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Custom-Rhymes Return to Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales by James Orchard Halliwell IT is greatly to be feared that, notwithstanding the efforts made within the last few years by inidividuals who have desired to see the resuscitation of the merry sports and customs of old England, the spirit which formerly characterised them is not to be recovered. The mechanical spirit of the age has thrown a degree of ridicule over observances which have not been without use in their day; and might even now be rendered beneficial to the public, were it possible to exclude the influence which tells the humbler subject such matters are below his regard. Yet it must be confessed that most of our ancient customs are only suited to the thinly-populated rural districts, where charity, good-will, and friendship may be delicately cultivated under the plea of their observance. CHRISTMAS.
To these lines we may add the following North-country nursery song:
CHRISTMAS MUMMERS' PLAY. A rude drama is performed at Christmas by the guisers or mummers in most parts of England and Scotland, but the versions are extremely numerous, and no less than six copies have reached me differing materially from each other. In the following copy, which is the most perfect one I have been able to procure, the dramatis personæ consist of a Fool, St. George, Slasher, a Doctor, Prince of Paradine, King of Egypt, Hector, Beelzebub, and little Devil Doubt. I am informed that this drama is occasionally acted at Easter as well as at Christmas.
NEW YEAR'S DAY
Wassel or Wassal.—A remnant of this part of our Saxon manners still exists at Yarmouth, and strange to say, in no other part of the Isle of Wight. On the first day of the new year the children collect together and sing wassel or wassal through the streets; the following is their song (see p. 249):
The following verses are said to be in some way or other connected with the amusements of this festival. They refer probably to the choosing the king and the queen on Twelfth-night:
CATHERNING.
These lines are sung by the children of Worcestershire on St. Catharine's day, when they go round to the farmhouses collecting apples and beer for a festival. This is no doubt the relic of a Popish custom; and the Dean of Worcester informs me that the Chapter have a practice of preparing a rich bowl of wine and spices, called the "Cathern bowl," for the inhabitants of the college precincts upon that day. VALENTINE'S DAY. In the western counties, the children, decked with the wreaths and true-lover's knots presented to them, gaily adorn one of their number as their chief, and march from house to house, singing—
They commence in many places as early as six o'clock in the morning, and intermingle the cry, "To-morrow is come!" Afterwards they make merry with their collections. At Islip, co. Oxon, I have heard the children sing the following when collecting pence on this day:
And likewise the following:
Schoolboys have a very uncomplimentary way of presenting each other with these poetical memorials:
Far different from this is a stanza which is a great favorite with young girls on this day, offered indiscriminately, and of course quite innocently, to most of their acquaintances:
The mission of valentines is one of the very few old customs not on the wane; and the streets of our metropolis practically bear evidence of this fact in the distribution of love-messages on our stalls and shop-windows, varying in price from a sovereign to one halfpenny. Our readers, no doubt, will ask for its origin, and there we are at fault to begin with. The events of St. Valentine's life furnish no clue whatever to the mystery, although Wheatley, in his Illustration of the Common Prayer, absurdly disposes of the question in this way: "St. Valentine was a man of most admirable parts, and so famous for his love and charity, that the custom of choosing valentines upon his festival, which is still practised, took its rise from thence." We see no explanation here in any way satisfactory, and must be contented with the hope that some of our antiquaries may hit on something more to the purpose.
It was anciently the custom to draw lots on this day. The names of an equal number of each sex were put into a box, in separate partitions, out of which every one present drew a name, called the valentine, which was regarded as a good omen of their future marriage. It would appear from a curious passage quoted in my Dictionary of Archaisms, that any lover was hence termed a valentine; not necessarily an affianced lover, as suggested in Hampson's Calendarium, vol. i. p. 163. Lydgate, the poet of Bury, in the fifteenth century, thus mentions this practice:
The divinations practised on Valentine's day is a curious subject. Herrick mentions one by rose-buds:
Perhaps the poet may here allude to a practice similar to the following, quoted by Brand: "Last Friday was Valentine day; and the night before I got five bay-leaves, and pinned four of them to the four corners of my pillow, and the fifth to the middle; and then, if I dreamt of my sweetheart, Betty said we should be married before the year was out. But to make it more sure I boiled an egg hard, and took out the yolk, and filled it with salt; and when I went to bed, eat it shell and all, without speaking or drinking after it. We also wrote our lovers' names upon bits of paper, and rolled them up in clay, and put them into water; and the first that rose up was to be our valentine. Would you think it? Mr. Blossom was my man. I lay abed, and shut my eyes all the morning, till he came to our house, for I would not have seen another man before him for all the world." According to Mother Bunch, the following lines should be said by the girl on retiring to rest the previous night:
We believe the old custom of drawing lots on this eventful day is obsolete, and has given place to the favorite practice of sending pictures, with poetical legends, to objects of love or ridicule. The lower classes, however, seldom treat the matter with levity, and many are the offers of marriage thus made. The clerks at the post-offices are to be pitied, the immense increase of letters beyond the usual average adding very inconveniently to their labours.
