Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/478

454 on the Sunday after Holy Cross Day, pig's head and dumplings are eaten. Some of the smaller public-houses display the head in their windows, and it is afterwards given away to customers. Drink is taken up into the church tower for the ringers. At Chalford Feast (about Aug. 15) a sheep used to be roasted whole. Woodchester Feast (St. Mary's; 1st Sunday after Sept. 8) is kept with pig's cheek. It used to be said that so much was eaten and spent at Woodchester Feast that on the Sunday following, if you looked across from the other side of the valley, you could see only one chimney smoking in Woodchester, and all the people rushing to that house for dinner. (A similar saying about Honley Feast is reported from the neighbourhood of Huddersfield.) But the most remarkable of all our Cotswold food-customs is at Painswick Feast, on the Sunday after Sept. 19 (St. Mary the Virgin, Old Style). Small china dogs are bought and put into apple or other fruit pies. No good or bad luck belongs to the person to whose portion the dog may fall, neither is it given to any special member of the household. It is considered a great joke among outsiders, who laugh at Painswick natives as "Painswick bow-wows." "You do come from Painswick, out of a Bow-wow pie," is another form of taunt. An explanation of the custom is given by saying that someone once hanged a dog and ate it in a pie. The custom still goes on quietly. You can buy the china dogs at one or two small shops, just before the Feast; but the poorer people often flatly deny doing anything of the kind, and readily take offence over it. Is a similar custom pointed to in the jeer at Thames bargees—"Who ate the puppy-pie under Marlow Bridge?"

At Coaley (where the church is dedicated to St. Bartholomew) the Feast seems to have been more like a hill-wake (cf. the cheese-rolling at Cooper's Hill mentioned above). Fosbrooke says,—"The wake day of the church is noticed by Mr. Smythe, as in his time forming a concourse or fair, where all kinds of country wares were sold; and, he adds, the number of young people, ascending and descending the hill called Couley Pike, and boys