Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/43

. iv. JCLY s, was.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 31 •wear a sprig of oak myself on each succeeding anniversary of Royal Oak Day. I have also encouraged the school children to do the same. This year I saw several of them decorated, and on the evening before I noticed they were gathering bunches of oak leaves ready for the occasion. It is long since our church and inns displayed their branches, and the ringers have now given up their early peal. In her ' Dictionary of Northamptonshire Words and Phrases ' (1854), Miss Baker gives the following interesting account of how the day was observed at Northampton : — " On this day it was formerly the custom for all the principal families in the town of Northampton to place a large branch of oak over the door of their houses or in their balconies, in remembrance of the restoration of Charles the Second. The oak boughs are gradually disappearing, but the corporate body still goes in procession to All Saints' Church, accompanied by the boys and girls of the different charity schools, each of them having a sprig of oak, with a gilt oak-apple, placed in the front of their dress ; and, should the season be unpropitious, and oak-apples be scarce, small gilded potatoes are sub- stituted. The commemoration of this day has probably been more generally and loyally observed in this town than in many other places from a feeling of gratitude to that monarch, who munifi- cently contributed 1,000 tons of timber out of Whittlewood Forest, and remitted the duty of chimney money in lM orthampton for seven years, towards the rebuilding of the town after the de- structive fire in 1675. The statue of the King, which is placed in the centre of the balustrade on the portico of All Saints' Church, is always en- veloped in oak boughs on this day." I may add that the custom of attending church as recorded above is still kept up. The Mayor, Corporation, and magistrates of Northampton, together with the charity trustees, the freemen, the boys of the Blue Coat and Orange School, and the girls of Beckett and Sargeant's School, walked in procession to All Saints' Church on Sunday, 28 May, this year, and the children received their annual prizes the next day. In The Bimingham Weekly Post of 3 June reference was made to the decline in the observance of "Oakapple Day," and an account (illustrated) was given of the way the day is celebrated at the Leycester Hos- pital, Warwick. See also 10th S. i. 486. We apply the dock leaf to nettle stings, but, our couplet being somewhat different from ME. RATCLIFFE'S, I record it : — In dock, out nettle ; Never let the blood settle. JOHN T. PAG*. Weit I laiM'-n, Northamptonshire. We always had a whole holiday on " Oak- apple Day" when I was a schoolboy at Chudleigh, in Devonshire, nearly fifty years ago. I have often wondered since why the his- torical event of 29 May should have been thus so rigidly commemorated in the county of Devon—not that we, as boys, ever questioned the propriety of the celebration. Iseern also to recollect some of the customs and penalties incident to the occasion, as mentioned by ME. THOS. RATCLIFFE and ME. HAEEY HEMS. CECIL CLAEKE. Junior Athenaeum Club. On the occasion of the review of Kentish Volunteers by George III. at the Mote Park, Maidstone, on 1 August, 1799, the town was specially decorated with oak boughs, and the people, including the royal ladies, wore oak leaves. Why ? E. SATTEETHWAITE, Col. R.U.S.I., Whitehall. "BEATING THE BOUNDS"(10th S. iii. 209, 293, 390).—The following articles referring to this interesting custom will be found under the above heading or ' Perambulations ':— Hone's Kvery-Day Book, vol. i. col. 651. Hone's Year-Book, col. 1178. Popular Pastimes.—London, published bv Sher- wood, Neely & Jones, 1816. Illustrated. (Who was the author of this interesting book ?) The Graphic, 14 May. 1881. Bumping a Curate.—The Daily Telegraph, Friday, 24 June, 188- (?). A Caution to Bumpers.—The Standard, 20 Novem- ber, 1874. I have also a considerable amount of manuscript and printed matter in my local collection referring to perambulations of the parish in which I was born and still reside— Hornsey, Middlesex ; but these items can
 * iardly be of more than local interest.

GEOEGE POTTEE. Highgate, N. In some fifteenth-century Chancery pro- ceedings, edited by Mr. C. Trice Martin, which appear in the last issue of Archaeolonia, /hinks that the turmoil grew out of a dispute as to parish boundaries. " Shewith yow William Phelipp, knyghte, on the }arte of oure lord the kyng, that, where as Nicoll Desonthyn, vickery of the chirche of Lesyngham in .In1. Counte of Lincoln, Edmund Baxster .of the lame, and other parachones of the same toune, and luimuntes to the sayd William Phelypp, the xvjth >f Mail last passyd, went procession aboute the >oundes of the sayd toune liche as hath be nsyd jefore, to praye for the peas and the good spede >f oure sovereign lorde ; ther come John Harvy of Svedon in the countie of Lincoln, swyer, Richard rlert of the same toun, laborer, John Cusson of the same, husbondman, Adam Cusson of the same
 * here is mention of a riot that occurred when
 * his custom was being observed. Mr. Martin