Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/263

 The Lifting of the Bride. 247

animal this is. Possibly some ideas of the same kind may account for similar practices.

The third and last group of customs connected with lifting need not detain us long, and I refer to them here because it has been sometimes considered that they are in some way analogous to those other classes of "lifting" which we have been considering. This is the custom of men lifting women, or women lifting men at certain special seasons of the year. Most of the cases which I have noted come from the north-western counties, where it would almost seem that the usage has become specialised. Thus, in Westmoreland, on New Year's Day, women were, or are, lifted on a ladder or pole, or occasionally on a chair or " swill " (which, according to Halliwell, is a large wicker basket used for carrying fish), and taken to a public-house, where they were obliged to provide ale for the company. If this was not given, the woman's shoe was taken off and left as a pledge with the ale-wife, from whom the owner had to redeem it by paying the bill.^ In Shropshire, according to Miss Burne," the practice was common ; Easter Monday and Tuesday being known as " Heaving " Monday and Tuesday. On Monday the men " heaved " the women, and on Tuesday the women the men. " An old bookseller," she writes, " told me in 1881, that in his 'prentice days at Ludlow he and his companions were accustomed to ' heave' all the young girls of their acquaint- ance. Parties of young men went from house to house carrying a chair decorated with evergreens, flowers, and ribbons, a basin of water, and a posy. ' What were the basin and the posy for? ' I asked, and the old man smiled with amusement at my ignorance. ' Oh,' said he, ' it's quite plain you have never been heaved ; ' and he pro- ceeded to explain that the posy was dipped in water, and

' Denhain Tracts, li., 31. The forfeit of shoes, spurs, or buckles seems common, see Henderson, op. cit., 84 ; Brand, i., 93 ; and Hone, Year Book, 751. ^ Shropshire Folklore, 336 seq.