Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/364

 334 annually on old Christmas Day; she also ordered that the twelve men engaged to contest the race for the hood should be clothed (pro tem.) in scarlet jerkins and velvet caps, the hood to be thrown up in the same place as the one where she lost hers. The custom is yet followed; and though the Meeres on which she was riding has long ago been brought into a state of cultivation and the road through been diverted, yet an old mill stands in the field where the old road passed through, and is pointed out as the place where the original scene took place, and the hood is usually thrown up from this mill. There is usually a great concourse of people from the neighbouring villages who also take part in the proceedings; and when the hood is thrown up by the chief of the Boggons, or by the officials, it becomes the object of the villagers to get the hood to their own village by throwing it or kicking it similar to football—the other eleven men, called Boggons, being stationed at the corners and sides of the field, to prevent, if possible, its being thrown out of the field, and should it chance to fall into any of their hands it is 'boggoned,' and forthwith returned to the chief, who again throws it up from the mill as before. Whoever is fortunate enough to get it out of the field tries to get it to his village, and usually takes it to the public-house he is accustomed to frequent, and the landlord regales them with hot ale and rum. The game usually continues until dusk, and is frequently attended by broken shins and broken heads. I have known a man's leg broken. The next day is occupied by the boggons going round the villages singing as waits, and are regaled with hot furmety; from some they get coppers given them, and from others a small measure of wheat, according to the means of the donors. The day after that they assume the character of plough-bullocks, and at a certain part of Westwoodside they 'smoke the fool,' that is, straw is brought by those who like and piled on a heap, a rope being tied or slung over the branches of the tree next the pile of straw, and the