Derbyshire Folk-Lore
By S. O. Addy, M.A.
Every English county, one might almost say every English village, has preserved some fragments of a vast body of traditional lore which, before the age of printing, was common to the whole people. Such fragments may still, like coins on the sites of Roman towns, be picked up, some in better condition than others. Unfortunately, those who have written on this subject have preferred for the most part to limit their researches to old books. For instance, Brand, in his Observations on Popular Antiquities, first published in 1777, has given us a collection of scraps drawn from a thousand authors. It was very entertaining, no doubt, but the work would have been more valuable had its author collected from the lips of the people the ballads, legends, tales, and other portions of belief and custom which in the eighteenth century were far more abundant than they are to-day. It was a great opportunity neglected. But in the eighteenth century there was excuse for such neglect, because the value of such things was not then understood. Nor was their importance seen until the publication of such works as Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border in 1802, and an English translation of Grimm’s Popular Stories in 1823. Even then English students did not begin to collect traditional remains systematically.
Although in these days the word folk-lore has become part of the common speech, and the subject is in some degree familiar to everybody, little original research is done. Even the Folk-lore Society, instead of collecting fresh material—and there is plenty to be had—has been printing, under the name of County Folk-lore, a farrago of material from local histories and guide-books, of which not one item in twenty was worth reproducing. Far different is the work of such men as Kristensen, whose labours in Denmark should have been taken as a model of what should be done in England. Not every day could a man be found to dine on potatoes or sleep on the table of a workman’s cottage, as Kristensen has done, in order to secure a ballad or a tradition. But at least it should be possible to make some effort to collect the lore which is passing away from us for ever. The old books are not likely to perish; the men and women who know the old tales are dying every year. But where you have one man ready and willing to collect folk-lore or dialect, you find a hundred who want to advance theories or to write little grammars. The armchair of the study is so much more comfortable than a rush-bottomed chair in a cottage.
In Derbyshire we have folk-lore which is common to other parts of Great Britain, just as Great Britain has folk-lore which is common to other parts of Europe. But every country has preserved items which are to be found in no other, or which, if found elsewhere, appear in such a modified shape that they contain much that is new. For folk-lore has been compared to a mosaic which has been broken and scattered, some fragments lying here and others there. In Derbyshire we have the garland or ceremony of the May King, which is performed at Castleton on the 29th of May—an ancient rite which seems to have survived in no other part of Great Britain.99 And then we have the Derby Ram or Old Tup, which may occur in other counties, but which, at all events, is so much associated with Derby as to have taken its name from that town. It is remarkable that these ceremonies are connected with ancient boroughs, for there were burgage tenements both in Castleton and Hope in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries.100 In Castleton there was Peak Castle, older than the Norman Conquest; in Hope there was the Roman town of Burgh or Brough.
In giving the title “Hugh of Lincoln” to the Derbyshire version of the ballad which follows, regard has been had to the precedent set by others, for the ballad is usually so entitled. The Derbyshire version, here first printed, is valuable not only for the literary beauty which two or three of its lines display, but for the association of the story of the Golden Ball with that of the Maid saved from the Gallows. I have added the words “Or the Rain Charm” to the title, because I believe that such is the subject of the ballad. But the reader will be able to distinguish tradition from inference, and to form his own opinion. I would add that a better version of the ballad may yet exist at Wirksworth or in some other part of the county. We may regret that in its present form it is corrupt; indeed, no two versions are alike. But it is the duty of the collector to write down such things as he finds them, without altering a syllable. He may conjecture, if he likes, that such a phrase as “playing at ice and ball” requires emendation, but he is not at liberty to alter the spoken words.
Hugh of Lincoln; or the Rain Charm
In the summer of 1901 the following fragment of a ballad was dictated to me by Mrs. Johnston, then aged 55, the wife of the landlord of the “Peak” Hotel at Castleton, in Derbyshire. Mrs. Johnston says that she learnt it from her mother, Mrs. Fletcher, who resided at Wirksworth, in the same county, when she was young, and died in 1904. Mrs. Johnston does not remember that the ballad had any title, or was sung to any tune:—
It rains, it rains in merry Scotland,
It rains both thick and small:
There were three little playfellows
Playing at ice and ball.
