Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/372

 342 between the customers of the public-houses there—each party trying to get it to his favourite 'house.' The publican at the successful house stands beer—I do not know whether there is any stated amount—and the game ends usually in a drunken spree.

"The struggle for the hood in the village street—called 'the sway'—is a very rough affair. Some years ago the crowd knocked down twenty yards or so of a wall, and a similar occurrence took place some years before that.

"I believe Monday's game was rather unusually well attended for these days. There were, I should say, between three and four hundred people in the field, and the game was well contested. The greatest fun, however, is when there is snow on the ground. I got four photographs taken, but the light was very bad, and the crowd unmanageable.

"My son, who went with me to Haxey, says there were six or seven boggans in the field, but some of them were distinguished only by a strip of red cloth tied round one arm. I did not notice these, being unable to follow the game far on account of the photography."

In conclusion Mr. Bell adds it was the custom "until recently to 'smoke' the fool over a straw fire on the morning after the hood. He was suspended above the fire and swung backwards and forwards over it until almost suffocated; then allowed to drop into the smouldering straw, which was well wetted, and to scramble out as he could."

A rhyming version of the hood-legend exists which bears indications of being the work of a modern versifier. Its author was either unacquainted with the appearance of the country in the neighbourhood of Haxey, or quite indifferent to accuracy of description, for the "local colour" is decidedly faulty. This variant of the story speaks of the original chasers of the hood as knights, and makes "Dame Adela de Mowbray" the heroine of a love-tale for which there is no