Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/225

 Collectanea, 203

A native of Evesham adds that the game was led by the old men and women, followed by younger folks and lastly by the children.^''

15. Birmingham. — On Easter Monday, the children made a ring, hand in hand, with their backs to the church; then they went in procession to the other church, and clipped that in the same way. The custom was obsolete a century or more ago.-°

16. Cradley. — The church is still clipped on Shrove Tuesday, at noon, by the school girls. Traditions of the custom go back for over eighty years; but, as it has been for years carried on under clerical supervision, there are no games. The children stand with their backs to the church.-^

17. Painswick. — The church is now clipped by the school children, (boys and girls), on the afternoon of the Feast Sunday, (Sunday after Sept. 19th); but there are local traditions con- necting the ceremony with Easter Monday. When the ring is formed, the children shuffle slowly round the church. No recollection remains of any other ceremonies performed on the same day.^*

At Baverstock (Wilts), " Thread the Needle " was played sixty years ago, whether on one special day I cannot ascertain. The rhyme used there suggests a courting game: —

" Thread the needle, thread the needle, who am I?

One, two, three, if you want a pretty girl, come and fetch me."

I have been told, vaguely, that in some parishes of Somerset and Dorset it was the custom formerly to "clip" the yew-tree, and that at Sandford Orcas (Somerset) the yew-tree was "clipped" at the coronation of George III. No definite evidence has been forthcoming from this district, but at Appleton (Cheshire) a thorn- tree was " clipped " and " bawmed " {i.e. dressed up with ribbons etc.) annually on St. Peter's Uay.^^

J. B. Partridge.

i^So Mrs. H. Martin, Evesham.

-"Hone, The Every-Day Book, vol. i., p. 216.

-1 Church Evangelist, March 9, 1906.

-So Rev. F. E. Evans, Appleton.