They threw it high, they threw it low,
They threw it rather too high,
They threw it into the Jew’s garden,
And there the ball must lie.
“Come in, come in, thou little palarp,101
And thou shalt have thy ball.”
“I won’t come in, I daren’t come in,
Without my playmates all.”
They showed him apples as green as grass,
They gave him sugar so sweet,
They put him on a dresser ta’
To stab him like a sheep.
“O hangman, hangman, stay thy hand,
A little before I die,
I think I see my father coming,
Hastening through yonder sty [path].
O father hast thou brought my ball,
Or hast thou bought me free,
Or art thou come to see me hung
Upon the gallows-tree?”
“I have not brought thy ball, my dear,
I have not bought thee free,
But I have come to see thee hung
Upon the gallows-tree.”
[The father and the mother then appear upon the “sty,” when the same request is made to the hangman in respect of each of them, and when they both declare that they have not brought the ball, etc. At last comes the sweetheart, who says:—]
“I have brought thy ball, my dear,
And I have bought thee free,
And I have brought a coach and six
To take thee away with me.”
During the same summer, I heard in Castleton this fragment of a story:—
Once upon a time a little girl had a golden ball bought her. One day her parents had gone away, and before going they told her if she lost her ball the magician who gave it her would hang her. After they had gone she began playing with the ball, and, as it happened, it went into a brook at the back of the magician’s house. She cried till she thought she would tell her father she had lost her golden ball. When she met him she began saying:—
Father, father, have you brought my golden ball
Or have you come to set me free,
Or have you come to see me hung
Upon that gallant tree?”
[The same question is repeated to the mother, brother, and sister, and cousins, and last of all to the sweetheart, who says that he has not come to see her hung, and stoops down and kisses her. They were married and happy ever after.]102
No fewer than eighteen other versions of the ballad here printed have been published.103 With one exception, these other versions omit the lines about the hangman and the child’s escape from the gallows. But in other respects they substantially agree in the story which they tell. A number of children are playing at ball, when one of them accidentally throws it into a Jew’s garden. The Jew’s daughter entices the boy to come in and fetch the ball. He is then laid on a dressing-board, and stabbed to the heart with a penknife, “like a swine,” or, as four of the versions have it, “like a sheep.” His body is then encased in lead, or in “a quire of tin,” and thrown into a draw-well. His mother goes forth to seek him, when he answers from the well, and bids her make his winding-sheet. The scene is variously laid in “merry Scotland,” in the city of Lincoln, in “Mirryland town,” in “Maitland town,” and in “Merrycock land.”104 In version F of Prof. Child’s collection the time is “a summer’s morning,” and in version N we are told that the deed was done “on a May, on a Midsummer’s day.”
In a story called “The Three Golden Balls,” reported from Romsey, in Hampshire,105 three girls called Pepper, Salt, and Mustard have each of them a golden ball. They play with the balls, and Pepper loses hers. Her mother is angry, and Pepper is hung on the gallows-tree. Next day her father goes to her, and she says:—
“Oh, father have you found my ball,
Or have you paid my fee,
Or have you come to take me down
From this old gallows tree?”
This Hampshire version is much degraded, but it mentions three girls, and is also important as showing that the one who was chosen for sacrifice might be ransomed, as in the Derbyshire version, and so escape death, if her father or her sisters would pay the proper fee. They refuse, however, and the girl is redeemed by her sweetheart. In this respect the Hampshire story resembles the Derbyshire metrical version, in which the child is at last “bought free.” I shall refer to the subject of redemption further on.
The concluding part of the Derbyshire version appears at first sight to be inconsistent with the first part, inasmuch as the child’s death seems to have been caused both by stabbing with a knife and by suspension on a gallows. The version, however, is quite consistent with itself, for the child was first stabbed and then suspended with the head downwards.
