Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/406

 376 publicans have to make recesses in their walls to accommodate the locksmiths' hump-backs. The Walsall men are supposed to be bandy-legged, owing doubtless to the habit of holding the saddler's wooden vice between the knees, with the feet closely touching each other. "He waddles like a Walsall duck." "As bandy-legged as the Walsall man, that stopped the pig in the entry"—that is, by touching the doorposts with his knees.

These and similar taunts are, it may easily be imagined, in great request at the Wake, or annual feast, of each parish. Parties are made up in the different villages to visit each other's wakes, as a kind of civility, like paying a call. The innkeepers are expected to treat their customers to a dinner of roast beef on these occasions, and one of the reproaches cast on the inhabitants of Wednesfield refers to this. It is said that the Wednesfield people were so stingy that they killed only half a cow for their wake, and left the other half for next year. The Darlaston wake, on the other hand, is a much observed one. There are said to be only two Sundays in the year when the Darlaston people don't put on the pot to boil for dinner. One is the Wake Sunday, when they roast the meat, and the other is the following one, when they have nothing left to boil. But in spite of this ready hospitality, the people of Darlaston (where the staple trade is making nuts and bolts, screws and files) enjoy nearly as great a reputation for stupidity as the Gornall nailers. They are called Darlaston geese; they are said to be bull-yedded, that is, to have more strength than brains. When they do think their thoughts are "mostly about nowt." They are great bell-ringers, but their neighbours say they know no more of the church than the belfry. "Who whistled the weathercock ofT the church steeple?" "Who shut the meadow-gate to keep the snow out?" are the polite enquiries proper to be addressed to them.

Wakes are customary throughout the county. In Needwood Forest special cakes are baked for them, and in the