Guy Fawkes at Ramsgate.—The notes in the March number of Folk-lore on “Guy Fawkes on the South Coast”, bring back to my memory that some fifty years ago it was a custom at Ramsgate to eat certain specially-prepared cakes on November 5th. They were like muffins as to size and shape, and were cut open for the reception of some treacle to be eaten with the cakes. At the same town boys personated Guy Fawkes, and not lay figures, as is usual in most places.
Burial of Teeth with Body in Cornwall.—An aged woman, known in the village as old Fanny, died at Mawgon, in North Cornwall, nine years ago. Mrs. Perrin, the Rector’s wife, wrote a touching little account of her, called Told for a Memorial, which was published, I believe, by the Religious Tract Society. Fanny was a devoted Churchwoman, and took great interest in Foreign Missions for which she saved out of her scanty pittance. But she firmly believed that every tooth she possessed (she preserved all she lost in a box for the purpose) must be buried with her against the Day of Resurrection. She exacted a promise from the good clergyman and his wife that the teeth should be placed in her coffin. Mrs. Perrin told me the story herself, and regretted that most unfortunately she and Mr. Perrin had chanced to be travelling at the time of Fanny’s death, and that they had not been in time to fulfil their promise about the teeth. Fanny firmly believed that her resurrection body would not be perfect without the teeth, as far as I could make out, but I had the impression that there was a special virtue in the things themselves. Excuse my troubling you with this story of the old Cornish woman, but I thought it might be of interest.
8, Balcomhe Street, Dorset Square.
Folk-lore Items from Český Lid, iii (Prag, January 1894).
P. 212. Village costumes, with pictures.
230. Going from house to house with the Mumming Girls (Lucka, pl. Lucky). Three to six girls of 12-14 years are clothed in white, their faces covered in a thin veil, to keep their faces from being seen and themselves from seeing. One holds a child swaddled up, the second has rags or a scrubbing-brush, the third a birch, the fourth a basket or bundle of apples, the fifth a brush for whitewashing. With them goes a sixth dressed up as a priest, holding a book and a sprinkler. They come quietly and unexpectedly in the twilight, into a room. They give greetings, but these are unintelligible. The nurse finds a stool, and sits upon it, taking the child in her arms and imitating its
