Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/97

 curious fact which may be connected with ball-games on holy-days. Mr. Thistleton Dyer, it appears, mentions, in his Popular British Customs, that at Tenby, on St. Crispin's Day, the 25th October, a figure of the saint used to be hung up, and after being taken down it was kicked about as a football. What is his authority for the statement?

It is interesting, in connection with the description of the plough-bullocks and their cry of "Largus," to compare what is said by Clement Scott in his "Poppy Land" (4th ed., Jarrold, pp. 20, 37), papers descriptive of scenery on the East Coast. He says: "I might here note one of the curious harvest customs that must have come down direct from Norman times. When the reapers are in the field they are allowed, or rather it is the custom, to demand 'largesse' from the passer-by. Indeed, the very same old French word is used. The phrase goes, 'Please da me a largesse. Sir!' which I made a brown-cheeked labourer translate, 'Please give me something to drink your jolly good health with.

Are not the Dozzils mentioned by Miss Peacock identical with the Roman Oscilla, "faces or heads of Bacchus, which were suspended in the vineyards, to be turned in every direction by the wind. Whichever way they looked they were supposed to make the vines in that direction fruitful." (Smith, Dictionary of Antiquities, s.v., with illustrations.) The locus classicus is Virgil, Georgics, ii., 388, sqq.

With Conington's note sub loco.