Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/322

 292 Sou/ino^, Clc)]icnting\ and Caiterning.

To which a Kinver correspondent adds: —

" If you fill it from the well God will send your soul to Hell! "

To turn now to the map (Plate XVI, p. 285 ). The places marked are those at which we know on good authority that the several customs are or have been observed within the memory of man.

The Shropshire notes were collected by myself and friends previous to 1885, (but Newport, 19 12).

Cheshire, from printed sources (E.D.D., A'', and Q.), by Brand workers.

North Staffordshire, by the Hon. Sec. of the Field Club, myself, and others, at various dates.

South Staffordshire, Mr. G. T. Lawley, myself, and others, at various dates.

Worcestershire, by Sir Richard Temple, through the local press, so lately as last autumn (191 2). The accounts given by Allies and Noakes, the Worcestershire historians, 1840-50, mention no locality.

Observe the sharp boundary between the customs — Boningale and Tong, Enville and Kinver, only three miles apart. The Enville ditty has been recorded on three differ- ent occasions: by " Cuthbert Bede " in 1856, by the parson of the parish in the eighties, and by the National school- master in response to Sir Richard Temple's appeal last autumn (1912). The Kinver version has also been recorded at different times, and each time it celebrates both St. Clement and St. Catharine, while that at Enville mentions St. Clement alone, so we see that the forms are fairly constant.

The southern boundary of the custom seems to be reached in Worcestershire, for enquiry through the Evesham Journal last autumn only elicited from Gloucestershire an account of a dole of apples on the 1st of January, with a ditty quite unlike ours but