was concluded by a festivity, and a treat of cakes and ale, furnished by the scholars.
One of the articles always stipulated for and granted was the privilege of immediately celebrating certain games of long standing, viz. a foot-ball match and a cock-fight. Captains, as they were called, were then chosen to manage and preside over these games, one from that part of the parish which lay to the westward of the school, the other from the east. Cock and foot-ball players were sought for with great diligence. The party whose cocks won the most battles, was as victorious in the cock-pit; and the prize, a small silver bell, suspended to the button of the victor’s hat, and worn for three successive Sundays. After the cock-fight was over, the football was thrown down in the churchyard: and the point then to be contested was, which party could carry it to the house of his respective captain; to Dundraw, perhaps, or to West Newton, a distance of two or three miles, every inch of which ground was disputed keenly. All the honour accruing to the conqueror at foot-ball was that of possessing the ball, Details of these matches were the general topics of conversation among the villagers, and were dwelt on with hardly less satisfaction than their ancestors enjoyed in relating their feats in the Border wars. These Bromfield sports were celebrated in indigenous songs, one verse only of one of them the writer happens to remember:—
At Scales great Tom Barwise gat the ba’ in his hand,
And t’ wives av ran out, and shouted, and bann’d:
Tom Cowan then pulch’d, and flang him ’mang t’ whins,
And he bledder’d, od-white te’, tous broken my shins.
Other customs obtained in the neighbourhood of Blencogo. On the common, to the east of that village, not far from Ware-Brig (i.e. Waver Bridge), near a pretty large rock of granite, called St. Cuthbert’s Stane, is a fine copious spring of remarkably pure and sweet water, which (probably from its having been anciently dedicated to the same St. Cuthbert) is called Helly-Well, i.e. Haly or Holy Well. It formerly was the custom for the youth of all the neighbouring villages to assemble at this well early in the afternoon of the second Sunday in May, and
