Page:History and characteristics of Bishop Auckland.djvu/197

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. The manners and customs, popular amusements, and sports and pastimes of our forefathers, are often cursorily passed over by the general historian, and are therefore only to be found recorded in some old manuscript, or picked up from a few quaint allusions made to them by some of our old dramatists and poets, or handed down by the less certain and more obscure medium of oral tradition ; and yet, in them are oft to be found a truer index of the moral and social condition of the people than are to be found in more general records. But the study of antiquities seems to have been greatly neglected tiU within the last half century, and the character of an antiquarian seems to have been considered something like what Bums describes Captain Grose to have been — a collector of " Auld nicknackets, of rusty caps, and jingling jackets ;" and the vagaries of their profession have formed a fund of character for the writers of novels and romances, of which the Monkbarns of Scott, and the illustrious Pickwick of Dickens are examples. The transactions and discoveries, however, of such men as Belzoni and Layard have placed these studies in a more important position, and have shown their great value in illustrating early history. And in modem times, the pre-historic researches of Canon Green well of Durham, the Roman discoveries of Dr. Bruce, of Newcastle, and the folk-lore of Ellis, and of Henderson, of Durham, have all tended to show the importance of bringing to the surface those long-neglected mines of rich lore which are to be found in the byways and untrodden paths of antiquarian literature. But our object in thus introducing the subject is not for the purpose of taking our readers on a mummy-hunting expedition in the dark recesses of the pyramids of Egypt, or on an antiquarian ramble over the ruins of Nineveh, but merely to notice a few of the popular old customs peculiar to our town and neighbourhood ; hoping that, though we may live in an age when a great many of them are laid aside, and when charms and incantations have lost their power, and "cats, magpies, and old women have ceased to assume any other appearance than that which nature designed them," " we may at least," as Brand observes, " by a kind of chemical philosophy, extract wisdom even from the follies and superstitions of our forefathers." The generality of men look back with a kind of veneration on the superstitious prejudices of their ancestors. White, in his " History of Selboume," says : "It is the hardest thing in the world to shake them oflf ; they are sucked in, as it were, with our mother's milk, and, growing up with us at a time when they take the fastest hold and make the most lasting impressions, become so interwoven with our very constitutions, that the strongest sense is required to disengage our- selves from them. But though we may carry them about with us ; and their, observances are mixed up with our every-day life ; and their sayings have become household words ; yet, we know little or nothing of the origin of many of them, and must despair of ever being able to reach the fountain head of streams which have been running and increasing from the beginning of time." The first old and now obsolete custom we purpose noticing, namely, "The Midsummer Cushion," is one which was peculiar to the town of Bishop Auckland, and is not mentioned by any of the writers on those subjects, either ancient or modem. About half a century ago, and for years previous to that time, it was customary on Midsummer-day, June 21st, to procure a high round three-legged stool, such as is used in the tap-rooms of inns at the present day. A coating of clay was evenly spread over its upper surface, about one inch in thickness, and in this clay every description of flowers that could be procured were stuck, so as to form a design similar to the pile on a Brussels carpet. One of these stools was placed at the comer of each street, or in the busiest part of the leading thoroughfares of the town. A pewter plate was placed upon an adjoining table, and a young maiden wa3 also in attendance to receive the Digitized by Google