Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/369

 Collectanea. -241

The fairy mentioned in this story seems to have been the Leprechaun, but McKeever did not say so, and I omitted to ask her.

Bryan J. Jones.

Northumbrian Social Customs.

The following notes were taken down by me, loth October, 1890, from the mouth of a member of the Roddam family of Roddam, an outlying estate in the parish of Ilderton, Northum- berland : —

"There is a twenty minutes' steep ascent up to the house which was my early home. Behind it the moors stretch away to the Cheviots, and till a few years ago it was fourteen miles from the railway. Close to the back of the house runs a public road, leading past the "town" of Roddam, as it was always called. This consists of a square paved court (paved with pebbles, I think), having on one side three cottages, on the second, one cottage, on the third a big porte-cochere^ and on the fourth a wall and some trees. All the houses look inwards upon the court, and must be approached through the gateway. I am inclined to think some cottages may have been pulled down, for an account- book of 1795 has an entry of '6d. each to the children of the town for a Christmas-box, 15s.' The cottages consist only of two ground-floor rooms each, containing box-beds. They are inhabited by the ' hinds,' or agricultural labourers. Each hind is bound to find so many women to help in the field-labour — harvesting, &c. These women were formerly called ' bondagers,' and are hired yearly at Wooler Fair (May 12th). They live in the houses of the hinds who hire them. The ' herds,' or shepherds, live in scattered cottages on the moor. The farms in the district are large, and many herds and hinds are employed on one farm. The herds' and hinds' families do not intermarry.

" Ilderton itself lies a mile and a half away across the moor (further by the road). It is a regular little village, not an enclosed court. The Ilderton people always used to lock a wedding-party into the Church till they pushed one or more gold coins under the door. This was done at the wedding of a lady of our family in 1858. Then a form was placed in the church-porch, over