Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/204

 St Andrew's-day, 30th November.

St Thomas (shortest day), 21st December.

In all, these vacancies make about six weeks holidays in the year—less than is now given in boarding and private schools, but very much more than working boys, apprenticed or otherwise, now enjoy. The most remarkable feature of the above list is, that, with the exception of the fortnight at Christmas, and three afternoons in the Easter week, and the like at Whitsuntide, all the holidays of the year are of single days (twenty-seven in all), averaging more than two in every month of the year. There were three in October and four in November. Now, for apprentices, there are, in addition to Sundays, only two days' holiday legally demandable, viz., Christmas Day and Good Friday. But the custom in Lancashire is to give, in large manufacturing establishments, the whole of the Whitsuntide week as a yearly holiday; and in shops and small establishments, the whole, or the afternoons, of three days; in many cases in the country, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday; but in Manchester and the neighbouring district, the three or four race-days, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday—Saturday being usually set apart for wives, sisters, and daughters from the country to go into Manchester and stare about them, whence it is derisively called "Gaping Saturday." In Blackburn, the annual holidays are Easter Week; in Burnley, the three days of the July fair.

TREACLE-DIPPING. late Mr Gregson, in his "Gimcrackiana," describes amongst the sports of the visitors at Southport, treacle-dipping, sack-running, and steering soap-tailed pigs to their styes. In a note to his verses on Southport, he