Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/220

 198 Collectanea.

special prominence in " Thread the Needle." The streets of the village or town were concerned in every case except Leicester and Tibberoughny, — and also Cradley and Painswick, where the clipping is now under the direction of the Church authorities and is carried out as a semi-religious function.

Details of the ceremonies have now to be considered, in the above order, except that those of a certain geographical area must be set side by side, — viz. a well-defined Wiltshire group of four parishes not far apart on the Somersetshire border. They all, and they alone of the recorded instances, preserved a rhyme connecting the ceremonies with Shrovetide and with the season of ploughing.

I. Bradford-on-Avon. — "As soon as the "pancake-bell" rang at eleven a.m., the school children had holiday for the remainder of the day, and when the factories closed for the night, at dusk the boys and girls of the town would run through the streets in long strings playing " Thread the needle," and whooping and hallooing their best as they ran, and so collecting all they could together by seven or eight o'clock, when they would adjourn to the churchyard, where the old sexton had opened the churchyard gates for them ; the children would then join hands in a long line until they encompassed the church ; they then, with hands still joined, would walk round the church three times; and when dismissed by the old sexton, would return to their homes much pleased that they had " Clipped the Church," and shouting similar lines to " —

" Shrove Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday, when Jack went to plough, His mother made pancakes, she didn't know how ; She tipped them, she tossed them, she made them so black, She put so much pepper she poisoned poor Jack."''

Pepper is associated with Shrove Tuesday doings in the Isle of Purbeck. The Stonecutters' Guild or Company, after transacting business in the Townhall of Corfe Castle, pay a visit to the old wharf at Owre, present a pound of pepper to the landlord of the

^ Lady Gomme, The Traditional Gaines of England etc. (1898), vol. ii., pp. 230-1. Local enquiries have added nothing further. "Clip" (to embrace) is in general dialect use. Cf. "Let me clip you in arms." Coriolanus, Act i., Sc. vi.