where the widows ask and commonly receive at the farmers’ houses a small measure of wheat, and they call it “going a Thomasing.”
St. Stephen’s Day in Cleveland, as indeed all England over, is devoted to hunting and shooting, it being held that the game-laws are not in force on that day; but I am not aware that the apple-trees are deliberately aimed at, as is the case in Devonshire, with the view of insuring a good crop of apples. A friend reminds me of the nursery rhyme which connects field-sports with this day:
Three Welchmen went a-hunting
All on St. Stephen’s Day,
the point of the tale being that none of the three can quite make out what the moon is.
The old custom of hanging up a stocking to receive Christmas presents, a custom which the Pilgrim Fathers carried to America, and bequeathed, curiously enough, to their descendants, has not yet died out in the North of England. If any of my readers are Folk-Lore collectors they will divine my feelings on discovering in one of our northern capitals, among my own personal friends, a family in which, without the excuse of a child to be surprised and pleased, each member duly and deliberately hangs out her stocking on Christmas Eve to receive the kindly gifts of mother and sisters.
I may add, that throughout the parish of Whitbeck, in Cumberland, the country people breakfast early on Christmas Day on black pudding, a mess made of sheep’s heart chopped with suet and sweet fruits.[1]
But a Christmas in the North would be quite incomplete without a visit from the sword-dancers, and this may yet be looked for in most of our towns from the Humber to the Cheviot Hills. There are some trifling local variations both in dance and song: the latter has altered with the times; the former is plainly a relic of the war-dances of our Danish and Saxon ancestors. I had an opportunity, A.D. 1866, of making inquiries into the mysteries of
- ↑ Hutchinson’s History of Cumberland, vol. i. p. 555.
