Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/48

40 to reorganise the affair on a plan which he had seen carried out by the Temperance Societies at Ashford, of which place he is a native. They got every society of working men or boys in the town to send delegates to form a Carnival Society, as they drolly call it. Every member of this society pays one penny a week through the year, which entitles him to a ticket for their annual dinner, and leaves a margin for the expenses of the procession. They also obtain subscriptions towards the expenses from the leading men of the town, so that all the money collected on the line of march is clear profit, and is handed over to the Victoria Hospital in the town. They carry no effigies, and "strictly avoid personalities", said Mr. Buzan; neither is there any bonfire. The result is curiously like a mediaeval trades procession, such as lingered within memory at Shrewsbury, and, as I believe, still exists in some Midland towns. But the present form of the custom is quite modern, though it reverts apparently to an old type. Still, the changing forms of an old custom, and the history of the circumstances and influences which have led to a change in one ascertained case, may not be without interest to members of the Folk-lore Society, though I scarcely think with Mrs. Buzan, to whom I explained the reason of my questions, that the result of my inquiries will be "a little en-courage-ment" to them.

[Substantially the same practices and the same modes of carrying them but obtain at Hampstead. I have, unfortunately, not kept my programme of the last fifth of November procession, but a good account, with illustrations, may be found in the Daily Graphic for November 6th. —A. N.]

Mrs. sent from Kashmir a description of "Masōck", a game played by Cinghalese fisher-boys near Colombo, in Ceylon:—