Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/155

 Folklore of the Azores. 139

streets and covered with white cloths, on which stand por- tions of meat (two pounds each) and two loaves, which are given to the poor. These portions are known as pensoes. In the afternoon the band plays the ' Hymn of the Holy Ghost,' and the Emperor or Empress (a child between the ages of eight and twelve), accompanied by its father and near relations and friends, walks down the road, giving the bread and meat away. On the Sunday the High Mass takes place, when in full canonicals the priest crowns the Emperor, after which he returns with the crown on his head and the sceptre in his hand, walking between two rows of people clad in white ; the band plays and rockets are let off. The procession is generally preceded by the Fulioes. These are four fantastically- dressed men, wearing a sort of mitre on their heads and long flowing garments made of some bright-coloured stuff or chintz, carrying the flag, a drum, a tambourine, and fiddle, and singing hymns to the Holy Ghost.^ The feast then takes place, after which the Emperor or Empress sits for the rest of the afternoon in the theatre, with a table before him on which the crown and sceptre are displayed; and on one side the holy flag. A chosen few of the other children sit there also. The lots are then drawn for the next year, and when a Sunday is drawn, the Fulioes announce it by a roll of the drum and shaking the tam- bourine. Plenty of bunting, green boughs, and flowers are displayed.

A Pombhiha {or the Dove Festival^.

On one occasion, while the plague was raging in St. Michael's in the fifteenth century, the priests were cele- brating Mass in the church of the Matriz, when, as they finished the service, a white dove was seen to fly in at the

' An illustration of this ceremony with the ' Fulioes ' was drawn by the Baron de Laranjeiras, and is given by Mr. W. F. Walker in The Azores, 1885, p. 117.