At the present day an English butcher who is about to kill a sheep lays it on a trestle. He then sticks a knife into the jugular vein, and leaves the sheep for a short time on the trestle until it is quite dead. Afterwards he skins and dresses it, and then he passes a piece of wood through the sinews of the hind legs. From this piece of wood it is hung, by means of a hook, head downwards from a transverse bar. In former times a transverse wooden bar appears to have been used instead of an iron bar, and to have been called the “gallows-tree” (the gallows being the two upright posts), just as the transverse bar from which the cauldron was hung in the kitchens of old houses was called the “galley-balk.” On turning to the word “gallows” in the New English Dictionary, I find three quotations from modern books, in which slaughtered sheep or cattle are described as being hung on the gallows. The first is from Lady Barker’s Station Life in New Zealand, 1866 (x. 64), in which the gallows is described as “a high wooden frame from which the carcasses of the butchered sheep dangle.” The third is from Boldrewood’s Colonial Reformer, 1891, p. 350, where the “gallows” of the colonists is described as “a rough, rude contrivance consisting of two uprights and a cross-piece for elevating slaughtered cattle.” One can hardly doubt that these colonists were adopting a practice once followed in the mother country, and, accordingly, the apparent inconsistency between the concluding part of the Derbyshire version and the first part of that version disappears. The child was first stabbed “like a sheep,” and then hung, as a sheep was, on a gallows-tree or transverse piece of wood. This suspension was identical with crucifixion on a Tau-cross, or crux commissa.
Amongst the versions of the ballad given by Prof. Child is a fragment, numbered L, which was supplied to him by the late Canon Venables, Precentor of Lincoln, and which came from Buckinghamshire. It was told to Canon Venables about the year 1825. On this, Prof. Child remarks, in a note, that “the singer tagged on to this fragment version C of the Maid freed from the Gallows given at II., 352.” The portion of the story which Prof. Child calls “the Maid freed from the Gallows” can hardly have been “tagged on.” It is found in Derbyshire and Buckinghamshire, and the metre of both portions is the same. And the lost ball occurs in both.
It remains to show for what reason the child was sacrificed. Ten of the versions published by Prof. Child begin by mentioning the falling rain—a thing which at first sight appears to have nothing to do with the matter. Thus in the Shropshire version we have:—
“It rains, it rains, in Merry-Cock land,
It hails, it rains both great and small.”106
And in the copy taken by Prof. Child from Brydges’s Restituta, we have:—
“It rains, it rains in merry Scotland,
It rains both great and small.”
The Derbyshire version, as we have seen, begins by saying that the rain is falling “both thick and small.”
Now it is remarkable that seven of the versions given by Prof. Child refer to the victim’s blood, as it flowed from the wound, as being both thick and thin. Thus in the version taken from Percy’s Reliques, we have:—
“And out and cam the thick, thick bluid,
And out and cam the thin.”
Obviously the falling rain, which seems at first sight to enter so needlessly into numerous versions of the story, would have a great deal to do with the matter if the shedding of the child’s blood were intended to be an act of imitative magic simulating, and hence producing, rain. In Central Australia men are bled with a sharp flint, and “the blood is thought to represent rain.” And “in Java, when rain is wanted, two men will sometimes thrash each other with supple rods till the blood flows down their backs; the streaming blood represents the rain, and no doubt is supposed to make it fall on the ground.”107
We know from other traditions that children were sacrificed, if not in Great Britain, at least elsewhere, with the intention of once more filling the dry beds of rivers. The Rev. Joseph Hunter (1783–1861) has recorded these lines about the English river Dun, or Don:—
“The shelving, slimy, river Dun,
Each year a daughter or a son.”108
The Rev. W. Gregor has told us that the Scottish river Spey “is spoken of as ‘she,’ and bears the character of being ‘bloodthirsty.’ The common belief is that ‘she’ must have at least one victim yearly.
“The rhyme about the [Scottish] rivers Dee and Don and their victims is:—
“‘Bloodthirsty Dee,
Each year needs three;
But bonny Don,
She needs none.’”109
There were German rivers which required their victim on Midsummer Day,110 and this, as we have seen, is the very day mentioned in one of the versions of our ballad. In nine of the versions given by Prof. Child, the body of the little victim is thrown into a draw-well, after having been rolled, as some of the versions say, in a “case,” or “cake,” of lead. The throwing of the body into a well was doubtless intended as a further rain-charm, just as, to give a single example, the man who gave the last stroke at threshing in the Tyrol was flung into the river.111 It appears from the Annals of Waverley,112 that the body of Hugh of Lincoln was first thrown into a running stream, and ejected by the stream. It was afterwards thrown into a drinking well.
