Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/467



The Cotswolds are specially rich in spring customs, the observance of May Day, and village Feasts,—the latter all in late summer or autumn. I have not yet come across any harvest or field customs. The modern Quarter Days (usually Old Style) were observed at such Hiring Fairs as continued until recent times, always at Michaelmas; at Tetbury and Chipping Sodbury there were also Lady Day Hirings. But from a list of Gloucestershire Fairs given in The New and Complete English Traveller (1794) one may gather hints of the older Quarter Days, All Saints, Candlemas, May Day, and Lammas. Eleven Fairs were held on those days, all Old Style:—

All Saints.—Blakeney; Cirencester; Fairford; Lydney.

Candlemas.—Frampton.

May Day.—Berkeley; Fairford; Stow-on-the-Wold; Stroud; Tewkesbury.

Lammas.—Thornbury.

"Holland Fair,"—i.e. All Hallows,—still survives, or did quite recently, at Cirencester, but not for hiring.

The other Calendar Customs, in their order of sequence, are as follows:—

New Years Day.—At Minchinhampton it used to be considered lucky for the first person who came to the house on New Year's Day to be dark haired. Either sex was equally lucky.

Valentine's Day.—At Minchinhampton the first person of the opposite sex that you saw on this day was your Valentine.