Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/359

 Hampshire Folklore. 323

V. Saints Days, Feast Days, and Holidays.

There are a very few places now, if any, where Shrovetide begging is kept up by the children. School hours have killed that as much as May Day doings. But in the neighbourhood of Hannington and St. Mary Bourne it lingered till very recent years, even if quite extinct to-day. The children chanted, —

" Knick-knock, the pan's hot, And we are come a-shroving. For a piece of pancake, Or a piece of bacon, Or a piece of truckle-cheese Of your own making,"

but this is ignored nowadays, and the Pancake Day beggars merely ask for pennies or cake.

At Romsey Pageant a pair of cock's spurs were exhibited with a note that " On Shrove Tuesday, the ' prentices ' holiday, a cock fight took place at the Duke's Head, and a cock's knell was rung at the Abbey " ; and among the papers of the Lathom Ms. (an unpublished History of Romsey), now in the British Museum, there is a note that cock-scailing, once a favourite pastime, " used to be in every avenue round the old Market Howse to ye great annoyance of all." It ceased, or was put down, in Romsey about 1752. At Lymington, though there is an entry in the Borough Books as late as 1747 anent cock-scailing, this Shrove Tues- day recreation has not only died out but the very fact of its existence has been forgotten there. No one could tell me anything about throwing the heavy sticks at the unhappy bird, tied up, Aunt-Sally-wise, till, the winner's stick having dispatched him, the bruised carcase was secured as spoil and a fresh bird was tied up to continue the "sport." But squoili^ig is still talked of, — sometimes as squirling or squirreling, as squirrels are the quarry in place of the birds, though they are hunted wild, not tied up for torture. A loaded stick is,