Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/400

366 . These were, I assume, simply loose women. The East Anglian Glossary (Nail) gives derivation from (Sc.) Kiddy, wanton, and Witch. Nearly every work dealing with Great Yarmouth gives a similar account of these. I quote from Forby (Vocab. of East Anglia, 1830), who says: "It was customary, many years ago, at Yarmouth, for women of the lowest order to go in troops from house to house to levy contributions at some season of the year, and on some pretence which nobody now seems to recollect, having men's shirts over their own apparel, and their faces smeared with blood." Is anything known of a similar custom which prevailed in other seaport towns? This species of Saturnalia might not be confined to Yarmouth. The ceremony doubtless had at some remote period an especial significance. Can it be that it alludes to some medieval attack on the town wherein the women, in the absence of the men, fought with and beat off the invaders? The wearing of men's shirts might simply be symbolical, or have been actually worn on the walls to deceive the enemy. The account of any such invasion is unfortunately not forthcoming, I fear ; the only semblance of such which I have been able to trace was the attack by the followers of Kett in 1549, but the story is probably very much older than this.

Hoddesdon, Herts.

  Antiquaries well versed in the social habits of medieval Europe have lately seen reason to deny that the seignorial right of jus primæ noctis ever really existed in any country under Christian rule, and have begun to ask where the slightest proof of the custom is to be discovered. What I desire to learn is, how the tradition concerning the practice originated. In writing on the subject in his Evolution of Marriage, 