A few words must be said about the Jew, or Jew’s daughter, mentioned in the different versions of the ballad and in the chronicles. We ought not to overlook the fact that the Jews at an early period of their history sacrificed, and at a later period redeemed, their first-born children, as many passages in Exodus and Numbers plainly indicate. But to say, as Matthew Paris does, that the Jews of Lincoln stole a boy named Hugh, and scourged, crowned, and crucified him, as a parody of the crucifixion of Jesus, is to make a very large demand on our credulity. The Jews of Lincoln were not at all likely to have risked their lives and property by such an act of wanton and hideous cruelty. Nor is the evidence afforded by the different versions of the ballad sufficient to establish the fact that the Jews sacrificed children in Great Britain for any purpose or in any way. These different versions seem to have all sprung from the same original, and the thing to be tested is the credibility of that original. Its value as evidence against the Jews in Britain is impaired by the different places in which the deed is alleged to have been done, and, moreover, we have seen that the prose version from Castleton speaks of a “magician,” not a Jew. Still more is the evidence vitiated by the existence of that well-known popular hatred of the Jews, which gave rise to all sorts of libels and slanders. A good example of this hatred appeared in London as late as 1758, when a man—
“published a sensational account of a cruel murder committed by certain Jews said to have lately arrived from Portugal, and then living near Broad Street. They were said to have burnt a woman and a new-born babe, because its father was a Christian. Certain Jews who had arrived from Portugal, and who then lived in Broad Street, were attacked by the mob, barbarously treated, and their lives endangered. A criminal information was granted, although it was objected that it did not appear precisely who were the persons accused of the murder.”113
What the evidence does suggest is the former existence of a custom of sacrificing children to make rain. It is not even alleged that the Jews sacrificed children to the Spey, the Dee, or the Don.
There is, however, a document of much greater evidential value than ballads and chronicles, which declares that a boy was crucified by Jews at Lincoln. In the Hundred Rolls for 3 Edward I. (1274), a sworn jury found that “certain land in the parish of St. Martin [in Lincoln], which belonged to Leo the Jew, who was condemned for the death of a crucified boy, and which land was then in the tenure of William Badde, was forfeited to the King as from the year 1256.”114
That Leo the Jew was condemned for the crucifixion of a boy will hardly be doubted. That the sentence was just and founded on sufficient evidence is quite another matter. There may have been as little evidence against the Jews of Lincoln in 1256 as there was against the Portuguese Jews in London in 1758.
Although the evidence against the Jews with reference to the subject which we are considering cannot be admitted as valid, we must not conceal the fact that this people at an early period of their history sacrificed their firstborn children. The story of Abraham’s intended sacrifice of his son Isaac should lead us to suspect the early existence of this custom. Dr. Frazer says that “the god of the Hebrews plainly regarded the firstborn of men and the firstlings of animals as his own,” the firstborn of men being generally redeemed.115 And he asks the question: “If the firstborn of men and cattle were ransomed by a money payment, has not this last provision the appearance of being a later mitigation of an older and harsher custom which doomed firstborn children to the altar or the fire?” He then discusses the Passover, and suggests that “the slaughter of firstborn children was formerly what the slaughter of firstborn cattle always continued to be, not an isolated butchery, but a regular custom, which, with the growth of more humane sentiments, was afterwards softened into the vicarious sacrifice of a lamb and the payment of a ransom for each child.”
The evidence which we have been examining does not mention the firstborn. But it tells us that the child devoted to sacrifice could be redeemed on payment of a “fee.” It is probable that those versions of our ballad which end by the throwing of the body into a well, represent the actual custom of early times when no redemption was possible. The father and mother may have regarded it as a duty that their child should become a victim, on the ground that it was better that he should die than that a whole tribe should perish of drought and famine.
No tale has been more popular among English children than that which is usually called “The Golden Ball.” In some form or other every collector has heard it.116 However much this tale may have been worn down in the course of ages, it is still repeated with emphasis. If ever there was a time when the blood of little children was shed, or when their dripping bodies hung from a gallows-tree, to make the rain fall, how could the memory of such a horror, and of deliverance from such a death, fail to be preserved in ballad or in story?
