Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/271

 Collectanea. 243

costume. Secluded as they were, in a great measure, from the c ircle of fashion and commerce, they lived in a kind of insulated manner, and retained the modes and customs of their ancestors.

The upper classes, — the men wearing white trousers and the ladies white dresses, — used to assemble at Mount Orgueil Castle on Easter Monday, and a fair was held at Gorey on that day. May day was observed as a festival by both old and young, who went forth in the early morn to gather the hawthorn blossom, to which they gave the name of "May," and called the ceremony " bringing home the May." The fairest maid in the parish was crowned with flowers as " Queen of the May." The Puritants were intolerant of May Day Celebrations. In 1592 it was ordained that " those who persisted, after being admonished, in giving pagan names to children at baptism, were to acknowledge their fault publicly," and in 1602 that "persons convicted of having danced publicly on the first of May, were to be suspended from the Communion, without being named, for the first offence, but publicly named, on a repetition of their sin." However, it was still the custom up to twenty-five or thirty years ago for the young men and maids of St. Heliers, on May Day at sunrise, to walk out to the neighbouring farms and there drink milk warm from the cow.

In the seventeenth century Jersey was known as the " land of the knitters." The scarcity of agricultural labourers, arising from the preference of the able-bodied men to knit rather than work in the fields, is alluded to by several ordinances of "the States." Men and women were forbidden to meet together to knit, and we read that in the year 161 5 "Philip Picot is forbidden to knit in the company of girls, to avoid a scandal, under pain of being punished ; if he knits, let it be in his house without any female companion." The penalty incurred for infraction of this ordinance was imprisonment in Mount Orgueil Castle, either for a week or month, on bread and water ; and the stockings, if knitted during the summer months, were to be confiscated.

Notwithstanding ordinances, men and women continued to meet and spend the long winter evenings by the dim light of the "crasset," which was suspended from the "Coniere." The wooden arm chair was occupied by the head of the family, who was