Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/328

 298 Soitlino; Clcmentiug, and Cat te ruing.

Taken by themselves these trivial little old customs may seem to have no more than a local antiquarian interest, and a mere equation of them with other begging customs elsewhere would not suffice to give them any anthropo- logical value ; but when we enquire into When and Where, as well as Wliat and Hoiv, when we study them historically (as in Europe it is possible to study custom) and consider them in relation to their economic environment, they become, as I have endeavoured to demonstrate, an object- lesson in the effect of the contact of cultures. They exhibit an example of successive layers of imported culture super- imposed on a groundwork of indigenous custom. We have first the ancient — I might almost say the prehistoric — autumnal celebration of the old and new }'ear, probably always combined with a Feast of the Dead. Then we get the introduction of Christianity, transforming the pagan feast into the festival of Hallowmas. Next we meet with that combination of newly introduced subsidiary cults with newly organized and specialized crafts, which marks the

coppers, thrown into the street to be scrambled for. Plaintiff was burnt by receiving a red-hot copper down his sleeve." (He lost the action on technical grounds. )

Miss Muloch (Mrs. Craik), in her Studies of Life, published in 1S61, thus describes the Mayoral election at Newcastle in her early days: "What a grand event was the first frost ! which I have known come so early as the 9th of November — 'Mayor-choosing day,' or ' clouting-out day' — which, by old town custom, was the very Saturnalia of play. All the children in every school or private house were ' clouted-out ' by a body of young revolutionists armed with ' clouts ' — knotted ropes — with which they battered at school-doors. All the delighted prisoners were set free. Woe be to the master or mistress who refused the holiday ! for there would not have been a whole pane left in the schoolroom windows : and I doubt if even his worship the new Mayor would have dared to fly in the face of public opinion by punishing any ' clouter.' "

In the case of Newcastle we see the custom of doling apples, etc., divorced from all ecclesiastical associations and associated with the beginning of the municipal year and with the licensed holiday common at New-Year festivals, as the All Saints' doles were with the agricultural year and the St. Clement's doles with the trade-guilds' year. It thus falls into line with the Kidder- minster Lawless Hour, and brings that into connection with the rest.