he liked.

To explain this custom properly I must take you to Ashover. During the present year I had the pleasure of reading a manuscript, in verse and prose, written by Leonard Wheatcroft, of that place, who was born in 1627. Two years before his wedding he had walked to London, and seen many fine ladies in balconies, but none of them, he says, had charms for him, so he walked back to Ashover, and arrived on the day of the village wakes. There he met Betty Hawley, of Winster, and forthwith, as he tells us, laid siege to the castle of her heart.

Every time he went a-wooing he cut a slash on an ash tree at Winster town end, and he tells us that for her sake he walked 440 odd miles. But these were Derbyshire miles, which, as the local proverb says, are " measured by a dead cat and a listing cap." A Derbyshire mile is about a third longer than a Yorkshire mile, as may be seen when Wheatcroft tells us that Sheffield is a town situate twelve miles from Ashover, whereas it is eighteen. So that if you add a third to the 440 miles, it will make 586 miles in all. Divide this by the 104 weeks of his courtship, and you will find that Wheatcroft walked about twenty-five miles a month - not very much for an ardent lover who could walk to London and back is less than that time. But I am digressing, and must return to the wedding dinners.

The wedding was fixed for the 20th of May, 1657, notwithstanding the fact that, from the time of the Romans it is said to have been unlucky to get married in that month. However, it was Whitsun week, when there was always a disposition to spend money over pleasure. Just before the wedding Miss Hawley brought some pewter and other things from Winster, and her lover went part of the way back with her.

"So," he says, " parting with her on the wild moors, I went to fetch in some fat wares which I had bought against the wedding ; but before I parted with her I told her that I would not come over again till I came for her [finally], to which she seemed very willing.

So, coming home again, I set very many to work; the butcher for one, who dressed for me, against that time, thirty-five head of wares. As for beer, it was brewed before, to the value of eight quarters of malt, with many more needful commodities to the value of f 62 9s. 9d.

Wheatcroft had worked out the cost of the wedding to a penny; out of that expenditure he made, as he intended to make, a considerable profit, and when you remember that beef was then rather under 3d. a pound, you will see that, for a village tailor, he staked a large sum.

Let us see how the money was invested, and Wheatcroft shall tell us in his own words. "The wedding days." he says, "did last long. For eleven days together there was eleven dinners got; all was shot diners, and there was which breakfasted, dined, and supped, to the number of two hundred persons; and I had one cook or two all the while." A “shot diner," as you will see, was one who paid for his dinner he "paid his shot," as we say now.

The writer gives further particulars. The marriage took place at the house of a justice of the peace, because this was the time of the Commonwealth. When the bride and bridegroom had returned to Ashover, the guests took their places, and the waiters had to bestir themselves, for there were fourteen tables full at one time; they were twice full that day, and some of them three times, and all of them, we are told, " gave very good satisfaction to the parties that were married that day," meaning that the guests paid a good price for what they ate and drank.

The morning after the wedding, as Wheatcroft says, "when Phoebus began to appear, and show himself valiantly in the firmament," they were saluted with music, with pleasant lessons, and choice tunes, and the father-in-law gave Wheatcroft his blessing and twelve half-crowns. After that the eating began again, "so after breakfast was ended, it fell to the cook's care to provide for another dinner, which immediately he did, and much moneys was taken that day.

The next day, being Friday, the bride-pie was eaten, at which dinner was above twenty-two messes. Almost all these were women. There came also many on Saturday, and laid their shots, and on Sunday came very many to dinner, and gave us their shots freely."

And so the feasting went on for eleven days.

But that was not all, for many came long after, and a fortnight after the wedding there were "above twenty-four messes from Winster." Wheatcroft sums up thus: "What I did gain by the feast was sufficient, for which I give all my friends many thanks, and shall be ready to congratulate them in like matter (meaning that he would do the same for them.

But what I shall gain by my wedding, as yet I cannot tell, for if my wife prove no worse hereafter, I hope I -shall be no loser at all. But, for that matter, let all those who are desirous to know what 1 have gained stay till God separate us again, and then let them view my inventory, and if they knew my estate when I was married, they may the easier know my gains."

