Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/482

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. XIL DEC. 12, 1903.

day. It now ends on the Thursday. In this village they speak of " holding up " the feast, and this year I was an eyewitness of what happened in the village. I also obtained from -aged men and women some information about customs which have passed away.

Wake Eve was a time of leisure, for on the evening of that day gates and doors were lifted from their hinges and hidden, and farmers' carts were removed from their sheds and taken down the hill to a wet and swampy place called the Minings (the first i is long), from which the villagers still fetch their water. One old woman said she would take care that her cart was not taken, and locked the door of her carthouse. But the cart was already gone. At the adjoining village of Brad well the carts used to be taken down the hill on which this village stands, and were found next morning in the stream at the bottom. At Little Hucklow the Sinings was often a place of merriment. To this place the lads and lasses of the village went every evening with buckets on their heads to fetch water, and then they played their evening ..games. At one of these they used to say :

Sally, Sally, water sprinkle in the pan ;

Rise, Sally, rise, Sally, for a young man.

Choose for the best, choose for the worst,

Choose for the pretty girl that you love best.

Then a couple were supposed to get married, and the others said :

Now you've got married we wish you joy, Seven years after a son and a daughter { Pray, young lady, come out of the water.

As the lads and lasses ran down the hill to the Sinings some of them made arches with their arms, under which the others "ducked " and when they "ducked" they said, "Dig under th' water hole." The eyes of the old woman who told me of these joys of her youth sparkled. This year carts were not taken from their sheds. ' Sally Water ' is still played, but not at the Sinings or in wake week.

We had two weddings in wake week, this being a favourite season for wedlock. At one of these the wedding party drove in the morning to the nearest church in a carriage and pair, and in the afternoon the bride and bridegroom played at trap-ball or rounders in the town gate (village street) with the 'other lads and lasses, the bride being in her bridal dress. As they came back from church entrance to the village was barred by a rope, and before the carriage could get through a small toll three shillings was exacted, i r Eve n^ evenin 8 tnei *e was dancing in a hay- iott. ihe room was decorated with ever- greens and flags, and they sometimes danced

to a tune called 'Paddy Whack.' I noticed that before dancing began pieces of tallow were scattered oh the floor to make it slippery.

On Wake Sunday a special service is held in a small Dissenters' chapel in the village. It is largely attended both by the villagers and strangers. ^ The young girls are dressed in white, and sit on a platform at one end of the building. In wake week children begin to wear new clothes and new shoes. Forty years ago much weaving was done in the village, but the loom ceased to work on the Thursday before Wake Sunday. In wake week visitors arrive from other towns, absent sons and daughters come to stay with their parents, and relations and friends pay their annual visit. I heard a farmer say that in wake week he had had once as many as forty visitors in his house at one time. Some days before Wake Eve houses are cleaned, white- washed (there is no papering), and painted. A man told me that his wife had been " scrattin' and fettlin' " for a week or more to get things ready. The custom is (or was) to paint the doors of the houses black, and to colour the outside of door-steads and window- frames yellow by means of clay- wash. Yellow paint was used instead of clay-wash this year. Spar, which is plentiful in the neighbourhood, is scattered in front of the houses just before wake week. Not only do friends meet at this season, but old quarrels are settled, and no wake week would be complete without a fight. This year two of the villagers settled a dispute by the help of their fists.

Old men tell me that fifty years ago most of the villagers brewed their own ale, and in wake week they went from house to house "tasting the taps." An interesting custom in this week has just been discon- tinued. Thirty or forty men and women joined their hands together, and, forming a ring, danced from house to house. A fiddler played the tune, and as they danced they sang :

There was a man, he had a dog,

And Bingo was his name O,

B-i-n-g-o, B-i-n-g-o [they spell the word],

And Bingo was his name 0.

They would dance in the houses if they could get in. It was a time of high merriment at which games were played and The girls used to sing :

I '11 have a lad with a white cockade, Or else I '11 wait till there is one made ; A white cockade and a jacket blue, Those are the lads that prove so true. It is said that the old women of Castleton, four miles off, loved their wakes so dearly that they made a rope to tie them in !

songs sung.