I talked to them of what I had seen at Ilfracombe. I only heard of carrying or burning effigies at Ludlow, where "Bonfire Day" or "Night" was a rowdy occasion, and the "Guys" frequently represented unpopular local personages, as well as the historical Fawkes.
From the evidence so far one might have been inclined, nothwithstanding the cases of Lewes and Guildford, to suggest that effigy-burning was a seafaring custom, but the inland instances of Ludlow, Bedford,[1] South Nottinghamshire,[2] Cheltenham, Minchinhampton,[3] and Nailsworth (Gloucestershire), and Headington, near Oxford,[4] in all of which places "Guys" are in evidence, forbid this idea.
In Lancashire, according to Harland and Wilkinson's Lancashire Folklore,[5] the Fifth of November is kept "in towns by the effigy of Guy Fawkes being paraded about the streets and burnt at night with great rejoicing, and by the discharge of fireworks. In the country the more common celebration is confined to huge bonfires, and the firing of pistols and fireworks." In some places the boys go about begging coal for the bonfire for some days previously. But the practice of effigy-burning or otherwise is not invariably a matter of town versus country, for in the villages of South Nottinghamshire it was always usual. Local religious sympathies, as Miss Peacock suggests,[6] no doubt had a
- ↑ Folk-Lore, vol. xiv., p. 188.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 187.
- ↑ Miss Partridge writes:—"Both bonfires and Guys are known in this district (Minchinhampton). About four years ago a notorious offender against morality was burned in effigy on Nov. 5th at Nailsworth, two miles from here. But both bonfires and Guys are less common than twenty years ago." At Cheltenham, so Miss Moutray Read informs me, "fireworks,—squibs for the most part,—are the great feature of the anniversary, but bonfires and Guys had their share of attention, and the first four lines of the bonfire rhyme given on p. 411 were sung."
- ↑ Folk-Lore, vol. xiv., p. 188.
- ↑ P. 252.
- ↑ Folk-Lore, vol. xiv., p. 89. At Coventry, which was a noted Parliamentary stronghold in the seventeenth century, the Fifth of November is celebrated uproariously. For days beforehand boys with masks or blackened faces go from house to house begging for money to expend on bonfires and fireworks. (Oral information from residents, November, 1912.)