We are now enabled to see what the thrifty people of Sheffield meant when they decided that nobody should take more than sixpence from each person at a wedding dinner. They meant that no bridegroom should charge his guests more than sixpence apiece. In 1609 a chicken was worth fourpence, and you may take it that a fat hen would not be worth more than sixpence, and so, in our money, a bridegroom would be allowed to take about three shillings from each of his friends. Whether the richer people took presents or money from their guests I do not know. In the case of servants and dependents, the time soon came when these " shot dinners " at weddings were commuted into payments in money.

For, on the 15th of November, 1660, Pepys writes in his Diary as follows: "To Sir W. Batten's to dinner, he having a couple of servants married to-day; and so there was a great number of merchants and others of good quality on purpose after dinner to make an offering, which, when dinner was done, we did, and I did give ten shillings and no more, though I believe most of the rest did give more, and did believe that I did so too."

Along with the rule about wedding dinners, the Sheffield Leet ordered that no person should bid or make any goose-feasts, carries, or other feasts or dinners for which he should take more than sixpence a person, and the fine for infringement was 1 pound, as before.

A " carry " was a curry, or dish flavoured with spices.

Many of these feasts were bid-ales, as the word "bid" implies. In 1656 Blount tells us that a " bid-ale is when an honest man decayed in his estate is set up again by the liberal benevolence and contribution of friends at a feast, to which those friends are bid or invited."

About ten years earlier, Adam Eyre, of Penistone, mentions one of these bid-ales in his Diary. We must bear in mind, as we go on, that in compound words, such as bride-ale, or bridal, " ale " came to mean " feast," so that a bridal is a bride-feast.

Our worthy Sheffield ancestors wished to impose a limit, not only on extravagance at weddings, but on charitable gifts, and they could hold the purse-strings tighter, and excuse themselves with better grace, if they appealed to an order made by their court. However, we must not blame them, for in our time it is often found desirable to limit contributions, as when the subscription to somebody's portrait is limited to a guinea, or when the tickets of a charity ball are sold at a fixed price.

I return once more to marriage customs. In my Household Tales, published in 1895, it is recorded that a man living at Oughtibridge wished to marry. So he and the woman got two friends to act as witnesses, and thereupon they went all together to the man's house. But before they got there the man took the key of the house from his pocket, and gave it to the woman, who went in, and locked the door. After a time she unlocked it, and allowed her intended husband and the two witnesses to enter, and then the man called on the two witnesses to testify that he took the woman for his wedded wife.

Now this is a remarkable custom or tradition. At the time when I published it, I did not know that when a Roman woman first entered her husband's house, the keys of the store-rooms were handed to her; or that the wife, if she separated from her husband, sent him back the keys.

Moreover, the form of divorce given in the Law of the Twelve Tables, first published in 449 B.C. was that the husband took away the keys.

Here then, in a Hallamshire country district, we seem at first sight to have a survival of Roman law and custom. But it is far more probable that this interesting tradition refers to the old ceremony used in conveying land, and known to lawyers as livery of seisin, that is, delivery of possession.

When there was a dwellinghouse or other building on the land, this ceremony was performed as follows: The house or building was left empty, and a twig or bough, with the ring of the door, given to the purchaser. The purchaser then entered the house alone, shut the door, and presently opened it again to let the bystanders in. All this is described in a book called Les Termes de la Ley, a manual once used by every lawyer. You will see that this ceremony is almost identical with the ceremony of marriage which is said to have taken place near Oughtibridge.

I turn to other customs relating to the ownership of land. Near the back of the Weston Park Museum is a house which bears the singular name of Mushroom Hall. It was so called because it was said to have been originally built in a single night. " The story was," says Hunter, " that it was built, covered in, and a pot boiled between sunset and sunrise, and this, it was alleged, gave a right to the ground on which it stood, according to the custom of the manor. It stood for many years, and with additions and improvements afforded what they thought a sufficient habitation for the family by whom it was first erected, and I believe occasioned some trouble to the commissioners when the commons came to be enclosed."