The Glass House117
There was a little girl selling oranges, and she went to a lady’s house, which was made of glass. It had glass doors, and everything was glass. The girl asked her if she would purchase of her oranges, and the lady said she would have them all if her mother would let her come and be her little servant. So her mother let her go. One day she was cleaning the glass window, when it broke. Then she broke the floor, and when her mistress went to change her dress the little girl ran outside to the gooseberry tree, and she said:—
“Gooseberry tree, gooseberry tree, hide me
For fear my mistress should find me,
For if she does she’ll break my bones,
And bury me under the marble stones.”
And the gooseberry tree said, “Go to the butcher’s.” And when she got to the butcher’s, she said:—
“Butcher, butcher, hide me,” etc.
But the butcher said, “Go to the baker.” And when she got there, she said:—
“Baker, baker, hide me,” etc.
And the baker said, “Get into this bread box.” And she got in, and he nailed it up. While she was at the baker’s, her mistress had been to the gooseberry tree, and it told her it had sent the little girl to the butcher. When her mistress got to the butcher’s, he said he had sent her to the baker’s. So she went to the baker’s, and he told her to go away; but she said she would let his house be searched, and she commenced. But when she came to the box that was nailed she shivered, and she made him undo the nails, and out came the girl. So her mistress took her with her, and as they were crossing a river the girl’s mistress was leaning over a bridge, when the girl gave her a push, and she fell over and was drowned. And the little girl went singing merrily till she got to the glass house, and kept it as her own.
Peggy With the Wooden Leggy118
Once upon a time there lived together a very rich gentleman and his wife, and they had a young and beautiful child—one of the fairest earth had seen. She had bright golden hair. Her eyes were blue, and her teeth like pearls from the ocean. Her parents loved her very dearly, and if in their power would grant her every wish that she asked. But Peggy fell down and broke her leg, and her father bought her a wooden one. And with Peggy having a wooden leg, the children called her Peggy Wooden Leg, and her father didn’t like that name. And at last, thinking that something was wrong with her, he bought her a cork one, and then they called her Peggy Cork Leg. And going into a shop one day, she asked the shopman if he could change her leg for a golden one. At last she was taken ill, and died, and the butler of her father’s house, thinking it was a sin to let her be buried in her golden leg, stole it, and hid it in his box. He was asleep one night, and he thought he heard a knock, knock, knocking at the door. He said, “Now, bother me, what’s that? No ghosts here.” On turning the bedclothes down he lay aghast, for there at the foot of the bed stood the ghost of beautiful Peggy, not as he had seen her the day before, beautiful as marble, but with features without flesh, sockets without eyes, head without hair, and mouth without teeth. He was terrified, but he thought he would speak to her, and he says, “Peggy, is that you?” And she replied, “Yes; ’tis I.” Then he says, “Peggy, where are those beautiful blue eyes of yours?”
She said, “They are worm-eaten and gone.”
And he said, “Where are those beautiful pearl teeth of yours?”
She said, “Worm-eaten and gone.”
And he said, “Where are those beautiful golden locks?”
And she said, “Worm-eaten and gone.”
Then he said, “Where is that beautiful golden leg of yours?”
And she said, “You—have—got it!!!” and vanished through the floor.119
Miscellaneous Folk-Lore
A Skull as the Protector of a House
At Tunstead, between Chapel-en-le-Frith and Whaley Bridge, a skull in three pieces has long been kept inside the window of a house. It is known as Dicky Tunstead. If the skull is taken away, things will go wrong in the house and on the land. When the house was being rebuilt and new windows put in, they set Dicky on a couple beam in the barn, and thought they had done with him, and would hear no more of him; but at the rearing supper he made such a disturbance that they had to bring him back into the house. Dicky appears in all kinds of shapes—sometimes as a dog, and sometimes as a young lady in a silk dress. In whatever form he appears, he will point to something amiss if you will follow him. One of the “quarrels” of glass in the window where Dicky is is always out, and if it is put in it is always found taken out again next morning.120
I was told that at Dunscar, a farmhouse in the parish of Castleton, there is a human skull on the outside of a window sill. If it is removed, the crops fare badly. I went to the farmhouse myself, and found no skull there, and the tenant who had lived there many years had never heard of such a thing.
