Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/371

 Rh minutes, and consisting of a few traditionary phrases. It ran something like this:

"'Now, good folks, this is Haxa' Hood. We've killed two bullocks and a half, but the other half we had to leave running about field: we can fetch it if it's wanted. Remember it's

This was all; the verses being clearly a most essential feature. They were much applauded, and at their conclusion the fool jumped down, and My Lord led the way to the open field behind the church. It is his part to throw up the hood, or rather hoods, for there are six of them, one, I suppose, for each of the principal hamlets round. The first five were of sacking, and these are, I understand, made every year as wanted, but the last, the hood par excellence, is of leather, and is kept from year to year. The hoods were thrown up about midway between Haxey village and Upper Thorpe, close to the ordnance mark showing the highest ground in the Isle. They are stout rolls of sacking (leather for the last) about two feet in length, and the object is to carry them off the field away from the boggans. If any of these can get hold of them, or even touch them, they have to be given up, and carried back to My Lord. For every one carried off the field the boggans forfeit half-a-crown, which is spent in beer, doubtless by the men of the particular hamlet who have carried off the hood.

"There are certain wards—it may be a tree or a building—showing the limits of the field, and when one of these is reached the hood is struck against it, and is then out of the boggans' domain. This is termed 'wyking' the hood. This goes on with the different hoods in turn until four o'clock, when the leather hood (the hood) is thrown up, and for this there is a great struggle, chiefly between the men of Haxey and those of Westwoodside—that is to say really