Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/103

Rh the springs and wells to fill their bottles, and suck at them all the afternoon.

To pass on to Good Friday. The Incumbent of Fishlake, a village in the south-east of Yorkshire, tells me that in that place, on Good Friday morning, at eight o’clock, instead of the usual bell being rung as on Sundays and other holydays, to give notice of Morning Service, the great bell of the church is solemnly tolled as for a death or funeral. This custom is very beautiful and suggestive, but I do not remember to have heard of it elsewhere. A friend, who passed his boyhood in the north of Durham, informs me that no blacksmith throughout that district would then drive a nail on that day; a remembrance of the awful purpose for which hammer and nails were used on the first Good Friday doubtless held them back.

I learn from a clergyman familiar with the North Riding of Yorkshire that great care is there taken not to disturb the earth in anyway; it were impious to use spade, plough, or harrow. He remembers, when a boy, hearing of a villager, Charlie Marston by name, who shocked his neighbours by planting potatoes on Good Friday, but they never came up.

The popular feeling in Devonshire is very different. The poor there like to plant crops on Good Friday, especially to sow peas, saying they are sure to grow “goody,” and it is thought a very lucky day for grafting, while in some part of the South of England (of the exact locality I am uninformed) they sow annuals on this day before the dawn, to make them come up double. A distinctive observance of Good Friday seems, however, to have once prevailed in that county, and so singular a one, that I trust its mention may not be deemed irrelevant. The rector of a country parish about fourteen miles from Exeter was startled one day by this inquiry, from a Sunday scholar, “Please, Sir, why do people break clomb (i.e. crockery) on Good Friday?” The question was rather puzzling to the rector, but he was a good deal struck by hearing afterwards that it is the custom in the island of Corfu for the inhabitants on that day to fling potsherds down a steep rock, uttering imprecations on the traitor Judas.