Christmas Eve
In Bradwell Christmas Eve is known as Mischief Night. On that evening gates are pulled off and hung in trees, and farmers’ carts are taken away. They sometimes find them in the morning in a brook at the bottom of the hill. On a certain Mischief Night a farmer was pushing a cart down a steep hill into the brook with great eagerness, not knowing that it was his own cart. He said to his companions, “layt it choiz,”121 i.e., let it down gently.
New Year
If you see the first new moon in the New Year through a glass there will be a death in the family.
At Great Hucklow they say that if you put clothes out on New Year’s Day there will be a death in the family before the end of the year.
Easter Observances
At Castleton and Bradwell, and in other villages of the High Peak, Easter Monday is known as Unlousing Day, i.e., releasing day. When a young woman came out of a house on the morning of that day the young men used to say “kiss or cuck.” If the girls refused the kiss the young men came in the evening and “cucked” them, i.e., tossed them up. The young women at Castleton used to “cuck” the young men on Easter Tuesday, and a tale is told there about a young man who was “cucked” so often on Easter Tuesday that he fell on his knees and implored an old woman who was driving a cow home not to “cuck” him. If the girl accepted the proffered kiss she was released, i.e., she escaped being tossed.
At Castleton the boys also kissed the girls on Valentine’s Day, and the schoolmaster had to let the girls go home before the boys to prevent the boys from kissing them.
“Cucking” was a very rough practice, and it sometimes led to charges of assault being made before the magistrates. At Castleton it was sometimes done by putting a “fork stale” or fork handle under the girl’s legs and lifting her up. It required two young men to do this. More frequently two men seized a girl by the arms and shoulders, tossed her up, and caught her as she fell. It is said at Bradwell that more girls were seen out on Unlousing Day than on any other day. The day is sometimes known as Cucking Day.
At Bradwell and Castleton parents tell their children to put pins into wells on Palm Sunday, or if they fail to do so they will break their bottles on the following Easter Monday. The pins must be new and straight, not crooked. I have talked to children who have done this, and one of them, a girl about fourteen years old, said the children go in great numbers on the afternoon of Palm Sunday to a well in Bradwell, “behind Micklow.” She took me to the well herself in October, 1901. It is divided into two parts by the boundary wall of a field, and is so small that I should never have found it alone. The Bradwell children used also to drop pins on this day into a well in Charlotte Lane, and also into a pond between Bradwell and Brough. Mr. Robert Bradwell, of Bradwell, aged 88, told me that on Palm Sunday “the children used to put new pins into lady wells, and the lady of the well would not let them have clean water unless they did that.” There is a lady well at the back of the castle at Castleton, from which the children used to fill their bottles at Easter, and there is another at Great Hucklow, or Big Hucklow, as some call it, from which they filled their bottles. Mr. Bradwell said the object of the children was “to get clean water by the lady’s influence. They had to do what the lady required. It was a fairy, or else an insect. On Easter Monday, a father or mother would say to a child, ‘If tha’s put no new pin in, there’ll be no clean water for thee.’” Mrs. Harriet Middleton, aged 83, once lost her slippers in the snow when she was going to put a pin in the well near Micklow. She and other young girls would have gone through snow or any weather to put them in.
At Castleton, Bradwell, and other places in the neighbourhood, Easter Monday is known as Shakking Monday. At Bradwell the children get glass bottles, such as medicine bottles, and fill them with water. They then put in pieces of peppermint cakes of various colours, but generally pink. These peppermint cakes are quite different from ordinary peppermint lozenges. They are big things, two or three inches wide, and are square or oblong in shape. The children break them up, put the broken pieces into the bottles, shake the mixture, and drink it. Some of the children tie the bottles round their necks. The sweetened water lasts for many days, and they take a drink of it from time to time. At Castleton and Aston the children put Spanish juice or “pink musks” into the water.
They say at Bradwell that unless you wear something new on Easter Sunday the birds will drop their excrement on you.
On Good Friday the lead-miners of Bradwell would on no account go into the mines. They would do any other kind of work on that day.
