Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/361

 Rh it will soon have to be numbered among the bygone amusements of English country life. Such being the case, the present seems the fitting time to set in order and to print the more important notes which I have been able to collect with regard to this curious custom—a custom which almost certainly dates from a period when the great mid-winter feast was still understood by all men to be held in honour of the sun, and of the powers connected with light and organic development. It will be observed that although the following descriptions of the game differ in completeness of detail, and vary more or less on small points, being distinguished by many slight discrepancies which it is impossible to harmonise; yet so far as they go they all agree in the main facts. Indeed, they tally so closely in this respect that it would be unnecessary to print them in full were it not advisable to preserve every fragment of original information relative to a usage so archaic in its essence as this belated instance of solar ritual.

"Throwing the hood," then, is an annual diversion indulged in at Haxey, in the Isle of Axholme, by a gathering of men who assemble from several adjoining townships; old Christmas day or Twelfthmas being the proper day for the game, which may, however, be played on the 7th of January if the 6th fall on a Sunday.

The Rev. W. B. Stonehouse says in his account of the parish of Haxey that this place, though at one time the most considerable in the Isle, never had the the privilege of a market or fair. "It has, however," he adds, "two feasts, one on the 6th of July, called Haxey Midsummer, and the other on the 6th of January, called Haxey Hood. The midsummer festival has nothing to distinguish it from other similar meetings, but that held on the 6th of January has a sport or game peculiar to the place. The hood is a piece