Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/368

 338 Miss Atkinson further adds that in the account of Haxey-hood and the subsequent smoking of the fool given in Mr. W. Andrews' Bygone Lincolnshire, 1891, p. 197, and also in a newspaper cutting in her possession, twelve boggans in red and the fool are mentioned, but that according to her notes and her memory of the scene there were only eleven boggans and the fool, twelve men altogether, A writer in the Hull Times, January 11th, 1890, says that several officers are appointed to rule the revels, including "Bunkus," "The Fool," "Michael," and "Webby," and that the fool to begin the proceedings mounts a stone neai Haxey Church and repeats the following lines:

These words are, however, sometimes attributed to "my Lord" when he is on the point of throwing the hood for the first time.

According to Mr. North's description of the custom, "Haxey-Hood" is supposed to have been instituted when the Mowbray family were owners of a castle in the neighbouring parish of Owston and of a residence at Haxey. And it was Lady Mowbray whose hood was blown off by the wind when she was going from the latter house, in a part of Haxey still spoken of as "the Park," to church on one Epiphany. Being amused with the scene which followed, she established its annual repetition, upon the hill where it had taken place; and it is said that she left six and a half acres of land as a reward to the thirteen men who were to conduct the affair, although "no record .... can now be found of the bequest, nor can the land be traced." Mr. North further describes the festival as observed in the following manner in recent years. About 2 p.m. twelve men