Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/520

 462 unplaited again by reversing the dance. I do not know how the pole was kept upright. I think there were some grown-up people with them—men. Some musical instrument was played, but I do not remember what. They performed two or three times in different parts of the town. It was usual to give all the school-children a holiday on May Day.

Kensington.

This performance is not uncommon in North Staffordshire, but the pole is usually planted firmly in the ground, not carried about. I saw it first at Talk o’ th’ Hill in 1878 or 1879, on the occasion of a village fête; but I have never been able to trace it properly. I think, however, it is indigenous there, though it has now become common in other parts of England, introduced, as Miss Peacock says, by school-teachers and others. .

I ask for space to correct an oversight in my article on The European Sky-God, No. III. It was towards the close of 1902, not 1903, as printed on page 288 (line 5 from bottom), that Dr. Frazer told me of his revised theory as to the rex Nemorensis. That communication preceded my further investigations into the subject, some of which were published in 1903. The date of the conversation is therefore not altogether unimportant.

(Ante, p. 427.)

What Miss Weston brings forward does not touch the question which I am discussing. She offers no evidence of the secular