Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/479

 Collectanea. 455

tumbling down, especially on Communion days, in the afternoons afforded much pleasure to the elder sort." ^"^ At Minchinhampton, where the church is dedicated to the Holy Trinity, no Feast has been observed within living memory. Old churchwardens' accounts refer to the Trinity Church-Ale; and perhaps the last vestige of a Feast died out with the Trinity Monday Fair, some thirty years ago. Gilt gingerbread, in the shape of horses and other animals, was a great feature of the Fair ; and anyone could sell beer if he hung out a bush in front of the house.

Nov. 5. — While bonfires are found in every village, guys are only local. They used to be common at Bristol. About five years ago, I heard that a notorious offender against moraUty was burned in efiigy at Nailsworth. At Stroud, until 1824, a bonfire was lighted at the Cross, and flaming tar-barrels used to be set rolling down the steep High Street.^'

Dec. 21-25. — -^t Minchinhampton and Avening, persons went round just before Christmas, begging for money. The custom was known as " mumping." , It was done by poor men and women too respectable to beg at other times. At Abson, near Mangotsfield, it is still kept up, and is there called "gooding."

Christmas. — i. Holly. Early in December, 1905, I was carry- ing some fine holly through Chalford, and a group of women in the street commented upon the ill luck that would follow my taking it into the house before Christmas Day.

ii. Mummers. In several, perhaps many, Cotswold villages, the Mummers' Play of St. George is still performed.

iii. Wassail bowl. Wassailers still go round at Randwick, Woodchester, Avening, Minchinhampton, the outskirts of Stroud, and probably many other villages. They formerly had a large wooden (maple) bowl, which at Minchinhampton was kept during the year in the possession of one man known as " King of the W'assailers." It was decorated with evergreens and small dolls. The latter are now omitted, and a modern bowl is used, with quite a bower of greenery and coloured paper over-arching it. Money is dropped into the bowl, and spent on drink. An old woman of seventy-eight can remember when there were as

^* T. D. Fosbiooke, Abstracts of Records etc., vol. i,, p. 435.
 * T. H. Fisher, Notes and Recollections of Stroud, p. 70.