Ha, ah wor mad, yo mind, ah nivver look't at a yung womman for two days at after for't; but it wor becos ah hedant a chonce."—Yorkshire Dial. YOULING. In Rogation week there is or was an odd custom in the country about Keston and Wickham, in Kent. A number of young men meet together for the purpose, and, with a most hideous noise, run into the orchards, and, encircling each tree, pronounce these words:
An old custom, formerly in vogue at Wenlock, in Shropshire, thus described by Mr. Collins: "I am old enough to remember an old custom, and the last time it took place was about sixty years ago; it was called the 'boy's bailiff,' and was held in the Easter week, Holy Thursday, or in Whitsun week, and I have no doubt was for the purpose of going a bannering the extensive boundaries of this franchise, which consists of eighteen parishes. It consisted of a man, who wore a hair-cloth gown, and was called the bailiff, a recorder, justices, town-clerk, sheriff, treasurer, crier, and other municipal officers. They were a large retinue of men and boys mounted on horseback, begirt with wooden swords, which they carried on their right sides, so that they must draw the swords out of the scabbards with their left hands. They, when I knew them, did not go the boundary, but used to call at all the gentlemen's houses in the franchise, where they were regaled with meat, drink, and money; and before the conclusion they assembled at the pillory, at the guildhall, where the town-clerk read some sort of rigmarole which they called their charter, and I remember one part was—
Bickbury, Badger, and Stoke on the Clee, were and are the two extreme points of the franchise, north and south; Monkhopton and Round Acton are two other parishes on the return from Stoke St. Millborough, otherwise Stoke on the Clee (or perhaps Milburga, the tutelar saint of the Abbey of Wenlock), to Much Wenlock. This custom I conceive to have orignated in going a bannering, unless it should have been got up as a mockery to the magistracy of the franchise; but I rather think the former." PACE-EGGING. It is a custom in some parts of England for boys to go round the village on Easter eve begging for eggs or money, and a sort of dramatic song is sometimes used on the occasion. The following copy was taken down from recitation some years ago in the neighbourhood of York; but in another version we find Lords Nelson and Collingwood introduced, by a practice of adaptation to passing events, which is fortunately not extensively followed in such matters. A boy, representing a captain, enters and sings—
Then old Toss-pot enters, and the captain, pointing him out, says—
This is repeated twice, and the performance concludes by the whole company shouting to the top of their voice—
"Pase-day, Easter-day. Pase-eggs, Easter-eggs. Corrupt. from Pasch. They have a proverbial rhyme in those parts for the Sundaies in Lent:
COLLOP-MONDAY
Verses for Shrove-tide, Collop-Monday being a North-country name for Shrove-Monday, because eggs and collops compose a standard dish for that day. At Islip, in Oxfordshire, the children, on Shrove-Tuesday, go round to the various houses to collect pence, saying:
"Collap Munday.—This time reminds me on a bit ov a consarn at happand abaght two year sin, to a chap at thay call Jeremiah Fudgemutton. This Jerry, yo mun naw, went ta see a yung womman, a sweetheart a hiz, an when he put hiz arms raand her neck to gie her a cus, it happand shood been hevin sum friend bacon to her dinner, an fagettan ta wipe t' grease off on her magth at after. Thear hiz faice slip't off on her chin-end, an slap went hiz head reight throot winda, an cut tip ov hiz noaze off."—Yorkshire Dial. ISLE OF WIGHT SHROVERS. Until within about the last thirty years, it had been the custom in the Isle of Wight from time immemorial at all the farms and some other charitable houses to distribute cakes on Shrove-Tuesday, called Shrove-cakes, to the poor children of the parish or neighbourhood, who assembled early in the morning at the different villages, hamlets, and cottages, in parties of from two to thirty or more, for the purpose of what was denominated "Going Shroving," and the children bore the name of Shrovers. At every house they visited they had a nice Shrove-cake each given them. In those days the winters were much more inclement and of longer duration than at the present time, and it often happened that, in addition to a severe frost, the ground was covered several inches high with snow, yet however cold or intense the weather, it did not prevent these little ones from what they called in the provincial dialect Gwine a Shrovun, and they jogged merrily along hand in hand from one house to another to obtain their cakes; but, before receiving them, it was expected and deemed necessary that they should all sing together a song suitable to the occasion; those who sang the loudest were considered the best Shrovers, and sometimes had an extra cake bestowed on them; consequently, there was no want of noise (whatever there might have been of harmony) to endeavour to get another Shroving gift. There were many different versions of the song according to the parishes they lived in. The one generally sang by the children of the East Medina was as follows:
The song of the children of the West Medina was different:
If the song was not given sufficiently loud, they were desired to sing it again. In that case it very rarely required a second repetition. When the Shrovers were more numerous than was anticipated, it not unfrequently happened that, before the time of the arrival of the latter parties, the Shrove-cakes had been expended; then dough-nuts, pancakes, bread and cheese, or bread and bacon, were given, or halfpence were substituted; but in no instance whatever were they sent from the door empty-handed. It is much to be regretted that this charitable custom should have become almost extinct; there being very few houses at the present time where they distribute Shrove-cakes.
