there to join in a variety of rural sports. It was the village wake, and took place here, it is possible, when the keeping of wakes and fairs in the churchyard was discontinued.—Hutchinson’s Hist. of Cumberland, vol. ii. p. 322-3.
In the villages of the West Riding the streets may be seen on this day full of grown-up men and women playing “battledore and shuttle feathers.”
Passion Sunday, the fifth in Lent, is called in the North Care, Carle, or Carling Sunday, the proper fare for that day being grey-peas steeped a night in water and then fried in butter. Formerly doles of these carlings were made to the poor; at present they are chiefly a treat to children. Boys have their pockets full of peas at this time, shooting them and nipping them about in frolic.
The use of palms on Palm Sunday has, for the most part I fear, passed away, except among Roman Catholics. The late Mr. Denham, however, in one of his tracts, printed in 1858, speaks of palm-crosses as relics still often to be seen in the hands of north-country children on Palm Sunday, and on cottage-walls through the rest of the year. And he quotes the proverb as still current, “He that hath not a palm in his hand on Palm Sunday must have his hand cut off.” The Rev. G. Ornsby also relates that when he was a child palm-crosses were always made for Palm Sunday by the people in the Vale of Lanchester. The substitute for palm was the willow with its early catkins, which formed the extremities of the arms of the cross; they were tied together with blue or pink ribbon, disposed with bows here and there, and were often very tasteful and pretty. And I can myself bear witness to their constant use in the city of Durham about forty years ago. Many a time have I when a boy walked with my comrades to the riverbank, near Kepier Hospital, to gather palms; and many a cross have I made of them for Palm Sunday. We formed them like a St. Andrew’s cross, with a tuft of catkins at each point, and bound them up with knots and bows of ribbon. In Yorkshire children mark the day differently; they get “pawne bottles,” i. e. bottles containing a little sugar, and betake themselves to