Shrove Tuesday Custom
About Whaley, near Chapel-en-le-Frith, they used to bake pancakes (which are eaten as soon as they are ready) on Pancake Day, i.e., Shrove Tuesday. If a girl could not eat a pancake between the time when the last pancake was done and a fresh pancake was ready, she was thrown into a gooseberry bush or upon the ash midden. At Abney on this day they called the one who was last in bed the “bed-churl” or “bed-churn,” and they threw him or her on the ash-midden. It was a common thing in the village to ask who had been the “bed-churl” that day.
Yule Loaf, Posset, and Candle
On Christmas Eve at Bradwell they have a large candle on the table and a large bowl of posset, which is made of ale and milk. They all sit round the table whilst the candle is burning, put their spoons into the bowl, and sup from them. The grocers still give candles to their regular customers for this purpose.
Mrs. George Middleton, of Smalldale, told me that the posset bowl used on Christmas Eve in that hamlet is a pancheon or milk bowl. They sit round the table, and put their spoons into the bowl. Any stranger who happens to come in can also put his spoon in. Posset is made of milk, which is warmed and spiced with nutmeg, ale being poured in until it “breaks” or curds. The Yule loaf was baked all in one piece. It was “like a round loaf put on the top of a four pound loaf.”
Robert Bradwell, of Bradwell, aged 88, said that the posset pot went round the table from one to another. There was a bit of a figure on the top of the Yule loaf to please the eye. The Yule candle was much longer than an ordinary candle.
The Last of the Cave-dwellers
Two old women, called Betty Blewit and Sall Waugh, lived in a hut within the opening of the great cave at Castleton. It was one storey high; it had a mud roof, and “a bit of a lead window in front.” The bed was in one corner. These old women used to say that they “lived in a house on which the sun never shone, or the rain ever fell.” They begged of gentle people in the summer.122 Writing of the cavern in 1720–31, the Rev. Thomas Cox says: “Within the arch are several small buildings, where the poorer sort of people inhabit, who are ready at all times with lanterns and candles to attend such travellers as are curious to enquire into these territories of Satan. These people resemble the Troglydites, or cunicular men, who, as Dr. Brown describes them, lived under the ground like rabbits.”123
First Foot
At Castleton a dark-haired man “takes the New Year in” immediately after twelve o’clock on New Year’s Eve. He must be a dark man, i.e., “a man with a black head or black hair.” The parish clerk who had very black hair took the New Year in to some houses in Castleton. When the dark-haired man comes in “a glass of something good is given to him.” I was told that young dark-haired lads “get a ruck o’ money” in Castleton for taking the New Year in. Black or dark hair is obligatory in the High Peak. Miss Barber, of Castleton, aged 76, said that the black-haired man ought to be a stranger, and not a member of the family visited. In Bradwell, as in Castleton, the New Year is brought in by a dark-haired man.124 The term “first foot” seems to be unknown in the High Peak.
Curfew
At Castleton the curfew bell is known as the “curfer” bell, the accent falling on the first syllable. It is said to have been rung as a warning to people coming over the moors. It begins to ring on the 29th of September, and ends on Shrove Tuesday. On the 29th of September it rings at seven in the evening, and on the following nights at eight o’clock. It does not ring on Sundays, or between Shrove Tuesday and September 29th. Mr. Samuel Marrison, of Castleton, aged 88, said to me that “people found their way across the hills by the sound of the bells. There were no walls, and the sound of the bells was a guide.” An old man in Castleton told me that “they ring curfer because a man was lost on the hills. The parish clerk rings it on one bell.” I was surprised to find how many people in Castleton knew the exact times at which this bell is rung.
Good Times
In Bradwell they speak of “a good time as a wakes time.” One of the lead-miner’s customary rules declared “that the bar-master, by the consent of the jury, shall make a lawful dish between the buyers and the sellers of lead ore; and against a good time (or festival) as Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, etc., shall give to the poor two dishes, if need require.”125
Vows Under the Shadow of a Hill
If lovers make vows to each other under the shadow of the castle hill at Castleton, those vows must never be broken. If broken, their love affairs will never prosper.
Thar-Cake Joinings
At Bradwell, on the fifth of November, they make a quantity of thar-cake (in South Yorkshire called tharf-cake), and divide it among the different members of the family, as the father, mother, brothers, and sisters. This is called a thar-cake joining. One Bradwell man will say to another, “Have you joined yet?” meaning “Have you made your thar-cake?”
