Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/378

 342 Correspondence.

Murray's Century Dictionary has : —

" Cuckoo-ale. A provision of ale or strong beer formerly- drunk in the spring of the year. The signal for broach- ing it seems to have been the first cry of the cuckoo."

The Vicarage, Headington Quarry, Oxford.

The Wild Huntsman.

While in Oxfordshire last year I met with a localization of the Wild Huntsman story which may, perhaps, be unknown to your readers. At the village of Noke, a place of some twenty- six houses about five miles from Oxford and one mile from Islip, there lived in the reign of Elizabeth one Benedict Winch- combe. He purchased the Manor, and lived in the Manor House (now destroyed), dying there in 1623. He was buried in a chapel attached to the church, wherein "a fair altar of black marble," bearing his effigy, was erected ; and, leaving no issue, he devised the manor to his nephew, Benedict Hall, son of his only sister Mary. Both monument and chapel are now demolished, though the inscriptions from the former are let into the chancel wall. The story is current in the village, that " old Winchcombe," as they call him, was very fond of hunting, and, as in many other versions of the tale, was not content with six days in the week for his favourite pastime, but devoted Sunday also to the chase; and that after his death he might be heard at night with his hounds, careering over the neighbouring country, until he was finally "laid by twelve parsons." I did not ascertain the date of this last event, but it is significant that the village is on the edge of Otmoor, formerly the haunt of innumerable wild-fowl, which of course we know are in many places termed " Gabriel hounds," in their nocturnal flight, from the resemblance of their cry to that of a pack of hounds, and the moor having been (within the last century) drained, they

are of course no longer heard.

W. Henry Jewitt.