boys burn the old stumps and fumigate others' houses with the smoke),[1] compares with the Oxfordshire boys' belief, often carried into practice, that they are at liberty to take forcible possession of any firewood, provided they have repeated the bonfire rhyme.[2] In Yorkshire and Lincolnshire it is thought that anyone may lawfully shoot all over the manor on Guy Fawkes' Day, and the belief was frequently put in practice in the early part of the nineteenth century. The licensed rowdyism of the south-country towns also agrees with this. These additional points of likeness between the old and the new festivals make the transference of the bonfires from one to the other the more probable.
Mr. John Nicholson[3] describes the Fifth of November as a much-observed holiday in country places in the East Riding of Yorkshire. The harvest has been finished, the stubble grazed off, the hedges trimmed; the thorns and clippings are saved up for a great bonfire, and the boys gather stores of fuel for weeks previously. On the eve of the great day the youths go round the village and strike the doors of the cottages with babbles, i.e., leather bags each having a stone inside and a string attached to it. At 11 a.m. on the Fifth, the eldest apprentice in the village goes to the church "to put the bell in," i.e., to ring a signal bell at the sound of which the apprentices leave work and the children school, and the holiday begins. "The church bells ring vigorously all day; amateurs help the regular ringers to keep them going, and much ale is consumed in the belfry. Some farmer lends a field and gives straw for the bonfire, and all bring their contributions. In the evening the fire is lighted; guns and pistols are fired, squibs and rockets let off, and
- ↑ Folk- Lore, vol. xviii,, p. 438.
- ↑ Several Oxford variants of this appear in Folk-Lore, vol. xiv., p. 176, and Brand, op. cit., vol. i., p. 398.
- ↑ Folk-Lore of East Yorkshire, p. 15.