Another informant told me that a “thar-cake join” was a kind of feast among children, and it used to be very common in Bradwell on the fifth of November. The children asked somebody to make the cake, and each of them paid his or her proportion towards the cost of the ingredients—meal, treacle, etc. They had coffee, etc., with the cake. The Primitive Methodists in Bradwell have now what they call a “thar-cake supper.” It is held on the Saturday which is nearest to the fifth of November.
Burial Customs
At Castleton burying cakes and warm ale were handed round at funerals. Burying cakes, said one of my informants, were three-cornered, and big enough to be carried under the arm. But another informant said they were round, and seven or eight inches across. They cut them into slices, and handed them round with warm ale.
At Castleton the funerals of poor people were known as “pay-buryings.” The guests used to give something towards the expenses, and an old woman with a white cap on used to sit in a chair in the corner, or in an armchair by the fire, and receive the money.
At Bradwell an old farmer called Jacob Eyre was expected to attend all funerals. A basket like a butter basket hung on one of his arms, and with the other arm he used to “deal out” pieces of bread to children standing round the door. Plenty of children gathered together at the funerals for the sake of the bread. The pieces of bread were three or four inches square, and they were either got from a bakehouse, or the relatives made it themselves. The old man was “very complimentary” to the children. He pleased them, joked, and made them laugh. What he said was very pleasant and nice. It was a regular custom in Bradwell, but it was not continued after Jacob Eyre’s death. He died many years ago.126
Mrs. George Middleton, of Smalldale, widow, aged 45, said that her mother used to dress coffins with flowers at Abney, where she lived. But she did not put thyme on them, for she said “they had nothing to do with time.” But she said that whenever one of the Twelve Oddfellows at Bradwell dies, the survivors march before his coffin and sing, each surviving oddfellow carrying a sprig of thyme in his hand, which he drops on the coffin. Mrs. Middleton thought that one of their printed rules provided for this being done, but I did not find it in them. Mrs. Middleton said that her mother was present at all births and laying out of corpses at Abney, not as part of her duty, but because she liked to be there. “Funeral bread,” she said, “was made in a peculiar way.” Mrs. Middleton said it was the custom at Abney to put thyme in a house after a death and before the funeral, and also southern wood, old man, or lad’s love, these being names for the same plant.
In Eyam there was a “custom of anointing deceased children with May-dew.”127
Wakes
At Thornhill near Hope they have two barrels of ale at the wakes, and they feast in a barn. They dance and sing.
Mr. Robert Bradwell, of Bradwell, aged 88, told me in 1901 that “every day weakened the wake time. A few old women used to stand across the road at Castleton at the end of the wake week with a rope to keep the wakes in. There is only one road in Castleton—that leading from Hope.” Mr. Bradwell said he had never seen a rope tied across the road to keep the wakes in, and that it was a superstition by which they intended to prolong the wakes. I put questions to many people in Castleton about this, but found nobody who had heard of it.
At Bradwell wakes, which begin on the second Sunday in July, children got their new clothes, and all sorts of cleaning and whitewashing were done against that time. At Castleton also the children had new clothes, and the houses were whitewashed. They “fettled and cleaned for the wakes.”128
At Castleton on wakes even, i.e., on the Saturday night before the feast begins, they pulled trees up in gardens, hung gates in trees, hid the farmers’ carts, and took them anywhere.
Offerings to the Fairies
A Derbyshire man, aged about 55, said that his grandmother used to tell him that if you made the hearth very tidy before you went to bed, and put a little food on it, you would find the room swept and tidy next morning. He remembers trying this experiment when a boy, and the disappointment he felt when the desired result was not produced.
“Sweeping the Girl” on St. Valentine’s Day
“If the lass is not kissed, or does not get a visit from her sweetheart on St. Valentine’s Day, she is said to be dusty, and the villagers sweep her with a broom, or a wisp of straw. She is bound, subsequently, to cast lots with other girls, and finally, if she has good luck, draws the name of her future husband out of an old top hat.”129
Mr. Pendleton tells me in a letter that the custom was observed on the morning of St. Valentine’s Day in the middle of the last century.