Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/100

78 purpose, each boy giving what was called a ‘cock-penny.’ The masters made a good profit out of the transaction, as they were entitled besides to claim all the runaway birds, which were called ‘Fugees.’&thinsp;” This custom is mentioned by Brand, and he brings forward in proof of its extreme antiquity a petition of the date of 1355 from the scholars of the school of Ramera to their schoolmaster for a cock he owed them upon Shrove Tuesday to throw sticks at, according to the usual custom, for their sport and entertainment. I learn from a clergyman, formerly a scholar at the grammar-school of Sedbergh, in Yorkshire, that the master used to be entitled to 4½d. yearly from every boy on Shrove Tuesday to buy a fighting-cock. At Heversham, a village one mile from Milnthorpe, the cock-pit was in existence close to the school a few years ago.

The historian of Cumberland gives a detailed account of the manner in which Shrove Tuesday was formerly observed in a grammar-school of that county:—Till within the last twenty or thirty years it had been a custom, time out of mind, for the scholars of the free-school of Bromfield, about the beginning of Lent, or in the more expressive phraseology of the country, at Fastings Even, to bar out the master, i.e. to depose and exclude him from his school, and keep him out for three days. During the period of this expulsion, the doors of the citadel, the school, were strongly barricaded within; and the boys, who defended it like a besieged city, were armed in general with bur-tree or elder pop-guns. The master meanwhile made various efforts, both by force and stratagem, to regain his lost authority: if he succeeded heavy tasks were imposed, and the business of the school was resumed and submitted to; but it more commonly happened that he was repulsed and defeated. After three days’ siege, terms of capitulation were proposed by the master and accepted by the boys. These terms were summed up in an old formula of Latin Leonine verses, stipulating what hours and times should, for the year ensuing, be allotted to study and what to relaxation and play. Securities were provided by each side for the due performance of these stipulations, and the paper was then solemnly signed by both master and scholars. The whole