It certainly caused trouble to the Enclosure Commissioners, and I have seen an advertisement on the subject by them in an old Sheffield newspaper.

Now this is a very ancient and widespread custom, and we must remember that it was the kindling of a fire which gave the right. In Hampshire there was an old tenure called " keyhole tenure," by which if a squatter could build a house or hut in one night, and get his fire lighted before morning, he could not be disturbed.

If you will read Mr. Baring-Gould's Book of Dartmoor, you will find that this tenure also existed in Devonshire, About fifteen years ago, when I was still collecting folklore, a farmer living at Shatton, three miles to the east of Castleton, mentioned a tradition that if a man could build a hut on the moors in that neighbourhood in a single night, and make a fire so that the smoke would go up in the morning, he would obtain the right of following a vein of lead on those moors.

Perhaps some of you know that one of the most interesting of the lead-mining customs of Derbyshire is that which enabled the finder of a vein to set a mark of possession upon it, and to build a " coe," or hut, over the pit.

On a visit to Crowland, in Lincolnshire, in 1900. I noticed a long row of cottages known as "keyhole property," and was told that they belonged to their several occupants. In front the houses touch the street; they have no land behind. The consequence is that the occupants have to hire small plots of ground at the back of their cottages for gardens and out-offices.

I asked a man if he could tell me what the expression "keyhole property" meant. He said " if you hold the key, you hold the property." Another man said " You can get a man out of copyhold property, but not out of keyhole property." I was amused to find that "keyhole property " was regarded as a better thing than copyhold. A local solicitor to whom I wrote on the subject said that he believed that the land on which these houses stand was formerly waste land, and got gradually built upon by people at will. When the owner of a cottage sold it, he took the money and handed over the key to the purchaser, so that the key was his title-deed.

How the right to these cottages was first acquired we are not told, but probably the process was like that at Mushroom Hall. The very name Mushroom Hall is the invention of some local wit who compared the new hut to the savoury fungus which springs up in a night.

In his book on The Antiquities of German Law, Jacob Grimm says that "the kindling and maintaining of fire upon real estate was proof of its lawful occupation and possession."

In Iceland we know that the hallowing of waste lands by fire for a man's self carried with it an absolute title to ownership in the early days of the settlement in that country. Thus, in the saga of Hen Thorir, we are told of a man who went to a burning house, laid hold of a burning rafter, carried it round the house and said: " Here take I land to myself, for here I see no house inhabited." It was the carrying of fire round the land, or the kindling of a fire thereon which gave a man his title, though in England he had to build a hut, as well as make a fire in it.

Possession of copyhold land in the neighbourhood of Sheffield is given by the rod, and, in one manor at least, by the straw. In the former case an office ruler is used instead of the twig by which possession was formerly delivered to the purchaser. In the latter case a straw is woven into the purchaser's title-deed.

It appears from a Roll dated 1365 that the castle and lordship of Sheffield, with their members and appurtenances, were held in chief of the King's Crown by homage and fidelity, by the service of one knight's fee, and by the service of rendering yearly to the King two white greyhounds on the 24th of June. These white dogs were of a sort which could be easily procured, and it was the custom in tenures to present such things as hawks, dogs, falcons, gilt spurs, &c.

But in The Gentleman's Magazine for 1764, the Rev. Edward Goodwin, of Sheffield, referred to this Roll, and said that the castle and lordship were held by the service of two white hares. Dr. Pegge, however, read the manuscript himself, and showed that Mr. Goodwin could not read his document, and that, among other mistakes, he had read lepores, which means " hares," for leporarii, which in late Latin means " harehounds" or greyhounds." The error found its way into literature, and the consequence was that some naturalists went so far as to say that we had white hares in Hallamshire. But about a year ago an appeal was made by a naturalists' society to Mr. Leader and myself for the source of this statement, when Pegge's correction was referred to. Perhaps we shall hear no more about white hares in Hallamshire.

Every town had its yearly feast, but Sheffield has grown so big that its inhabitants have forgotten that the feast-day was Trinity Sunday. It was almost forgotten in 1826, for a writer in Hone's Every-day Book in that year says that only a few old families then kept it up by the usual dinner of roast beef and plum pudding. But this writer goes on to tell us that there were other local feasts, held on different days, in the town or its suburbs.

