Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/169

 consist chiefly of ass-races, for purses of gold; prison-bar playing, and grinning through collars, for ale; bag-racing, for hats; foot-racing, for sums of money; maiden plates, for ladies under twenty years of age, for gown-pieces, shawls, &c.; treacled-loaf-eating, for various rewards; smoking-matches; apple-dumpling-eating; wheel-barrow-racing, the best heats; bell-racing, and balls each evening. 'Que nunc prescribere longum est.' The humours of Didsbury festival are always well regulated; the display of youths of both sexes, vieing with each other in dress and fashion, as well as cheerful and blooming faces, is not exceeded by any similar event; and the gaieties of each day are succeeded by the evening parties fantastically tripping through the innocent relaxation of country-dances, reels, &c., to as favourite tunes, at the 'Cock' and 'Ring o' Bells' inns."

ECCLES WAKES AND ECCLES CAKES. annual festival is held at Eccles, of great rustic celebrity and of high antiquity, as old probably as the first erection of the church, called "Eccles Wakes," celebrated on the first Sunday in September; and there is a wake at Swinton on the first Sunday after the 23d July, and another at Woodgate on Saturday in Whitsuntide. The Eccles wake commences on the Sunday, it is continued during the three succeeding days, and consists (amongst many other things) of feasting upon a kind of local confectionary called "Eccles cakes" and ale, with various ancient and modern sports. All the authorities agree in assigning the first institution of wakes to the annual assembly of the people to watch and pray on the