Page:A book of folk-lore (1913).djvu/99

96 same prolonged and slow manner as before, with singular harmony and effect, three times. The last cry is accompanied by the same moments of the body and arms as in crying “The Neck.” After this they all burst out into a kind of loud joyous laugh, flinging up their hats and caps into the air, capering about, and perhaps kissing the girls. One of them then gets “the neck” and runs as hard as he can down to the farmhouse, where the dairymaid, or one of the young female domestics, stands at the door prepared with a pail of water. If he who holds “the neck” can manage to get into the house in any way unseen, or openly by any other way than the door at which the girl stands with the pail of water, then he may lawfully kiss her; but, if otherwise, he is regularly soused with the contents of the bucket. “The neck” is generally hung up in the farmhouse, where it often remains for three or four years.’

Mr. Hunt wrote in 1865. Since then the custom has almost if not wholly ceased to be observed, owing to the general abandonment of the sickle and the introduction of reaping machines.

Mr Hunt is wrong in supposing that ‘We yen’ is a corruption of ‘We have done,’