The above was the original song, but within the last fifty or sixty years, as the custom began to fall off, the chorus or some other part was often omitted. EASTER-GLOVES.
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 Devonshire, the young women thus address the first young man they happen to meet on St. Valentine's day—
In Oxfordshire I have heard the following lines intended, I believe, for the same festival:
LENT-CROCKING Parties of young people, during Lent, go to the most noted farmhouses, and sing, in order to obtain a crock or cake, an old song beginning—
"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 assailant 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 compassion 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 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 Nottinghamshire couplet:
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—
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—
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—
HARVEST-HOME
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:
THE BARLEY MOW.
ALL-SOULS' DAY "November 2nd is All Souls, a day instituted 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-mass cakes, which are a kind of oat-cakes that some of the richer sort of persons in Lancashire and Herefordshire (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:
— Festa Anglo-Romana, 1678, p. 109. FIFTH OF NOVEMBER
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 anti-popery, is the object of the exhibition, and the evening fires have generally been exchanged for the mischievous practice of annoying passengers 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.
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 scraped on a Saturday 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."
It is not improbable that these lines had been partly modernized from an older original before they reached Dr. Kenrick, but Steevens was certainly too precipitate in pronouncing them to be forgeries. Their authenticity is placed beyond a doubt by the testimony of my late friend, Major Moor, who, in his Suffolk Words, p. 133, informs us that he had seen a version of these rules at the tonsor's, of Alderton, near the sea. COCKLE-BREAD.
A very old practice of young women, moving as if they were kneading dough, and repeating the above lines, which are sometimes varied thus:
The entire explanation of this, which is not worth giving here, may be seen in Thoms's Anecdotes and Traditions, p. 95. An allusion to cockle-bread occurs as early as 1595, in Peele's singular play of the Old Wives Tale. A DRINKING CUSTOM.
These lines are sung by a person at the table after dinner. His next neighbour then sings "Once so merrily hopped she," during which the first singer is obliged to drink a bumper; and should he be unable to empty his glass before the last line is sung, he must begin again till he succeeds. The next line is "Twice so merrily hopped she," sung by the next person under a similar arrangement, and so on; beginning again after "Thrice as merrily hopped she, heigh ho! heigh ho! heigh ho!" till the ceremony has been repeated around the table. It is to be hoped so absurd a practice is not now in fashion. When a boy finds anything, and another sees him stoop for it, if the latter cries halves before he has picked it up, he is, by schoolboy law, entitled to half of it. This right may, however, be negatived, if the finger cries out first—
Or, sometimes the following:
Boys leaving the schoolroom are accustomed to shout—
1: Composed of flour and lard, with plums in the middle, and made into round substances about the size of a cricket-ball. They were called nuts or dough-nuts, and quite peculiar to the Isle of Wight. 2: Dame. The mistress of the house, if past the middle age, was called Dame, i.e. Madame. 3: An egg an egg 4: Throw away. 5: That is, turn the pin inside the door in order to raise the latch. In the old method of latching doors, there was a pin inside which was turned round to raise the latch. An old Isle of Wight song says,—
6: "Aal vall in," stand in rank to receive in turn the cake and ale. 7: Review of Johnson's Shakespeare, 1765, p. 42. 8: Another version says, "and I wish she was dead, that I may go mould," &c., which, if correct, may be supposed to mean, "My granny is ill, and I wish she was dead, that I may use a charm for obtaining a husband." Halliwell, James Orchard. Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales. London: John Russell Smith, 1849. Return to Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales by James Orchard Halliwell |
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Anne Heiner, SurLaLune Fairy Tales E-mail: heidi@surlalunefairytales.com Page created 10/25/07; Last updated 10/25/07 www.surlalunefairytales.com |
