Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/604



, in his article on Asinus in Tegidis in the last number of Folk-Lore, refers to "the curious custom reported from Great Bookham, Surrey, of putting a broom up the chimney with its twigs protruding during the absence of the housewife." This practice existed in Clitheroe, Lancashire. The following is extracted from some articles I contributed to a local paper over thirty years ago on Clitheroe Folk-Lore:—

"It was at one time the practice (though I have never seen it done) for a man, whose wife is away from home, to stick the besom out of the window, or from the top of the chimney, in order to intimate to his friends that he is temporarily free from restraint, and that he will be free to enjoy himself. This has given rise to the saying 'When you are gone we will put the besom out and have rejoicings,' which is as much as to say, 'We shall be glad to be rid of you.' Sometimes when a man's wife is away from home, his friends, for a joke, will tie a red rag to a broom, and climb up and fix it in his chimney. I think this is more often done when the wife has deserted her husband, and it is a species of poking fun at him." The late Mr. R. C. Pilling, who spent the early part of his life in Clitheroe, corroborated this account.

There is an allusion to putting out the broom (but applied to the absence of the master of the house) in a letter dated 4th February, 1810, from Revd. Thomas Wilson, B.D., Incumbent of Clitheroe and Head Master of the Free Grammar School there, to Samuel Staniforth, Esq., of Liverpool (see Wilson's