Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/266

 250 The Lifting of the Bride.

night after Easter similar ceremonies were, or are, per- formed on what is known as " Hocktide Day, " or " Kissing Day," as it is called at Hungerford, on the eve of which this paper was read before the Society.^

It will be noticed that part of the rite is the ceremonial lustration, which Dr. Tylor describes as the " transition from practical to symbolic cleansing, from removal of bodily impurity to deliverance from invisible, spiritual, and at last moral evil." '-^ It would thus be a suitable rite for the New Year; and many customs practised in some places at the New Year, as for instance the " new lire " rite, are in other places practised at Easter.

The proceedings are also supposed to be in some way emblematical of the final tragedy of the Christian faith ; or, as Hone chooses to put it, " handed down from the bewildering ceremonies of the Romish Church." It is, of course, possible that the idea may have been in some cases derived from one of the mediaeval mystery-plays. But the occurrence of such ceremonies at seasons connected with pagan spring rites makes it sufficiently clear that they must have a different origin.

This view is strengthened by the fact that in some parts of the country celebrations of this kind are specially per- formed at harvest-time. Thus, in Berwickshire, what is known as the " Bicker-rade," or " Up in Air," consists in " bumping " women at harvest time.^ Those who have made themselves popular during the season of reaping are let off lightly ; but those who have made themselves

Sixth Series, viii., 234, where, as in the cases referred to above, the woman's legs and feet were brushed with a bunch of box ; Cheshire, Sixth Series, vii., 308 ; Ripon, Ibid., viii., 94 ; xi., 404 ; Crewe, First Series, vi., 194 ; Shropshire Fifth Series, iii., 465 ; v., 453. A woman's shoe was taken off at Gateshead on Easter Monday because she refused to give an egg, Folk- Lore Journal, vii., 318.


 * Folk- Lore, ix., 281 seq. ; Chambers, Book of Days, \., 498 seq.

- Primitive Culture, ii., 429.

^ Bicker apparently meaning " quarrel, contention," for which see New English Dictionary.