Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/430

 122 A Cole skill Ceremony.

A CoLESHiLL Ceremony. Among curious tenures certainly rivalling the chopping of a faggot by the London City town clerk, or the cracking of the whip in Caistor Church, is one which was performed at Coleshill, on Easter Monday, so late as, I am told, 1895. The vicar held his glebe on condition that if the young men could catch a hare and bring it to him before ten o'clock, he was bound to give them a calf's head and a hundred eggs for their breakfast, and four- pence in money.

The connection of eggs with Easter was pretty frequent, hare- pie being the correct thing to eat, and at Hallaton, in Leicester- shire, there was an endowment for providing a hare-pie, bread, and ale for distribution on Easter Monday.

It is easy to read in these old customs a meaning they never had, but the following is the most probable : Caesar, in his Commentaries, tells us that the ancient Britons never ate hare, but used it for the purpose of divination. It was supposed that demons sometimes transformed themselves into these animals. It is probable therefore that the triumph of Easter suggested the eating of the hare, as showing the complete subjection of all that is evil. — Midland Counties Herald, 26th January, 1922.

Folk-Tales from the P.anjab. [Folk-Lore, vol. xxxiii. 271 et seqq.) The Clever Wife of the Merchant. A CERTAIN merchant had a wife who could not be matched for beauty in the whole world, and she was as virtuous as beautiful. One day the husband set out on one of his many journeys connected with his trade, leaving his wife behind to look after their little children. Before starting he agreed with his wife that if he did not return within two years she would know he was dead and might therefore marry anyone she pleased.

Time went on and still the merchant did not return. More than a year after his departure the Governor of the town, who had heard of her great beauty, sent a message to her through an old woman, that he wished to marry her. This she said was