Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/453

Rh season' at this time of the year, pies of mutton, veal, and bacon are substituted. (This year the loaves were dispensed with, an equivalent being given to the aged poor.) .... As may well be imagined, Easter Monday is the great carnival of the year, and eagerly looked forward to by the youths and natives of the place, as well as by the surrounding villagers. This year the two benefit societies, as usual, held their anniversary, one at the Royal Oak, and the other at the Fox Inn, and to enliven the proceedings each engaged a band of musicians to accompany the members in processional order to the parish church for the 'club sermon', after which each society proceeded to their respective inns, where a substantial dinner was provided. About three p.m. a selected deputation called at the Rectory for the provided 'pies and beer', which, upon being taken to the Fox Inn, a procession was organised in the following order:

"Two men abreast, carrying two sacks with the pies cut up.

"Three men abreast, carrying aloft a bottle each; two of these bottles, filled with beer, are ordinary field wood bottles, but without the usual mouth, and are iron-hooped all over, with just a hole left for drinking from; the third is a 'dummy'.

"Occasionally, when can be procured, as was the case in 1885, a hare, in sitting posture, mounted on top of a pole.

"Band of music.

"Procession, which, as may well be imagined, increases greatly in number as it approaches the 'Hare Pie Bank', where, on arrival, the pies cut up are pitched out of the sack and scrambled for.

"Until this year a man followed the band with a basket containing the penny loaves, which were broken up and thrown about indiscriminately as he went along. On Monday, when the procession neared the bank, the band struck up 'See the conquering hero comes', and on reaching the bank the hare-pies were scrambled for by the spectators, who amused themselves by throwing the contents at each other. Then commenced in earnest the business of the day—the well-known 'Hallaton bottle-kicking'. One of the large bottles containing ale—both of which are of wood strongly iron-hooped—was thrown into the circular hollow on the mound, when the 'Medbourne men' or other villagers who cared to join tried to wrest the bottle from the Hallatonians' grasp. Talk of a football scrimmage! It was nothing to this. First one