Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/362

 332 of sacking rolled tightly up and well corded, and which weighs about six pounds. This is taken into an open field on the north side of the church about two o'clock in the afternoon, to be contended for by the youths assembled for that purpose. When the hood is about to be thrown up, the plough-bullocks, or boggins, as they are called, dressed in scarlet jackets, are placed amongst the crowd at certain distances. Their persons are sacred; and if amidst the general row the hood falls into the hands of one of them the sport begins again. The object of the person who seizes the hood is to carry off the prize to some public-house in the town, where he is rewarded with such liquor as he chooses to call for. This pastime is said to have been instituted by the Mowbrays, and that the person who furnished the hood did so as a tenure by which he held some land under the lord. How far this tradition may be founded on fact I am not able to say, but no person now acknowledges to hold any land by that tenure."

Peck's account of the sport is earlier in date than the above description, and contains important particulars which Mr. Stonehouse leaves unmentioned. His statement connects the Haxey custom with the ordinary twelfth-tide mummers or plough-jags of the county, whose traditional drama, rough and artless though it be, is still of indisputable interest as a lingering survival from the days when the awakening energy of vegetation was allegorically represented in show at the termination of the Yule feast. According to this authority, the hood, "a roll of canvas tightly corded together, weighing from four to six pounds, is taken to an open field and contended for by the rustics, who assemble together to the number of many hundreds; an individual appointed casts it from him, and the first person that can convey it into the cellar of any public-house receives