Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/224

 "BRINGING IN THE FLY."

BY TEKCY MANNING, M.A., F.S.A.

{Read at Meeting, Mareh \Q)th, 19-13.)

We read in Anthony Wood's description of St. Bartholo- mew's Hospital, near Oxford, written in 1661, that once a year the Fellows of New College used to visit the Hospital on Holy Thursday,^ " early in the morning, after their grave and wonted manner," and attend a short service in the chapel. This done, "they walked from thence to a well, called Strowell,. at the upper end of the grove adjoyn- ing, (which with the way from the chappell therto used anciently to be strewed with flowers)." Here, after the reading of the gospel and epistle, they joined in singing part-songs and then returned home.

In two notes, Wood first queries, "whether the bringing in of the fly doth not relate to this custome;" and then remarks that " many people resorted here ; as the cooks bringing in of the fly, the boyes their at May Day to bring the first fruits of Flora."- No explanation is given of these some- what mysterious allusions, which I -daresay have puzzled others besides myself.

At the installation of the Earl of Pembroke as Chancellor of the University in 1648, the proceedings, says W^ood, were so disorderly that "the rout or rabble of the City" declared openly "that they had often seen Sir Cranion or the Fly at Whitsuntide fetched in by the Cooks of Oxford

1 " Before it was on May Day," says Wood in a note.


 * A. Wood, Survey of the Antiquities of the City of Oxford, vol. ii., pp. 514-5.