Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/340

312 of skin in his cap, for it brought good luck and ensured her marriage within the coming year. The forest-meeting was recognised as the fittest place for settling up old grudges and quarrels, and many a fight took place between private enemies or the champions of different villages. My informant's father has seen a dozen fights going on at the same time.

While the hunters were gone, those who were left behind set up a Maypole on the village-green, and a party of morris-dancers, accompanied by a fool and a pipe-and-tabour player, gave an exhibition of their skill. With the dancers went a "sword-bearer," as at Bampton (v. p. 309), carrying a cake impaled on a sword, which brought good luck to all who partook of it. The dancers afterwards marched off to Witney, where they gave a similar exhibition, and collected money for the feast. Others of the villagers got ready the "Bowery," a barn dressed up and decorated with flowers and green boughs. On the return of the hunters and the morris-dancers, the whole company repaired to the "Bowery" to take part in a feast known as the "Youth Ale." Festivities were kept up all the week till Saturday, when the deer was dressed and cooked, and the hunters plentifully regaled with venison. Outsiders had to pay a shilling for a taste of the meat. During each day the morris-dancers visited neighbouring villages to collect money, and to engage in competition with other morris-dancers ; and on their return every evening they went to the "Bowery" for a jollification. This ceremony was discontinued some fifty years ago. My informants are John Fisher, aged 80, and John Bennet, aged 87, labourers of Ducklington. Fisher made me three "Peeling-horns" in March, 1895.