Besides those of the Wicker and Little Sheffield, which were then suburban, Broad Lane and Scotland Street, in the town itself, had their respective feasts. At Little Sheffield and Broad Lane there were ass-races and foot-races, both for men and women, and grinning matches, which would be not likely to improve their beauty if they practised much grinning before¬hand. Often they made a din by striking bars of steel, in imitation of church bells.

Besides these there were feasts at Crookes and Attercliffe. For them, and for other details of the feasts just mentioned, I must refer you to Mr. R. E. Leader's Reminiscences.

But for the purposes of history, or for the elucidation of custom, the feast which the writer in Hone's Every-day Book calls Scotland feast is of far more importance than the rest. T he feast was so named, we are told, from Scotland Street, in the northern part of the town, and was held, like the so-called Garland at Castleton, on the 29th of May. On the eve of that day parties of the inhabitants went into the neighbouring country, and especially to Walkley Bank., then celebrated for its birch trees.

At dead of night, or in the early morning, they brought home from sixteen to twenty well-sized trees. They instantly planted the trees in two rows, one on each side of the street, just without the kerbstone of the flagged pavement. With the branches they decorated the doors and windows of the houses, the signboards of the drinking-shops, and so on.

By five or six in the morning, Scotland Street, which is not very wide, had the appearance of a grove, and soon, from ropes stretched across it, three, four, or five garlands delighted the eyes, and danced over the heads of the people. These garlands were composed of hoops, wreathed with foliage and flowers, fluttering with variously coloured ribbons, rustling with asidew (a thin brass leaf of a high gold colour) and gay with silver tankards, pint pots, and watches.

The largest tree was planted before the door of the principal alehouse, and among its branches might be seen the effigy of Charles II. These, no doubt, are the May Games, or " fantastical pastimes," mentioned in the document published by Mr. Hall, and it is obvious that neither they, nor the Garland at Castleton, had anything whatever to- do with King Charles. Green foliage is the garment of May and of Summer, and the birch, most graceful of forest trees, was everywhere used for May-poles ages before Charles II was born.

Let us hear what Jacob Grimm says about English May-games. " On May Day morning," he says, " the lads and lasses set out soon after midnight, with horns and music, to a neighbouring wood, broke boughs off the trees, and decked them out with wreaths and posies; then turned homeward, and at sunrise set these May-bushes in the doors and windows of their houses. Above all they brought with them a tall birch tree which had been cut down ; it was named Maypole, and was drawn by twenty to thirty yoke of oxen, each with a nosegay betwixt his horns ; this tree was set up in the village, and the people danced round it. The whole festival was presided over by the lord of the May elected for the purpose, and with him was associated a lady of the May."

In Sheffield the lord and lady of May had ceased in 1826, and perhaps long before, to take part in the annual feast. And instead of one Maypole the inhabitants of Scotland Street had sixteen or twenty. It was natural that the Puritanism of the Commonwealth should have been followed, at the King's restoration, by the return of a custom which had been in abeyance, but was still dear to the hearts of the people, so that when Charles ascended the throne a compromise was made, and the Summer Game began to be associated with the so-called royal oak at Boscobel, and the time for holding it changed.

This custom of going to the woods and bringing in Summer takes us back to the childhood of the world, when man, in his ignorance, believed that by a magical trick he could alter the laws of nature. If there be any who think that customs like these are mere curiosities of the past, and unworthy of serious study, they may be reminded that archaeology is now called upon to deal with the progress of the minds of men, as well as with their progress in the arts.

How powerful an instrument for recovering the earlier thoughts of mankind the study of custom and folklore has become may be seen in recent books, such as Professor Frazer's Golden Bough. If anybody shou1d think that the earlier thoughts of mankind are of no concern to him, we may reply that he is mentally, as well as physically, what his ancestors have made him, and that he cannot possibly understand his own nature, and his own environment, if he is altogether ignorant of anthropology.

Other customs might be referred to, but I think I have said enough.

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